journal homepage: https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte © 2022 the author submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if accepted for publication, copyright of the article shall be assigned to international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) and magister program of english education department, universitas jambi as publisher of the journal. copyright encompasses rights to reproduce and deliver the article in all form and media, including reprints, photographs, microfilms, and any other similar reproductions, as well as translations. content lists available at www.doaj.org https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte http://www.doaj.org/ 2 m. f. ubaidillah 3 m. f. ubaidillah 4 m. f. ubaidillah international journal of english teaching and education (ijolte) editorial team editor in chief urip sulistiyo, jambi university, indonesia associate editors eddy haryanto, jambi university, indonesia kaspul anwar, jambi university, indonesia copy editor and proofreader mariza juwita, jambi university, indonesia syofranita, jambi university, indonesia layout editor yuzadi, jambi university, indonesia administrative staff ridho praja dinata, jambi university, indonesia jambi university july 2018 jln. raden mattaher, no.16 pasar jambi, 36112 p-issn: 2614-1191 e-issn: 2598-2303 email: ijolte.engedu@unja.ac.id https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=30dy8f0aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=obsuyx4aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=nvswsrsaaaaj&hl=en table of content thong vi nguyen 103-112 language use and sustainable development: opportunities and challenges for policy-makers and educators in northeast vietnamese areas ha ngan ngo, maya khemlani david 122-130 an analysis of grammatical errors in writing recount text at the eighth grade of smp negeri 20 kota jambi selvia lisa asni, susi susanti, urip sulistiyo 131-144 the influence of students motivation toward students achievement tuti alawiyah 145-156 the language attitudes of minangkabau people towards minangkabau and indonesian language temmy thamrin 157-175 manifestation of 18th century literary movement through sir walter scott’s ivanhoe: history has been rewritten rudra tapash 176-183 emotional geographies of an efl teacher in asmat, papua; male perspective sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 113-121 increasing global awareness through professional learning community: a study from lattice dion efrijum ginanto 71-86 this article was withdrawn because it was published in another journal 87-96 how phase theory can be used to improve reading comprehension in children monal manik dewle 97-102 a varbrul analysis on the reporting verb propose in electrical engineering research articles https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/4965 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/4965 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5002 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5051 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/4953 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/4953 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5204 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5048 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5048 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5205 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5205 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5000 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5065 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5065 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5003 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte/article/view/5003 untitled international journal of english teaching and education (ijolte) editorial team editor in chief urip sulistiyo, jambi university, indonesia associate editors eddy haryanto, jambi university, indonesia kaspul anwar, jambi university, indonesia copy editor and proofreader mariza juwita, jambi university, indonesia syofranita, jambi university, indonesia layout editor yuzadi, jambi university, indonesia administrative staff ridho praja dinata, jambi university, indonesia jambi university marc2018 jln. raden mattaher, no.16 pasar jambi, 36112 p-issn: 2614-1191 e-issn: 2598-2303 email: ijolte.engedu@unja.ac.id https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=30dy8f0aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=obsuyx4aaaaj&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=nvswsrsaaaaj&hl=en table of content 1. ethical issues in research involving children in tesol and applied linguistics udi samanhudi 1-12 2. from english to indonesia: translation problems and strategies of efl student teachers a literature review risni ade sandra 13-18 3. using video to improve pronunciation of the second year students of fkip uir pekanbaru afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra 19-24 4. teaching reading skills to nonenglish native speaker students: the numbered head together (nht) technique and students’ reading ability in bengkulu yarni valentina gultom 25-31 5. the implementation of project-based learning to improve students’ speaking skill diki riswandi 32-40 6. improving students’ speaking skill by using show and tell method at smpn sungai gelam muaro jambi betty kasita bangun 41-48 7. integrating ict in english language learning dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi 49-59 8. the implementation of ctl approach in teaching speaking at college students akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi rahmah 60-70 issn: 2598-2303 international journal of english teaching and education issn. 2598-2303 jambi university september 2017 editorial board editor in chief urip sulistiyo (jambi university, indonesia) associate editors eddy haryanto (jambi university, indonesia) kaspul anwar (jambi university, indonesia) reviewers heather fehring (rmit university, australia) estefania w. kollin. (clsu, philippine) siti nurul azkiyah (uin syarief hidayatullah, indonesia) florante p. ibarra (clsu, phillipine) hong nguyen (hutech university, vietnam) yuyun yulia (universitas sarjanawiyata taman sisiwa) hadiyanto (jambi university, indonesia) hanung triyoko (iain salatiga, indonesia) ana nurul laila (uin sunan ampel, indonesia) burhanudin syaifulloh (stain kediri) chothibul umam (stain kediri) https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=30dy8f0aaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=obsuyx4aaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=nvswsrsaaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=dyzfwqyaaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=dfdymaiaaaaj&amp;hl=en http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss4/7/ https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=a9oig-yaaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=mccsoloaaaaj&amp;hl=en https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=hbtjohkaaaaj&amp;hl=en http://latrobe.academia.edu/ananurullaila http://stainkediri.academia.edu/burhanudinsyaifulloh https://scholar.google.co.id/citations?user=c-m4wraaaaaj&amp;hl=en table of content 1. the implementation of british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester student’s speaking ability at english education study program of baturaja university. henny yulia & nanda aprilita 1 2. story mapping in teaching writing narrative text. yuliana 8 3. the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus. novarita 16 4. increasing speaking achievement by using pow-tega teachnique. sri wahyuni 27 5. using vlog in the youtube channel as a mean to improve students’ motivation and confidence to speak english in intermediate 1 level of lb lia jambi pramita sari 38 6. lecturer talks: classroom interaction’s identifying yunda lestari 45 7. the analysis of the readability levels of the reading texts in textbook entitled “fast tract to english” for the third year students of sma based on raygor readability estimate yelli nurhamsih 50 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte story mapping in teaching writing narrative text yuliana yulianaabi84@gmail.com stkip muhammadiyah pagaralam abstract the title of this research was teaching writing by using story mapping technique. the main objective was to improve the students’ writing achievement. quasi-experimental design was used in this research which population was the eleventh grader of sma muhammadiyah pagaralam with the total number 254 students and the sample were 64 students which consisted of two classes taken by purposive sampling technique. the data were collected by using written test. the data were analyzed by using independent sample and paired sample t-test. the result showed that the students who were taught by using story mapping technique gained better improvement with the value of t-obtained was higher than critical t-table, in which 3,73>2,38 with the significant value 0,01 value in their writing achievement. it means that the alternative hypotheses (ha) was accepted and the null hypotheses (ho) was rejected. in short, the using of story mapping technique could improve students writing achievement. keywords: story mapping technique, writing achievement. introduction according to sidekli (2013:289) writing provides communication with people who are far away in terms of time and distance, presents incredible opportunities for acquiring, presenting and transferring information. through writing, the student can express their idea, opinions, knowledge, experiences, and willingness. writing is not only leads the students to be more competitive when they want to have a good position for job but also helps them to think critically. in short, it is thus of central importance to students in academic and second language programs throughout the world. langan (2001:178) mentions that writing skill is important for two reasons. first, writing is a basic need for english learners to support their academic success. a good writing skill will help learners to do their written assignment. second, writing is a practical need to support their future career. having good writing skill is one of job requirements. more professions require ability to write especially in the use of email and message. it can be inferred that writing is an important skill that can support students’ academic success and future career. therefore, this skill should be learned and mastered well by the students. considering the importance of writing achievement in language learning discussed, the education ministry of indonesia includes writing as the important skills in curriculum 2006. in senior high school syllabus, there are twelve genres of the text that are learned by students: procedure, descriptive, recount, report, news item, discussion, exposition, and narrative text. refer to the senior high school syllabus particularly for eleventh grade; students must be able to understand narrative text. based on the writer interviewed to the english teacher at sma muhammadiyah pagaralam, she found the students’ writing is not comprehensible, because the content of the composition is not relevant to the topic, the ideas are not clearly stated, and sentences are not well organized. the second problem was that there are many errors in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling when the students tell their experience in the form of writing. therefore, the writer assumes that those problems will continuously arise if there is no innovation made. the writer tried to find out and apply innovative ways, like techniques, strategies and media that can be used to help the students in improving their writing achievement especially in narrative text. in this research the writer tried to apply the appropriate technique. if the teacher applies good and appropriate technique, it will make the students enthusiastic and have great motivation in learning process. to overcome the problem above, the teacher should offer students a technique to help them in producing written texts, step by step in producing a piece of writing. the effective technique to improving writing achievement is story mapping. ibnian (2010:182) noted story mapping technique could be used to enhance students’ interpretative abilities by enabling them to visualize story characters, events and setting. story mapping is a visual graphic map in which is provided the elements of story such as setting, characters, problems, and resolution which are presented to help the writers associate the whole content of the story, so that they can easily manage their ideas as they write and read the story. burke et al (2004:106) said story maps provide a visual spatial display for key information in narrative text. in writing of narrative text, story mapping can create not only writers’ creativity, but also help the writers develop their thoughts appropriate with the theme provided in writing of an imaginative story or telling their experience to the readers. writer also believes that using story mapping is a suitable technique that can attract the students to focus on writing narrative text. therefore, the writer interested to find out whether or not any significance difference of the tenth grade students of sma muhammadiyah pagaralam in writing achievement who were taught by using story mapping and those were not. method the method used in this research was an experimental research. it means that the writer investigated and analyzed the data, which obtain after giving the treatment to the subject. then, quasi-experimental used, according to fraenkel & wallen (2009, p. 275), “quasi-experimental designs do not include the use of random assignment. this research used control class pre test-post tests design. in this case, the population of the research was the eleventh grader of sma muhammadiyah pagaralamin academic 2016/2017. the population was 254 students; they were divided into eight classes. from the population the researcher took purposive sampling technique. purposive sampling technique is a type of non-probability sampling where the researcher consciously selects particular elements or subject for addition in a pertinent to the study. the researcher took two classes from eight classes; they were x.1 and x.3 as sample. in doing this study, the researcher taught at sma muhammadiyah pagaralam. before doing the experiment the researcher gave a pre-test to the sample students. the samples were divided into two groups, as the experimental group and control group. both of experimental and control group had different teaching procedure. in the experimental group, they got a treatment of the implementation of using story mapping technique in their writing activity, while for the control group the treatment of story mapping technique was not given. teaching procedure teaching procedure for experimental class a. pre-activities 1. the researcher gave a stimulus that related to the material or standard competence and reviewed the previous material in the last meeting. 2. the researcher gave a motivation about the importance of learning english, especially writing. b. whilst-activities 1. researcher explained the four stages of writing; planning, composing, revising, and editing. tell the students that they are going to focus on planning and that you are going to share another strategy with them to help them plan their writing. 2. researcher introduced the story mapping as a graphic organizer for planning to write. 3. researcher demonstrated the strategy by partially completing a story mapping in the picture for your own story. 4. researcher asked students to complete a story mapping for their folk tale. students may work in groups to share ideas and help each other. when students are finished, have pairs exchange their story maps and check that they are complete. 5. researcher asked students to begin write their stories. remain them to use story mapping to guide them as they write. 6. researcher asked the students to review their stories. c. postactivities 1. the researcher asked the students to review about the material that had been given. 2. the researcher gave some suggestion and motivation about how important to practice writing by using story mapping technique. 3. the researcher closed the class and appreciates students’ work which has been done teaching procedure for control class a. preactivities 1. the researchers gave a stimulus that relates to the material or standard competence and review the previous material in the last meeting. 2. the researcher gave a motivation about the importance of learning english, especially writing. b. whilst-activities 1. the researcher made some important point that relates to the material being taught. 2. the researcher guided the students to write and know the meaning of the key words. c. post-activities 1. the researcher asked the students to do a review about the material that has been given. 2. the researcher closed the class and appreciates students’ work which has been done. result and discussion the data in this research were analyzed by using paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. paired sample t-test is used to find out whether or not there is significant difference in writing achievement of narrative text of the students in the experimental and control groups before and after treatment. in the other side, independent sample t-test is used to know whether or not there is significant difference in writing achievement of narrative text between students’ post-test in the experimental and control group. the data of this study were analyzed by using spss 22. result of descriptive statistics based on the result of the test, it was known that in pre-test experimental class the lowest score was 47, the highest score was 61, the mean 55,76 and the standard deviation was 3,473. meanwhile, in the post-test, the lowest score was 55 and the highest score was 82, the mean was 70,94 and the standard deviation was 7,228. furthermore, the result of the test in control class showed that in pre-test found the lowest score was 46, the highest score was 61, the mean 55,44 and the standard deviation was 3,831. meanwhile, for the post-test, the lowest score was 51 and the highest score was 76, the mean was 65,03 and the standard deviation was 5,744. table 1 frequency, mean and standard deviation of students’ writing ability in post test variable level of achievement experimental class control class mean sd frequency of percentage mean sd frequency of percentage writing failed poor 55,00 0,00 1 (3%) 51,00 0,00 2 (6%) enough 61,57 3,30 7 (21%) 62,13 2,44 16 (47%) good 73,76 4,41 25 (73%) 69,69 2,38 16 (47%) very good 82,00 0,00 1 (3%) total 272,33 7,71 34 (100%) 182,8 4,82 34 (100%) the result showed there was significant difference in students’ writing ability in experimental and control class. in experimental class there were 1 student (3%) categorized very good with the mean score 82,00, there were 25 students (73%) categorized good with the mean score 73,76, there were 7 students (21%) categorized enough with the mean score 61,57 and there were 1 student (3%) categorized enough with the mean score 55,00. based on the categories presented, it showed that the students’ writing achievement by using story mapping technique in the experimental class mostly in good category. on the other hand, in the control class, the result of post test showed that there were 16 students (47%) categorized good with the mean 62,13, there were 16 students (47%) categorized enough with the mean 69,69, and there were 2 students (6%) categorized enough with the mean 51,00. based on the categories presented in table 8 it concluded that the students’ writing achievement of control class mostly in enough and good category. it can be conclude that the score of experimental and control class in writing was improved. the experimental class who were taught by using story mapping technique had better differences in writing that control class who were not. the result of statistical analysis two statistical analyses were used in this study: paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. paired sample t-test was used to find out whether or not there was significant difference in writing achievement of the students in the experimental and control class before and after treatment. independent sample t-test was used to know whether or not there was any significant difference in writing achievement between the students post-test in experimental and control group. the result of paired sample t-test of writing achievement in experimental class to find out whether there was significant difference in students’ writing achievement before and after treatment, the result of pre-test and pos-test were compared. in term of writing aspects, the value of content was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 3,64, followed by organization was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 4,11, vocabulary was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 3,63, language use was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 3,11 and mechanics was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 0,48, as presented in table 2. table 2 the result of paired sample t-test of writing achievement in experimental class variable mean pre-test mean post-test mean differences t-obtained sig.(2-tailed) writing achievement (total) 55,94 70,94 15,00 16,84 ,000 content 15,00 18,65 3,64 13,67 ,000 organization 12,31 16,43 4,11 14,22 ,000 vocabulary 12,60 16,24 3,63 14,22 ,000 language use 13,41 16,53 3,11 9,97 ,000 mechanics 2,62 3,10 0,48 7,46 ,000 the result of paired sample t-test of writing achievement in control class to find out whether there was significant difference in students’ writing achievement before and after treatment, the result of pre-test and pos-test were compared. in term of writing aspects, the value of content was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 4,25 followed by organization was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 2,30, vocabulary was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 1,83, language use was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences1,80 and mechanics was at the significant level 0,000 with mean differences 0,38, as presented in table 3. table 3 the result of paired sample t-test of writing achievement in control class variable mean pre-test mean post-test mean differences t-obtained sig. (2-tailed) writing achievement (total) 54,44 65,03 10,58 10,84 ,000 content 14,12 18,37 4,25 11,41 ,000 organization 12,34 14,65 2,30 6,93 ,000 vocabulary 12,44 14,28 1,83 5,83 ,000 language use 12,81 14,62 1,80 5,53 ,000 mechanics 2,74 3,12 0,38 4,38 ,000 the result of independent sample t-test of writing achievement to find out whether or not there was a significant difference in writing before and after treatment between experimental and control class, the researcher compared the result of post test in both of classes by using independent sample t-test. table 4 the result of independent sample t-test variable post-test   t-obtained  t-table df sig. (2-tailed) mean exp mean cont writing achievement 70,94 65,03 3,73  2,38 66 0,000 based on the calculation in table 4, the value of t​-obtained was 3,73, at the significant value p >0,01 in 2-tailed testing with df=66, the critical value of the t-table was 2,38. since the t-obtained > t-table (3,73>2,38) and p value of t-obtained was higher than the critical value of t-table. the null hypothesis (ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (ha) was accepted. from the calculation, it was found out that there was a significant difference between the students in experimental class who were taught by using story mapping and those who were not. it proved that the using of story mapping technique could improve students writing achievement. conclusion based on the result of data analysis, that was described in the previous chapter. it could be concluded that use story mapping technique in teaching writing was significance improvement, that proven by analyzing the student’ post-test value of the experimental group and the control group by using independent sample t-test. in which showed that the value of t​-obtained was 3,73, at the significant value p>0,01 in 2-tailed testing with df=66, the critical value of the t-table was 2,38. since the t-obtained > t-table (3,73>2,38) and p value of t-obtained was higher than the critical value of t-table. the null hyphothesis (ho) was rejected and the alternative hyphothesis (ha) was accepted. from the calculation, it was found out that there was a significant difference between the students in experimental class who were taught by using story mapping and those who were not. it means the using of story mapping technique could improve students writing achievement. the using of story mapping in teaching writing is effective technique to improve students writing achievement especially in narrative text. the story mapping is a visual graphic map in which is provided the elements of story such as setting, characters, problems, and resolution which are presented to help the writers associate the whole content of the story, so that they can easily manage their ideas as they write the story. story mapping is useful to be used by students as an outline of students’ writing. it uses in the early stages of planning a narrative essay. furthermore, this technique can be used to increase student’s awareness that story and characters and events are interrelated. the story map question provided by the teacher also can provoke the student’s imagination so that they can produce a good text. references abidin, tedi (2014) using story mapping technique to improve the writing ability of grade vii students at smp n.2 gamping, sleman the academic year of 2013/ 2014. universitas negeri yogyakarta. bachman f. lyle, alderson (2009) assessing writing. cambridge language assessment series: cambridge university press. brown, h. douglas (2001) teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. person education, inc. burke, mark d., fore c., boulineau, tori (2004) use of story mapping to increase the story grammar text comprehension of elementary students with learning disabilities (27) 105-121. burns, a. 2010. doing action research in language teaching: a guide to practitioners. london & new york: routhledge. fraenkel, jack r., norman e. wallen (1990) how to design and evaluate research in educatioanl ny: th mc. graw hill companies fuchs, d., mathes, g. patricia (1997) cooperative story mapping 18(1) 20-27. harmer, j (2002) the practice of english teaching (4th ed) endibrurg: logman harris, j (1993) introducing writing. london, england: punguin english heaton, j.b. (1990) writing english language test: logman handbooks for language teacher (3rd ed) new york, ny: logman ibnian, k.s. (2010) the effective of using the story mapping technique on developing tenth grade students’ short story writing skill in efl: english language teaching 3(4) li, daqi (2000) effect of story mapping and story map questions on the story writing performance of students with learning disabilities. longan, l. (2012) collage write skill (6th ed) new york, ny: mc graw-hill companies mulyani, u., & alhafiz, m (2012) teaching junior high school students to write recount text through wiki media. journal of english language teaching i (1) 225-229 oshima, a., & hogue, a (2006) writing academic english (4th ed) new york, ny: pearson education pardiono (2007) pasti bisa !teaching genre based writing. andi offset: yogyakarta. sidekli, s (2013) story map: how to improve writing skill: academic journals, 8(7) 289-296 zamach, d.e., & islam, c. (2005) paragraph writing: from sentence to paragraph. oxford: mc millan 15 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 contact lilik ulfiati lilik.ulfiati@unja.ac.id multilingualism doctoral school, university of pannonia, hungary ©2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). review of “developing writers in higher education” reviewed by lilik ulfiati multilingualism doctoral school, university of pannonia, hungary email: lilik.ulfiati@unja.ac.id title : developing writers in higher education editor : anne ruggles gere year of publication : 2019 isbn : 978-0-472-13124-2 (hardcover) 978-0-472-12481-7 (e-book) no. of pages : 385 place of publication : ann arbor, michigan, united states of america publisher : university of michigan press instructors and researchers of an academic writing course in higher education often experience discouragement when they find their teaching falling short of their expectations even though a number of endeavors they invest in the teaching practices and research works. as a writing teacher for higher education, i feel disappointed when i am not able to present more beneficial support than the motivation to write using appropriate vocabularies, making grammatical sentences consisted of a compound or complex ones, organizing ideas of writing or paragraphs, constructing coherence essays and so on. after ineffective attempts at aiding higher education students significantly enhance their writing, i began to review the nature of writing and facets other than the language competencies comprising what academic activities the teachers are necessary to carry out, how the students’ academic writing practices are applied during their writing process, who are involved in the process of writing and how long the writing academic activities take place. i have figured out solutions to some questions in the book entitled “developing writers in higher education”. in this five-section book, anne ruggles gere describes a comprehensive longitudinal study about the topic concerning how students in higher education keep practicing their academic writing process and their writing follows various developmental paths. it can be seen in this monograph a systematic divide of theoretical thinking and empirical studies (between section 1 and section 5). this multi-year study involved 169 student writers, who produced 322 surveys, 131 interviews, 94 portfolios, and 2,406 total pieces of writing. given the large amount of data collected across five years, this was a highly collaborative project requiring many hands, and various configurations of researchers discuss in anne gere’s office week after week and year after year to plan and discuss. gere intends to cast some light in more deeply understanding how writers in higher education develop, analyzing new awareness of the complexity of writing development, examining its many forms and variations, and studying the multiple methods that can illuminate various aspects of it. to this end, the author clarifies relevant studies and concepts such as audience awareness, approaches, genres, language focus, and style through an extensive literature review and examines the correlation between students’ writing practices and instructors’ involvement in different contexts and for different purposes. in doing so, gere places the learners (writers) at the heart of the writing process and draws on their writing activities as central factors in the writing practices of higher education. in this sense, the author upholds that writing development takes time and it is necessary to be traced the varied and irregular paths learners take as they move smoothly through one writing challenge and stumble on another. this view contrasts with some other researchers focusing on writing development which is attached more to the writers themselves than to the texts they produce. the book is divided into five main sections, each dealing with essential issues within this multilayered discipline. the first section addresses rhetorical knowledge and the concept that writing is both social and rhetorical. emily wilson and justine post concern about analyzing the effect and action in student interactions with instructor feedback. benjamin keating, moreover, examines peer review and authority in students’ undergraduate writing. the second section describes chapters on students’ approaches to the conflation of disciplinary expertise in the study investigated by both lizzie hutton and gail gibson. still in this section, ryan mccarty investigates writing development and the “types of writing” or genres described by students. another section elaborates chapters that focus on language, demonstrating how attention to sentence-level features illuminates entire texts. laura l. aull explores a corpus study of epistemic stance across levels, disciplines, and genres. zak lancaster tracks students’ developing conceptions of voice and style in writing. the next section discusses the idea that writers never reach a state of complete mastery; they always have more to learn. anna v. knutson carries out a case study of resourcefulness and resilience. furthermore, naomi silver studies student’s conceptions of writing and self-perceptions of multimodal compositional development. finally, section five reviews two sites of writerly development, the transition from high school to first-year writing and the transition from college to new writing environments. sarah swofford identifies the influence of high school in undergraduate writing development and anne ruggles gere elaborates on writing beyond the university. through a well-organized manuscript and a highly readable style, gere does not simply discuss the main theoretical concept of writing activities literature. instead, she provides the readers with evidence-based on the empirical studies, synthesizes the existing references, reinterprets the implications of the data presented in the light of pedagogical research findings, and analyses international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.12345 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.12345 2 h. budiyono contributions of the investigations for further either theoretical or practical areas. for this reason, the target audience may range from undergraduate and postgraduate students, student teachers who wish to look into basic writing practices to the teacher of higher education, in-service writing teachers, and researchers. it may also verify to be valuable for writing learners who wish to find out about the process of writing approach and develop their own strategies. however, it should be noted that research perspectives on writing for higher education learners explored mainly focus on the motivation and the writing products from the point of view of the writing instructors and the current trends on writing development research in the face of the increasing numbers of higher education writers are perhaps overlooked. throughout the book, there are numerous references to undergraduate writers’ audience awareness and feedback from instructors/ peers, genres awareness, voice and style in writing, self-perceptions of multimodal writing development, which might be true in some cases. nonetheless, little attention is given to the fact that effective writing development, as opposed to mastery, might be one of the chief objectives of enhancing writers in the context of higher education, many of whom might already write more than one or two text genres by the time they begin studying in the college levels. hence, the strategies that might be relevant to these kinds of writers will differ from those of the learners explained in the book. in any case, this book proposes informative empirical studies and relevant theoretical points of view of writing development, critical analysis of numerous research studies, qualitative and quantitative evidence, hands-on approaches to the teaching of writing and learning written texts in a pedagogical style. thus, it is worthy to say that gere has created a valuable contribution to this complex area of knowledge and that her work will undoubtedly show to be beneficial to a wide range o f readers. acknowledgment this review paper is supported by the “advanced knowledge and skills for sustainable growth – asian development bank (adb) project, university of jambi, indonesia”. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 38 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 using vlog in the youtube channel as a means to improve students’ motivation and confidence to speak english in intermediate 1 level of lb-lia jambi pramita sari pooja_swty@yahoo.com lb-lia jambi abstract students find it hard to speak english despite the fact that they have the basic knowledge of the language due to the lack of motivation and confidence. as the technology advances, teachers must be willing to take advantage of the potential channels provided by it. this study aims to improve students’ motivation and confidence to speak english through the use of vlog in the youtube channel as well as to find out the element that affect the most to the improvement of the motivation and confidence. the data were obtained through classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews. in terms of findings, this study revealed that the use of vlog in the youtube channel improved students’ motivation and confidence. the data also suggested that students were most motivated and confident to speak english because they were given enough time to think of what they wanted to talk about and it was done in the place they found familiar. therefore, teachers are suggested to bring technology into the classrooms more often and adjust it to the situation where students find it convenient to speak up. key words: vlog, youtube channel, motivation, confidence, english background communication is one of the essential hallmarks of the global society of 21st century. business, politics, and the media all demand and expect seamless international exchange of information and ideas, and english is often the language of international interaction (su, 2006). when two people interact who are not native speakers of the same language, they are likely to find common ground in english. the result is that english is now a global priority for economic development, science, culture and interactions among governments. but in spite of the emphasis of the immediate demand of english as an important key aspect in international communication, students who learn english in order to be able to keep up with the 21st century’s qualification, find it hard to speak english despite the fact that they have the basic knowledge of the language. several reasons are found why this happens. in indonesia, where english is considered as a foreign language, the lack of motivation and confidence among the students are the two common reasons (juhana, 2012). today, however, technology provides a global infrastructure with many potential channels for students to use english that may enhance their motivation and confidence to speak, namely search engines such as googles and yahoo, social medias such as mailto:pooja_swty@yahoo.com international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 39 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 facebook, twitter and instagram, or video-sharing website such as youtube. teachers, most importantly, must be willing to take advantage of such potential as a learning tool. vlog a vlog is a video blog post. the term can also refer to a blog made up entirely of video blog posts (gunelius, 2016). vlog posts are created by creating a video of yourself or an event, uploading it to the internet and publishing it within a post on your blog. in the early days of blogging, vlogs were called podcasts, a term that was used to refer to both audio and video blog posts. today the two have adopted their own distinct nomenclature. the vlogosphere is a very democratic arena. unlike mainstream media, such as television or commercial web sites, vlogs are not, for the most part, created to make money. as a result, vloggers are free to make their content about whatever they desire, no matter how controversial the topic. vlogging gives average citizens an audience and a chance to make their voices heard. youtube channel a channel on youtube is the home page for a personal account, and a channel is required to upload videos, add comments or make playlists (karch, 2017). a personal youtube channel is available to everyone who joins youtube as a member. the channel serves as the home page for the user's account. after the user enters and approves the information, the channel shows the account name, the account type, a personal description, the public videos the member uploads, a list of members who are friends and any user information the member enters. the channel also includes a section where other members can comment. both vlog and youtube channel when combined create a meaningful and enjoyable teaching media for students. first, because it gives chances for students to speak up using english without interruption. second, students are given enough time to arrange what they want to deliver in their vlogs. third, vlog can be done in any place at any time that are convenient for students to record themselves and speak their opinions. motivation and confidence motivation and confidence are interrelated and interact with each other (philips & lindsay, 2006). one might say that mastering a new language is a hard thing to do and it takes up much time for the students to acquire it. that is why in learning english, especially in improving the speaking skill, students need to to have motivation in order to reach progress. gage and berliner (1984: 372) said that, “motivation is the term to describe what energizes a person and what directs his or her activity.” that statement implies that motivation can be seen from the activities done by the learners. for example, when a student realizes that most of his or her friends speak english well, he/she is not only interested but also motivated to learn it. furthermore, dornyei (2003: 1) states, “motivation is a multifaceted construct and the exact nature of the constituent components activated in a particular situation depends on greatly contextual factors.” https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-vlog-3476285 https://www.lifewire.com/create-a-youtube-business-account-2655503 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 40 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 this means that motivations is actually already exists in every person and motivates the person automatically once there is a stimulus given. motivation is a mental power that causes something to happen. sardiman in arianingsih (2005:20) mentions some of the characteristics of a highly motivated person:  being strong-willed and persistent in achieving a goal no matter what the obstacle is.  able to work on a long period of time.  show high interest towards problems.  prefer to work alone rather than in groups but that does not mean that a highly motivated person avoids working in groups. motivation can increase rapidly, given a positive stimulus while confidence is the reflection of motivation because it grows as the motivation increases. thus, the use of appropriate technique or teaching media is crucial in improving students’ motivation and confidence to speak english. when the learning experience is positive and pleasant, it leads students to interact more frequently in english both outside and inside the classroom. because the experience is enjoyable, the increased confidence, affected their motivation in a positive way. methodology research setting and participants this study was undertaken in lb-lia jambi of intermediate 1 level of students. the classroom consists of 20 students. they are considered to have sufficient knowledge and ability in english as reflected from their daily performance score especially in reading and writing activities yet they have problem in speaking. based on the classroom observation result and interview with the classroom teacher which were done before this study, students seemed reluctant when given speaking activities. they showed little interest in the activities and mostly produced simple and unelaborative sentences. students also showed less initiative to volunteer to speak up or ask questions. techniques of collecting data this study employed three techniques of collecting data namely classroom observation, questionnaires and interview with the classroom teacher. the observation was carried out to find out students’ participations and responses in speaking activities. it was done three times, each after two vlog tasks. open-ended questionnaires were addressed to the respondents to get their responses in the form of written data.the interview with the classroom teacher was conducted to gain further information on students’ motivation and confidence to speak english.the questions revolved around her observation and evaluation as the classroom teacher and how she perceived students’ performance during speaking activities. as for the task for vlog in youtube channel was given after each unit in the material book was completed. students were required to make one vlog for one unit/topic of discussion. table 1. questionnaire items international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 41 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the following questions are not a test. read them carefully then answer honestly. 1. after doing the tasks on making vlog in youtube channel, do you think you are more motivated to speak english? explain your answer. 2. after doing the tasks on making vlog in youtube channel, do you think you are more confident to speak english? explain your answer. 3. in what way do you think that making vlog in youtube channel could make you become more motivated and confident to speak english? 4. which one do you prefer to do: the usual speaking activities in the classroom or doing vlog in youtube channel? explain your answer. 5. would you like to have more speaking activities that involve the latest technology as a part of the activities? explain your answer. discussion a. students became more motivated and confident to speak english in class through classroom observation, it is noticed that students’ motivation and confidence gradually improved. it was not yet seen until the second classroom observation that students showed more participation in speaking activities as well as higher responses. they stayed excited through out the whole speaking activities and spend longer time speaking until the given time by the teacher was up. by the time the last observation was conducted, it was clear that students now were more motivated and confident to speak in the class using english. this applied not only for the speaking activities given by the teacher but also for the classroom language. regardless the complexity of the activities, the students remained highly participated. b. questionnaires showed positive response from the open-ended questionnaires distributed to the students at the end of the cycle, most of the students’ gave positive response towards the use of vlog in youtube channel in improving their motivation and confidence. they agreed that the use of vlog helped growing their motivation and confidence to speak english higher. mostly it was because the tasks were done in the place where they found most comfortable such as in their houses or bedrooms and that they were given enough time to think on what they wanted to say. the questionnaires also revealed that when given the choice, students’ enjoyed doing vlog as much as the common speaking activities in the class with their peers. vlog enabled them to speak freely and comfortably without feeling anxious but doing activities in class wih the peers also gave them enjoyable learning moment and interactions. since all of the students recorded the vlogs using their phones and that they were fairly technology savvy, all of them were enthusiastic on the ideas of bringing more technology into classroom activities. for one thing, technology was something that they were familiar with. it was also flexible and a lot more interactive compared to the traditional teaching media. c. interviews with the classroom teacher international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 42 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the interviews were carried after each classroom observation. the teacher was pessimistic at the beginning of the cycle for she knew how poorly students’ performance on the speaking task was, but as we went through with the vlog tasks,she shared the same point of view that vlog helped improving students’ motivation and confidence to speak english in class. she expressed her great feelings as the students got more involved in speaking activities and showed more initiative and positive responses. students’ progress was also reflected in their daily performance scores which steadily increased. conclusion one goal of any academic program should be to provide a foundation from which students can further develop their own ability to adapt and continue learning on their own (wu, yen & marek: 2011). in a nutshell, incorporating vlog in youtube channel in teaching helped to improve students’ motivation and confidence of intermediate 1 level of lb-lia jambi.most of the factors that indicated higher motivation and confidence were reflected from the students’ response and participation in the classroom. additionally, the teacher agreed on seeing the improvement of her students’ during her teaching session. bringing technology into teaching and learning process is now proven to be one of the most effective way to improve students’ general performance in quite significant result. for future improvement, the habit of combining technology into one of the teaching techniques used in class shoud not just stop here. most importantly, teachers need to be more technology savvy and keep up with the advancement of the technology in order to be able to help students to improve their english. references arianingsih, y. (2005). hubungan motivasi berprestasi dengan hasil belajar mata pelajaran ekonomi pada siswa kelas ii smp negeri 5 jambi. a thesis. universitas jambi. unpublished. berliner, d. c., & gage, n. l. (1984). educational psychology third edition. boston: standford university and university of arizona. dornyei, z. (2003). attitudes, orientation and motivations in language learning advances in theory, research and application. language learning. vo. 52, supplement 1. gunelius, s. in https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-vlog-3476285. accessed on march 20th 2017. juhana (2012). psychological factors that hinder students from speaking in english class (a case study in a senior high school in south tangerang, banten, indonesia), journal of education and practice, 3 (12), 100-101 karch, m. in https://www.lifewire.com/channel-youtube-1616635. accessed on march 20th 2017. philips, n., & lindsay, g. (2006). motivation in gifted students. high ability studies, 17 (1), 57-72. su, y.c. (2006). efl teachers’ perception of english language policy at the elementary level in taiwan, educational studies, (32) 3 educational technology and society, 265-283. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-vlog-3476285 https://www.lifewire.com/channel-youtube-1616635 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 43 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 wu, w.v., yen, l.l., marek, m. (2011). using online efl interaction to increase confidence, motivation and ability., 14 (3), 127. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 44 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 45 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 lecturer talks: classroom interaction’s identifying yunda lestari yunda_lestari@fkip.unbara.ac.id baturaja university abstract this study aimed to find out what category of lecturer talks applied by lecturers in classroom interaction. this study was a descriptive survey. the participants were chosen by using purposive sampling technique where there were four english lecturers who taught at second semester class of english department of baturaja university in the academic year of 2016/2017. the data were taken through observation, questionnaire and interview. camera recorder and checklist were the instruments used in this study. the data were identified by using flint (foreign language interaction) system as developed by moskowitz (1971). the result of the study showed that the total of frequencies the deals with feeling were 9 or 1.6%, praises or encourages were 57 or 9.9%, uses ideas of students were 42 or 7.3%, asks questions were 199 or 34.6%, gives information were 92 or 16%, gives directions were 151 or 26.3% and criticizes student behavior were 25 or 4.3%. in conclusion, the category of lecturer applied by lecturers was asks questions in classroom interaction that the best ways to develop their role as an initiator and strategies that promote interaction in classroom activity. key words: classroom interaction, lecturer talks, flint introduction classroom interaction is about the interaction in the classroom, it is not far from the activities among the lecturer and students. in classroom interaction,. lecturer should create communication with their students either in oral or written forms. communication in the classroom can be built through interaction. to have reciprocal interaction done, there should be an effective interaction between lecturer and students, and among students in improving their knowledge and skills of the target language. in the classroom interaction, the lecturer is key one who will create the interactive classroom. incidentally, classroom interaction that was intended in this research was how the lecturer and students participate to talk during teaching and learning process. in fact, according to kundu (1993), musumeci (1996), and chaudron (1988) cited in tuan and nhu (2010), teacher talk is dominant in classroom interaction. therefore, the researcher would like to identify the type of lecturer talks in the classroom interaction that stimulated the student to participate at the classroom interaction actively and purposefully. based on the researcher’s pre-observation at second semester of english department of baturaja university in the academic year of 2016/2017, the researcher found that the lecturers did the interaction during teaching and learning process in the classroom. the lecturer interaction such as: praises, asked question, gave information, gave directions, criticized, etc. these interactions were to stimulate the interaction in the mailto:yunda_lestari@fkip.unbara.ac.id international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 46 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 classroom. that was the basic reason why the researcher wanted to know the category of lecturer talks in the classroom interaction. interaction occurs as long as people are communicating each other and giving action and receiving the reaction in one another anywhere and anytime, including in the classroom setting. brown (2007) defines as the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people, resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other. interaction simply means communication. this includes talking and listening, head nods, gestures, glances, paths on the backs, frowns, and many others behaviors to which people assign meaning (tubbs & sylvia, 2001). in addition, brown (2007) describes the term of interaction “as the heart communication; it is what communication is all about.” interaction occurs as long as people are communicating each other and giving action and receiving the reaction in one another anywhere and anytime, including in the classroom setting. classroom interaction happens among lecturer and students. it is supported by dagarin (2004), classroom interaction is an interaction between teacher and students in the classroom where they can create interaction at each other. wanphet (2006) who states that a classroom interaction is the activity by teacher questions and students responses. the lecturer is the key one who will make the students participate at the classroom interaction actively and purposefully. creemers and kyriakides (2006) mention that classroom interaction is really related to the teacher’s style. the correlation appears at the more the lecturer use different teaching style, the more the lecturer knows how to make the students involve in the classroom interaction. a good classroom interaction depends on how the lecturer gives chance to the students to talk at each other. khan (2009) claims that classroom interaction contributes the students being active in the learning process. according to moskowitz’s flint (foreign language interaction) analysis system in brown (2007) interaction are divided into two components; teacher talk and student talk. first, teacher talk is any words or sentences said by the teacher during the interaction in teachinglearning process. those are when the teacher gives explanation, asks questions, give feedback, etc. lecturer talk is crucial and important, not only for the organization and for management of the classroom but also the process of the acquisition. in teaching process, teacher often simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk such as applying slower and louder than normal speech, using simpler vocabulary and grammar and the topics are sometimes repeated (richards, 2002). second, students talk is the students words use to express their own ideas, initiate new topics, and develop their own opinions. as the result, their knowledge will develop. students talk will show the activity concentration of the students to their teaching learning activity. literature review classroom interaction lecturer talk categories moskowitz’s flint (foreign language interaction) analysis system in brown (2007, p.170) lecturer (teacher) talk has seven categories which enable to be analyzed in classroom interaction. those categories of teacher talk divided into two kinds of influences; indirect and direct influence. the indirect influence is an effect which learners are lead to the warm classroom atmosphere and try to break the ice in order to encourage them to participate and learn in classroom interaction. categories of lecturer (teacher) talk which are included in this indirect influence are mentioned and described below. (brown, 2007) 1. deals with feelings international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 47 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the understanding from lecturer and the right way of handling with students feeling will comfort the lecturer-students interaction in the classroom. such as: a. in a non-threatening way. b. accepting: “you can ask to me if you still confused”. c. discussing. 2. praises or encourages lecturer activities are also motivate students to raise their motivation in doing their daily activities in the classroomso they can find and develop their language skill. such as: a. praising: “you are diligent student”. b. complementing: “thank you for you opinion”. c. telling students what they have said or done is valued. 3. uses ideas of students. the ideas must be rephrased by the teacher but still be recognized as being student contributions. such as: a. clarifying the ideas of students. b. using the ideas of students. c. interpreting the ideas of students. d. summarizing the ideas of students. 4. asks questions: asking questions to which the answer is anticipated (rhetorical questions are not included in this category). from the whole classroom meeting, asking question took the most frequent utterance that the lecturer said. wheter it was to stimulate the students to talk, to get students opinion or eventhough to get information from the students. another influence in the teacher talk is direct influence. the direct influence is done whose aim is to encourage students to involve directly in the teaching and learning activity. the features are described as follows: 5. gives information: lecturing or asking rhetorical questions. such as: a. giving information b. facts c. own opinion d. ideas 6. gives directions: directing various drills; facilitating whole class and small-group activity. students need some direction and facilitation of information on how they should demonstrate the whole ideas they own sistematically. such as: a. giving directions that students are expected to follow. b. requests that students are expected to follow. c. commands that students are expected to follow. 7. criticizes student behavior: rejecting the behavior of students, trying to change the non-acceptable behavior. in criticizing student behavior, most of the lecturers utterances are intend to manage the classroom, to keep the students paying attention and listening to the speaker at that time. such as: a. communicating anger with what students are doing. b. displeasure with what students are doing. c. annoyance with what students are doing. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 48 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 d. dissatisfaction with what students are doing. one of the best ways to develop teacher role as an initiator and sustainer of interaction is to develop a repertoire of questioning strategies. in second language classrooms, where learners often do not have a great number of tools for initiating and maintaining language, teacher questions provide necessary stepping stones to communication. this study was focused on the categories of lecturer talk in classroom interaction during teaching and learning process. the data identified based on foreign language interaction analysis (flint) category system. lectures’ role in the classroom ribas (2010) insists that teacher has great influence to make the students involve in classroom interaction. it means that students who are active in the classroom interaction were determined by the lecturer’s role that give chance the students to talk in the classroom. equally important, the lecturer was the key one to create the classroom interaction. the main lecturer’s role in classroom interaction was to make the students participate in the classroom interaction actively. brown (2007) states that some of teacher roles which more conducive to creating an interactive classroom are the teacher as controller, director, manager, facilitator, and resource. in addition, the lecturer’s role was related to the important factors in classroom interaction. preston (2010) states that there are some important factors in classroom interaction that include input, turn-allocation and turn-taking behaviors, students’ production, and feedback. in input, the students have to participate at learning process. the lecturer’s role at this factor is the lecturer persuades the students to participate. moreover, the lecturers have to do some ways to make the students participate in the classroom interaction. palmer (1998) mentions that there are eight ways to make the students participate at the interaction by creating routine activities including encouraging the students to answer each questions that the teacher give to them; giving attention and chance to the students who raise their hand, even they are not asked to speak at the time, to explain their opinion; finding the students’ strength to teach the low achieving students; asking the students who are shy in the classroom to speak at the classroom; responding and giving attention to what the students talk since the students want what they have talked are heard by the teacher; giving attention to the students who are work in group by asking them what they are doing and do not understand yet at the discussed material; asking the student to measure that they have the same understanding at each other at each materials by teaching their friends who do not understand yet at the trait material; asking the student to give comment at what the teacher’s style. conclusion in teaching and learning process in the classroom, the lecturers did many initiation of interaction. the objective of the initiation is to create the interactive classroom. it means that initiation of interaction by lecturer can stimulate the students to talk and participate in the classroom. from the research findings, it concluded that the categories of lecturer talks applied by lecturers were asking questions in the classroom interaction which is being the best ways to develop their role as an initiator and strategies to promote interaction in the classroom activity. references international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 49 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 brown, h. d. (2007). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. (2nd ed.). new york: addison wesley longman, inc. creemers, b.p.m., & kyriakides, l. (2005). a critical analysis of the current approaches to modelling educational effectiveness: the importance of establishing a dynamic model. an international journal of research, policy and practice, 17(3) p. 1-37. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243450600697242 dagarin, m. (2004). classroom interaction and communication strategies in learning english as a foreign language. ljubljana: elope. khan, r. n. (2009). classroom interaction in esl classrooms: a comparative study between group work and individual work. degree’s dissertation, brac university, bangladesh. kinsella, k. (1991). promoting active learning and classroom interaction through effective questionning strategies. ca: francisco state university palmer, p. j. (1998). the courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. (2nd ed.) san fransisco-bass. preston, l. r. (2010). a glimpse into classroom interaction. unpublished master’s disseration, barcelona. ribas, w. b. (2010). instructional practices that maximize student achievement: for teachers by teachers. (2nd ed.). westwood, ma: ribas publications. richards, j, c., & renandya, w. a. (2002). methodology in language teaching an anthonology of current practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. tuan, l.t., & nhu, n.t.k. (2010). theoretical review on oral communication in efl classrooms. studies in literature and language journal 1(4) p. 29-48. tubbs, l. s., & sylvia, m. (2001). human comunication. remaja rosda karya: bandung. wanphet, p. (2006). analyzing conversational repair in online second language classroom. retrieved from http://www.oeade.org/scholars/thesis_abstract/education/plonearticlemultipage00605-04. journal homepage: https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte © 2022 the author submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if accepted for publication, copyright of the article shall be assigned to international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) and magister program of english education department, universitas jambi as publisher of the journal. copyright encompasses rights to reproduce and deliver the article in all form and media, including reprints, photographs, microfilms, and any other similar reproductions, as well as translations. content lists available at www.doaj.org ˃ https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte http://www.doaj.org/ mailto:taridi@uinjambi.ac.id https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v6i2.23721 15 m. taridi 16 m. taridi susilana et al. (2009); susilana et al. (2022) articulated that the benefits of media include: clearing the notification; overcoming limited capacity, time, and energy; increasing academic achievement, direct interaction between learners and education sources; enabling learners to comprehend completely separately depending on their visual, auditory, or kinesthetic abilities; and offering the same stimulus. according to latif et al. (2019) the use of social media into traditional classroom instruction in medical education has obvious benefits. however, this media still has advantages and disadvantages for teachers (ayu & pratiwi, 2021), and there are some advantages in designing math adventure educational game as a media (kartika, 2019). utilize various instructional media well, and then the learner can share roles with the media. trust the part of our role to the media learning (junaidi, 2019). susilana et al. (2009); susilana et al. (2022) mentioned five different types of mediaquiet visual media, animation visual media, audible media, silently audiovisual media, and animation visual and audio media are all examples of visual and audio media. these forms of media vary in the technique of transferring information or a message, how the voice or image is captured, and how it is transmitted (straight gazing, visual projection, electronically projected image, or telecommunication). printed, infographics, animation, audio files, and audio visual materials are all examples of educational media and technology (o.d, omodara & adu e.i, 2020). considering there are several educational media alternatives, heinich et al. (1993) described the option to employ a specific aspect of instructional media is influenced by various aspects. he went on to say that recent study has confirmed that some factors are crucial in content evaluation. 17 m. taridi cartoon animation is one type of instructional medium that may be utilised in the process of writing. formerly, cartoons were employed as a visual medium with interpretive drawings that used symbols to generate a concise messaging and instantly shift perspective about people, situations, or particular occurrences (dahlan, 2015). heinich et al. (1993) described that cartoons (line illustrations that are crude caricatures of real people and events) are possibly the most widely used and known visual genre. humor and sarcasm are staples of the cartoonist's craft. the greatest of them are wise as well as witty. they are frequently used to emphasize or reaffirm a point of training. nevertheless, perception and understanding may be affected by the viewer's level of knowledge and intelligence. make ensure that the cartoons employed for teaching purposes are within the students' experience and intellectual capacity. referring to the statement of heinich et al. (1993), cartoons are one of the various sorts of visual material that is not projected typically encountered in the class. the following are some of the benefits of cartoons as non-projected motion pictures. 1) it is simple to operate because no special devices are required. 2) it is reasonably priced. many are available for little or no cost. 3) it can be applied in a variety of methods whatsoever educational levels and across all disciplines. 4) it may be utilised to encourage artistic phrases like storytelling or composing poems. 5) it might be utilised for testing and assessment. 6) it is especially useful for purposes that require the recognition of individuals, locations, or objects (heinich, et, al., 1993). ▪ they give students with real language: just as textbooks integrate restaurant menus or train or bus schedules into training, movies may do the same. because the majority of the narratives in the films (dvds) are taken from true stories, the conversations are all in everyday english. ▪ they increase students' listening abilities: flower drew and miller (2005), utilizing films (dvds) may be a leisure process that benefits the receivers. ▪ they allow students to become acquainted with the social milieu of the target language: leung and jenks (2005) also said that colloquial expressions is component of culture and customs. incorporating the culture notion into language education by utilising the target language's way of living, behaviour, and values may convey a feeling of authenticity. writing has been defined in a variety of terms. according to harmer (2004), composition represents one of the four language talents that learners must learn, and improving one's ability to compose properly is seen as a critical aim for pupils. students' mental health suffers as a result of the pressure to write correctly, processes differ dramatically from how they engage dialogue or other types of verbal language. to be able to compose well, students must understand and take into account (1) grammar relationships, or grammar cohesion, which including pronoun, possessive reference, tense arrangement, article reference, connectors, and replacement and ellipsis, (2) lexical items, like rehearsal of utterance, and (3) text cohesiveness, including such connection of thought 18 m. taridi sequence and composing function (harmer, 2004). an instructor might concentrate on the finished result or on the process of writing up alone while teaching writing. when focusing on the product, as harmer (2007) observed, we are solely concerned with the task's goal and the ultimate result. those who promote a process method of writing, on the alternative hand, are concerned with the many stages that each piece of writing must go through. the process method seeks to get to the heart of the exceptional abilities that should be engaged while writing by using quality time engaging students in re-writing phases, editing, redrafting, and actually finalising their work in terms of outcome. the process method, which requires students to explore assembly practises, is an excellent work of art. there are several varieties of writing forms, including description, argumentation, narration, reporting, and recounting, among others. the writer narrates and describes distinct locations, things, or people in descriptive language. according to wiyanto as cited in dahlan (2015)) demonstrated that narrative text is a text that presents a oral portrait of a person, a location, and an object. an excellent description contains three key characteristics. they are as follows: a) strong first sight: the initial one is phrase or perhaps the initial descriptive phrases, which acts as the paragraph's topic sentence. a) mood: a mood that extends beyond observable physical characteristics; c) logic progression: a mental image or image of a people, location, or thing. 19 m. taridi the study used a group of posttest group design, which requires researchers to modify and control more self sufficient factors and examined dependent variables to determine if there is a difference. simple random sampling was used to split the sample into two groups in this study. the first class was an experiment, and it is being treated. the second group was command. following that, the researcher sought a posttest to determine mean changes based on therapy. applying animated cartoon as the independent variable and descriptive text as the dependent variable. the explanations above can be used to illustrate the study posttest alone control design (creswell, 2014). descriptions: x = treatments with the use of animated cartoon as educational medium r1 = participants on experimental group r2 = participant of control group o2 = outcomes of having to write narrative text via animated cartoon o4 = outcomest of having to writie narrative text via conventional participants in this study are all 7th -grade students at one of senior high schools in jambi. the populations in this study total 126 people. 126 participants were separated into three groups: experiment, control, and validity, for a sum of 94 participants. table. 1 the population of the seven grade participant at one of senior high schools in jambi. no classes males females total 1 a 15 17 32 2 b 14 18 32 3 c 15 17 32 4 d 13 17 30 total 57 69 126 after determining the amount of samples, the researcher separated them into two groups: experimental (x) and control (y), with a total of 64 participants. the researcher employed thirty participants from populations that were not included in the group of experiment and control for the validation items. the lists are displayed on this table below: table.2 experiment and control group classes class total experiment group control group 32 32 64 there are various different explanations for these study findings, such as teaching english writing descriptive text employing cartoon animation through experiment design. based to (nair et al., 2014; tosun, 2016), one of the finest ways for assisting learners in accomplishing the primary aspects that determine language acquisition is to correctly teach the new language by using powerpoint, presentations, exercises, and production, such as animation cartoons incorporating instruction. the following the result values of participants’ composition skills either experimental or control analysis. 20 m. taridi table.3 the scores of the writing skills on the group of experimental and control no names experiment scores control scores no name experiment scores control scores 1 participant a 79 60 17 participant q 96 65 2 participant b 70 55 18 participant r 93 58 3 participant c 64 75 19 participant s 90 55 4 participant d 81 79 20 participant t 87 70 5 participant e 64 53 21 participant u 93 65 6 participant f 88 73 22 participant v 85 73 7 participant g 81 55 23 participant w 91 65 8 participant h 57 50 24 participant x 82 67 9 participant i 72 80 25 participant y 79 58 10 participant j 52 60 26 participant z 70 73 11 participant k 85 54 27 participant aa 88 35 12 participant l 63 70 28 participant bb 84 59 13 participant m 90 45 29 participant cc 79 63 14 participant n 72 78 30 participant dd 91 65 15 participant o 78 63 31 participant ee 78 64 16 participant p 82 68 32 participant ff 87 79 there are thirty two participants each of group, the score ranked (52-96) for experiment, and for the control groups ranked (35 to 80). for the lowest score span seventeen and the highest one is sixteen. table 4. frequency distribution of participant' writing ability in experiment no interval f x1 x1’ x1’2 f x1 ’ f x1’ 2 1 92-99 3 95,5 3 9 9 27 2 84-91 11 87,5 2 4 22 44 3 76-83 9 79,5 1 1 9 9 4 68-75 4 71,5 0 0 0 0 5 60-67 3 63,5 -1 1 -3 3 6 52-59 2 55,5 -2 4 -4 8 n=32 ∑f x1’= 33 ∑ f x1’ 2 = 91 table 5 indicated that the frequency distribution of scores (92–99) has three with x1 = 95.5, (84–91) is eleven with x1 = 87.5, (76–83) shows nine with x1 = 79.5, (68–75) refers to four with x1 = four, (60–67) belongs to three with x1 = three, and (52–59) values two with x1 = two. table 5. frequency distribution of participant' writing ability in control no interval f x1 x1’ x2’2 f x2 ’ f x2’ 2 1 75-82 4 78,5 3 9 12 36 2 67-74 8 70,5 2 4 16 32 3 59-66 10 62,5 1 1 10 10 4 51-58 7 54,5 0 0 0 0 5 43-50 2 46,5 -1 1 -2 2 6 35-42 1 38,5 -2 4 -2 4 n=32 ∑ 𝑓𝑥1 = ∑ 𝑓𝑥2 = 34 84 table 6 reveals that the frequency distribution of scores (75–82) equals four with x1 = 78.5, (67–74) stands at four with x1 = 70.5, (59–66) seems to be ten with x1 = 62.5, (51–58) gets seven with x1 = 54.5, (43–50) represents two with x1 = 21 m. taridi 46.5, and (35–42) seems to be one with x1 = 38.5. figure out the impact of exploiting cartoon animation and conventional methods on participants' descriptive text writing abilities. the data might be presented as follows to determine the influence of applying animated cartoons and instructors on participants' performance in composing descriptive content. table 6. final result of experiment and control results animated cartoon conventional total the greatest score 96 80 32 the smallest score 52 35 32 total 32 32 64 consequently, based on the calculations given, tobtained = 4,98. then, using the equation: 𝑑𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑏 = 𝑁 − 2 = 64 − 2 = 62 considering ttable with a significance level of 5% is (2, 00) and with a statistical significance of 1% is (2, 65), and tobtained is 4, 98, it may be claimed that (tobtained) is greater than or equal to (2, 00 < 4, 98 > 2, 65). it may be concluded that introducing cartoon animation prior to the learning process has a substantial impact on the accomplishment of participants in producing descriptive prose. as a result, ha represents acceptance while h0 represents refusal. it is consistent with the findings of arienintya's (2011) results, who found that using cartoon animation clips and image series in writing activities matched the success criterion, but the difference is in the technique. it is also suggested that english teachers use cartoon animation clips and image series to help lea rners enhance their writing skills. tosun (2016) investigated forty participants representing two groups that learn the rigorous english language, with the control group of the experiment studied in vocabulary. almustaflikhah and pujiani (2022) study of the media included not just vocabulary but also listening, reading, speaking, and writing. the kids' linguistic competence was improved by creating addie designs and employing video animation. as a result, throughout the teaching and learning process, instructional media may boost student accomplishment while also assisting teachers in practice. this study revealed that employing animated media to improve participant literary skills in the narrative text at one of the 7th-grade students of state junior high schools in jambi city is effective. so, the researcher can conclude that the findings in writing proficiency in narrative text employing an animated cartoon are higher than the conventional one. the findings show there is a considerable influence of cartoon animation on participants' descriptive text writing abilities. afidah, n., sari, n. k., kh, u., & hasbullah, a. w. (2021). investigating students ’ perspectives on the use of tiktok as an instructional media in distance. dinamika, 6(2), 47–68. almustaflikhah, n., & pujiani, t. (2022). the development of animation videos for teaching english integrated skills for young. language, education, and development (lead) journal, 2(2), 9–17. anisimova, e. s. (2020). digital literacy of future preschool teachers ellina sergeevna anisimova 1. journal of social studies education research, 11(1), 230–253. arienintya, d. (2011). employing cartoon animation clips and picture series to improve the narrative writing ability of the eleventh graders of sman 7 malang / dhinar arienintya. [diploma thesis, universitas negeri malang]. http://repository.um.ac.id/10532/ ayu, m., & pratiwi, z. f. (2021). the implementation of online learning in english language teaching during pandemic : the teachers ’ voice. journal of research on language education, 2(2), 93–99. brown, h. d. (2001). teaching by principles; an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new york: person education. churiyah, m., & sakdiyyah, d. a. (2020). indonesia education readiness conducting distance learning in covid-19 pandemic situation. international journal of multicultural and multireligious understanding, 7(6), 491–507. https://doi.org/http//dx.doi.org/10.18415/ijmmu.v7i6.1833 creswell, j. w. (2014). research design : qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (v. knight (ed.); 4th 22 m. taridi ed). sage publications, inc. 2455 teller road thousand oaks, california 91320 e-mail: order@sagepub.com. dahlan, a. (2015). cartoon as instructional method in teaching descriptive text writing. journal of english studies (adjes), 2(2), 58–62. dwijayani. (2019). development of circle learning media to improve student learning outcomes development of circle learning media to improve student learning outcomes. journal of physics: conference series paper, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1321/2/022099 faloye, b. (2013). the effect of animated cartoons on teaching english grammar. harmer, j. (2004). how to teach writing. england: pearson education limited. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. edinburgh: pearson education limited. heinich, robert, molenda, michael, russell, james d., & smalldino, s. e. (1993). instructional media and technologies for learning. new jersey: macmillan publishing company. holden, j. t., ed, d., westfall, p. j., & ph, d. (2008). an instructional media selection guide for distance learning. eric, 36. hureri, muhammad akram., et al. (2019). the role of media i n islamic da ’ wah in a plural society. elsevier, 1–9. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3496529 hyland, k. (2003). second language writing. cambridge. cambridge: cambridge university press. junaidi. (2019). peran media pembelajaran dalam proses belajar mengajar. jurnal manajemen pendidikan dan pelatihan, 3(1), 12. kaplan, a. m., & haenlein, m. (2017). users of the world , unite ! the challenges and opportunities of social media. december. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003 kartika, y. r. w. b. s. j. r. (2019). improving math creative thinking ability by using math adventure educational game as an interactive media. journal of physics: conference series, 1179, 7. https://doi.org/10.1088/17426596/1179/1/012078 khalid, hamidon, meerah, t. subahan, & halim, l. (2010). teacher’s perception towards the usage of cartoons in teaching and learning physics. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 7(c), 538–545. latif, m. z., hussain, i., & atif, m. (2019). use of smart phones and social media in medical education : trends , advantages , challenges and barriers. 27(2), 133–138. https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2019.27.133-138 mushohwe, k. (2011). mushohwe, knowledge (2011). an analysis of selected editorial cartoons published during zimbabwe’s 2008 election. nelson mandela metropolitan university, zimbabwe. nelson mandela metropolitan university, zimbabwe. nair, s. m., yusof, n. m., & arumugam, l. (2014). the effects of using the play method to enhance the mastery of vocabulary among preschool children. 116, 3976–3982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.876 o.d, o. a. e. . (2020). relevance of educational media and multimedia technology for effective service delivery in teaching and learning processes. journal of research & method in education, 4(march 2014), 5. https://doi.org/10.9790/7388-04214851 paul, j., & jefferson, f. (2019). a comparative analysis of student performance in an online vs . face-to-face environmental science course from 2009 to 2016. frontiers in computer science, 1(november), 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2019.00007 reiser, r. . (2001). a history of instructional design and technology: part i: a history of instructional media. educational technology research and development, 49(1), 53–64. su, s.-c. (2015). using subtitled animated cartoons and textbook-based cds to test elementary students ’ english listening and reading comprehension in a cram school. international journal of applied linguistics & english literature, 4(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.1p.106 susilana, rudi, & riyana, c. (2009). media pembelajaran: hakiakat, pengembangan, pemanfaatan dan penilaian. bandung: cv. wacana prima. cv. wacana prima. https://play.google.com/store/books/details/media_pembelajaran_hakikat_pengembangan_pemanfaata?id=yqhawaaqbaj&gl=us susilana, r., dewi, l., rullyana, g., hadiapurwa, a., & khaerunnisa, n. (2022). can microlearning strategy assist students ’ online learning ? cakrawala pendidikan: jurnal ilmiah pendidikan, 41(2), 437–451. tosun, s. (2016). the effects of blended learning on efl students ’ vocabulary enhancement. globelt: an international conference on teaching and learning english as an additional language, antalya turkey, august 2015, 641–647. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.592 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 50 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the analysis of the readability levels of the reading texts in textbook entitled “fast tract to english” for the third year students of sma based on raygor readability estimate yeli nurhamsih yeli.nurhamsih@yahoo.co.id bengkulu university abstract the objectives of this research are to know the readability levels of the reading texts in the textbook and want to know whether or not the reading texts are suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma. the method used in writing this research was the descriptive method. there were the 38 reading texts analyzed which were taken from an english textbook entitled “fast tract to english”. the data were collected through the documentation technique. those reading texts were analyzed by using raygor readability estimate. there are five findings in this research. first, on the whole, the readability of the textbook is 11. it means the textbook is not suitable lingustically for the third year students of sma because in general, the students have been studying english for nine years. second, the writer found four reading texts that their readability levels are under level 9. based on raygor readability estimate (rre), those reading texts are not suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma because they are predicted as too easy texts for them. conversely, those reading texts can be linguistically suitable for those who have been studying english since first year of junior high school or for less than 9 years. third, there are seven reading texts that are considered as readable texts. the readability level of those reading texts is 9. based on rre, those texts are suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma because level 9 is predicted as suitable readability level for them. however, those texts cannot be suitable linguistically for them if they have been studying english for under or over nine years. fourth, most of the readability levels of the reading texts in the textbook are over level 9 namely twenty-six reading texts. based on (rre), those reading texts are not linguistically suitable for the students who have been studying english since they were in fourth grade of elementary school. those reading texts can be suitable linguistically for those who have been studying english formally for over nine years. fifth, among 38 reading texts, there is only one reading text that its readability level is in invalid level. this text is considered as not readable text. it means, this text cannot be read and learnt. it is predicted, the students might have difficulties in understanding this reading text. the reading text entitled “non-aligned movement”. keywords: readability levels, reading texts, textbook. mailto:yeli.nurhamsih@yahoo.co.id international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 51 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 introduction reading is one of the four language skills which is always taught by teachers of english to their students in the class. it is an important language skill taught because it gives the understanding of the main and supporting ideas of the written language. by reading, the students can also enrich their vocabulary. saleh (in rohani, 2002:12) states reading is the understanding of the main and supporting ideas of written languange. in teaching and learning process, beside teaching method, teachers also have to use the instructional media. heinich (in gunawan, 2003:3) says that the term media refer to anything that carries information between a source and receiver. english textbook is one of media as printed materials. it is common medium which is used by teachers to teach their students. actually teachers of english are sometimes still confused to decide which book should be used as material sources in teaching and learning process beacuse there are so many english textbooks which are published by publishers. because of this, most of teachers of english may choose one or two textbooks just based on their intuition. they think intuitively that the textbook used is suitable for their students without concious reasoning or study. they may sometimes choose a certain english textbook to get profit. they will get profit from the publishers by selling the textbook to their students. so, this case will occur the problem to their students . the problems may be occured when the english textbook is not suitable for them. perhaps, they are too complicated or too easy for the students. consequently, the textbook is not readable enough and hard to understand or boring for them. the students may not to be able to understand the reading texts so they cannot find what the main ideas are. therefore, the teachers need to analyse the english textbook first, before they decide to use those as media in teaching and learning processes. the writer determines the purposes of this research are as follows: 1) to know how the readability levels of the reading texts are in textbook entitled “fast track to english” for the third year students of sma published by ganeca exact 2) to know whether or not the reading texts are suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma literature review sheldon (1987:1) states that the english textbook may be closely defined as a published book, most often produced for commercial gain, whose explicit aim is to assist foreign learners of english in improving their linguitic knowledge and for communicative ability. grant (1987:7) states whatever the textbooks are, they should be able to do five point listed below: 1) identifying what should be taught/learnt, and the order in which it should be taught/learned; 2) indicating what methods should be used; 3) providing neatly, attractively, and economically, all or most of material needed 4) saving the teacher an extraordinary amount of time; 5) acting as a very useful learning-aid for the students according to grant (1987:12-14), there are two kinds of textbooks; they are traditional textbooks and communicative textbooks. traditional textbooks focus on students to learn the language as a system. while, communicative textbooks try to international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 52 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 give opportunities to the students to use the language in the classroom before using it in real life. readability is one of the most important aspects that should be considered in selecting s good passage for students (hil walter, 1979). barbara woods (1989) also defined that the readability was investigated to measure the writing complexity and to estimate the reading or education level for comprehension of the text. richard r.day also mentions five factors that influence readability namely lexical knowledge, background knowledge, organization, discourse phenomena, and length of passage. procedures used for measuring readability are known as “readability formulas” readability formulas are mathematically derived indices of text difficulty based on analysis of language variables (readence, et all 1985:41). readability formulas are predictive technique. they are used to make judgement about instructional materials. these judgement are global, to be sure and are not intended to be precise indicators of text difficulty. vacca and vacca (1986:47) write that a readability formula can best be described as „a rubber ruler‟ because this score that it yield are estimates of the text difficulty not absolute level., these estimates are often determined a long a single dimension of a author‟s wrting style : sentence complecity (as measured by length) and vocabularies difficulty (also measured by length) these to variable are used to predict difficulty of reading materials. to make judgements about instructional materials, the teacher can use a readability formula. linguistically, magdad (1996) states that there are at least five readability formulas that can be used to measure the readability level of english textbooks. they are (a) fry readability estimate, (b) smog grading, (c) lix formula, (d) fox index, and (e) raygor readability estimate. there are some reasons why the writer applies raygor readability estimate as an instrument to analyze the english textbook entitled “fast tract to english” for the third year students of sma. the writer has reasons as follows: 1) simple to use and reliable 2) not measured by counting syllables but counting the number of words with six or more letters. 3) needing shorter time to count the score methodology method is a way of doing something (hornby, 1995). in doing this research , the writer applied a descriptive method. isaac and michael (1981) describe that the objetive of a descriptive method is to describe systematically a situation or area of interest factually and accurately. the steps taken in doing the research are as follows: 1) choosing the textbook applied in curriculum 13 published by kementrian pendidikan dan kebudayaan in 2015. i choose the textbook for the twelfth class. 2) analyzing reading texts found in the textbook that consisting of 100 words or more. 3) applying the raygor readability estimate to know the readability levels of the reading texts. 4) testing the reading texts randomly analyzed by using cloze procedure text to the students of twelfth class of smkn 1 ujan mas 5) reporting the result. technique for collecting the data international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 53 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the technique used in collecting the data was documentation one. the data were collected by choosing a reading text which containing more than 100 words in every chapter of the textbook investigated. technique for analyzing the data technique used in analyzing the data obtained was raygor readability estimate. raygor readability estimate is a readability formula specifically for middle/secondary level text material which simple to use and reliable and measured by counting long words (six letters or more): there are some directions for the raygor readability estimate as follows: 1) counting out a 100-word passage at every chapter of a textbook; counting proper nouns but not numbers 2) counting the number of sentences in each 100-word passage, estimating to the nearest tenth to partial sentences. 3) counting the number of words with six or more letters 4) averaging the sentence lenth and word length measures over all samples and plot the avarage on the graph. the grade level nearest the spot marked is the best estimate of the difficulty of the selection. (readence, bean, and baldwin, 1985:42) figure 1. raygor readability estimate findings according to the data analyzed, the writer found some results from the reading texts in textbook entitled , “fast tract to english” for the third year students of sma. they are (1) the number of long words with five letters or more for each reading text and its average number, (2) the number of sentences in each 100-word passage and its average number, and (3) the readability level of each reading text and its average readability level. first, dealing with the number of long words, the reading text entitled “conglomerate” and “students exchange” get the highest number of long words with 44 long words. in contrast, the lowest one is the reading text entitled “money and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:raygor.png international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 54 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 bank” with only 18 long words in 100-word passage. but, the average number of long words is 36. second, dealing with the number of sentences, there are two reading texts, that have the most sentences, which are entitled “money and bank” and “natural conservation”. the number of sentences of them is 9.6. conversely, the text with the lowest number of sentences is the one entitled “non-aligned movement” with only 2.5 sentences. yet the average number of sentences is 6.9. third, there are five reading texts which get the highest readability levels. their readability levels are in professional (prof) level. the lowest one is in level 3. the title of the reading text that has the level is “money and bank”. while the average readability level is 11. however, there is one reading text that its readability level is in invalid level. after plotting their number of long words and sentence length on the raygor readability graph, the writer found the distribution of their readability levels as follows: 1) level three : 1 reading text 2) level six : 1 reading text 3) level seven : 1 reading text 4) level eight : 1 reading text 5) level nine : 7 reading texts 6) level ten : 2 reading texts 7) level eleven : 7 reading texts 8) level twelve : 9 reading texts 9) level college : 3 reading texts 10) level professional : 5 reading texts 11) level invalid : 1 reading text the writer presented the table below to show clearly the results of this research. table. 1. the readability levels of the reading texts no text titles of the reading texts number of long words number of sentences readability levels 1 stock exchange 36 7.3 11 2 trade and commerce 37 6.6 12 3 money and bank 18 9.6 3 4 small-scale industries 39 7.6 12 5 electronics 40 8.1 12 6 the influence of science and technology 34 8.3 9 7 research 29 6.6 8 8 air transportation 38 7.8 11 9 medical technology 41 5.2 prof 10 investors and discoverers in science and technology 36 8.6 10 11 countries 36 5.6 12 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 55 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 12 political parties 34 5.6 11 13 right and responsibilities 33 8.3 9 14 custom and way of life 29 5.1 9 15 ethnic groups and religions in indonesia 34 8.3 9 16 local art 28 7 7 17 handicrafts 36 7.5 11 18 decorative art 38 6.5 12 19 dramatic writing 42 6.3 prof 20 wood carving 39 6.8 12 21 cooperation 40 8.9 12 22 urbanization 31 5.9 9 23 natural conservation 43 9.6 college 24 wildlife sanctuary 38 8 11 25 department store 31 6.1 9 26 chemical industry 41 6.1 college 27 adoption system in industries 35 6.3 11 28 conglomerate 44 8 prof 29 students exchange 44 6.3 prof 30 the unesco 42 6.5 prof 31 non-aligned movement 39 2.5 invalid 32 geothermal energy 41 5.8 college 33 coal 36 5.6 12 34 wind and solar energy 34 8.2 9 35 money 34 6.4 10 36 savings 19 6.1 6 37 gloria macapagal-arroyo 37 7.3 11 38 women entrepreneurs 38 6.9 12 total number 1365 263.2 the average number 36 6.9 11 discussion based on the results above, the writer would like to interpret the readability levels of the reading texts that are divided into four parts. they are (1) the reading texts with under level 9, (2) the reading texts with level 9, (3) the reading texts with over level 9, and (4) the reading texts with invalid level (1) the reading texts with under level nine (9) based on the writer‟s findings, there are only four reading texts that are in the readability levels under level 9. in connection with raygor readability estimate (rre) those reading texts are not suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma. those texts are predicted too easy linguistically for them because based on rre, the readability level which is considered as suitable one for the third year students of sma is level 9. it could be stated since in general, the students have been studying english formally since the fourth grade of elementary school. it means they have been studying english at least for nine years. however, if the students have been studying english formally since first year of junior high school, those texts might be considered as readable texts or suitable linguistically for them. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 56 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 (2) the reading texts with level nine (9) based on the writer‟s findings, there are only seven reading texts whose readability levels is 9, as explained above that suitable readability level for the third year students of sma is 9 because actually most of students have been studying english since the fourth grade of elementary school. it can be concluded that those seven reading texts are suitable linguitically for the third year students of sma. they are considered as readable texts linguistically. on the other hand, those text could not suitable linguitically for the third year students of sma if the students have been studying english since first year of junior high school, those texts would be rather difficult for them. (3) the reading texts with level nine (9) based on the writer‟s findings, most of reading texts in textbook entitled “fast tract to english” for the third year students of sma have readability levels higher than level 9. the writer found twenty-six reading texts which are higher than level 9. based on raygor readability estimate, those texts are predicted as difficult texts. they are not suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma. the students might get difficulties in understanding those texts because they have been studying english for nine years. conversely, those texts would be suitable linguistically for the third year students of sma if they have been studying english formally since first grade of elementary school or over nine years. (4) the reading text with invalid level. based on the writer‟s findings, among 38 reading texts analysed, the writer found only one reading text which is in invalid level. based on raygor readability estimate, this reading text is considered as not readable text. the students might get difficulties in understanding this text. the level 9 means the students have been studying english for nine years. in this case, the level 9 refers to the third year students of sma because in general, they have been studying english since the fourth year of elementary school and it is regarded as suitable readability level for them. however the level 9 in america is quite different from level 9 in indonesian students because certainly the time of american students learns english more than the time of indonesian students. while the term linguistically tends to syntax especially in sentence length and long words. this formula assumes the long sentence and long words more difficult than short one to understand. conclusions this research found five findings. first, on the whole, the readability of the textbook is 11. it means the textbook is not suitable lingustically for the third year students of sma because in general, the students have been studying english for nine years. second, the writer found four reading texts that their readability levels are under level 9.. third, there are seven reading texts that are considered as readable texts. the readability level of those reading texts is 9. fourth, most of the readability levels of the reading texts in the textbook are over level 9 namely twenty-six reading texts. based on (rre), those reading texts are not linguistically suitable for the students who have been studying english since they were in fourth grade of elementary school. fifth, among 38 reading texts, there is only one reading text that its readability level is in invalid level. this text is considered as not readable text. it means, this text cannot be read and learnt. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 57 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 references crystal, david. (1987). the cambridge ensyclopedia of language. cambridge: cambridge university press grant, neville. (1987). making the most of your texbook. london: longman gunawan, fitra. (2003). language teaching media. a compilation design specially for pgri university students. palembang: university of pgri magdad. (1996). evaluation of english textbook. palembang: faculty of teacher training and education, university of pgri. palembang hornby, a.s. (1995). oxpord advanced learner‟s dictionary. new york: oxpord universitu press. marlina, eni. (1999). “the readability level of the english textbook entitled‟communicative and meaningful english for smu for the second year‟ based on raygor readability estimate.”unpublished research, english study program, university of pgri palembang marino, jacqueline. (1981). cloze passages: guidelines for selection. journal of reading, march 479483. neri, desri. (1998). “the readability level of the english textbook entitled „bahasa inggris untuk sltp‟ based on raygor readability estimate.”unpublished research, english study program, university of pgri palembang raymond, p (1988). cloze procedure in the teaching of reading tesl canada journal!revue tesl du canada vol. 6, readence, john e. , thomas w.bean and r scott baldwin. (1985). content area reading: an integrative approach. dubugue, iowu: kendall/hunt publishing company rohani, susi. (2002). “the first year students‟ difficulties in learning reading comprehension through practical demonstration at smk pgri 2 palembang”. unpublished research, english study program, university of pgri palembang. sheldon, leslie e. (1987). elt textbook and materials: problem in evaluation and development. london: modern english publications contact siti syafi’atul qomariyah sitisyafiatulqomariyah@undikma.ac.id mandalika university, indonesia ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract this study was conducted to find out how problem based learning (pbl) affects students' english learning interests. the questionnaire is used as an instrument. the result of implementing the problem based learning (pbl) method was that students felt enjoy and more interested. the students could develop their brainstorming when the teacher provided a problem to discuss with their group. they also created some ideas for solving their problem. some students also provide their daily problems and make the classroom/discussion situation life. based on data analysis showed that computing of the ttest was significant 0.000. it means that applying problem based learning (pblaffects students' learning interests. so, this method can be used as one of the alternative ways of teaching-learning to develop students' learning interests. article history received november 24, 2021 accepted december 17, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: problem-based learning, english learning interests, teaching-learning 1. introduction this period is the first time teaching-learning has been conducted in the classroom as long as covid 19. the teacher faced many problems which are caused by teaching-learning online before. we have shown that online is an alternative way to teach students during covid 19. limitation of interaction with others is also one of the problems in teaching-learning online. students only watch how the teacher teaches, explains the material, and gives assignments only online media. students feel bored; they will ignore the lesson and find another activity such as playing a game, sleeping, doing something, etc. based on the information above, the researchers tried to determine the objective of our study to solve that problem: to find out how problem based learning (pbl) affects students' english learning interests. students commonly face the difficulty of maintaining learning interests in one lesson. learning interests are usually up and down depending on the student's condition. to grow up students' interests, especially after online learning, the teacher applied suitable methods for teaching-learning, especially english subjects. a good method will help students to be accessible in learning. teachers used the traditional method to teach during online learning. so, to make a good boaster for students' learning, the teacher wants to try to apply problem based learning (pbl) method. the teacher is applying this method to students' learning interests because it could develop their skills, especially in english subjects, and students are more interactive. it is seeing relevance learning with their life. moreover, pbl is designed to give students a good chance to increase their skills which have a goal such as collaborating in a group or team, developing oral and written skills, self-learning, implementing problem-solving materials in real life, awareness of responsibility and self-evaluation, individually work, explain a concept, learn group management and leadership responsibility, critical thinking and analysis, and develop information literacy (nilson, 2010; hmelo-silver, 2004; hmelosilver and eberach, 2012; amerstorfer, 2020; ansarian and teoh, 2018). we could see from figure 1 the differences between the traditional method and the pbl method. the traditional method is a standard method used by teachers. they only provide the materials and directly teach learning activities. students only receive the materials without international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15881 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15881 international journal of language teaching and education 56 developing brainstorming before they get it. the students only join the teacher's rule in the teachinglearning process. the traditional method is how to educate students using memorization and repetition of information; it means that there is no developing their decision-making skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving. figure 1. traditional method and pbl method source: educational technology problem based learning (pbl) method is how to use or provide a teaching method to promote students' learning concepts and principles using complex real-world in the teaching-learning process as the vehicle to direct concepts and presentation of facts. in addition, to teach content, pbl could improve critical thinking skills, communication skills, and problem-solving abilities (hmelo-silver, 2004; hmelo-silver and eberach, 2012, ansarian and teoh, 2018). moreover, it also supported finding and evaluating research materials, and life-long learning could be provided in working groups (duch et al., 2001;). pbl is a learning system that stands on students' problems when they get knowledge process. it has a critical function to be individually in finding problem-solving. pbl also has a valuable strategy for finding problem-solving in students' daily lives. students can determine the kind of problem that has to solve. according to duch et al. l (2001), there are some characteristics of pbl problem such as it must give motivate for students to understand the concept more deeply than their think, it must ask the students to make a good decision and to maintain them, it should connect to previous knowledge/courses to see content objectives, it needs to ensure that using a level of complexity, it should provide how students to open-ended and how students to provide problem-solving. how is the teacher implementing problem based learning (pbl) method? the researchers adapted from abdalla and gaffar (2011:15) stated there are three sessions of implementing problem based learning (pbl) method as 1) first session is to solve the problem which is given to the students through problem based learning is challenging knowledge and experience—making group discussion with their roles and responsibility every group, especially for a leader. every session has 1-2 hours. students will have several days to learn individually to manage the teacher's task. 2) the second session is to share students' results after learning individually before solving the problem. this session has a similar time to the first session, which is 1-2 hours. the students are more active thinkers, cooperate, are responsible, study how to give information, and get feedback at the end of the learning process. 3) third session, the students could share the result in front of group discussion to get feedback from them, and also, they could also ask the expert suitable with the problem given before. 1-2 hours is the duration in this period. there are four stages of the pbl method, namely 1) basic concepts; teacher explains basic knowledge consisting of the basic concept, instruction, sources, connection, and skills in every lesson. so, the students can catch the objective of the lesson. 2) defining problem; teacher describes the problem, and students respond with a brainstorming activity. it means that every student should give their idea and suggestion. this activity will get many problems that could be 57 s. s. qomariyah & i. m. p. utama discussed. 3) self learning; every student should find many references from many resources such as magazines, newspapers, books, electronic media, etc. the aim of this point is students could find information sources and understand well about the problem and have the selfconfidence to describe issues in front of the class. 4) knowledge exchange; teacher asks the students to make a group to discuss references and determine problem-solving. furthermore, 5) assessment; it consists of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. it also can see in figure 2. figure 2. the stages of pbl method the researchers tried to apply pbl to students' learning interests. according to mangal (2007), interest is how the drives the whole machinery of teaching-learning is forced. two kinds affect learning interests: 1) internal factors, such as motivation, attention, ideal, and talent. 2) external factors, such as teachers, family, friends, and environment. the teacher can give treatment to grow students' learning interests, such as motivating them to learn, explaining what they can do at the end of the meeting, giving rewards to their achievement, and creating habitually good learning. arikunto (1990) also stated when someone catches their eyes in the teaching-learning process; they need some elements. the role of interests in teaching-learning is for the concentration of thought and creating excitement. the function of interest in learning as a motivating force encourages students to learn. some researchers stated that the reader might not be confident about educational outcomes when applying a multifaceted approach (charlin et al., 1998; dolmans 2003; lee, 2004). many researchers applied pbl in large classes; the teachers have difficulty experience in improving students' interest and motivation, difficulty making students concentrate, and difficulty in connecting new content. argaw et al. (2016) also applied pbl on large classes is 80 students. so, in this current study, the researchers tried to apply it in small classes. these varieties of pbl, the researchers needed to detail what factors affect the implementation of pbl, what factors affect learning interests of pbl, what happens in pbl environments, and what the outcomes of implementing pbl. the result of this research may help to improve their performance and practices. the analysis of pbl of the students is part of contributing pbl implementation to take ideas in the primary component. international journal of language teaching and education 58 2. method the researchers used a quasi-experimental design. quasi-experimental design is more suitable for real than true experimental. establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between independent and dependent variables is the purpose of quasi-experimental design. non randomize pretest-posttest design is used to conduct experimental research. it is used to conduct an organized classroom setting because the researcher will conduct without arranging and changing all the classes. the classroom design is suitable for the original class in the school. the process of conducted treatment in the class has similar time both experiment group and control group. it also has similar material. all third-grade students in the academic year 2021/2022 were used as a population because this school is located in a village, so the number of students consisted of 44 students. we determined the sample using a purposive sampling technique consisting of 22 students as an experimental group and 22 students as a control group. in selecting the purpose of investigation, the sample is kind of the main point that will be used to select it (kothari, 2004: 158). the instrument of this study used a questionnaire. the questionnaire was used to know students' interests. to collect the data, the researchers used pre-test and post-test. after conducting pre-test and post-test data, the researcher computed the data using spps 18 to analyze the data. in analyses of the data, two kinds of data are conducted: descriptive analysis (finding mean score, mode, median, and standard deviation) and inferential analysis (finding hypothesis/t-test score). after the treatment of both the experimental and control groups and hypothesis analysis was compared at the .05 level of significance, it could be determined whether the independent variable (problem based learning) affects the dependent variable (students' learning interests). 3. finding and discussion the data analysis showed that the score of the pre-test control group (39.77) was lower than the experimental group (45.45). the post-test score was 53.86 (experimental group) and 47.72 (control group). it means that the experimental group had a higher score than the control whether we showed from pre-test or post-test. there was an increase between the experimental group and the control group. the computation of the post-test can see in table 1. table 1. statistics experimental group control group n valid missing mean median mode std deviation 22 0 53.8636 55.0000 60.00 6.53413 22 0 47.7273 47.5000 60.00 10.77113 implementing the problem based learning (pbl) method was, students felt enjoy and more interested. the students could develop their brainstorming when the teacher provided a problem to discuss with their group. they also created some ideas for solving their problem. some students also provide their daily problems and make the situation of classroom/discussion is life. the result of computing was significant in 0.000. it means that there is the effect of applying problem based learning (pbl) method toward students' learning interests. the analysis of the ttest (hypothesis result) can be seen in table 2. 59 s. s. qomariyah & i. m. p. utama table 2. analysis of t-test test value = 0 t df sig (2-tailed) mean difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper experimental group control group 38.665 20.783 21 21 .000 .000 53.86364 47.72727 50.9666 42.9516 56.7607 52.5029 this research aims to determine the effect of problem based learning (pbl) on students' learning interests. the result of data analysis showed that the score of the experiment group was higher than the control group. analysis of t-test is significant in .000. it means that implementing the problem based learning (pbl) method has a significant effect on students' learning interests. when we look at how problem based learning (pbl) uses real-world problems to construct knowledge and improve the learning experience, it is suitable with the definition of problem based learning (pbl) as an instructional strategy to find a meaningful solution (rayne & symons, 2005; capon & kuhn, 2004; kuhn, 2015; mcdowell, 2017). it also can see that problem based learning (pbl) has some advantages, such as (1) it can force the students more interactive when the discussion is going. the students should give more ideas to contribute to problemsolving. (2) it can improve students more practice in oral communication than written. (3) it requires students to think critically. (4) it improves students' learning interests. the students like the atmosphere of the problem based learning (pbl) learning process. (5) it can make students know new problems that never known before. the students can share the problem and knowledge with others. (6) it grows the spirit of cooperation with others. students can learn how to work and solve together (cooperation, teamwork, and communication skills). however, learning is a process of getting knowledge. learning interests is how the students develop their thinking ability. kusmaryati & amertaningrum (2017) stated that when the students are getting paid attention, they provide good information efficiently and effectively strategies such as critical thinking, new knowledge, and deep structure. the students will bring their self-regulatory skills and hard work when they are interested in something. in implementing problem based learning (pbl), the teachers used four components of pbl, which adapted from rayne & symons's (2005) theory. they explained as follows: (1) group work, students, work together in small groups and provide their level understanding of the material. the teachers can provide their groups, or the students can determine the groups independently. (2) problem solving, the teacher gives the problem based on the daily problem. it means the students face problems in their lives and try to solve them. (3) discovering new knowledge, students should have new knowledge to find a better solution. (4) based on real life, the teacher encourages students to begin thinking like an expert. it will help the students most accessible to solve it. the students should try to think and solve the problem that is ever felt in their life. it relates with a previous study by khotimah (2014) she conducted on how problem-based learning can improve students' speaking ability. she has found that the implementation of pbl was easy for the students. they felt happy. the result of the study was a significant improvement; the score of speaking ability proved it. it means that the method that she has applied positively contributes to students' speaking ability. bashith & amin (2017) also conducted research with applying problem based learning (pbl) model on students' critical thinking skills and learning outcomes. in conducting the result of data analyses, the t-test is smaller than the significance level. however, the mean score of the experimental class is higher than the control class. so pbl becomes one of the alternative teaching models that enhance students' critical thinking skills. mrayyan (2008) researched assessing students' learning preferences by applying problem-based learning (pbl) using vark. he measures the difference in learning style after introducing pbl as a teaching methodology. the result of multimodal preference on pre-test was 54%, whereas on post-test was 68%. he had found that more students could learn effectively when the teacher provided different learning activities. active learning might be improved in the large classroom. tambunan et al. (2018) conducted research applying pbl to improve students' outcomes. their research is succeeded because the result of international journal of language teaching and education 60 hypothesis analysis is high in a significant level. it is also proved by there is an interaction between e-learning and students outcomes. seibert (2021) found that pbl also enhanced critical thinking and perseverance. the similarities between the current study and the previous study are that the study showed that problem based learning (pbl) might help students in learning interests and motivate them to think critically. although one of the studies showed low significance, another showed a high score is proved by hypothesis analysis. every process in teaching-learning, the pbl method gave the experience that was confirmed students' perception of their perseverance and appreciation. perseverance provides opportunities for students not to quickly give up on the problems encountered during the learning process; students have shown their best academic performance (lavy and ovadia, 2016). in addition, wolters and hussain's (2015) found that perseverance demonstrated better self-efficacy, an effective way of learning and managing students' skills. furthermore, appreciation is closely related to "recognition" in terms of value and meaning of events, appearances, behaviors, or even objects with a positive emotional sense of connection (adler & fagley, 2005, p. 81). these things can influence students during the learning process; students can improve their interest in learning english by having a positive view on learning activities, materials, or even self-efficacy. 5. conclusion the researchers can conclude that implementing problem based learning (pbl) is an effective method to increase students' learning interests. based on data obtained and data analysis showed that this study is significant. problem based learning (pbl) method has a good impact on the students, and also it can increase their learning interests. otherwise, teachers can use other ways to increase students' learning interests, such as using various teaching-learning methods, using various teaching media, creating interactive learning styles to make the classroom is life, and giving rewards to motivate students more interested in learning. pbl method is an effective teaching method, especially in teaching english compared to the conventional/traditional teaching method. it is proved that the experimental group achieved better than the control group, where students found in the comparison group. in order to enhance the results of studies regarding the use of the pbl method, researchers hope that further research can find new things with a different scope that was not found in this study. the next researchers can investigate whether problem based learning (pbl) method is effective on language skills, the internal-external factors that affect problem based learning (pbl) method in language skills, or how the pbl method improves the students' psychology in learning. the maximum result of a few studies in applying the pbl method is hoped so that the results of this study can be a supporting source for further research on the pbl method references abdallah, m.e., & abdurrahim, m.g. 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(2005). possibilities: a practice guide to problem based learning in physics and astronomy. uk. university of hull. seibert s. a. (2021). problem-based learning: a strategy to foster generation z's critical thinking and perseverance. teaching and learning in nursing : official journal of the national organization for assciate degree nursing, 16(1), 85–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2020.09.002 tambunan, l., rusdi, r., & miarsyah, m. (2018). effectiveness of problem based learning models by using e-learning and learning motivation toward students learning outcomes on subject circullation systems. indonesian journal of science and education, 2(1). wolters, c. a., & hussain, m. (2015). investigating grit and its relations with college students' self-regulated learning and academic achievement. metacognition and learning, 10(3), 293– 311. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-014-9128-9. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5003 176 ijolte manifestation of 18th century literary movement through sir walter scott’s ivanhoe: history has been rewritten rudra tapash lincoln university college, selanggor, malaysia email: tapashrudra6@gmail.com how to cite this paper: tapash, r. (2018). manifestation of 18th century literary movement through sir walter scott’s ivanhoe: history has been rewritten. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 176-183. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5003 received: may 16, 2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31, 2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract the nationalist feeling is agitating again today. as far as the new and ultra-developed global scenario is concerned, a huge facet of exotic invasiveness is up for grab. people of the modern era are in the thought process that their native country might be under serious threat; even though; they would remain silent until their entity rattles. the national tale before ivanhoe reflects national character as a synecdoche of an unchanging cultural space; here patriotism is a self-evident legacy, the result of unbroken continuity and a populist community that unites aristocracy and folks. arguably, sir scott for the first time, enlightens the vision of national continuity through the forcible, often violent, entry into history that does the feudal folk community become a nation. patriotism is a positive thing for every nation and its people. it’s undoubtedly a notion of proud and passion. but here in the novel ivanhoe, the other aspect of patriotism has been also highlighted, which has the notion of negativity and intolerance. however, we should keep in mind the time when sir scott was writing the novel. this was the period where just the resentment happened between france and england. in fact, the novel ivanhoe was published (1819) just after few years of napoleonic wars, where eventually, england went on victorious after the defeat of napoleon bonaparte at the battle of waterloo. therefore, against this historical backdrop, the continuous struggle in ivanhoe between domineering normans (french) and honest englishmen (saxon and their allies) took on center stage to redefine the concept of patriotism. subject areas historical linguistics keywords patriotism, provincialism, normans, saxons, 18th century 1. introduction sir walter scott must be remembered not only as a pronounced narrator of 18th-century literary movement but also as one of the sheering forces in upcoming modern english literature. the concept "literature is not only for few, rather it's for the public as well" was revolutionized all through the works of sir scott. the literature prior to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ rudra tapash 177 ijolte scott was confined to an extremely narrow circumference that included few patrons and critics. prior to scott, english literature was overwhelmingly restricted to rational romanticism that focused on relationship between two or three individuals. the principal theme during that period was '' emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." (the romance genre overview, 2013). sir walter scott was the first one who broke the shekels and propagated the literary campaign among the public. "sir walter scott was the luther of literature. he reformed, and he regenerated. to say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth; for there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been universal." (landon 123). scott's poetry like marmion as well as lady of the lake evoked through the minds of people and of course developed a resounding response throughout the country with overwhelming enthusiasm. moreover, for the first time in history, romantic poetry became extensively popular among all ages. again, looking back to the prose of sir scott, that how much it showcased the men and women who probably for the first time, believed in themselves and thoroughly enjoyed the charm of reality. his novels draw the minds of millions of readers and audiences who hitherto were the part and parcels of the previous patrons of the romantic era. it's worth mentioning, readers who were having little idea what modern literature was all about, were eventually mesmerized as sir scott's ivanhoe percolated through the veins of them. however, some critics may call his prose and poetry lacking poetic excellence, but to be honest, regarding end to end actions, excess of youth, rapid and realistic approach made sir scott a significant force to be reckoned with in modern english literature. research questions: 1. how can we correlate the historical perspective of sir scott's ivanhoe in the relevance of the past public consciousness? 2. how can we depict the notion of patriotism and provincialism/regionalism in sir scott's ivanhoe? 3. what is the significance of ivanhoe now in concurrence of modern global perspective regarding the conflict of ideology of patriotism and its resolution? 2. literature review concentrate by sir scott's writings, go back to his write up in details we would see that there are as many as two different sets of approach in his literary profile. the previous successors of romantic era, deeply engrossed sir scott and at the same time, he was extremely keen to relate and diversify the romantic perception equivocally among the scottish isles. in fact, little interest was made to merge romance and reality before the waverley. in ivanhoe, possibly for the first time, romanticism and realistic thoughts were mixed. people around the world saw how 18thcentury romance and 18thcentury mannerism blended to absolute homogeneity. in other words, sir scott set the rudra tapash 178 ijolte manifesto of 18thcentury manners in a historical frame of literary creation. like several of sir scott's novels, ivanhoe is a historical novel or romance, revolved around the middle ages. it uses the central literary device that is the perfect blend of simile and allegory that reflects to enlighten the contemporary issues by looking at the parallel debates of the distant past. scott's outlook towards the historical romance is to amalgamate the real history with fictional monologues, using drastic fictional scaffoldings to resurrect the thoughts and feelings of people in the distant past by mixing research and literary imagination. i would like to quote john henry newman, an anglican priest, poet and theologian who claimed scott, ''had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages". furthermore, carlyle and ruskin pointed similar assertions on scott and his influence on the revival, through the publication of ivanhoe. (chandler, 1965) it's worth mentioning that apart from balzac in france, no other novelists of that era approached history in such a way how scott did during that period. in this context, mitchell quoted admirably; "i cannot always pin scott down to a medieval source to the exclusion of other possible sources. in such cases, it is altogether conceivable that three or four or more literary works from different periods of literary history were on his mind at the same time" (mitchell 79). he was the first man who through his individualistic approach introduced men and women into the volumes of historical cascade and attracted the minds of all ages as depicted by thomas carlyle; "this historical novels have taught this truth.....unknown to writers of history: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and abstractions of men" (carlyle 51). the first of the scholarly works on sir scott's novels was perhaps represented in sidney w. cornish’s the waverley manualor hand-book of the chief characters, incidents, and descriptions in the waverley novels with critical breviates from various sources (adam & charles black, edinburgh, 1871, viii, 504 pp). it described in the preface as a humble attempt to facilitate reference to his works, and to their most striking features, by extracts drawn from the best contemporary criticisms. next scholarship on scott should be mary rogers’ the waverley dictionary. an alphabetical arrangement of all the characters in sir walter scott’s waverley novels with a descriptive analysis of each character, and illustrative selections from the text (s.c. griggs, chicago; trubner, london, 1879, 357pp.). it provides a list of the novels arranged by the period in which they are set; a list in chronological order of publication; and then, for each novel its plot, perhaps including scott’s own description; brief notes; its location and period; an alphabetical list of characters; and a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. bradley (1975) manifested a major piece of scholarship on sir walter scott's novels in an index to the waverley novels (the scarecrow press, metuchen, nj, 1975, xiv, 681pp). it locates persons, things, places, words, phrases, proverbs, etc., which https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/middle_ages rudra tapash 179 ijolte appear in the waverley novels, and to arrange several persons by trade or profession, and of things by subject. it would be far from over if we cannot include the scholarly works of jane millgate's scott’s last edition: a study in publishing history (edinburgh university press, 1987, x,154pp). it is a full account of its genesis, preparation and printing, together with studies of scott’s work on the interleaved set, its transcription and proofs, revision and annotation, and the magnum’s place in the transmission of scott’s text and the development of nineteenth century publishing. furthermore, iain gordon brown’s “the exile and return of the magnum”; and patrick caddell’s “the pforzheim scott manuscripts “are equally worth reading as scholarly research on the novels of sir walter scott. 3. limitations and delimitations the most important limitation of this study is the time limit. we know already that the period where we are concentrating is vast regarding information and historical perspective as well. another limitation of this study is the lack of flow of information. the data i have gathered although is potentially sizeable, still more data are necessary to make the study more concrete. the delimitation of this study is the idea on which we have pondered over. this is not only cultured here but also can be nurtured in the days to come by as this hypothesis holds a major part of modern english literature. 4. findings and discussions sir walter scott was appreciably a devoted son of his native land. as we go to the in depth analysis of his work we would find fulcrum is the passion and loyalty towards his native country. he wrote ivanhoe with astonishing vigor. this enumerates loyalty and belief towards scottish isles of that era. characters were ranging from as high as king to the lowest social chronology such as beggar. scotland remains unrevealed if we cannot read the novels of sir walter scott. scotland comes in front of our eyes through the writings of sir scott as we alter each page of his novels. during sir scott, scotland was under the rules of british empire. but scotland was by no means given the respect and colors by the british dynasty. sir scott took up his writing pen to showcase that his very own country is no push over's. eventually, in 1819 he catered this fact of ignorance towards scotland by the british dynasty of that time. in ivanhoe, he showed how queen and his dynasty ignored scotland during that period. as a patriot he continued with his writings in an abrupt way, emphasizing on rapid and quick actions, not on mellow dramas. he revolved around the fact if society is not good enough to give due respect to its cultural domains and heritage, it should be subjected to change. he continued to cater his works among the people, especially, to young and rudra tapash 180 ijolte adolescents, whom he believed, the "potential revolutionist" of society. even though he was in all respect a true scottish, but he was never biased in his approach. he distinguished between patriotism and regionalism. he believed patriotic work differs from regionalism in that; it is founded in love of your country and not resentment or envy of others. it can, therefore, speak volume for itself to change because the patriot recognizes, as scott did, that all societies are subjected to change. scott's success in changing the outlook of people is admirable. he ignited the people all over, to think and believe in them. his success speaks volume for itself, as we may say he is the writer among his contemporaries who sent the message to the people that "if you have self-belief, you will overcome all obstacles, only keeping in mind, what you have to do.'' however, authors like kenilworth, nigel, woodstock gave sir scott tremendous respect and recognition and showed his potential and grasp in modern english literature. it's now obvious, that through his writings, civilians of scottish isles reached the highest picks which had never been possible up to that time. count robert, the talisman, and ivanhoe showed how he was able to merge the romance and rapid prolific actions in the same pot. a brief account of historical novels and its implications historical novels pertain to a position in the chronology of modern english literature. it started far back in 1678 in france, where gothic stories named la princesse de clèves, was published. since then, so many historical fiction and stories have been written and of course, sir scott's contribution among them supposed to be immense. however, critics may say that his deviations were quite prominent, but this does not mean that scott’s writing does not worth values. taken into consideration that scott's works might not have so much of literary amplitudes, but we can say without any doubt, sir walter scott personified social demography through his collections of short stories and bunch of novels including ivanhoe. sir walter scott was thoroughly impressed by his previous authors regarding the historical cascade of events. moreover, since the very early days of his career he was a lover of his native land. during the british empire and the queen, her dynasty marched along and propagated its wings across the world by invading millions of ecorse of land. however, among this life of growing economy and continuous prosperity, scotland was merely forgotten, as this very land was just a part of british isles. not to mention the rich historical heritage and cultural background of scottish domain were considered as remnants of british empire. all these events circulated through the veins of sir scott and the concept of patriotism came through his literary prolificacy in the years to come. he convinced the native people to believe in themselves again. he attracted millions of his readers and admirers and stamped the meanings of patriotism in their minds for their native land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/la_princesse_de_cl%c3%a8ves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/la_princesse_de_cl%c3%a8ves rudra tapash 181 ijolte he was not at all bias in his approach. he distinguished between patriotism and narrow provincialism. therefore, the hypothetical paradox between true patriotism and narrow provincialism is resolved to a considerable extent as we depicted sir walter scott's ivanhoe stretching almost every corner of his literary aspect. ivanhoe undoubtedly is one of the greatest historical novels that erase the gap between provincialism and patriotism to a considerable extent. the very fact of cooperation is thoroughly established with the concept of providence. but we should always remember it was the crisis, of an era which was far back and accordingly it was resolved to keep in mind the socio-economy and political aspect of that period. in contrary, the ultra-developing world of modern time exhibit an array of crisis and those can't be resolved only by the act that is being shown in ivanhoe. moreover, the central character, as we go through the facets of the story, is mostly confined to sidelines which by every means, is a contradiction of the novel itself. the same thing stands as well. a role model can't be in disguise most of the times, and of course, it is quite ambiguous regarding modern global perspective as well. 5. conclusion we have been discussing time and again how prolific sir walter scott was to erase the gap between social justice and judgment during the 18th century social hierarchy is concerned. this makes the scenario to have a belligerent and centralized ruler in a nation. ivanhoe raised the bar against social injustice but at the same time argued its resolution in a nonviolent manner. in fact, we find the fact in various facets of the novel as we go along. to say in few words, he was inspiring, wholesome and manly. in conjunction with that, i would wish to quote, anne scott, a historian on the chronology of scottish and british isles, who said '' the difference between the english and scottish trials reflects the different legal systems. ironically, the acquittals made the loyalist case—that england was a country where a man could have a fair trial.'' furthermore, sir scott taught people to believe in their capabilities to overcome any obstacles and initiated the seed of patriotism in their heart (higgins, 2010). the chief arts writer and critic charlotte higgins admirably quoted in this regard, '' scotland's image-maker sir scott invented english legends.'' he added that, '' the author of ivanhoe and the waverley novels was not only crucial in creating the idea of scotland as it persists today, but also "invented england". my work is multifaceted that would allow exploring some themes and ideas and corelate the aspects of scott's work with past, present and future perspectives of nationalism and provincialism in sir scott’s novel ivanhoe. i would like to track that exotic invasiveness, import of foreign culture and ideas have been always up for grab as we can see this in the conflict between norman and saxon counterparts in the novel ivanhoe. in conjunction with that, i would also like to draw the recent scenario that is being reverberated in the various geographical pockets of asia minor. several rudra tapash 182 ijolte communities of the respective countries of this territory are now raising the bars, appealing for separate domain. the future, however, we can only assume, but to say the least, novels of sir walter scott, including ivanhoe, we can use as the roadmap to settle the issues that are obvious. however, more vivid research and studies should be conducted in these areas in the coming days to achieve more data and information. references [1] grand lodge of scotland year book. (2014). "walter scott digital archive – chronology". [2] walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. 13 oct 2008. retrieved 29 nov 2009.isbn 0902324-861, pp 25 & 34. [3] chandler, a. (1965). "sir walter scott and the medieval revival", nineteenthcentury fiction19.4 pp. 315–332. [4] bradley, p. (1975). an index to the waverley novels. [5] brown, d. (1979). walter scott and the historical imagination, in kindle ed. 2013. [6] cadell, r. (1847). catalogue of the various editions now completed of the novels, poetry, prose writings, &life of sir walter scott, bart. [7] carlyle, t. (1871). "sir walter scott. vol. xxv, part 5.the harvard classics. new york: p.f. charles black, edinburgh, viii, pp 504.collier & son", 1909–14; bartleby.com, 2001. print. [8] cornish, s.w. (1871). ‘’the waverley manual or hand-book of the chief characters, incidents, and descriptions in the waverley novels with critical breviates from various sources’’, adam &edinburgh university library "homes of sir walter scott". retrieved 9 july 2013. print. [9] hay, j. (nd). "sir walter scott". london. retrieved 22 november 2016. print. [10] higgins, c. (2010). '' scotland's image-maker sir scott invented english legends. ''16 august london.2010.theguardian. retrieved 4 sep 2011. [11] mitchell, j. (1987)."scott, chaucer, and medieval romance: a study in sir walter scott's indebtedness to the literature of the middle ages". print. [12] stuart, k. 2010, "scott-land: the man who invented a nation". polygon. print. [13] leerssen, j. (2011). ‘viral nationalism: romantic intellectuals on the move in nineteenth-century europe'. nations and nationalism, vol. 17, pp. 257271.print. [14] elizabeth, l. (1837). landon. 'female portrait gallery", flora m'ivor and rose bradwardine. no.1."the new monthly magazine (1837-1). [15] elizabeth, l. (1841). "the female portrait gallery. a series of 22 analyses of scott's female characters (sadly curtailed by letitia's untimely death in 1838)". vol. 2. pp. 81–194. print. [16] lincoln, a. (2007). "walter scott and modernity". edinburgh up. print. [17] lockhart, j, g.2016, “memoirs of the life of sir walter scott, bart". philadelphia. http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/biography/chronology.html http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/biography/chronology.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/0902324861 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/0902324861 http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/biography/homes.html http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/biography/homes.html https://books.google.com/books?id=ojewaaaayaaj&pg=pa258&lpg=pa258&dq=sir+walter+scott+tory+conservative&source=bl&ots=nlkrdw_jua&sig=tiobhgcupp0lrnmotqfl2t9aqxq&hl=en&sa=x&ved=0ahukewjrm6ya6r3qahujslqkhzd5aviq6aeimdad#v=onepage&q=sir%20walter%20scott%20tory%20conservative&f=false https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/letitia_elizabeth_landon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/letitia_elizabeth_landon https://books.google.com/books?id=wngu55k3ttec&pg=pa397&lpg=pa397&dq=walter+scott+melrose+father+battle&source=bl&ots=wwnqrdn7if&sig=uaw_1vop4wcd9j2zb6d3hrtbgvi&hl=en&sa=x&ved=0ahukewi7-rjdozjqahuc3ymkhrsmctaq6aeimdae#v=onepage&q=walter%20scott%20melrose%20father%20battle&f=false rudra tapash 183 ijolte p. 1.397. retrieved 7 november. [18] millgate, j. 1987, scott’s last edition: a study in publishing history. [19] miłosz, c. (2014). "the history of polish literature", pp. 299–302.robertson, fiona. "disfigurement and disability: walter scott’s bodies". otranto.co.uk. print. [20] rogers, m. (1879). the waverley dictionary. an alphabetical arrangement of all the characters in sir walter scott’s waverley novels with a descriptive analysis of each character, and illustrative selections from the text. [21] griggs,s.c. (2008). “waverley". oxford: oxford world classics.print. [22] scott, s. w. (2006). "count robert of paris and castle dangerous". michigan: university of michigan. print. [23] scott, s. w. (2001). "the monastery". edinburgh: edinburgh university press. print. [24] shaw, h.e. (1983). "the forms of historical fiction: sir walter scott and his successors". new york: cornell university press. print.the scarecrow press, metuchen, nj, xiv, pp 681. [25] trumpener, k. (1993). “national character, nationalist plots: national tale and historical novel in the age of waverley, 1806-1830”. elh, vol. 60, no. 3; pp. 685-731. [26] walter, s, w. ( 2012). "the lady of the lake". lititz, pa: ap publishing house. p. 308.retrieved 22 november 2016. print. http://www.otranto.co.uk/index.php/publication/view/54#_ftn3 https://books.google.com/books?id=bkhtawaaqbaj&pg=pa304&dq=walter+scott+record+stories+twigs+carvings&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=snippet&q=sing%20carvings%20on%20twigs&f=false paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 41 improving students’ speaking skill by using show and tell method: a classroom action research betty kasita bangun university of jambi, jambi, indonesia bettykasitabangun@yahoo.co.id how to cite this paper: bangun, b. k. (2018). improving students’ speaking skill by using show and tell method: a classroom action research. international journal of language teaching and education. 6(2), 41-48 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this research employed a qualitative study using a classroom action research approach by kemmis and mc. taggart which was done during 3 cycles. each of the cycle consists of four phases; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, while each cycle was done in two meetings. data were collected through the observation sheet, field notes, interview and and tests. the research findings show that there were improvement on students’ speaking skill. in cycle one, the process of teaching learning with show and tell method suggested a potential improvement, the researcher found some minor technical problems and weaknesses that leave rooms for improvement. afterward, necessary alterations and revisions were done and later applied in cycle two and three. the result of the research suggested that the students show a tremendous improvement during the process of teaching learning when show and tell method was applied. the students’ participation and vocabulary mastery were increased; they were more active, enthusiastic, and confident in speaking. subject areas language teaching keywords show and tell method , speaking skill introduction speaking becomes one of the fourth skills to be mastered by junior high school students besides listening, reading and writing. there are interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information (brown, 1994). by speaking, the students are expected to be able to communicate and express the meaning of language in a transaction and interpersonal spoken text to interact with surrounding. in teaching and learning process, speaking seems difficult to students. based on the researcher’s experience as an english teacher in smp satu atap sungai gelammuaro jambi, there were some problems during speaking class. one the most problematic causes that always hamper students to speak in language learning process is the lack of vocabulary. the students got difficulties to find the appropriate words to express their ideas. due to the level of the students, they were seemingly grasping hard for words whenever they try to speak. as the result, most students preferred to be quite. beside lack of vocabulary, the most troubling factor in open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 42 speaking is lack of participation. when the teacher asked some questions, they just kept silent and hesitated to answer. it took long time for them in uttering something and responding to questions by using simple short answers with long pauses because they were not confident enough and afraid that they might make mistakes in vocabulary, pronunciation or other aspects of speaking. as a result of these two problems in speaking, the students became less participative and showed low motivation especially in speaking activity. they did not enjoy the lesson. based on the problems above, the needs for an attractive method of learning to stimulate students to speak and improve students’ ability in speaking are urgent. the teacher should be creative in finding the appropriate method that can encourage students to speak. one of the methods is show and tell methods. since it is applied in the school, show and tell method becomes intriguing to be implemented. this is because this method has just recently been implemented in the school where the research took place. literature review speaking skill has become an academic attention since a long time ago. proven by numerous definitions and meaning offered by established experts. bailey (2005), for one, stated that speaking is “an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information, often spontaneous, open-ended and evolving, but it is not completely unpredictable.”(p.2). richard (2006) stated that in speaking, speaker needs to produce and communicate fluently, and accurately. meanwhile, brown (2007) stated that someone has competence in speaking when he or she is doing his or her actual speaking of the language. hammer (2007) also said that speaker needs to understand about speaking event, and basic language functions; transactional function and interpersonal. taking together and ground all those into account to the classroom where students needs to practice speaking english with their own style, students need to get used to speak more naturally. natural speaking can be practiced by repetition and memorizing. it always happens in the classroom. it is supported by clarke (2009), who stated that the use of repetition is an important strategy to assist in the learning of the second language. saying the same thing more than once will give more than one chances to understand what is being said. repetition, consequently, will also affect students’ confidence, activeness and enthusiasm. in indonesian classroom context, teaching speaking is quite challenging for english teachers. this is due to lots of limitation on teachers’ part as well as students’. that is why in teaching and learning process, teachers ideally need so many variations of attractive methods of teaching the speaking skills to stimulate students to participate more in learning speaking and improve their ability in speaking. according to many literatures, among numerous teaching speaking methods available, one of the most effective one that can motivate students to speak and to participate to speak in learning process is a method called show and tell method. show and tell methodis basically defined as a method in teaching and learning process by sharing time activity for students. according to barletta (2008, as cited in mortlock 2014) show and tell method denotes a practice whereby children are given opportunity to share an oral narrative about an object or experience. the object or experience is usually from their home-life and told orally with their peers and with the teacher’s support. thornbury (2005) stated that the procedure of show and tell method that giving presentations or talks in real life the experience of standing up in front of their mates and speaking for a sustained turn is excellent preparation for real-life speaking. while the benefits of show and tell method is best stated by moffet and wagner (1976 as cited in bohning, 1981) stated that some benefits of doing show and tell method are to improve communication skill and practice it in front of audience. it also becomes happy time with other mates to share with about something special, talking about their feeling, excited or proud about it. this methodhas also given opportunity to students to develop betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 43 their language skill and with careful coaching, it can assist children in enhancing their communication skills and confidence in sharing narratives or speaking to groups (poveda, 2001 as cited in mortlock 2014). a study by endarweni (2014) entitled “implementing the show and tell techniqueto improve the speaking skill of grade viii students at smp pembaharuanpurworejo” shows that the implementation of the show and tell techniquewas effective. from the evidences, it could be concluded that implementing show and tell technique could improve the speaking ability in english teaching and learning process for grade viii students of smp pembaharuan purworejo. methodology the method employed in this research was car. according to burns (2010), car is a part of a broad movement that has been going on in education. it is related to the ideas of ‘reflective practice’ and ‘the teacher as researcher’. in this method, there are four components in one cycle for conducting classroom action research; planning, action, observation, and reflection which were conducted integratedly like spiral. each phase is concluded based on the previous one and the next. the instruments used to collect the data are observation checklist, field notes, interview and video-taping, testswhich are administered to measure the students’ speaking skill after each cycle. the method used is qualitative method and numerical data as supporting data. the data in the form of qualitative method is obtained from the observation done by the collaborator during the teaching learning process about the whole activities and the students’ participation. it is done by checking the list of activities during the teaching learning process. furthermore, it is also supported by taking field note and the interviews are done after the teaching learning process. while numerical data are obtained from the tests in form of speaking performance. the result of the test within each process is analyzed to see the improvement of the student’s speaking skill. it shows the improvement of the student’s speaking score as one of the evidence of the effectiveness of show and tell method for the student’s speaking skill. the score of the students’ speaking skill are rated by rating scale adopted from heaton; rating scale (1990) that described about the students’ ability to communicate orally namely; excellent (6), very good (5), satisfactory (4), fairly satisfactory (3), much difficulty (2), and extreme difficulty (1). moreover, to see the students’ improvement, the researcher calculated the speaking score by using numerical data obtained from the conversion of the rating scale into numerical data. finding and discussion this action research was conducted on august, 1st2016 – september, 30th 2016. the data consists of tests, interview result, observation sheet, and field notes. to support the data, the researcher also used video taping to record the process of the research. the data of tests showed the improvement of the students’ achievement in speaking. field notes and the observation sheet showed the students’ participation in teaching and learning process also suggested positive impacts on students. interviews showed the students’ positive feeling after being implemented in using show and tell method. in implementing show and tell method, the researcher found the effectiveness of this method in the classroom which can be seen from the process of each cycle. moreover, the researcher also found the result of interview and field note to support the research result. as mentioned in methodology, the research comprised of 3 cycles. each cycle consists of 4 steps; (1) planning, where the instruments were prepared in doing the action, such as syllabus, lesson plans, the material used in implementing the action, supported media and also the evaluation material after conducting the action to measure the students speaking’s improvement, (2 and 3) acting and observing, where the actions were implemented. the researcher did the actions as planned in the lesson plan. the collaborator observed the students by checking the students’ observation sheet, and (4) reflecting, where the researcher evaluated the actions and made conclusion of what needed to be imbetty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 44 proved in the next cycle.  in every cycle, the steps of the activity implemented in doing show and tell are;  the teacher explains about the rules in doing the activity.  the teacher collects the students’ objects in a box and shares q-a cards.  the students are divided into groups.  the teacher takes one object from the box.  the student who owns the object shows his/her object in front of the class.  the student tells about his/her experiences when getting the object in front of the class.  other students discuss and interview related to the story by using the interview.  card given after friend’s presentation (only for cycle one). in cycle i, the material was about recount text, while the specific theme was “my experience”. the actions were implemented twice on august, 2nd 2016 and august, 5th 2016. generally, there is an improvement in term of students activity and interest in the classroom in implenting show and tell method, the researcher found the students enjoyed the lessons. some of them seemed enthusiastics and confidence in speaking even though they made mistakes in performing their presentation. it also showed that the students were encouraged and enthusiastic by using show and tell method. by raising the question, they got interested in friends’ presentation and started to speak. furthermore, based on teacher’s field note, the students who presented their experiences could share ideas to others but not fluent enough. when they were performing, it took long time to speak and also they mixed with their mother language. it was also seemingly easier for them to understand because they talked about their own experiences. however in this first cycle, the researcher still higlighted some problems;  while in general, participation is increasing, some students are found to just keep silent or were not fluent enough in doing monologue because they did not understand about the material.  despite students showing interest, some students were not engaged in the activity due to limited vocabulary.  moreover, some objects were too small for big class, so the other students could not clearly see the object. based on those data, the researcher made improvement in revision for the next cycle. the actions of cycle 2 were conducted on august 12th and 16th, 2016. in this cycle, the objects are changed into form of pictures. in the second cycle, there were some significant improvements of the students during the english teaching and learning. in solving problem for silent students, the researcher gave chance to discuss in pair, modify the group by considering the students’ ability, add more time for discussion, bring bigger objects, mix the languageintheinstrucuon.for the reflections, the researcher interviewed some studentsto know the teaching and learning process in both meetings. based on the students’ interview, some students said that they were excited to the activities. here, they had to bring picture related to their best experiences. the researcher had informed the task the day before so they had enough time to prepare for the next day presentation. the students followed the activities easier. the students learnt more enjoyable in their group. they also felt more challenged because they were asked to retell about their own experience based on the picture they had. even most of the students spoke ungrammatically monologue, they enjoyed the activity. based on the result of field note, it seemed they had memorized their story before. it meant that they had willingness to prepare their presentation. even it was not natural, but there was progress in their learning english. furthermore, the other progress was the students were active and motivated to ask questions when other students had presentation. moreover, they also had willingness to help their friends in group who betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 45 had limited understanding about the presentation. it meant that grouping influenced them to be active. besides, the students also were enthusiastic in the learning process. it seemed when a student had presented his monologue, the class was crowded. meanwhile, when discussing, most of students prepared their own questions and felt proud if they asked many questions. moreover, they also had curiosity about other experiences. it meant that show and tell method was effective to engage students to be active and more enthusiastic. however, in implementing show and tell method, few were less active. they were slower than other students. it happened because other students got involved enthusiastically and proud if they raised many questions. it made slow students had similar question with other students. it was proven that show and tell method led the students compete each other. it would influence them in speaking. the more they asked, the more confident they were. the result above is also supported by murlock (2013) who stated show and tell method also creates competition among students. the researcher also agreed that this method increased students’ participation either individual or peer. based on the reflection at the end of cycle 2, some revisions were still needed to maximize the participation for all students in the class to be implemented in cycle 3. the actions of cycle 3 were conducted on august 30th and september 2nd, 2016. based on the reflections of cycle 2, the researcher made a revised plans. in solving problem for vocabulary, the researcher asked the students to make lists of vocabulary of their own object at home and the lists would be shared in group. this would enrich their vocabulary. for grammar, the researcher prompted the students to make sentences in the past tense before presentation through game. specifically, the researcher asked the students to stand up, and led in question about making sentence in past tense and the students who answered the questions could sit. for slower students, the researcher moved and mixed them to the other group that could help them. for the this cycle, the researcher did not give the card for questioning and answering session and also in meeting one of the next cycle, the researcher emphasized the activity for the students. in the other words, the researcher focused on students’ difficulties in vocabulary and grammar. the class activity was done as planned. in cycle three, the material was still about recount text. the topic was about gift or prize that they had ever had. they were also asked before to bring object related to the topic. they brought dictionary, mobile phones, camera stick holder, hats, shirts, trophy awards, dolls, and pillow. all students were pleasant to bring their own object and those who forgot asked to substitute with others. this negotiation defined the improvement of enthusiasm among students. based on teacher’s observation, in cycle 3, it was found that the students’ activeness, confident, and enthusiastic were increased.it could be seen from the result of observation, field note, and speaking test. post test indicator also confirmed the improvement. after this cycle was finished, the researcher felt highly satisfied with the process and progress achieved by the students during the learning. the implementation of the show and tell method to improve speaking skill as the focus of this current study was conducted over a period of three cycles within 3 months (6 meetings). before the researcher started doing the research on the subject of this research, the students’ speaking skill was very low; particularly challenging in terms of vocabulary competence, in extension, students were also mostly very reluctant to participate in classroom discussions or doing speaking activities. bearing this problem, the researcher, as an english teacher in that school conducted this research to improve their speaking. before the researcher started doing the research on the subject of this research, the students’ speaking skill was very low; particularly challenging in terms of vocabulary competence, in extension, students were also mostly very reluctant to participate in classroom discussions or doing speaking activities. bearing this problem, betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 46 the researcher, as an english teacher in that school conducted this research to improve their speaking. the students’ participation, both quality and quantity has progressively increased by each cycle. for instance, when a student stood up in front of their friends to tell his/her experience, other students were more active in giving their friends the questions related to their objects. this dynamic also happens during the preparation of the students who showed more enthusiasm in facing their speaking assignments such as preparing the objects, discussing it with their friends and teachers and even to negotiate their tasks. during the teaching and learning process where show and tell method was implemented to improve speaking skills, the researcher noticed a fast-paced progress shown by the students in responding to the learning. it can be seen from the data gathered through field note, observation sheet, interview, and also tests from the first cycle until the third cycle. the data gathered from these instruments showed that the students were more eager in following the lessons, more encourage participating in solving and exercising speaking tasks and psychologically relaxed that they could learn while had fun in the learning. in addition to this, the sessions where students have to respond the questions from the audience also helps create the opportunity for the performer to elaborate their ideas or points about the topics (their objects). it engaged the students to speak up in the classroom. it is supported by thornbury (2005), who stated that the procedure of show and tell method in form of presentations or talks about real life experience such as standing up in front of class can prompt students to speak more. in the last cycle, it was found a high improvement of students’ behavior in speaking by using show and tell method. besides tests’ result and also observation sheet, the result of interview also showed that show and tell method improved students’ speaking in the classroom. moreover, this method also enhanced them being active, confident, and enthusiastic in learning english. one of students interviewed stated told that show and tell method increased his confidence in speaking in english. the test results also suggest a significant improvement. by seeing the whole research findings, it can be seen that show and tell method is very useful to enhance the students in speaking. moreover, by implementing this method, the students’ speaking skill was improved. they were confident, active, and also enthusiastic. in line with the result of this current study, several related research which has conclusively suggested the positive findings by implementing show and tell method. conclusion show and tell method was implemented by asking the students beforehand to bring objects related to the topic of the lesson and then asked to narrate the random objects they had gathered first. since the first cycle when the method of show and tell was implemented, the researcher had already noticed an improvement during the process of teaching and learning process, particularly in speaking tasks. while the activities are mostly designed to help students to be more active such as doing presentation in front of the class and followed up by question and answer sessions where the opportunity to speak was maximilized, the speaking tasks were enhanced. during the first cycle, the students’ responses were viewed to be positive. improvement can be seen already especially from students’ enthusiasm and the atmosphere of the classroom; the students seemed to be really enjoying and had fun in the classroom. consequently, their participation is increasing and the intensity of the speaking also positively went up. however, some of the technical problems and challenges are still clearly interfering the process of the learning. for instance, some students were still confused of the teacher’s explanation due to the manner of the teachers’ language which is relatively fast and using full english while the students’ level is still considered low. another problem is the sample object brought by the teacher in explaining was considered too small such a large class. in consequent, the instruction was less effective. the lack of familiarity of the method of show and tell also hampered the students betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 47 understanding of how details of the activity should be proceded. the third problem is the grouping process. in dividing the students to some groups, the students chose their own group member. it made the group members quality were not balance. all these problems were revised and implemented in cycle 2. in cycle 2, the revisions of the cycle one were implemented. regarding to the students’ confusion caused by language, the researcher then changed the language by using code mixing. the effect was immediate and the students understood the instruction and explanation clearly. the researcher also brought a larger object to the class as a sample for the students. the revisions done during cycle 2 resulted in a significant improvement on the process. the level of participation and quality of the speaking outcome also shows that students were more receptive of the lesson and reflected it by their performance and presentation. during the cycle 3, the researcher implemented the revised plannings. to raise equality of speaking, the chance to speak was not only used to simply dominant students but everyone was motivated to participate, especially the quite and reversed students. regarding vocabulary, the researcher asked the students to prepare the list of vocabulary clues (key words) at home. this is in order to help the students to be easier and more anticipative in understanding the presentations. the implementation of the show and tell method has conclusively improved the students’ progress in teaching and learning process. students’ participation in speaking activities and tasks can be seen by some of these regards: students’ psychological responses; students seem to be more emotionally inclined in following the activities, they seemed to have a lot of fun with their classmates and their groups, they did not seem bored or sleepy as usual. instead, they seemed happy and enjoying the tasks given to them. students’ enthusiasm; showed by their focus on the lesson and activities. in group, they actively involved in completing the tasks by asking each other questions regarding the topics. they also were more willingly to make personal effort to contribute in solving the tasks such as making preparation for the presentation including even doing negotiation of his chosen object and followed the teacher’s instructions without even a slight reluctant as usual. students’ activeness; during the speaking activities, the students’ level of participation and contributing in class speaking discussion and activity increased significantly, especially in cycle 3. students asked and answered questions more to their teachers and their friends. the designed competitive atmosphere inflicted by this method also encouraged the students to achieve more, by extension, speak more. they viewed that they were “better” than others of they ask or being asked more. this set the class activity where students competed in being more active especially after their friends did their presentations. students’ confidence; as the effect of show and tell method, each student was given equal opportunity in speaking task. supported by the relaxed and friendly aura of the classroom, students were more enjoyed in doing the activity. this helps them a lot for them to be psychologically ready for the time of presentation and answering questions. they did not feel intimidated and had no burdened to speak what were in their mind, they were more confident in speaking and doing presentation even when they made errors either in vocabulary or grammars. by seeing the whole research findings, it can be seen that show and tell method is very useful to enhance the students in speaking. moreover, by implementing this method, the students’ speaking skill was improved. they were confident, active, and also enthusiastic in the classroom. from the evidence shown by the result of the current study and also many other previous research adopting the same method, it could be concluded that show and tell method can significantly improve students speaking skills as well as the process of teaching and learning in which that method is being implemented. in summary, show and tell method improved students’ betty kasita bangun international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 48 speaking skill and also their behavior or interest in speaking. the result of this study also proved that this method is effective to motivate the students in the classroom who were not active, not confident, and also not enthusiastic in speaking to improve more in every aspect in teaching speaking skill. references bailey, m. k and nunan, d. (2005). practical english language teaching: speaking, new york : the mcgraw hill companies brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment: principle and classroom practice. new york: pearson education inc brown, h. d. (2007). principles of language teaching and learning (5th ed). new york: pearson education inc bohning, g.(1981). show-and-tell: assessing oral language, reading horizon journal, 22,1-5. [online]. available at http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading. [accessed from internet on january 23rd 2016) endarweni. (2014).implementing the show and tell technique to improve the speaking skill of grade viii students at smp pembaharuan purworejo.lumbungpustakauniversitasnegeri yogyakarta, accesed in http://eprints.uny.ac.id/19865/pdf, 03 thjuni 2015, 11.00.p.m harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching: fourth edition, new york : pearson education limited mortlock, a. (2014). children's narratives and show-and-tell: what the story books tell us about 'being known,' 'being better,' and 'being judged'? he kupu, 3. [online]. available at; http://www.hekupu.ac.nz/journal%20files/issue5%20n ovember%202014/6%20anita%2 [accessed from internet on march 28th 2016) spratt, m, pulverness, a. & williams. m. (2005). the teaching knowledge test course. uk : cambridge university press thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking: new york : pearson. http://www.hekupu.ac.nz/journal%20files/issue5%20november%202014/6%20anita%20mortlock.pdf http://www.hekupu.ac.nz/journal%20files/issue5%20november%202014/6%20anita%20mortlock.pdf contact hafizah hafizah@ubharajaya.ac.id universitas bhayangkara jakarta raya ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). abstract the purpose of this study was to find out and understand (1) the process of improving scientific essay writing skills through a heutagogical approach to online learning and (2) the effectiveness of applying the heutagogical approach to improving students' scientific essay writing skills. the method used is action research. the research was conducted on students at a university in jakarta, indonesia. this research is participatory and collaborative and takes place in two cycles. each cycle consists of planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. data were collected through writing tests and observations. the writing test results were assessed using the speech writing assessment guidelines. the results showed that applying the heutagogical approach in online learning could improve students' scientific essay writing skills. the mean score on the initial test was 67.88, with only 37.2% getting a score of 75. in the first cycle, the average value increased to 74.49 with a success percentage of 60.5, and in the second cycle, the average value increased to 78.95 with a success percentage of 81.4%. from the research results, it can be concluded that the heutagogical approach can improve students' scientific writing skills. article history received november 24, 2021 accepted december 18, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: heutagogical approach, scientific essay writing skills, action research 1. introduction the covid-19 that hit the world, including indonesia, has caused many changes in the social life sector in the past year. this change occurred from the economic, tourism, socio-cultural sectors to the education sector. in the field of education, teaching and learning activities have changed drastically from those initially conducting offline learning (outside the network), turning into online learning (in the network) (walukow, 2020) (oktafia ika handarini, 2020); (sunarti & mitroharjono, 2021). this change occurs in all levels of education from kindergarten, elementary, junior high, senior high schools to universities. the application of online learning in higher education introduces lecturers to technological innovation, information, communication, and heutagogy (ashton & newman, 2006). in online learning, students who participate in learning activities are not as many as in offline learning activities (msila & setlhako, 2012). lecturers are also required to be more creative in carrying out teaching and learning activities. lecturers must be able to use technology to convey knowledge to students and ensure that the knowledge conveyed is well received and understood (kaliky, 2013). so far, the role of lecturers in online learning is more focused on learning materials. lecturers do not think about the existence of their students even though students in higher education are adult humans who already have their own way of dealing with and solving problems. in addition, lecturers must be able to make maximum use of technology. the selection of learning approaches is also very influential on students' success in understanding the knowledge provided. several errors in selecting learning approaches result in learning activities not running optimally. many lecturers use rigid and monotonous learning techniques so that learning becomes international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15580 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15580 international journal of language teaching and education 30 boring and learning objectives are not achieved. the lecturer's focus should not only be conveying the material, but the lecturer should ensure that his students can understand the material presented. therefore, it takes a learning approach that follows students' needs in online learning, one of which uses a heutagogical approach. heutagogy is the application of a holistic approach that is used to develop students' skills by learning as an active and proactive activity, and students act as the main agents in their own learning, which is obtained as a result of their personal experiences (hase & kenyon, 2007). this means that students play an active role in their learning, determine what learning activities take place, and determine what will be learned. educators are only tasked with facilitating what students do. this approach is a development of the andragogy approach that focuses on students' independence but in complex situations in the form of the necessity of using technology systems and devices (blaschke, 2012). heutagogy is also defined as an approach where the educator provides the resources, but the students themselves design the learning activities and negotiate them (canţer, 2012). from this statement, it can be seen that this heutagogical approach is a learning approach that utilizes technology in the teaching and learning process and this approach is very suitable to be applied in online learning in universities at mkwu (general compulsory course) indonesian in writing material, scientific essay. writing scientific essays is a systematic writing activity to obtain scientific answers to a problem by developing the science, technology, and art obtained through literature studies, a collection of experiences, research, and previous knowledge of others (totok djuroto, 2014); (dwiloka & riana, 2012). therefore, the activity of writing scientific essays is very much needed by students because, in all learning activities, students are always asked to make scientific essays, which can be in the form of making papers, proposals, and reports. based on the results of pre-observations that the author did on the skills of writing scientific essays for 43 students, it can be seen the difficulties experienced. this difficulty is in the form of errors in spelling. difficulty in expressing ideas or ideas, writing scientific papers that are not under the systematics of writing, grammar is still messy, and choosing diction that is not in the context of scientific papers (nurgiantoro, 2001); (hafizah, 2021). based on the phenomenon of students' scientific papers, it is necessary to apply a heutagogical approach in indonesian mkwu lectures to improve scientific writing skills. 2. literature review heutagogi heutagogy is a study of self-determined learning by the learner. it can also be seen as a natural development of previous educational methodologies, especially from capacity development, and may provide an optimal approach to learning in the twenty-first century. the difference between this approach and the andragogy approach is that there is still the role of educators (teachers, lecturers, and facilitators). in heutagogy, the role has been integrated because educators and students gain knowledge from each other and learn from each other. educators here are not limited to providing knowledge, but their role is more than that, namely lifelong learners, learning leaders, learning resource directors, network diversity, and communication openers. the characteristics of the heutagogical approach are as follows: 1. using an open and flexible curriculum; 2. learners as drivers in determining the learning path, its context, activities, and journey, not just the educator; 3. learners engage in flexible and negotiable assessment design; 4. learning is collaborative between educators and students, and educators must be active for the benefit of students based on questions posed by students; 5. students create contextually relevant content according to their knowledge and learning needs; 6. encourage reflective practice for learning in journals as a place to reflect on learning and research as a place for experimentation in the real world (halupa, 2015); (mohammad et al., 2019). 31 h. hafizah, f. d. c. putri, a. widiansyah & h. farhana writing scientific essay writing is a learning process in collecting scattered ideas. a writer must unite these ideas through writing and develop them rationally so that the reader can understand them. in addition to requiring experience, writing can be grown through habituation. writing habits can be grown through the closest environment, namely family. even teachers or lecturers can try various techniques to develop their writing and like writing lessons. developing writing skills can make it easier for a person to organize thoughts and ideas, which can be put on paper. good writing is not a writing skill that can be produced according to orders (leonhardt, 2001). letting children write according to their creativity and knowledge will be much better. writing is a language skill used to communicate indirectly, not face to face with other productive and expressive people (tarigan, 2008). the writer must utilize graphology, language structure, and vocabulary in this writing activity. this writing skill will not come automatically but must go through a lot of practice and regular practice. writing activity is an activity that does not stand alone, which is closely related to other matters, such as mastery of the material, understanding of research methods and writing methods, utilization of reference sources, mastery of language, habituation to practice, and the use of appropriate media and selection of reader segments. (sutarno, 2008). scientific essays are essays made by a scientist who wants to develop science, technology, and art obtained through library research, a collection of experiences, research, and previous knowledge of others (dwiloka & riana, 2012). a similar definition also states that scientific writing is a writing activity based on research results that are systematically arranged following a scientific methodology that aims to obtain scientific answers to a problem (djutoto & supriyadi, 2002). this means that scientific essays are made to solve a problem using certain research methods based on observations in the field. the assessment criteria in writing scientific essays are as follows: 1. ideas or ideas are topics with themes that are expressed in writing; 2. the organization is the arrangement of scientific essays that must follow the existing writing systematics, use of appropriate references, use of paper, font size, and paper margins; 3. grammar is the arrangement of sentences that are good and correct so as to produce paragraphs and continuous discourse; 4. diction in the form of choosing the right words according to the context and using terms that are appropriate to the field of science; 5. spelling in the form of rules in writing letters, words, numbers, abbreviations, acronyms following indonesian spelling (nurgiantoro, 2001). online learning online learning (on the network) is a form of learning without face-to-face with a flexible time and place and supported by supporting facilities in the form of a network system such as the internet (osguthorpe & graham, 2003). this means that online learning utilizes the internet network in its implementation so that the time and place of learning can be adjusted according to needs.in line with the previous definition, online learning is a learning activity that utilizes internet and web technologies to create learning experiences (horton & katherine horton, 2003). online learning is considered innovative as a medium of good delivery, user-centered, interactive, and can be done flexibly. the platforms used in online learning are google meet, zoom, whatsapp, google classroom, e-learning using supporting facilities in laptops, smartphones, and tablets. online learning aims to provide quality learning in a massive and open network to reach more and wider students. this research focuses on the use of a heutagogical approach. this approach is a new approach and is still rarely used in learning approaches, especially in improving students' scientific essay writing skills. this approach was based on the covid-19 situation, which required universities to conduct online learning. 3. research method action research is a process designed to empower all participants (students, lecturers, and other participants) to improve the practices carried out in the educational experience hopkin (emzir, 2011). the activity is carried out online for students in jakarta, indonesia. the research was carried out in the even semester of the 2020/2021 academic year, starting in april until june 2021. this period starts from pre-observation until the research is completed. data were collected by conducting a international journal of language teaching and education 32 scientific essay writing test three times, namely once during the pretest, once during the post-test cycle 1, and once during the post-test cycle 2. the research procedure used was the kemmis and taggart model. the stages of research data analysis start from (1) doing pre-observation to find out the problems that exist in the field; (2) collecting data by conducting a scientific essay writing skill test and non-test in the form of attitudes and processes during learning; and (3) the data will be analyzed with quantitative and qualitative approaches. quantitative is used to analyze the teaching and learning process data or compare student scores before and after the research activity is carried out. in this study, this quantitative data was obtained from the results of a scientific essay writing test using a heutagogical approach in the form of student worksheets. the data from the test results were analyzed using numerical calculations and described. from this qualitative approach, non-test data were obtained in a description of activities during the learning process using a heutagogical approach to online learning. the data is contained in written words from the observed sources. to check the validity of the data, the researcher refers to the validity criteria stated by guba in mills, namely credibility, relevance to context, testability, and validity (geoffrey e. mills, 2000). 4. findings writing skills cannot be separated from other language skills. writing skills must be supported by listening, speaking, and reading skills, especially reading skills. because the more students read or listen, the more ideas, they can put into writing. writing scientific essays is based on research results that are systematically arranged following a scientific methodology that aims to get a scientific answer to a problem. scientific essays, especially scientific papers, are prepared based on the criteria, which must pay attention to the ideas or ideas outlined, the organization of the essay, the grammar used, the chosen diction, and the application of proper indonesian spelling. online learning activities through a heutagogical approach are carried out by first agreeing on learning activities between researchers and students. the researcher here functions as a facilitator for students who inform the approach used in learning, namely heutagogy. in addition, the researcher also explains the definition of the heutagogical approach, how it is applied in learning, its advantages, and disadvantages. students are required to determine their own learning process according to what they want. the researcher and the students also agreed on the assignments, assessment system, and technology tools to be used. after that, students are asked to determine the material they want to learn for themselves. this is done by discussing and voting. finally, an agreement was obtained regarding the material to be studied, namely, scientific essays, especially scientific papers. the material has been decided. then students find their own material about scientific essays. students explore writing scientific essays, especially scientific papers, online, books, or other sources. they discuss the material that has been obtained. the facilitator is tasked with providing new information and adding information obtained from the results of student discussions. based on the pretest results, it is known that there are still many students who have difficulty writing scientific essays. based on the pretest results, it showed that of the 43 students who took the pretest to write scientific papers, only 16 students, or 37.2%, met the standard value set, which was 75. the rest, 27 students or 62.8%, do not meet the standard value. student score data can be seen in the graph below. figure 1. the score of the student pre-test 33 h. hafizah, f. d. c. putri, a. widiansyah & h. farhana the graph above shows that the highest score of students is 80, the lowest is 55, and the average score is 67.88. the results of this pretest indicate that there are still many students who have difficulty writing scientific essays. this can be seen from students' difficulty in applying the five elements in writing scientific essays, namely choosing ideas, organizing writing, using correct grammar, choosing the right diction, and writing messy spelling. based on the pretest results, it was found that the students' scientific writing skills did not meet the assessment standards, so the researchers took action learning through a heutagogical approach in cycle 1. the student essay writing test results in cycle one are known to have increased but have not met the assessment criteria, namely 75% of students received a test score of 75. in the pretest conducted on tuesday, may 25, 2021, the results were recorded from 43 students, only 16 students (37.2%) who can meet the standard assessment criteria. a total of 27 students (62.8%) have not obtained a score of 75. after the action was carried out in cycle 1, there was an increase in student scores. there were 26 students (60.5%) who had met the standard scores. the rest, 17 students (39.5%), have not met the standard value set. student score data can be seen in the graph below. figure 2. the score of the student in cycle 1 based on the results of the tests and reflections above, the application of the heutagogy approach can improve the skills of writing scientific essays for students even though they have not yet reached the indicators of research success. therefore, this learning model needs to be continued in cycle 2 with various improvements. cycle 2 was carried out by applying the heutagogical approach. of the 43 students, 35 students (81.4%) have met the standard value. the rest, eight students (18.6%), have not met the standard value set. there is an increase of 18.6% compared to the first cycle. this means that the learning objectives with the heutagogical approach have been achieved because 81.4% of students have obtained a test score of 75. student score data can be seen in the graph below. figure 3. the score of the student in cycle 2 international journal of language teaching and education 34 based on the post-test cycle 2, the indicators of research success have been achieved. the highest score obtained by students is 85, and the lowest is 67. thus, this action research does not need to be continued to the next cycle. by giving actions in cycle 1, students begin to understand and understand the nature of ideas/ideas when writing speeches. students are able to determine ideas well. the delivery is sequential and well organized. from paragraph elements, students begin to understand how to express ideas so that readers can well receive them. in the element of the organization, students have begun to understand the proper arrangement of papers. and student was able to make the background of the problem quite well. in addition, students know the mistakes they made and correct them. students have also begun to understand grammar compose good sentences coherent paragraphs so that their writing becomes continuous. they began to choose the right diction according to the context of the sentence, and the spelling used was much better. improvements continued to occur in cycle two so that only a few of the students still made mistakes. the following increase in students' percentages and average scores can be illustrated in the graph below. figure 4. improvement of scientific writing skills every cycle from the graph above, it can be seen that an increase occurred from the pretest to cycle 1, namely the percentage of students who met the standard value from 37.2% to 62.8%. the average score of students also increased from 67.88 to 74.49. in cycle two, there was also an increase in the percentage of students writing scientific essays through the heutagogical approach, from 62.8% to 81.4%, and the average score also increased from 74.49 to 78.95. with this percentage, the application of the heutagogical approach was declared successful in improving scientific essay writing skills. the difficulties encountered by students were in the form of difficulties in applying the five elements in writing scientific essays, namely pouring out ideas/ideas, organizing essays, grammar, selected diction, and applying proper indonesian spelling. first, in pouring ideas or ideas, many students are still confused about determining the contents of the titles that have been determined or chosen, copy and paste from other people's writings so that the level of plagiarism is high, and the pouring of problems in the background does not match the problems to be discussed. the ideas expressed do not focus on the problems discussed. second, the organization of scientific papers is also not following existing rules. sometimes students write papers with different systematics, and this happens very often. the systematics of scientific papers consists of an introductory chapter, a content chapter, and a concluding chapter. third, the grammar used is also not appropriate, the arrangement of sentences, paragraphs, and discourse. this must be addressed so as to create a coherent discourse. fourth is the choice of diction. in the choice of diction, many students do not use the right choice of words, and they still use words with connotative meanings and synonyms. finally, in writing spelling, students still experience errors in writing capital letters, italics, bold letters, writing derivative words, combining words, writing numbers, and using punctuation marks. students write spellings without following the rules. 35 h. hafizah, f. d. c. putri, a. widiansyah & h. farhana 5. conclusion based on the results of research and discussion on improving scientific essay writing skills through a heutagogical approach to students at a university in jakarta, indonesia, it can be concluded that the heutagogical approach can increase students' enthusiasm and motivation in accepting online learning. in the beginning, learning was still conventional by lecturing so that students felt bored and unenthusiastic in accepting learning. the heutagogical approach can also increase students' scientific essay writing skills, which is marked by an increase in the average value of writing scientific essays. in addition, the heutagogical approach in online learning can foster a critical attitude of students about learning. this approach also makes students more active, innovative, and initiative in the learning process carried out. the limitations of this study are the results of research that cannot be generalized or used in general because they are only related to certain groups of students. references ashton, j., & newman, l. (2006). an unfinished symphony: 21st century teacher education using knowledge creating heutagogies. british journal of educational technology, 37(6), 825–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00662.x blaschke, l. m. (2012). heutagogy and lifelong learning: a review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning. the international review of research in open and distance learning, 13(1), 56–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12135 burhan nurgiantoro. (2001). penilaian dalam pengajaran bahasa [assessment in language teaching]. bpfe yogyakarta. canţer, m. (2012). e-heutagogy for lifelong e-learning. procedia technology, 1, 129–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protcy.2012.02.025 djutoto, t., & supriyadi, b. (2002). menulis artikel dan karya ilmiah [writing articles and scientific papers]. remaja rosdakrya. dwiloka, b., & riana, r. 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(2020). rancangan model pendekatan heutagogi dalam pembelajaran online [heutagogical approach model design in online learning]. thesis. https://doi.org/10.24853/tahdzibi.6.1.47-56 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5641 238 ijolte analysis of students' english reading comprehension through kwl (know-want-learn) learning strategies eva yuni rahmawati universitas indraprasta pgri jakarta email: everez29@gmail.com how to cite this paper: rahmawati, e. (2018). analysis of students’ english reading comprehension through kwl (knowwant-learn) learning strategies. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 238-247. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5641 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this research aims to know the reading comprehension of students through kwl learning strategies. the research is descriptive research survey. the subject of research is the student of mathematics education programwho learned english. a sample of this research used simple random sampling technique (n = 40). data collection is done by carrying out a test of reading using the test, after the students being treated by kwl learning strategies. analysis of research data using descriptive statistical techniques. the results showed that, there are 75% of the students who were able to determine the topic from the reading passage, 62.5% of the students were able to determine the word reference and 67.5% of students were able to determine the main idea of the text and 50% were able to determine the detail information. it can be concluded that the kwl strategy is able to improve students reading comprehension. subject areas language teaching keywords english reading comprehension, know-want-learn learning strategies 1. introduction english is one of the subjects that must be taught at every level of education. in the university, english is taught at the first and second semester for study programs. in other words, we can say english for special purposes (esp). the purpose is to develop the learners communicative competence in a specific discipline. meanwhile, there are four english skills, namely: listening, speaking, reading and writing. one of language skill is reading, reading is an important activity to do, because various information can be obtained by reading. reading is one of the skills that process and receive information. reading is seen as a channel of language processing, a form of communication between writers and readers who are mediated through a written text (sulistyo, 2011). the ability in reading english text is not only can read text smoothly, but understand the contents of the text and understand the message from the author. however, the learners still have difficulty in understanding the text. it can be seen from the test results. there are several factors that cause the learners faced the difficulties in understanding the text, such as lack of vocabulary in english, lack of grammatical understanding, and lack of background knowledge. this is in accordance with tyler's (1994) statement that there are six basic factors that influence https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5641 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5641 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ eva yuni rahmawati 239 ijolte students' reading comprehension ability: 1) experience background, 2) intellectual ability, 3) language ability, 4) interest, 5) reading purpose, 6) skills reading understanding. reading comprehension ability is the ability to understand the core of a topic. rubin (1981), states that reading comprehension is a complex thinking process that involves a number of abilities. therefore, a learning strategy is needed which is expected to help students understand text easily. there are various kinds of learning strategies, but the strategy that is used in this research is kwl (know-want-learn) strategy. the strategy was first developed by ogle in 1986 on the basis of the idea that language learners gain knowledge by constructing meaning. the kwl strategy was first developed by ogle in 1986 which is an idea that language learners gain knowledge by forming meaning. this means that the learner can connect the initial knowledge with new information is created. 2. literaturereview 2.1. kwl(know, want, and learn) learning strategy the kwl(know, want, and learn) learning strategy was developed by ogle in 1986. the aim of this strategy is to facilitate students' metacognitive thinking processes. this strategy can be illustrated by a simple graph consisting of three columns. the first column is labeled "k" which stands for what students already know about the topic. the second or middle column is labeled "w" which stands for what mind students will learn. the third and final columns are labeled "l" which stands for what really isn't learning. to fill in the "k" column, the lecturer only brainstorms all the different ideas that are in relative knowledge before the topic. remember the topic is the person, place, or thing the chapter is about. if you find that you have limited prior knowledge about the topic, then the lecturer asks students to find out about topics that can be done in books or the internet and search by using topics as keywords. according to ogle in abdulrab (2015), the stages of learning using kwl are: 1) introduce and explain strategies for each student group, or a group of students as a whole. 2) divide the student activity sheet, which shows three parts by placing k in the first column, w in the second column, and l in the third column. choose a topic and guide students in brainstorming activities to generate ideas about what they already know about the topic, then students will place it in column k. students to verbally describe to the lecturer's background information on what they have and lecturers then write on the board in column k. 3) guiding students in generating questions. use probing questions to encourage students to think. this is information for column w and students will write these questions in column w. students must be given text on the topic. they can read the text independently or in small groups. text must be managed until students become familiar with this technique. reading the text allows students to realize what they are learning and what they have not understood. eva yuni rahmawati 240 ijolte 4) students read the text and find new information, they can add questions to column w. students continue through the material, they constantly think about what they read, monitor their learning, and may generate additional questions to guide their reading. when they examine with an eye towards answering their questions have been asked, students must record new information in column l, which identifies what they have learned. students will record answers to their questions and other information they have learned. in many cases, they also know that what they think they know is inaccurate. 5) guide students through the process of categorizing information in column k. this allows them to anticipate the information fields they can find in their research. have students ask themselves what each statement describes. the process of categorizing strategies by thinking hard while identifying categories and combining and classifying information. the kwl strategy is arranged in the following table form: table 1. kwl strategi name: topic: k what weknow w what we want to learn l-what we learned according to rahim (2008) the advantage of the kwl strategy is that students can set goals and provide an active role before, during, and after reading. the kwl strategy can help them think about the new information they receive. the kwl strategy can also strengthen students' ability to develop questions about various topics. students can also assess their own learning outcomes. so, through the implementation of the kwl strategy students are expected to be able to understand the contents of a reading without being separated from their active role in linking new knowledge with the knowledge they have acquired beforehand. from the above concept it can be concluded that the stages in kwl learning are explained in the following table: eva yuni rahmawati 241 ijolte table 2. stage in kwl learning strategy learning steps kwl initial activities lecturer college student o introduce and explain the strategies for each group of students o distribute the student work sheet, which shows three parts by set down k in the first column, w in the second column, and l in the third column o the student explained the explanation of the lecturer o students guide (students work book) core activities k-what we know lecturer college student o guiding students about what they have already known about the subject matter presented o lecturer start by using brainstorming activity to help students organize their ideas questions (students work book) wwhat we want to learn lecturer college student o lecturer help students fill out column w by discussing what they want to learn from the material presented o students write specific questions where they are more interested in the subject matter that has been prepared in students work sheet eva yuni rahmawati 242 ijolte 2.2. english reading comprehension tarigan (2008) reveals that reading is a process carried out to obtain messages, which the writer wishes to convey through the words / written language. whereas nation (2009), "reading is a source of learning and a source of enjoyment". according to broughton quoted tarigan (2008) reading skills have two important aspects, namely mechanical skills and understanding skills. understanding skills cover 4 things, namely: 1) understanding simple understanding; 2) understanding the significance / meaning, 3) assessment, 4) flexible reading speed. mastery of skills that are of this understanding allows the reader to understand the meaning of the words / sentences contained in the reading rubin in somadayo (2011) stated that reading comprehension is a complex intellectual process that includes two main abilities, namely mastery of the meaning of words and the ability to think about verbal concepts. this means that in reading comprehension, simultaneous two-way concentration occurs in the reader's mind in conducting reading activities, the reader actively responds by expressing the writing sound and the language used by the author. therefore, the reader is required to be able to express the meaning contained in the text that is the meaning that the writer wants to convey. razak (2009) points out that reading comprehension is "the ability of the reader to recite the contents of the argumentation, expository, or read a description of a particular topic.mulyati, et al (2007), "that reading comprehension is a reading activity that is done to get an understanding of something or for learning purposes, so as to gain a broader insight into something that is read. according to djiwandono (2008) there are several indicators in understanding a reading that is as follows. understand the meaning of words according to use in discourse b. identify the organizational structure of discourse and the relationship between its parts c. recognize the main points of thoughts expressed in discourse. able to answer questions whose answers are explicitly contained in the discourse e. able to answer questions whose answers are contained in discourse even though expressed in different words f. able to draw inferences about the contents of the discourse g. able to recognize and understand words and phrases to understand literary closing activity lwhat we learned lecturer college student o lecturer ask students to write down what they learned students examine the questions that have been generated eva yuni rahmawati 243 ijolte nuances h. able to recognize and understand the intent and message of the author as part of an understanding of the author somadayo (2011) states that there are three stages in implementing reading comprehension learning activities, namely: 1. prepaid stage: teaching reading must be based on the view of the schema theory. based on this theory, effective lecturers must direct students to use topic knowledge to get ideas and messages of a text. guber in farida (2005) states that there are several techniques that can be done to activate student schemes through pre-reading activities. the intended privacy activity is to make predictions as follows: the lecturer reads the reading title and then introduces it to the student, predicts activities to tell the student's interest in the reading, and uses various stimuli to maintain the student's attention to the reading. 2. reading activities stage. in reading activities the lecturer discuss with the learners about what are they going to learn from text. this is so that students can predict answers to questions in accordance with the purpose of reading and testing the accuracy of their predictions, compiling questions to test information obtained and working in groups / individuals, and making reading summaries. 3. post-reading stage post-reading activities can be developed in the following ways: students are given the opportunity to find further information about the topic, students are given feedback with questions about the content of the reading, students are given the opportunity to organize the material to be presented and students are given the opportunity to do assignments to improve understanding 3. method this study was carried out on students of the mathematics education study program who studied english language lectures. the research method used a descriptive survey. according to nasir (2005) descriptive survey is "a method of examining the status of a group of people, an object, a condition, a system of thought or a class of events in the present which aims to create a systematic, factual and accurate description, picture or painting of facts -facts, traits and relationships between phenomena investigated. the population of this study were the students of the second semester in mathematics education program study who studied english, with a total sample is 40 students. sample was taken by simple random sampling technique. data collection results is reading comprehension test after being treated by kwl strategy. data analysis techniques used descriptive statistics consisting of mean, median and frequency mode and analysis. 4. findings and discussions 4.1. findings the results of reading comprehension test of students who were treated with kwl learning strategies (know-want-learn) obtained the following results: number of eva yuni rahmawati 244 ijolte respondents 40 students, minimum score is 50, maximum score is 90, the range of empirical scores were 91-50 = 41, and the theoritical range of 0-100. furthermore, the data is presented in a table of a frequency distribution with the number of six class, the widht of interval class is 7, the average score is 69.00, mode 66.5, median is 67.5 and standard deviation is 10.21. the score of reading comprehension of students who were treated with kwl learning strategies (know, want, learn), shows that there are 12 (30%) students under the interval class which contains an average score, 14 (35%) students are in the interval class which contains an average score and 14 (35%) students are above the interval class which contains the average score. based on the data above it can be said that students who have scores above the average score are more than students who have scores below the average. to clarify the reading comprehension data of students who were treated with kwl learning strategies (know, want, learn), it is presented with the following histogram display. figure 1 understanding score histogram reading students given a kw learning strategy while the analysis of reading comprehension test results with indicators 1) determine the main topic or theme of reading, 2) reference, 3) conclusion, and 4) detail information, presented in the table below: eva yuni rahmawati 245 ijolte indicators of reading comprehension topic reference conclusion detail informattion fn % fn % fn % fn % 30 75 25 62,5 27 67,5 20 50 30 75 25 62,5 27 67,5 20 50 based on the table above it can be explained that in the text item reading comprehension there are 75% of students who are able to solve the problem at the stage of determining the main topic or theme of reading, 62.5% of students who are only able to solve the problem at the stage of determining the reference word and 67.5% capable students at the stage determine the conclusions of the reading and 50% determine the detailed information.based on the results of the data analysis above it can be said that learning using kwl learning strategies can help students understand reading. this can be seen from the results of each student reading indicator above or equal to 50%. 4.2. discussion indicators of reading comprehension measurement consist of four stages, namely: 1) determine the main topic or theme of reading, 2) determine the reference word, 3) determine the conclusion of the reading, and 4) determine the detailed information. the results showed that in text item reading comprehension there were 75% of students who were able to solve the problem at the stage of determining the main topic or theme of reading, 62.5% of students who were only able to solve the problem at the stage of determining the reference word and 67.5% of students who were able at the stage of determining the conclusion of the reading and 50% determining the detailed information. based on these results, the kwl learning strategy is able to improve student reading comprehension. through the implementation of the kwl learning strategy, students become more active and independent in carrying out the assignments. in addition, the learning atmosphere during learning activities seems fun, provokes curiosity, and motivates students. this is because the kwl learning strategy requires students to be more independent in thinking, as in the first step to explore students' initial knowledge about what is known, the second step requires students to develop curiosity about what they want to know, and the final step is to read and gain knowledge. and more insight into the topic. this makes students more interested in learning to read. kwl learning strategy is able to increase students 'reading interest, this is in accordance with ogle (1986) kwl strategy to help lecturers turn on the background of students' knowledge and interests on a topic. the kwl strategy gives students the purpose of reading and provides an active role for students before, during, and after reading. this strategy helps them think about the new information they receive. this eva yuni rahmawati 246 ijolte strategy can also strengthen students' ability to develop questions about various topics. students can also assess their own learning outcomes. on the other hand according to rahim (2008), the advantage of the kwl strategy is that students can set goals and provide an active role before, during, and after reading. the results of this study are supported by several previous studies that was conducted by riswanto (2014) revealing that the kwl strategy is effective in increasing students' reading comprehension. its effectiveness is indicated by the results of the regression that the kwl contribution to the strategy of student reading ability is 70.5%. research conducted by dieu. (2015) shows that "as a result, the research has proved the effectiveness of the treatment. it is also suggested how to control a reading class, to create an interesting and exciting atmosphere to improve students' reading comprehension skill ", this study proves the influence of k-w-l strategy on teaching reading comprehension. this also proves a way to control reading classes, to create an interesting and fun atmosphere to increase students' reading comprehension skills kwl learning strategies, students are given the opportunity to find and solve a problem on their own. kwl learning strategies are specific strategies of metacognitive approaches that promote effectiveness and efficiency in thinking and problemsolving. lecturers facilitate effective thinking and problem-solving. effective problem solving must begin with identifying potential difficulties which will then be followed by problem identification. students take action on their own solutions. generally students who have enough competence will plan for their thinking process, through reflection and open-mindedness in finding solutions. finally, after finding a solution, note the student on what is needed to get the optimal solution. 5. conclusion based on the results of the data analysis and discussion that mentioned above, it can be concluded that kwl learning strategies are able to improve students’ reading comprehension. some suggestions are given to lecturers and fellow researchers who will develop and improve the quality of research with similar or similar topics, so there are some things that can be considered as follows: (1) students as individuals initially have a high reading interest, but if one uses a learning strategy will have an impact on the results of reading it. because with kwl, lecturers need to be considered as an alternative to teaching students in reading comprehension; (2) lecturers as the most important element in the learning process must strive to display learning processes that can facilitate diverse students; (3) creating a learning process that can develop the independence of student learning; (4) for the next researcher who will research and develop on the same topic, it is expected to be able to make a more specific measurement tool and a simpler language so that it is easy for students to understand. eva yuni rahmawati 247 ijolte references [1] sulistyo, g.h. (2011). reading for meaning. malang: pustakakaiswaran [2] tyler, r. (1994). children construction of explanation in science. victoria: deakin university [3] rubin, d. (1983). writing and reading the vital arts. new york: mcmillan publishing co., inc. [4] abdulrab,a. h. m., (2015) “effectiveness of kwl-plus strategy on acquisition the concepts in science and attitude towards science for eighth grade students.” international journal of innovative research and studies, vol. 4 (3) [5] rahim, f. (2008). pengajaranmembaca di sekolah dasar. jakarta :bumiaksara. [6] tarigan, h. g. (2008). membaca: sebagaisuatuketerampilanberbahasa. bandung: angkasa. [7] nation, s. p. (2009). teaching esl/efl reading and writing. new york. routledge [8] tarigan, h. g. (2008). membaca: sebagaisuatuketerampilanberbahasa. bandung: angkasa [9] somadaya, s. (2011). strategidan teknik pembelajaranmembaca. yogyakarta: grahailmu. [10] razak, a. (2005). membacapemahamanteoridanaplikasipengajaran. pekanbaru:autobiografi [11] mulyati, y.dkk. (2007). keterampilanberbahasa indonesia sd. jakarta :universitas terbuka [12] djiwandono,s. (2008). tes bahasa. jakarta: pt indeks [13] somadaya, s. (2011). strategidan teknik pembelajaranmembaca. yogyakarta: grahailmu. [14] nazir, m. (2005). metodepenelitian . jakarta: pt ghalia indonesia [15] ogle, d. (1986) k-w-l: a teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. the reading teacher, 39, 564-570. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.39.6.11 [16] rahim, f. (2008). pengajaranmembaca di sekolah dasar. jakarta :bumiaksara [17] riswanto., risnawati., deti,.(2014). the effect of using kwl (know, want, learned) strategy on efl students’ reading comprehension achievement. international journal of humanities and social science. vol. 4, no. 7(1) [18] dieu, tran thi thanh. (2015). trying k-w-l strategy on teaching reading comprehension to passive students in vietnam. international journal of language and linguistics. vol. 3, no. 6, 2015, pp. 481-492. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.39.6.11 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 13 from english to indonesia: translation problems and strategies of efl student teachers–aliterature review risni ade sandra university of jambi, jambi, indonesia ade_sandra91@yahoo.com how to cite this paper: sandra, r. a. (2018) from english to indonesia: translation problems and strategies of efl student teachers–aliterature review. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 13-18. accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this research articulates problems and strategies in translating text from english as the source text to indonesia language as the target text. by reviewing and analysing critically mélange of concepts, examples and findings explained in some collected references, it is known that problems in translation mostly are around lexical, grammatical and semantic elements. in the other hand, the strategies used to produce acceptable translation result regarding to the readers’ of target text understanding have to consider aspects such as cultural content, the availability of equivalencies, and the ability to use the monolingual dictionary. this research also try to emphasize and to convince why finding problems and strategies of efl student teachers in translating text is very prominent to help the mapping of which elements in english language that are still hard to be transmitted back to indonesia language and how to overcome that problems. subject areas translation keywords translation, translation problems, translation strategies, efl student teachers introduction in indonesia, translation still take part in the english teaching and learning activity in the class since the portion of reading and writing activities is quite dominating due to students’ preparation of examination. in order to comprehend information written in english, one of students’ strategies mostly is to translate it, as found in karimian and talebinejad (2013) research, and translation even plays a positive role in efl classes. generally efl student teachers will face teaching training at school for several months where they have to teach and prepare teaching tools to support their teaching activity in the class. tabakowska (1998) stated that translation must be considered one of the basic devices for all those who plan language courses or write language textbooks. the fact that student teachers are still in the learning process of becoming teacher in the future, measuring their english competence is prominent, one among other ways to accomplish that purpose is through translation. open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ risni ade sandra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 14 finding efl student teachers’ problems in translation can benefit them in term of realizing what they have missed in understanding text in english. as an english teacher in the future, student teachers themselves have to master on english translation since their students may not aware of some aspects that can lead them to understand the text inaccurately, such as, there are some words in english which have multiple meanings and the time information contained in the sentence according to the tenses used in the sentence itself (sudirman, 2013). various researches had been done to identify problems in translation usually in specific cases, but very rare conducted purposively for efl student teachers. beside problems, finding students’ strategies in translating text can also give such advantages, not only for them but also for the lecturer of translation class about whether their strategies help them to correctly transfer the meaning from english to indonesia language because if they do not, this information can help the lecturer to conduct teaching planning on how to translate the text appropriately with strategies efl student teachers can apply. in the other hand, if the strategies are proven helpful to produce acceptable translation result, it can show students’ english proficiency level. literature review translation problems and strategies the main points of discussion in this research will be highlighted and referenced theoretically about problems and strategies in text translation, then, describing problems and strategies in translation based on recent studies, and the last, providing critical analysis on some works. problems in texttranslation first, even though some methods and strategies of translation were already defined by some experts to assist in translating text, some problems in translation still exist. arnold (2008) stated that there are three major problems in translating text; the ambiguity, structural and lexical differences between languages such as idioms and collocation and the attempt to find equivalencies. ambiguity appears when one cannot decide which meaning that should be chosen. this case called lexical ambiguity according to cecilia (2003) in hamlaoui (2010), but if the ambiguity appears in the sentence, then it is called structural ambiguity. nakhallah (2009) give more emphasize of this case by stating that “words which are really hard to translate are frequently the small, common words whose precise meaning depends heavily on context”. in ambiguity, the problem is sometimes, words in english have multiple meanings and functions whether it is a noun, a verb or even adjective. the term used for this case is polysemy. for example, should the word ‘use’ is translated into ‘menggunakan’ or ‘kegunaan’ in indonesian language? the answer is both are possible to become the meaning of the word ‘use’ in indonesian based on its context in english, after understanding the context, it can be decided which one is the most appropriate to be the meaning of the word ‘use’. it must be translated into ‘menggunakan’ if the word ‘use’ in the sentence is functioned as verb, meanwhile, ‘kegunaan’ is used when it is functioned as a noun. in structural and lexical differences, the problems among others that often arise are, first, the existence of dummy do in english that is not common in indonesia language (kurniawan, 2007), the time information attached in the tenses used in the sentences (sudirman, 2016), the plural noun (noverino, 2013) and the pronoun in english (see morin, 2005). look at the example below about dummy do in english: source text: i never not listen to the music target text: (1) saya – tidak pernah tidak mendengarkan – music (2) saya selalu mendengarkan musik even though two translation results provided are understandable in indonesian language, but it is very rare in the culture of indonesian language to use dummy do as shown in the first translation result. next, talking about the time information that usually failed to be translated, it become a special case and challenge to be able to put time information in the translation result, as the example provided in sudirman (2016, p.1690): risni ade sandra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 15 source text: he didn’t get the joke, of course target text: (1) tentusaja, dia tidak – menangkap maksud – dari lelucon itu the tense used in the source text shows that the event happened in the past, but in the translation result, to show that information is quite confusing. sudirman (2016) successfully carried out this example to show the translation problem related to tenses, but didn’t mention the other alternative on how to overcome this problem. the adverb of time that shows past event is quite the same between english and indonesia, such as, ‘kemarin’ as the equivalency of ‘yesterday’ and ‘yang lalu’ for ‘ago’, for example, ‘two days ago’ means ‘duahari yang lalu’ in indonesia language. in the case above, it didn’t mention precisely in the translation result about the time when the event happened. in the culture of indonesia language, to show past event with no specific time included, the phrase ‘waktuitu’ or ‘saatitu’ are often used. so here is the alternative for the problem related to time information in tenses that in this discussion is past tense. (2) tentu saja, dia tidak – menangkap maksud – dari lelucon waktu itu through this translation result, there is no absent of time information as contained in the source text. it also give such a clue for the reader of target text that the event happened in the past. in benfoughal (2010) there are variation of problems that still related to structural and lexical differences faced by each participant in his research. some of them are similar and some don’t. they are; complicated and ambiguous sl grammar, translating the nominal verb, have and do, collocation, idioms, proverbs and metaphors, parallelism and fronting, complex vs simple styles, phonological and cultural problems. the problems that successfully identified are quite a lot for the participants who are in the third year of their study in university, but in this case, other variable should be analysed, such as the cause of those problems. according to newmark (1998), if a sentence syntactically ambiguous within its context, it must be poorly written. then if it is poorly written, it must be quite difficult to translate it. that might be the reason why complicated and ambiguous sl grammar came up as the problem faced by participants. discussing further about idioms and collocation, besnett (2005) stated that “the translation of idioms takes us a stage further in considering the question of meaning and translation, for idioms, like puns, are culture bound”. sudirman (2016) gave some examples such as ‘a case in point’ and ‘on the other hand’. these idioms, if they are translated literally, might not transfer the source text message correctly, so baker (1992) suggested that in translating idioms, they can be replaced with another word that is equal with its meaning in the source text, so understanding the intention of their using in the sentence is really necessary. ‘a case in point’ can be translated into ‘contohnya’ or ‘misalnya’ in indonesia language, while ‘on the other hand’ can be translated into ‘sebaliknya’. about the attempt to find equivalencies, catford (1965) stated that lexically, equivalence occurs when the lexis of source text can be replaced by the lexis of the target text without the replacement of grammar. sentences structure in english and indonesian language are quite similar, where acceptable sentence should contain subject (noun) and predicate (verb). but the problem is, in a text there are various types of sentences, such as simple sentence, complex sentence and complex compound sentence. a sentence might contain preposition, articles, adverb, adverb of time and place and many more. the absence of the verb ‘be’ and articles to be translated come up as the problems as what hendar (2012) found in his research. the problems may also come when someone who translate the text rely on what is served in the translation tool one used to find the meaning of the words without considering whether the result of translation will sound natural or not (fraser & marcu, 2004; pado, et al. 2009). even though translation problems can be generalized into four types of problems which are ambiguity, lexical and structural differences, idioms and collocation and equivalencies, but specific problems may appear depend on the language involved in the translation, the type of the text to be translated, the language unit in forisni ade sandra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 16 cus, and many more. the problems may also not only appear in the text. external factors like the misinterpretation that may appear due to the use of translation tool also should be consider, for example, when students use translation result directly as served in the translation tool online, without analyse it further whether it is already accurate as the meaning and comprehend readership. for the efl student teachers, they should have awareness about the different culture of delivering ideas through words between english and indonesia, or whether a word in english may have more than one meaning in indonesia language. to have this ability is very important for them who will become a teacher in the future so they will not misinterpret or mislead their students in understanding the text in english then transmit it into their mother tongue in this case indonesia language. analysing efl student teachers’ translation result can be one among other ways that can be done to find out about how far is their ability to understand the idea in the english text then to transmit it into indonesia language so it can be understandable without violating the original idea itself. other studies also mapped the problems and difficulties in translating text after analyzing the translation results from the participants of their research (rini. 2007; santoso&asmarani. 2014; nakhallah, 2009; sudipa, 2012; gorlewski, et al. 2012; benfoughal.,2010; hendar, n.d; rini&gunawan.,n.d). strategies in texttranslation thethere are some strategies in translating proposed by some experts. in words level, hervey and higgins (1986) stated that there are two strategies in translating proper names, first, it is written just the way it is written in the source text or it can be written just the way it is written in the target text in terms of arranging the letters. for example, in translating the word german to indonesia language, it can be written just like that or the way it is written in the target text, which is ‘jerman’. this is defined as transliteration (hatim & munday, 2004). the consideration to choose transliteration is due to the equivalency provided for the specific word in english by pusat pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa (the centre of language development and evolvement) is unfamiliar. for example, instead of translate it into ‘pancarona’, the word ‘warna warni’ is more popular among indonesian to express the word ‘colorful’ in english. it is not become a problem if the purpose of the translation itself is to provide the translation result that is understandable for the reader of target text. newmark (1988) defined that in translating sentences from source text to target text, one should consider transposition, which are, change the words from singular to plural or the opposite. in the case of translating english text into indonesia language, most cases found are plural noun in english is translated into singular noun (noverino, 2013). the term used for this strategy is called intra-system shift (catford, 1965) if in english, the sentence is ‘that light hurts my eyes’ then in indonesia, it should be translated as ‘cahaya itu menyakiti mataku’ not ‘cahaya itu menyakiti mata mata ku’. in indonesia language, to state that the word is plural, it is not as easy as adding ‘s’ after the noun just like in english. it is usually written double by adding punctuation ‘-‘, or just written one only to represent all, or, for plural noun like ‘doctors’, in indonesia language we can use the word ‘para’ so the translation result can be ‘paradokter’ or ‘dokter-dokter’ to show that the doctor is more than one. next, the transposition of sentences in certain grammatical structure in the source which does not exist in the target text. as english learners in indonesia might aware, there are types of tenses in english that regulate how to say things based on when they happen. one of them is present perfect tense. the purpose of this sentence is to show that an event is just happened. the specific characteristic of this tense is the use of word ‘has or have’ and followed by the third form of a verb. the word has or have themselves are included as polysemy since they have multiple meanings, beside ‘sudah or telah’, they also mean ‘punya, mempunyai or memiliki’ in indonesia language. in puri (2007), translating past tense sentence into perfect tense become one of students’ strategy in translating past tense in english that has no specific time. the example is like the following: source text : i have done it (present perfect risni ade sandra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 17 tense) target text : saya sudah melakukannya source text : i did it (past tense) target text : saya sudah melakukannya the classification of tenses are not exist in indonesia language, as the result, there is no other way to differentiate and to deliver precisely the tenses in english into indonesia. the next transposition is, when the word in the source text translated literally to target text is acceptable and understandable but sounds not natural in the target text. for example; the word ‘belly button’, if it is translated into ‘tombolperut’ it is understandable but not natural, since indonesian knows the thing that in english is named ‘belly button’ as ‘pusar’ in indonesia. it must be found often that translation result in the target text appears longer or shorter that in the original one in the source text. it may due to other type of transposition exist, where the complex sentence, after translation process, translated best into still complex sentence, or changed into compound sentence, into simple sentence or into complex compound sentence (newmark, 1988). to accompany translation, the modulation strategy can be used to translate words in source text which has no equivalencies in the target text, firstly, one should understand the meaning of the word then try to serve the words by its meaning in the target text, in order to do that, the monolingual dictionary (english – english) can be used since it is proven as a helpful tool for the word in english which has no meaning after it is seek in the bilingual dictionary (english – indonesia) (adriani & croft.1997; sudirman, 2006). conclusion before even though various research were already done toward translation. translation studies is an area of research where any possibility is open due to its dynamic characteristic. the availability of sophisticated translation tools on-line open the way for students to translate a text easier, the media that exposed them with english such as the programs on television, the music, the commands in social media application and their gadget may add their knowledge on how to understand english text and be able to transform the information into indonesia language. but the problems may also arise from the tools and media that help them in understand english, like if the students accept the translation result just the way it is after they input the sentence in the source text, without considering polysemy, transliteration, and the culture of language use, idioms used and so on, the translation result might be unacceptable since it does not deliver the idea the author of the source text try to convey. it is worth to find out in the further research about efl students problems and strategies in translating text since making sure that they are aware of components to be considered in understanding a text and to be able to deliver what was written in english into indonesian language means that they are ready to give that kind of understanding to their students too and it can help them to elevate their english proficiency level. references adriani, m. & croft, w.b. (1997). the effectiveness of a dictionary-based technique for indonesian-english cross-language text retrieval. benfoughal, a. (2010). students’ difficulties and strategies in translation – the case of third year students, mentoury university constantine. catford, c. j. (1965). a linguistic theory of translation. oxford: oxford university press. hamlaoui, m.h. (2010). ambiguity of polysemous english words in translation: the case of second year students at the university of constantine. hatim, basil and munday, jeremy. (2004). translation an advanced resource book. london: routledge hendar. (2012). the english students’ difficulties in translating english news headlines. karimian, z. & talebinejad, m.r. (2013). students’ use of translation as a learning strategy in efl classroom. journal of language teaching and research vol.4, p.605-610 kurniawan, a. (2007). an analysis of indonesian translation of english complex sentence in the short story entitled sherlock holmes: the dancing men by sir arthur conan doyle. english department faculty of letters and fine arts sebelasmaret university (p. 1-61) malik, a.s., boyko, o.,atkar, n. and young, w.f. (2001) a comparative study of mr imaging profile of titanium pedicle screws. actaradiologica, 42, 291-293. risni ade sandra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 18 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/028418501127346846 mono, et al. (2015). translation strategies of cultural words in animal farm into indonesian. iosr journal of humanities and social science vol.20, p. 90-95. nakhallah, am. (2010). difficulties and problems facing english students at qou in the translation process from english to arabic and their solutions. al-quds open university. newmark, p. (1988). a textbook of translation. great britain: prantice hall limited. noverino, r. 2013. the translation of english plural noun into indonesian. proceeding pesat vol.5. 58-66. puri, r.a. (2007). structural adjustment in the translation of past participle into indonesian. gunadarma university rini, je. (2007). difficulties in translating text for beginner translator students. kata vol.9, (2).169-178. silviana, e. no year. an analysis of students’ difficulties in translating narrative text. english education study program language and arts department .1-5 sudipa, in. (2012). kemampuanmenerjemahkanbahasainggriskebahasa indonesia mahasiswaquangxicina. program bipas fakultassastrauniversitasudayana sudirman, a. (2016). current issues in english-indonesian translation equivalences. international journal of science and research .vol. 5, 1687-1695 contact laely nuriyah 7782210019@untirta.ac.id universitas sultan ageng tirtayasa, indonesia ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract this research aimed to figure out what a storyteller's phenomenology was like. the method was phenomenological, and data was collected through interviews, questionnaires, documents, and data triangulation. according to the findings of this study, a storyteller can improve english language skills in four different areas. according to the findings of this study, students can improve their english language skills by telling stories. several recommendations were made based on the previous conclusions. first, the researcher suggests that all of this research be continued by other researchers, particularly in digital storytelling with stories containing local content to help students understand and learn about indonesian culture while also improving their ability to speak english. second, the researcher hopes that the findings of this study will inspire students to learn more about storytelling. article history received november 27, 2021 accepted december 17, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: the storyteller, storytelling, descriptive phenomenology, english ability. 1. introduction storytelling is a ubiquitous everyday practice among youth that seems inconsequential as the focus for the literacy education field, especially in english. and yet, as numerous critical literacy scholars have argued, when youth have the opportunity to explain and expand on the images, emotions and meaning of their lives, they may be recognized in new ways as people with complex social histories and insights about equity and justice (agosto, 2013). storytelling is a technique that students can use to learn english, particularly in speaking. it has a universal language function; the student can tell about a story that they have prepared in advance, such as a legend, folktale, or even their own story, because we are all unique narratives (thornbury, 2005). it refers to the idea that each of us is a unique story that is constantly, unconsciously constructed by, through, and in us through our perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions; and, last but not least, our discourse, our spoken narration. individuals gain a deeper understanding of the people with whom they interact through narrative, allowing them to recognize the uniqueness of their own and others' dispositions. (l. russell, 2018). inline, storytelling can be gained from our stories because we all have to tell about our lives. students can use storytelling to tell the story of their lives by practicing in the classroom. students can also practice conversation based on the dialogues in the story by using storytelling. storytelling also serves to understand others' experiences and observe how differences in people's values emerge. (l. russell, 2018). the experience of the storyteller with storytelling is still a journey. it began with great apprehension, and to be honest, it was not entirely of her choosing. on the other hand, the storyteller was grateful to be challenged in this way, and she recognized the potential and power of storytelling every time she told a story. this shared, lived experience with her class brought them closer together in a profound and meaningful way, not only during the story, but also afterward (tinckler, 2017). international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15640 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15640 48 l. nuriyah, m. fathurrohman & a. hufad the storyteller with whom the researcher collaborates is frequently praised in her class for the entertainment value of her stories. her storytelling goals, on the other hand, frequently align with critical literacy goals: to name what matters to her, to speculate about what is possible in her lives, to unravel contradictions, to make sense of the incomprehensible, to claim or question a point of view, to wonder, and to act. as a result, storytelling is a two-way interaction between the storyteller and the listeners or audience, in which the storyteller must employ storytelling techniques in order to receive feedback from the audience. the storytellers' building materials are words, sounds, and language patterns; their tools are voice projection, facial expression, and hand gestures; and their product is the creation of a shared human experience. as a result, storytelling is primarily concerned with bringing characters to life so that the storytellers and the audience can experience their emotions and thoughts. characters can be brought to life by employing features such as diction, voice projection, intonation, gesture, facial expressions, and so on. (y. b. choo et al., 2020). storytelling is a social and cultural activity that focuses on telling and sharing stories ( roig, et al., 2018). sharing stories has always been one of the most common ways of passing down knowledge from generation to generation. people enjoy hearing stories, so they survive. furthermore, stories are extremely important in our children's lives. we can say that every time they walk into their classroom, they feel compelled to tell stories because they are fantastic, entertaining, and fun. engaging characters, narrative tension, and a unified point of view are all present in stories. these elements are present in man's earliest organized narratives, such as legends and folk tales, and are fundamental to all stories (yahaya & shuhidan, 2020). there is a desire and a need to keep an eye out for bits of information that have the potential to become interesting stories. curiosity is important, and asking critical questions about a story allows students to discover stories they can tell. curiosity is a lowercase letter. it is at its weakest when people have no idea what the answer to a question is and when they are completely certain they know. when people think they have an idea but aren't sure, they are in the zone of maximum curiosity, which is where storytellers play. loewenstein breaks down four ways of involuntarily inducing in humans in his paper "the psychology of curiosity." (1) "asking a question or presenting a puzzle; (2) "exposure to a sequence of events with an expected but unknown resolution; (3) "the violation of expectations that prompts a search for an explanation; (4) knowledge of someone else's possession of information." storytellers have long known these principles who discovered them through practice and instinct (storr, 2020). all of the steps can be repeated to learn more about the storytelling method. it provides opportunities to expose the language while also giving the audience a second chance to figure out and confirm the meaning. if necessary, walk around the classroom to show the audience the pictures and repeat the text. according to patton (2001), how people perceive, describe, feel about, judge, remember, make sense of, and talk about a phenomenon is determined by how they perceive, describe, feel about, judge, remember, make sense of, and talk about it with others. meanwhile, the implied retention of "transcendence" in phenomenological perception within the phenomenological attitude (husserl, 2006). it is also clear that such retention evidence is presupposed in empirical perception and that, in any case, a natural scientist who bases his or her work on empirical perception, and thus every philosopher who relies on natural knowledge, cannot suddenly become a hypercritic when dealing with phenomenology. based on the preceding statement, storytelling gives the storyteller the power to communicate with feeling and show the listener where they stand. and it demonstrates that someone's high-value experience will be a phenomenon. when we weave stories, one thread may come from our personal lives, another from our imagination, and yet another from our social experiences and how they affect us in some way (simmons, 2007). when we use a story to elicit human emotions, we direct those emotions in a specific direction. stories replicate the neurological effect of attention in our individual brains on a social level. what draws our attention is tended by society, and what draws society's attention is tended by society (simmons, 2007). it means that we are testing whether we can create emotions or even behaviors by directing our attention to a past event. objective thinking can distort our ability to analyze, understand, or predict human behavior because human behavior is subjective. humans see and hear the world through eyes and ears that can only be in one place at a time. a subjective point of view that frames how a person feels about us, our idea, or our organization is represented by the collective past, present, and imagined future times and places. to ensure that the study's previous is accurate, some other closely related studies relevant to the current research should be presented. according to rosli and idrus (2020), the students international journal of language teaching and education 49 appeared to have a good understanding of conventional/traditional, digital, and cyber storytelling. most of them had some experience with it or had participated in various storytelling activities. students initially described storytelling in various ways, including retelling a story, bedtime stories, and gossip. although friday (2014) defined storytelling as a variety of things, including the story of your day, the story of your life, workplace gossip, and news horrors, this study discovered two types of storytelling: one is informal, narrated in a leisure mode for non-academic purposes, and the other is formal, a more classroom-based activity for academic purposes. meanwhile, the researchers had conducted preliminary research for this project. it was held for two months, from december 11, 2020 to february 14 2021. the researcher conducted some interviews during this phase and documented the storyteller's journal. as a result, triangulation was used in this study to ensure that the findings were accurate. several conclusions were drawn from the interviews and recorded in the storyteller's journal. the following findings were important to consider for the main study: 1). the participant's interest in reading a story, particularly a fairy tale that can teach her moral values, can be seen in the interview script. 2). in the other interview, she discussed how she learned to be a storyteller, how she used a variety of methods to comprehend the story, and how she did something unusual by chewing bubble gum to help her concentrate on her studies. this result reflected her learning style. 3). she demonstrated how she learned to be a storyteller in the other interview. she also demonstrated how she benefited from storytelling. 4). triangulation data: the interview scripts of the participant's friends. it revealed her personality as well as her english ability. the documents demonstrated the participant's many accomplishments at al-farhan islamic boarding school from junior high to senior high school, particularly her improvement in english. storytelling helped her improve her english skills. because of the benefits of storytelling in improving english skills and the benefit of phenomenological study in describing a phenomenon experienced by an individual, the writer intended to conduct this current study to descriptively reveal the process that nurlya rhomadhona goes through in order to become an excellent storyteller while also becoming skilled in english and phenomenon. 2. methodology the study employs phenomenological methodology to comprehend and describe the phenomenon and determine the essence of an english storyteller's encounter with it. "the basic phenomenology," according to creswell, "is to reduce individual experiences with a phenomenon to a description of the universal essence" ( creswell, 2012). the phenomenon is referred to as "the greatest storyteller experience" in this study. the goal is to distill the phenomenon's essence by reducing the participant's experiences of her educational achievement and use of storytelling in her educational environment to a description. husserlian phenomenology is a type of descriptive phenomenology that holds that all experiences have one universal commonality or "correct interpretation." as a result, the analysis transforms into a quest for universal meaning. the researcher's ability to achieve "transcendental subjectivity" is thus central to descriptive phenomenology. it refers to the researcher's ongoing efforts to overcome personal knowledge, preconceptions, and biases, so that they do not influence or obstruct faithful or accurate recording of participant responses or data analysis (husserl, 2006). high school students in grades 11 and 12, both boys and girls, participated in this study. as a result, the researcher is interested in capturing and recording the participant's experience as a storyteller about ways to improve english through storytelling, her attitude and motivation, her difficulties in developing english ability, and her ability to maintain storytelling, as well as investigating the moment of this lived experience through interviews, questionnaires, and documents. moustakas' phenomenological data analysis procedure was applied to the data (1994). 50 l. nuriyah, m. fathurrohman & a. hufad horizontalizing, or listing, all relevant expressions in the first step of data analysis, every statement was considered equal value. if some statements were irrelevant to the research phenomena, repetitive or overlapping, the researcher deleted these statements. the remaining parts of the data consisted of horizons (husserl, 2006). a horizon is described as the phenomenon's textural meaning or constituent parts. reduction of experiences to the invariant constituents in this step, the horizons were clustered into themes. the translated data were split into meaning units so that each of horizons had only one meaning. thematic clustering to create core themes in this step, the researchers clustered the invariant constituents, which are the horizons, and defined them as "the core themes of the experience" ( moustakas, 1994). comparison of multiple data sources to validate the invariant constituents the themes derived from the participant's experiences reported in the interview were compared to the researcher's observation field notes, interviews and literature to ensure accuracy and clear representation across the data sources. crafting of individual textural descriptions of participant the textural description is a narrative that explains participants' perceptions of the phenomenon. for this step, the researchers created textural descriptions defined as the participant's experiences using excerpts from their interviews verbatim. the researcher explained the meaning units in a narrative format to understand what the participant experienced. crafting of individual structural descriptions of participant this step is based on the textural descriptions and imaginative variation. in the imaginative variation process, the researcher imagined how an experience occurred and created the structures. the researcher created a textural description for this single participant and incorporated it into a structure that explained how the experience occurred. construction of composite structural descriptions the composite structural description was a combination of five individual structural descriptions that underlined the shared meaning units and reflected the participant's experience as a whole. the common features of the experience accounted for the essence of the experience of an english storyteller. 3. results and discussion according to the findings and data presented above, how the storyteller developed her english storytelling ability was an ally in the dual-language environment. according to duman & göcen (2015), the most effective and successful method to apply to enhance the pupils' acquisition of the language is to use digital storytelling or storytelling technique. it's also seen as the best way to turn literary genres into a vivid mental image that helps students build and enrich their vocabulary bank while also stimulating their senses, such as hearing and sight. the kind of language she heard and was exposed to at home and in the immediate environment, such as at islamic boarding school, may have influenced the storyteller's learning differences (proficiency and attitudes). the results of l2 teaching to participants as storytellers from the following backgrounds may differ significantly, for example, the storytellers living in dual-language families, the storytellers influenced by a supportive environment, natural settings where l2 is used for communication either as an official language or as a community language, and educational settings where l2 is used as a means of instruction in the classroom. as a result, the storyteller realized that storytelling could help her improve her public speaking skills. she had tried a variety of methods to improve her english skills, including reading aloud. she had always put it into practice as much as she could. she learned a lot from her collective experiences in order to constantly improve and develop her english ability to be better than before. oral storytelling is an effective teaching and learning tool because it engages students' mental imagery and imagination in the story (choo, y. b et al., 2020). when a storyteller international journal of language teaching and education 51 has good speaking skills, it shows that she can give her english storytelling power. she was well aware that her retelling of a story could inspire a large number of people in her immediate vicinity. according to rosli and idrus (2020), the students appeared to have a good understanding of conventional/traditional, digital, and cyber storytelling. most of them had some experience with it or had participated in various storytelling activities. students initially described storytelling in a variety of ways, including retelling a story, bedtime stories, and gossip. the researcher discovered that some of the theories elucidated above were related to the findings about the ways storyteller develops her english storytelling ability, and she gained a stronger passion for english. the storyteller's positive attitudes the storyteller had very positive attitudes toward english and english storytelling because she had supportive parents and an environment that encouraged her to improve her english skills. attitude, like personality trait, is a hypothetical construct that must be inferred from measurable responses because it is inaccessible to direct observation. given the construct's nature, these responses must reflect positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object (azjen, 2005). whether she had verbal or nonverbal responses to the object, institution, or event in question, the storyteller had shown her positive attitude in this study. these responses can be cognitive in nature, reflecting perceptions of the object or beliefs about its likely characteristics; effective in nature, reflecting the person's judgments and feelings; and conative in nature, indicating how a person acts or would act in relation to the object. there were many reasons to expect that measured attitudes toward storytelling would be related to english ability, as evidenced by the aforementioned findings. many aspects of the storyteller's upbringing clearly influenced his or her attitudes. the researcher discovered reinforcement for the storyteller's english ability based on her friend at al-farhan islamic boarding school who knew her and the expert judgment affirmation. according to the findings, storytellers must have a positive attitude toward english and storytelling in english. the storyteller's motivation according to the questionnaire and the storyteller's response, the storyteller had higher motivation and desire to learn english, and her orientation index toward english was the highest with a percentage of 100 percent. it can be concluded that the storyteller had a positive attitude toward english as well as a strong desire to learn the language. furthermore, the storyteller had to use both motivating and fascinating stories. according to the storyteller, students who identify as stronger storytellers develop stronger storytelling skills in identifying appropriate story ideas and themes. the different types of documentary stories told and identified by the students allow for a strong visual conceptualization of the story, which improves their understanding of documentary storytelling at the same time (yahaya & shuhidan, 2020). the findings that showed the motivational intensity and the storyteller's personal style profile elucidated these theories. meanwhile, digital storytelling or storytelling strategy simplifies teaching and language acquisition, maintains students' enthusiasm for learning, focuses their attention, and increases motivation (tabieh et al., 2021). according to the theory, the storyteller had a high level of motivation. she had a strong interest in english ever since she entered an english competition, such as an english speech or an english storytelling competition. she also thought the teachers and her english story were very motivating. she was also very motivated to weave her dream about her english achievement from that point forward. as a result, the storyteller's attitudes and motivation were significant because they reflected an active involvement on his or her part in the entire process of learning english. as the researcher's expert judgment improved, she found support for her storyteller english ability from a friend at al-farhan islamic boarding school who knew her well. the storyteller's difficulties in developing english ability the researchers were able to understand better how storytellers interpret the storytelling text. she had to memorize as much as she could and then read it aloud as many times as she could. these were the most straightforward ways for her to understand the storytelling text comprehensively. according to yigit (2020), students in multilingual classes reflect their cultural environment, and stories allow us to learn about them. because stories are typically told by people who have lived through the events and said the words. without even realizing it, people find it easier to present themselves in stories. in order to overcome the challenges and constraints of english storytelling, 52 l. nuriyah, m. fathurrohman & a. hufad the storyteller had some strategies and a style. after several years of instruction, the learner's beliefs about l2 as a storyteller appear to be very stable, but her affective states may vary depending on the teacher's personality traits, the type of tasks performed in the classroom, and the results she obtained. furthermore, storytelling creates engaging and intellectually rich learning environments through creativity, various forms of literacy, and a variety of modalities (nassiem, 2018). the findings that convinced the storyteller of constraint factors and her ways to solve the problem based on her style and strategy were in line with the theory above. she was well-behaved and interested in english, completing all academic tasks and overcoming her english learning difficulties. the storyteller's english ability was found to be reinforced by her friend at al-farhan islamic boarding school, who knew her well. according to the excerpt from the interview above, the storyteller's school life was extremely memorable. she had so many accomplishments that she inspired other students at al-farhan islamic boarding school. the storyteller had improved her english storytelling ability with a lot of achievements in english, as evidenced by her friend's reinforcement. it also persuaded me that college life was so memorable. she was able to exist and always attempted to solve all of her problems in english. the ways storyteller maintains english ability because she believed that speaking english was a habit, the storyteller tried to maintain her english ability with her classmates in college. whenever she met up with them and communicated with them, she tried to speak english. she realized she needed to be able to communicate in english in order to manage her english. digital storytelling is a powerful tool for integrating instructional messages with learning activities to create more engaging and exciting learning environments, as stated in these statements. it's a method for establishing a constructivist learning atmosphere (nassiem, 2018). based on the theories mentioned above, the researcher discovered that they were related to the findings, implying that she attempted to apply the moral value from her english story always to struggle and maintain her english ability. she understood that each story contained different lessons that we could apply in our daily lives. in short, the findings about how the storyteller maintained her storytelling ability revealed personal and general factors, with the storyteller learning habit being the most important. the evidence that storytelling provided many benefits to the storyteller is used to support this claim. it was in line with the expert's conclusion based on his research. according to this research, there are ten advantages to using storytelling as an educational tool: 1). in order to improve and develop all four primary language arts skills, storytelling is a powerful and effective tool (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). 2) when information (both concepts and facts) is presented in the form of a story, it is remembered better and for longer. 3). storytelling is an interdisciplinary, cross-curricular teaching tool that is powerful and effective. 4). storytelling encourages students to learn by motivating them to tell their own stories. students' attention and learning are heightened when stories are told, and they are motivated to pursue related studies. 5). storytelling helps students develop self-confidence and self-esteem. 6). storytelling engages and develops imagination and creativity skills more effectively than any other single classroom activity. 7). storytelling entertains and engages the audience. storytelling fosters empathy and a sense of belonging. 9). storytelling improves problem-solving and analytical skills. 10) storytelling strengthens ties to one's community and heritage (haven, 2000). nurlya rhomadhona, my participant as a storyteller, had a good english ability and how phenomenon her life experience as a storyteller is, based on the testimony of participant friends and the expert judgment of the lecturer. storytelling provided her with a diverse range of language and cultural experience. 4. conclusion the focus of this research would be on the description of some lived experience; it was the great storyteller's experience and with the researcher aiming to elicit the maximum amount of information about the topic at hand. the researcher's purpose here was to present a model design for use by both novice and experienced researcher that can provide a much-needed and to date lacking guide for approaches by which to gain better understanding of and elicit richer material from the storyteller about her english ability. the method of phenomenology, which involved describing the phenomenon of a story teller who was able to improve english language skills, limited this study. sharing stories, as the storyteller had done, was an important part of her literacy development because stories could international journal of language teaching and education 53 help her to (1) broaden her knowledge and understanding of other races and beliefs, particularly indonesian folklore, (2) expose her to a wider range of story-sharing experiences, (3) stimulate her imagination, (4) expand her vocabulary and provide her with good models of use, enunciation, and pronunciation, and (5) expand her vocabulary and provide her with good models of use, enunciation, and pronunciation. (5) encourage her to pay attention, concentrate, and follow event-structured material; (6) challenge her assumptions and introduce new ideas in a nonthreatening manner; (7) develop her thinking skills; (8) nurture and encourage a sense of humor; and (9) increase her appreciation of literature and reinforce cultural values, particularly those found in indonesian folklore. several recommendations were made based on the previous conclusions. first, the researcher suggests that all of this research be continued by other researchers, particularly in digital storytelling with stories containing local content to help students understand and learn about indonesian culture while also improving their ability to speak english. second, the researcher hopes that the findings of this study will inspire students to learn more about storytelling. the storyteller grew up in a variety of social environments in islamic boarding school, where she could learn about various topics and form opinions about the consequences of her actions, the normative expectations of important others, and the obstacles that might prevent her from carrying out a behavior. all of these things were required to develop english skills, and they were similar to how a storyteller developed her english skills. references agosto, d. (2013). if i had three wishes: the educational and social/emotional benefits of oral storytelling. storytelling, self, society, 9, 53–76. ajzen, i. (2005). attitudes, personality & behavior (2nd ed). new york: open university press. choo, y. b., abdullah, t., & nawi, a. m. (2020). digital storytelling vs. oral storytelling: an analysis of the art of telling stories now and then. universal journal of educational research, 8(5 a), 46–50. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.081907 cresswell, w, j. (2012). qualitative inquiry & research design among five approaches (4th ed). lincoln: university of nebraska. sage publications inc. syafrizal, s, masrupi masrupi, i. m. (2019). the impact of experiential learning method and vocabulary mastery toward indonesian students' reading comprehension through animation video. journal for the education of gifted young scientists, 7(3), 449–458. https://doi.org/10.17478/jegys.531412 duman, b., & göcen, g. (2015). the effect of the digital storytelling method on pre-service teachers' creative writing skills. anthropologist, 20(1-2), 215–222. friday, m. j. (2014). how storytelling inspires children to learn english. from http://www.edutopia.org/https://www.edutopia.org/blog/storytelling-inspires-childrenlearnenglish-matthew-friday. haven, k. f. (2000). super simple storytelling: a can-do guide foe every classroom everyday. greenwood publishing group, inc. husserl, e. (2006). the basic problems of phenomenology. netherlands. springer. moustakas, c. (1994). phenomenological research methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. nassim, s. (2018). digital storytelling: an active learning tool for improving students' language skills. pupil: international journal of teaching, education and learning, 4(1), 14–29. https://doi.org/10.20319/pijtel.2018.21.1429 patton, q. m. (2002). qualitative research and evaluation method (3rd ed). sage publication. roig, a., r. pires de sá, and g. s. cornelio. (2018). "future story chasers: an experience with co creation of fiction in the classroom through a collaborative storytelling game." catalan journal of communication and cultural studies 10 (2): 279–289. https://doi:10.1386/cjcs.10.2.279_1 rosli, m. r., & idrus, f. (2020). cybernated storytelling: revitalising storytelling activities for secondary school students. teaching english with technology, 17(3), 19-34. russell, l. (2018). relational storytelling and critical reflections on difference. journal of communication pedagogy, vol. 1(1) 52–57. https://doi.org/10.31446/jcp.2018.10 simmons, a. (2007). whoever tells the best story wins: how to use your own stories to communicate with power and impact. new york: amacom. storr, w. (2020). the science of storytelling: why stories make us human, and how to tell them better. uk, london: harper collins publisher. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.081907 https://doi.org/10.17478/jegys.531412 https://doi.org/10.20319/pijtel.2018.21.1429 https://doi:10.1386/cjcs.10.2.279_1 https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2019.070108 54 l. nuriyah, m. fathurrohman & a. hufad tabieh, a. a. s., al-hileh, m. m., abu afifa, h. m. j., & abuzagha, h. y. (2021). the effect of using digital storytelling on developing active listening and creative thinking skills. european journal of educational research, 10(1), 13-21. https://doi.org/10.12973/eujer.10.1.13 thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking. new york: pearson educational ltd. longman. tinkler. r. (2017). connecting storytelling and social wellness: a case for holistic storytelling in the elementary classroom. http://sciencedirect.com yahaya, w. a. w., & shuhidan, m.s . (2020). documentary storytelling techniques: mapping strategies among film students. universiti teknologi mara (uitm), 600-rmi/dana 5/3/aras(90/2016). http://doi.org/10.24191/ajue.v16i3.10273 yigit, e.o. (2020). digital storytelling experiences of social studies pre-service teachers. international journal of technology in education (ijte), 3(2), 70-81. https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.10.1.13 https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.10.1.13 http://sciencedirect.com/ http://doi.org/10.24191/ajue.v16i3.10273 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5051 97 ijolte how phase theory can be used to improve reading comprehension in children monal dewle ambedkar university, delhi, india email: monal@aud.ac.in how to cite this paper: dewle, m. (2018). how phase theory can be used to improve reading comprehension in children. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 97-102. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5051 received: **** **, *** accepted: **** **, *** published: **** **, *** copyright © 2018 by author(s) and open access library inc. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract the present paper gives summary about some development theories which focuses on how development of reading takes place in a child. it then focuses on one theory, i.e. the phase theory by ehri (1999) where this theory mentions with the help of four stages how a child goes from the stage of no knowledge of letters to full knowledge of letters in children. though this theory has been criticized by some, but it is still considered as the theory which explains the basic stages of development in a child while reading while refuting the earlier theories on development of reading. further, this paper discusses how this theory can be used as a form of instruction for children to develop reading comprehension. subject areas reading comprehension keywords phase theory, rote learning, decoding, development in reading, skilled readers 1. introduction reading is a process which includes meanings to be accessed with the help of print (cain, 2010). however, interim processes are required to decode print and attach meaning to it. these develop when the child learns to decode words and to read. however, we do not know how the child goes from decoding words to reading. it was a kind of mystery which several researchers as well as teachers have always wanted to solve. there are many researchers who have investigated this issue but ehri’s (1999) work regarding the development of reading is considered the most important. the present paper discusses the stages in the development of reading where children go one from stage of no knowledge of letters to skilled reading through theoretical viewpoint and how this knowledge can be used by the teachers to give instructions to develop reading comprehension in children. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ monal dewle 98 ijolte 2. literature review 2.1. developmental theories the earlier developmental theories which focused on how a child learns to read, the notable ones were gough & hillinger (1980) where they have mentioned that a child goes through two phases of reading, the first one is reading a word through visual cues which are surrounding the word and relate to the word s/he has already stored in the memory. the second stage is where the child can decode easily with the knowledge of grapheme and phoneme connection in a language, where the child replaces the visual cues with the letter-sound knowledge to read words. the second theory was proposed by mason (1980) where she mentioned that the first stage of gough and hillinger’s is same where she stated that a child reads a word with the help of pictures and each word has its own unique pattern which helps him/her to remember the word. further, she added another stage to gough and hellinger’s theory, where the child reads letters of the word but is not able to decode the word. in the last stage the child can understand the connections between grapheme and phoneme in the language and is able to read words which are not known to him/her. the third theory is marsh, welch, and desberg (1981) has mentioned four stages, in the first stage the child tries to guess the word through glance either with the help of pictures or visual cues and see whether he/she can remember the word. the second stage is where the child discriminates one word from the other word with the help of the grapheme cues available. the third stage is where the child learns to understand the connections between the letters and sound and read the word. the fourth stage is where the child becomes skilled in reading by able to understand the complex relations between words and being to read and understand the words. the final theory that has been discussed over the years is firth’s model (1985) where she has proposed three stages of learning to read, the first stage is where the child is able to read words based on the visual or contextual features. the second stage is where the child uses the phoneme-grapheme connection to read words. the last stage is where the child read long words with the help of the spelling patterns in the language, especially with the help of the morphemes. 2.2. ehri’s phase theory: when all these developmental theories were proposed, the only problem being that all the stages in these theories do not cover systematic stages a child goes through when s/he learns a language. ehri through her phase theory tries to provide an overall view of how a child can learn to read word and, she challenges the conventional way of teaching word reading through rote learning where the child must memorize entire words with visual cues. however, in case of irregular words it does not work, and it leads to confusion among the child. monal dewle 99 ijolte therefore, ehri has proposed the four stages of alphabetic development. the stages are: pre-alphabetic, partial-alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic. these four phases of alphabetic developmental model discuss the development in learning to read words where each phase is characterized by the involvement of learner’s working knowledge of the alphabetic system (ehri, 1999:99). these are as follows: stages of phase theory: pre-alphabetic phase: in this phase, readers do not use the alphabetic system as they do not have the knowledge of alphabets to read words. so, they use the visual cues that accompany the words to memorize and remember the pronunciation for reading those words. they form connections with the help of these cues and store in the memory and whenever they see these letters they pretend to read them, for example, children see a packet of ‘maggie’ and the way it is written to discern the word ‘maggie’. sometimes when they see an unfamiliar word they try to predict with the help of these cues. therefore, readers in this phase are not able to decode, analogize and do independent reading since their alphabetic knowledge is not developed. moreover, readers are not able to pronounce exact words on the printed page as there is lack of connection between letter and the sound. here there is a distinction between firth (1985) and ehri’s model because ehri thinks that the reader uses the context rather than the words. therefore, ehri named it as pre-alphabetic stage whereas in firth’s model it is logographic (where readers read whole words like in chinese which is not possible according to ehri, since children use visual cues to read words (ehri, 1999). partial alphabetic phase: in this phase, the reader can read sight words by forming connections between the first and the end letter of the words as they are salient and contribute to the sound of the word. these connections help the reader to pronounce words, for example, when the reader read the word ‘listen, he/she reads the initial sound /l/ and the end sound /l/ which helps him/her to pronounce the word correctly. since, the reader identifies only the initial and end sounds of the word then confusion arises with the words having similar initial and end sounds. moreover, children in this phase write partial spellings since medial vowels, consonant blends are absent. this again indicates that decoding and analogizing is not possible since full knowledge of alphabetic system is unavailable. however, readers in this phase can use the partial letters to identify unfamiliar words with the help of the context. they are also able to read words backwards with the help of the partial cues that are available to them. full alphabetic phase in this phase, the reader can understand the alphabetic system and the connections between the grapheme and the phonemes and the corresponding pronunciation of the words. therefore, the reader can read the sight words and remember them. also, monal dewle 100 ijolte with the help of sight words the reading becomes more accurate and able to distinguish between similar spelled words. moreover, the knowledge of alphabetic system helps the reader in decoding unfamiliar words for pronunciation. the identification of similar spelled words helps the reader to read pseudo words. in addition, the reader can use analogy to identify unfamiliar words though not in large extent. they try to use strategies to identify words such as island where ‘s’ is silent (beech, 2005). according to beech (2005) this phase is important for ehri because this phase discusses sight word reading and it is central to phase theory. whereas in case of firth’s stage theory of reading (1985) no such reading theory has been proposed and the development has been termed as general. moreover, in this stage theory firth has considered sight word reading (which is described later) as non-phonological process (where there is no connection between grapheme and phoneme). consolidated alphabetic phase: in this phase, the reader can detect letter patterns that recur in words. the reader is also able to read sight words more easily as they are stored in memory and they can decode multisyllabic words as they understand the spelling system. moreover, they can access sight words very easily since letter identification is not a problem. they can read familiar words and letter patters accurately and the use of knowledge of shared words to identify the sight words. ehri’s phase theory model, the developmental process of reading centers around the alphabetic reading where she has described that when a reader goes from a non-alphabetic phase to an alphabetic phase he/she also use other ways to read words. these are sight word reading, decoding, analogy and prediction. sight words are those words which are frequently read and retained in the memory of the reader. these words are easily accessed by the reader from the memory whenever he/she encounters a familiar word. also, the reader does not have to spend time on concentrating the pronunciation and decoding of the words but only on the meaning of the text. therefore, the process where sight word is used to read is known as sight word reading. it is a process where the reader does not memorize the word but understand the letter-sound connection in each word which leads to the linking of written words to pronunciation. this helps him/her to form these connections whenever a familiar word is repeated in the text. moreover, sight word reading involves the process of reading words which are accessed by the memory. if the visual forms of the words are memorized, then the reader would not be able to tell the difference if the words are misspelled or if there are no visual cues then the reader would not be able to read the word. thus, it can be inferred that phase theory helped us to understand that development in reading progresses through using visual cues, forming connections between letters and sounds detected, sight vocabulary and letter patterns that recur to monal dewle 101 ijolte detect different words and recognize them. also, it mentioned that these phases are not precursor to the subsequent phases. different ways of learning to read words: ehri (1999) has also focused on three different ways of reading words other than sight word reading which are linked to the development of reading are mentioned below: 1. decoding: where single letter or combinations of letters is/are divided according to the sounds they produced and these sounds are then blended into pronunciation, for e.g. when we read the word king, we know that this word contains four letters k, i, ng but which represents three sounds /k/ /ı/ /ŋ/ which leads to the pronunciation of the word ‘king’. here the reader tries to understand the grapheme-phoneme connection between the words and use this knowledge to read words. 2. analogizing: where familiar words are used to read unknown words that have/share similar letters. whenever we come across any unfamiliar word we try to read them based on the spellings of the known word, like here, in this example, when a child tries to read the word ‘brain’ s/he will search in the memory to look for a similar word like ‘train’. then, s/he will use this analogy of similar word to read the unknown word ‘brain’. 3. prediction: to guess the unfamiliar word based upon the pictures that accompany the words in the text or with the help of the context in which it appears or the partial letters appearing in the word, for e.g. if a word like temper is given then the reader does not know what it means but can understand with the help of a picture that is given of a woman showing red jets of vapor coming out of her ears and nose. this helps the reader to know the meaning of temper. 3. implications this theory can be used as is important because it helps the teachers to help students in reading instruction: 1. it is important for beginners to learn all the letters and to use this information to relate to their own speech processes. this will include learning graphemes such as ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and ‘th’. 2. children need to develop awareness of phonemes and relate this to their graphemic knowledge. 3. by the first grade, teachers should help all children to achieve the full alphabetic phase. the major grapheme-phoneme connections, particularly those involving vowels, need to be learned. 4. children need practice at learning unfamiliar words both by breaking down their graphemes to form sounds and using analogy. this will be easier for students in the full alphabetic phase. monal dewle 102 ijolte 5. learning to spell is an important part of reading development. the important initial phase is to be able to create appropriate graphemes from the constituent sounds. memorizing word lists should not be started until this is mastered because this will make learning such lists easier. 6. later work should expand to learning morphemes, affixes and families of related words. (ehri, 1998 cited in beech, 2005). references [1] beech, j. (2005). ehri's model of phases of learning to read: a brief critique. journal of research in reading, 28(1), 50-58. [2] cain, k. (2010). reading development and difficulties: an introduction. oxford: wiley-blackwell. [3] ehri, l.c. (1999). phases of development in learning to read words. in j. oakhill & r. beard (eds.), reading development and the teaching of reading: a psychological perspective, (pp. 79–108). oxford: blackwell science. [4] ehri, l.c. (1998). grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in english. in j.l. metsala & e.c. ehri (eds.), word recognition in beginning literacy, (pp. 3–40). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. [5] frith, u. (1985). beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. in k. patterson, j. marshall & m. coltheart (eds.), surface dyslexia: neuropsychological and cognitive studies of phonological reading, (pp. 301–330). london: erlbaum. [6] gough, p. b., & hillinger, m. l. (1980). learning to read: an unnatural act. bulletin of the orton society, 30, 179–196. [7] marsh, g., friedman, m., welch, v., & desberg, p. (1981). a cognitive-developmental theory of reading acquisition. in mackinnon, g. e., waller, t. g. (eds.), reading research: advances in theory and practice, (vol. 3, pp. 199– 221). new york: academic press. [8] mason, j. (1980). when do children begin to read: an exploration of four year old children's letter and word reading competencies. reading research quarterly, 15, 203-227. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 1 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the implementation of british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester student’s speaking ability at english education study program of baturaja university henny yulia hennyyulia@yahoo.co.id baturaja university nanda aprilita aprilita_nanda@yahoo.co.id baturaja university abstract the problem of this study was concerned with british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester students’ speaking ability at english education study program at baturaja university. the objective of this study was to find out whether it was significantly effective or not to implement british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester students’ speaking ability at english education study program at baturaja university. this study used pre experimental design covered pre test before the treatment and post test after the treatment. the second semester students of english education study program at baturaja university were the population. the number of the population was 18 students. the researcher took class a as a sample by using cluster random sampling. based on the calculation, the sample of the study was 12 students and the significance level (α = 0.05). the result of paired t test has value of ttest (5.033) was more than the value of ttabel (2.2009) with df = 12-1 = 11. the value of sig. (2-tailed) was 0.000 lower than the value of significance level (α = 0.05). this result showed that the alternative hypostudy (ha) was accepted. it meant that british parliamentary debate style training could improve second semester students’ speaking ability of english education study program. keywords: speaking, implementation, debate, baturaja university. introduction background language is basically speech (bashir, azeem, & dogar. 2011: 35). english has four skills involved speaking. speaking is a productive skill in oral mode. oral language is the best communication way for delivering idea, opinion, or others. naturally, the purpose of learners in learning english is for having a predicate as a good speaker. the mastery of speaking skills in english is a priority for many second-language or foreign-language learners (richards, 2008: 19). speaking is very important because by mastering speaking skill, people can carry out conversations with others, give the ideas and exchanges the information with others. since it’s important, english is taught mailto:hennyyulia@yahoo.co.id mailto:aprilita_nanda@yahoo.co.id international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 2 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 widely at formal school starting from elementary school up to universities including baturaja university. it has speaking subject in english education study programs. speaking ii is one of subject in second semester students of english education study program at baturaja university. it is a subject about how students’ may speak out their thoughts about many topics that have given from the lecturer of speaking ii. in english education study program curriculum, speaking is one of conditional subject. the students need to pass speaking i to continue speaking ii and have to pass speaking ii to continue speaking iii. as a student of english education study program, they should have ability to speak in public. based on the data of students’ speaking i score which was taken in june 10 th 2017 from mrs. yunda lestari, m.pd as lecturer of speaking i, only 2 students who got a, 4 students got b and 12 students got c. from the data, the researcher concluded that second semester students of english education study program still have hard time in speaking. researcher wants to measure student’s achievement in speaking orally by implementing british parliamentary british training. english debate is nowadays widely known among students, this activity has been something popular for its image. it is proven that debate tournaments take place and debate camps for middle school students are located all over the world (bettivia & leagu, 2011: 1). debate competitions are popular, especially in indonesia. english debate competition becomes one of prestigious competition for students. there are english debate competitions for university students that are in indonesia: nudc, joved, adc. it effected to popularity of english debate in baturaja. in fact, there are competitions that have been held in baturaja such as rector’s trophy of unbara, english fair of english academy, debate competition of bulan bahasa unbara. if we see this fact from the perspective of students’ cognitive aspect, we come into the answer that debate itself will stimulate the students to have good understanding of what happens around them. participating in debate makes you a better thinker and communicator (bettivia & leagu, 2011: 2). it deals to how they cope with the current issues and how they position themselves as humans who have great faith in their own thought or idea upon the issues. this thought is not merely for the sake of their own self, it is to be believed by others. in short, we can say that debate can be used as a tool to prepare students to cope with social life. the british parliamentary debating is chosen as the official international debate system because british parliamentary debating system offers some advantages. according to agustina and bahrani (2016: 80), the advantages of british parliamentary debating are not limited to the connections you immediately make to debaters around the world. british parliamentary debating offers debaters the opportunity to engage a variety of controversial issues. with ample opportunities for debaters to interact through the use of “points of information”, the format is particularly appealing to audiences. acording to somjai and janse’s research in 2015, british parliamentary debate can improve students in critical thinking and student’s speaking ability in communication. based on the explanation above, the researcher conducted the experimental study, entitled “the implementation of british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester students’ speaking ability at english education study program of baturaja university.” international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 3 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 problem of the study the problem of this study was formulated in this following question: was it significantly effective to implement british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester students’ speaking ability at english education study program of baturaja university? therotical base concept of british parliamentary debate style british parliamentary debating system is a common form of academic debate. it has gained support in the united kingdom, ireland, canada, india, europe, africa, philippines and united states, and has also been adopted as the official style of the world universities debating championship and european universities debating championship. in british parliamentary debating system, there are 4 teams in each round (husnawadi & syamsudarni, 2016: 125). two teams represent the government, and two teams represent the opposition. the government supports the resolution (motion), and the opposition opposes the resolution. the teams are also divided into the opening and closing halves of the debate, each debater will have 7 minutes and 20 seconds to deliver the speech. there are some items related to british parliamentary debate: motion, definition, case building, theme line, argument, rebuttal, point of information (poi) the procedure of british parliamentary debate a debate format consists of a description of the teams in the debate and the order and times for the speeches that make up that debate. the british parliamentary debate format differs from many other formats because it involves four teams rather than two (smith, 20011: 29). two teams, called the “opening government” and the “closing government” teams, are charged with the responsibility of supporting the proposition while two other teams, “opening opposition” and “closing opposition,” are charged with opposing it. two speakers represent each of the four teams and each speaker gives a speech of seven minutes twenty seconds. procedure of training the debaters in debating, as in mathematics, music, or mechanics, we are educating students. math teachers never write their students’ tests for them, they leave that to the student. so the debate coach keeps his or her distance, too. it is a disservice to the students to “do it for them”. according to alberta debate and speech association (2007: 16), here are the procedures: 1 call a meeting of all those interested in taking part. 2 establish the teams; complete the registration form 3 hold a brainstorming session on the resolution, and on its possible interpretations and definitions; encourage the debaters to dredge up every possible argument, with or without justification, on both sides of the resolution. 4 discuss profitable lines of study: 5 keep them on their toes before you have arranged to see them next. “how are you getting on with that affirmative case? what definition did you decide to use?”. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 4 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 6 before the debate starts, if possible: listen to each team debate another, preferably twice and taking opposing sides of the resolution. you will not need to criticize logical inconsistencies or weakness in either case – each team will discover these when they face their “in-house” opposition. (but you can chip away at style, rules, delivery, structure of speeches, missed opportunities, and so on.) with inexperienced debaters, you might suggest areas for further study. sometimes you will find, to your amazement, that they all missed the point of the resolution, and are chatting happily about details. shine a big light on them; show them the way, but don’t do it for them 7 ease off before the debate starts. do not pressure debaters at the last minute. they have either done what they need to do or they have not – it’s too late to do much about it. 8 after it’s all over, hold a postmortem. help your debaters to benefit from their experiences; discuss the strong and weak points of their recent oppositions, ask them what comments they received from judges. it all adds up to a better performance next time. methodology types of research this study is quantitative study. quantitative study is a study which the researcher is not only observes but also should do the experiment. method of this study is experimental method which is used pre experimental design cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007: 274). there are pre-test and post-test which will apply in one class. it is called pre experimental study. after giving the pre-test, the researcher gives treatment. the treatment is british parliamentary debate style training. to know the effect of this treatment, the researcher gives post-test for measuring the influences or the effectiveness of the treatment to the students. . data analysis technique scoring scoring is as the process of marking the students’ achievement which is measured by the test. scoring was determined by two raters. they were mrs. yunda lestari, m.pd and the researcher. mrs. yunda lestari, m.pd is qualified who had finished her bachelor degree from muhammadiyah university palembang and magister degree from sriwijaya university. she is an english lecturer of baturaja university since 2008 until now. her toefl score was 540. she also had an experience as a representative of baturaja university to be adjudicator in nudc 2010. the researcher is a national debater in 2015 and 2017. the raters gave speaking score to the students by using scoring criteria. criteria are statements which describe achievement level and real evidence of learners’ achievement in standard quality that is wanted. the scoring consists of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 point which the criteria in every point. a point covered fluency, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, comprehension aspects. the scoring criteria are taken from brown. percentage the data international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 5 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the data in this research were made in percentage for giving description about the data. the formula was shown below: p = where: p: percentage f: frequency of students in interval n: total score (sudijono, 2010: 43) research result and discussion research result based on the table of paired samples statistics, it was found that the value of sig.= 0,002 less than the significance level (α=0, 05), so it meant that there was a great correlation between the score of pre test and post test. then, the value of tobtained = 3, 999 more than value of ttable = 2, 2009 with df = 11, and the value of sig.(2 tailed) = 0,002 less than the significance level (α=0, 05). based on the explanation above, the researcher concludes that there was a significance differences in speaking ability before and after treatment. interpretation based on the finding of the study, the researcher could interpret that it was effective to improve students’ speaking ability by implementing british parliamentary debate style training. debate can motivate student to practice the language, it can improve students in critical thinking, and develop students’ speaking ability in communication (somjai & janse, 2015). from the result of paired t-test, the researcher could interpret the alternative hypostudy was accepted. the result showed that british parliamentary debate style training was significantly effective in improving students’ speaking ability to the second semester students of english education study program at baturaja university. students also improved their critical thinking, in debating the students tried to win the debate by making strong arguments that could nt be broken by the other team. in making the strong argumets, students needed to think it in critical way. it is also showed the average of increasing from pre test to post test. conclusions and suggestions conclusion this study has a significant difference between the result of pretest and post experimental class. the result of value paired t test of pretest and posttest was 5. 033. so the alternative hypo study was accepted and null hypo study was rejected. it meant that british parliamentary debate style training helped teacher to increase students’ speaking ability. the significances of students’ achievement in pretest and posttest both of is showed not only about the progress but also the effectiveness of british parliamentary debate style training. from the result of this study, the researcher concluded that international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 6 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 british parliamentary debate style training is a effective technique because it was significantly effective to increase students’ speaking ability. suggestion for the teacher the teachers hopefully could develop the teaching technique because students like to something new that is interesting. the technique should be appropriate with this era and students’ level and need. for the students students hopefully could study hard in high motivation for adding knowledge. implementing teaching technique or using teaching media at home should be useful for the students. for the other researchers researcher hopefully could develop this research in deeper understanding and comprehending so that it will be better in the future. reference agustina, l & bahrani, (2016). the implementation of british parliamentary debating in mulawarman debate society. indonesian journal of efl and linguistics, 1(1). bartanen, d. m., & littlefield, s. r. (2015). competitive speech and debate: how play influenced american educational practice. american journal of play, 7(2). bashir, m., azeem, m., & dogar, a. h. (2011). factor effecting students’ english speaking skills. british journal of art and social science, 2(1). bettivia, r., & league, f. n. (2011). the middle schoolers’ debatabase 75 current controversies for debaters. international debate education association. brown, h. d. (2007). principles of language learning and and teaching. (5th ed.). sans fransisco state university. sans fransisco. burgess, m. (2010). leeds debating union guide to debating. united kingdom, dc: author. coaches start up guide. (2012). pa: alberta debate and speech assosiation. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education. (6th ed.). london: routledge falmer. debate: step-by-step. (2014). pa: agency for private initiative development. dibetpedia. 2010. portal: asian parliamentary debate (n.d.). retrieved from http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.php/portal:asian_parliamentary_debate/ field, a. (2009). discovering statistics using spss. (3th. ed.). dubai: sage. fraenkel, j. r., & wallen, n., e. (2009). how to design and evaluate reseach in education seventh editin. new york: mc.graw hill. inc. husnawadi, h. & syamsudarni, s. (2016). the role of english debating tournament in the face of the asean economy community. dinamika ilmu, 16 (1). inoue, n. (2009). let’s practice debating in english with advanced exercises from euthanasia debates. japan: kyushu university. morgan, r. (2014). british parliamentary debating. retrieved from: https://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/morgan_bp_text.pdf. quinn, s. (2009). debating in the world schools style: a guide. new york: international debate education assosiation. http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.php/portal:asian_parliamentary_debate/ https://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/morgan_bp_text.pdf international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 7 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 richards, j.c. (2008). teaching listening and speaking from theory to practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. retrieved from http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/richards-teachinglistening-speaking.pdf rubiati, r. (2010). improving students’ speaking skill through debate technique (thesis). semarang : iain walisongo semarang. smith, h. s. (2011). the practical guide to debating world style/ british parliamentary style. new york: international debate education assosiation. somjai, s. m., janse, h. (2015). the use of debate technique to develop speaking ability of grade ten students at bodindecha (sing singhaseni) school. international journal of technical research and applications. 27-31 sudijono, a. (2010). pengantar statistik pendidikan. jakarta: pt. raja grafindo persada. http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/richards-teaching-listening-speaking.pdf http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/richards-teaching-listening-speaking.pdf paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.4953 103 ijolte a varbrul analysis on the reporting verb propose in electrical engineering research articles vi thong, nguyen graduate institute of linguistics, national chung cheng university – taiwan email: vithong1985@gmail.com how to cite this paper: nguyen, t. (2018). a varbrul analysis on the reporting verb propose in electrical engineering research articles. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 103-112. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.495 3 received: may 16,2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31,2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract choosing an appropriate reporting verb is not only a technique to report a claim but also a tool to imply the writer’s stance or attitude towards the claim. the way the reporting verb is employed can reflect the writer’s underlying implication. by using a variations framework, this study is an in-depth investigation on how reporting verbs are affected in electrical engineering research articles, taking propose as a variation. with the assistance of varbrul program, 397 tokens from 160 electrical research articles were analyzed. past tenses of propose was selected as an application value. the results show that time periods that the articles are published and verb voices are two factors independent from the application value. meanwhile, tense choice of the verb has a significant correlation with journal editions and verb types. in different journals, frequency of propose used in past tenses can vary, and a significant proportion of self-reporting propose is used in past tense. regardless the limitation of sample size and verb types, the study is potential in analyzing reporting verb from the sociolinguistic approach in future. subject areas reporting verb keywords propose; electrical engineering; research articles; varbrul; significant factors; application value 1. introduction it is widely recognized that language use can be determined by the context or discourse where the communication takes place. it implies that with different context and audience, the language is used in a selective way. however, as reported in geeslin & long (2014), language users are not always consciously aware of these choices which are defined as sociolinguistic variation. this term refers to “the choices a speaker makes when selecting the forms necessary to convey a message that is appropriate in a given context” (p.3). as observed, there have been an increasing number of studies done on how languages are used in various settings. swales (1990), in addition, identifies the shared norms which can establish a discourse community with a broadly agreed set of common public goals. besides, the genres owned by the discourse community also acquire some specific lexis. in academic discourse community, research articles (ras) are recognized as a genre http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vi thong, nguyen 104 ijolte which plays a prominent role. by means of ras, not only can researchers share their knowledge in their fields but also announce the new claims to the rest of scholarly world. good academic writing is crucial to succeeding in higher education. when we examine the text of scientific articles, it is obvious that there is a generally accepted way of writing them (harley, 2008). in linguistics, analyses of ras have been carried out by many linguists. according to lin and evans (2012), the past three decades have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of scholarly interest in the structural and linguistic features of ras. as mentioned in swales (1990), the examination of structures and linguistic factors in ras started early in 70s when lackstrom et al. (1972; 1973) analyzed tenses and paragraph development. following this pioneering research, many studies were conducted concerning ra analysis such as types of lexis (inman, 1978), modals, voices and clauses (tomlin, 1981), structure (stanley, 1984), citation patterns (jacoby, 1987), etc. the results from these examinations imply that ras do own identities which distinguish ras from other genres. hyland (2005) stresses that academic writers must be aware of not only how to report claims but also how to set their stances or, in other words, their own position in the claims. to accomplish these goals, writers need to adopt various academic writing techniques. one of the techniques that is considered beneficial to reporting claims and setting stances is the appropriate use of reporting verbs (swales 1990, 2004; thompson & ye, 1991; hyland, 1999, 2001; charles, 2006; bloch, 2009, 2010; thong, 2013). in other words, reporting verbs are one of the effective academic devices which can help in achieving the writer’s rhetorical purposes of stating claims (charles, 2006). as stated in bloch (2010), there has existed an argument during the last four decades that the rhetorical context of an academic paper is the combination of the clear, concise presentation of new claims with a review of previous related research; but in practice, the manner that writers build up a paper has been seen “in more classical rhetorical terms as a process of developing an argument to support the writer’s claims” (p. 222). bloch explains this situation. traditionally, when constructing research, writers often consider claims to be built on logical certainty; therefore, they are “the natural outcome of scientific research”. as a result, being clearly and concisely located within the previous research is believed as the only condition of setting up a claim. in hunston and thompson (2000), it was stressed that, to have their own research situated within the network of previous studies, writers must not only evaluate the strength of each claim but also clearly set their own attitude towards the claims that are being made or reported. therefore, hunston & thompson concluded that reporting verbs should be chosen with a high attention of carefulness and exactness, which can enhance the credibility of both the writer and the claims; and as a result, the readers will be more likely to accept the position that the writer is taking. in discourse analysis, a great deal of literature has focused on reporting verbs in academic discourses in different perspectives (e.g., swales, 1990, 2004; thompson & ye, 1991; shaw, 1992; thomas & hawes, 1994; hyland, 1999, 2001; hunston & thompson, 2003; charles, 2006; bloch, 2009, 2010). swales & feak (2004), for example, examine the vi thong, nguyen 105 ijolte variety of reporting verbs used in summary writing, which is assumed to both reveal the writer’s personal stance towards the source material and convey his/her attitude. hyland (1999) further identified 400 different reporting verbs which are most frequently used from his corpus of 60 research articles. his finding shows that nearly fifty percent of these reporting verbs are used only one time and a much smaller number of verbs tend to predominate. as a matter of fact, reporting verbs specially play a key role in writing citations which are considered vitally important in academic writing (charles, 2006). according to the author, citation indicates “how a new piece of research arises out of and is grounded in the current state of disciplinary knowledge and thus constitutes an overt manifestation of the ongoing conversation of the discipline” (charles, 2006: 311). recently, recognizing the fact that there has been very little research done to compare how reporting verbs are used between english native and non-native speakers (vietnamese), nguyen (2013) conducted a study to investigate the phenomenon across disciplines and cultures. in his study, 167 research articles in three disciplines – engineering, mathematics, and applied linguistics – are chosen as research data. the framework of nguyen’s study is a combination of charles’s (2006) and bloch’s (2010) models. the findings show that disciplinary – not cultural – variation is the major factor that affects the reporting verb usages in journal articles in both groups of speakers. it determines verb groups, tenses rhetorical implications of the verbs. it means that in different disciplines, writers tend to use reporting verbs in different manners no matter what group of speakers the writers belong to. regarding reporting verbs used across disciplines, rau (2017) has observed the phenomenon in electrical engineering and categorized reporting verbs occurring in research articles of this field into three types. citation verbs are defined as verbs to report the action of a previous author. self-reporting verbs are used to report the processes and contribution of the writer of the current study. third, rau defined pointing verbs as verbs that direct the readers’ attention to a graphic and highlight certain information in a graphic. since this categorization is closely relating to the current study, the author decided to adopt this model to his reporting verb analysis. it means that the reporting verb in this study will be categorized into three types as mentioned in rau. previously, hyland (1999) explored how academic citation practices contribute to the construction of disciplinary knowledge. by examining 80 research articles in eight disciplines and interviewing experienced writers, the author found that in different fields, the frequencies of using certain reporting verbs are varied. for example, in linguistics, suggest is the verb with the highest frequency while propose occurs the most in electrical engineering. the author then concluded that discourse decisions are influenced by the epistemological and social conventions of their disciplines. later, in chen’s (2009) study, the matter of tenses in reporting verbs was investigated thoroughly. it was addressed that using an appropriate tense is one of the most effective ways to convey not only the information but the judgement of the writer. by examining the literature reviews in phd dissertations, chen found that in both hard and soft sciences, roughly 80% reporting verbs are used in present tenses while only 15% are vi thong, nguyen 106 ijolte in past tenses. in the current study, tenses in which propose is used are considered dependent variables with the attempt to find out whether reporting verbs’ tenses are varied according to external factors (time periods and journals) or internal factor (verb types). it means that the results may imply if tense feature becomes a tendency in academic writing. to continue hyland (1999), chen (2009), and nguyen’s (2013) work, the author of the current study attempts to deeply examine whether differences in reporting verb usage happen within a discipline. by taking propose as a key verb, the study aims to investigate how it has been used across time periods since geeslin & long (2014) identifies time among the social factors affecting the language use. in short, the study aims to answer these two questions: 1. within the field of electrical engineering, are the tenses for the reporting verb “propose” affected by external factors (time periods or journal editions) and internal factors (verb types and voices)? 2. how should the tendency in reporting verbs employed in electrical engineering research articles be generalized? 2. method 2.1. corpora this study is based on a corpus of 160 english research articles written by scholars in the field of electrical engineering in four journals published in two separate time periods. the first criteria for the selection of time is attributed to the publication time of hyland (1999). it was decided that the first group consists of ras written approximately from 1994 to 1998. to compare with the current reality in the field, the second group of ras was collected from the publication time of 2014 till present. table 1 describes the corpora in detail. it should be noted that the selection of journals was carefully considered. the decision was completely based on the list of journals employed as data in hyland (1999), so that the comparison can meet certain reliability standard. in addition, the chosen articles should be relatively identical in length with the others in each journal category. it is noted that the text length excludes the tables, figures, acknowledgements, autobiographies, appendixes, and references. vi thong, nguyen 107 ijolte table 1 text corpora journals before 1999 present no of texts text length (words) no of texts text length (words) 1 international journal of microwave & millimeter-wave computer-aided engineering (now known as int. j. of rf & microwave computer-aided engineering) (rf) 20 110,789 20 89,140 2 journal of microelectromechanical systems (jms) 20 125,237 20 162,608 3 ieee transactions on microwave theory and techniques (ieee) 20 126,418 20 148,053 4 microelectronics journal (mj) 20 143,661 20 139,464 total 80 506,105 80 539,265 2.2. procedures of analysis this study is a corpus-based analysis on the reporting verb propose. to investigate the frequency of propose in the samples, antconc 3.2.1 (anthony, 2011), a corpus tool, was used to make concordances on the search verb. all the tokens found by the tool were categorized into two groups: propose in past tenses and propose in present tenses, which are two dependent variables. with the assistance of goldvarb program (sankoff et al., 2015), this study aims to investigate the correlations between the dependent variables and independent variables which include internal factors and external factors (see appendix a). the description of the data analysis procedures is demonstrated in figure 1. figure 1. data analysis procedures vi thong, nguyen 108 ijolte first, all the tokens were analyzed in terms of publication time and journals. this step of analysis is expected to reveal whether tenses of reporting propose are used in a similar or different way between the two corpora: before 1999 group and present group. moreover, it is attempted to examine whether there is any correlation between the verb tenses and the journals where they occur. the results from this step of analysis may infer whether tenses are affected by external factors. similarly, an analysis was done on internal factors. it was hypothesized that tenses of reporting verbs depend on their types, or in other words, their functions in the sentences consisting of citation and self-reporting. moreover, it is also expected to investigate the correlation between tenses and voices. the varbrul analysis can indicate which tense is favored to use with which voice. all the procedures of analysis aim to figure out a generalization on how the verb propose is used in the electrical field across time periods and genres. 3. results and discussion the following section provides results in response to the research questions, which are mainly about the correlation between the factors and the tenses of propose. as mentioned above, the results derive from the varbrul analysis, in which a factor with a probability weight above .50 favors the use of the variant past tenses that was chosen as the application value. meanwhile, a weight below 0.50 restricts the use of the variant, and a weight of .50 implies that there is no influence on the past tense choice. it should be noted that the factor group with the notification from the program to be eliminated fails to have significant effect on the application value. in the current study, the result generated by varbrul shows that among the four factor groups, there are three significant groups which are journal editions, verb types, and voices. it means that time was recognized as an insignificant group, which means that it has no effect on the tense choice of propose. the following analysis targets on the significant groups selected by varbrul to predict the frequency of past tense for reporting propose. table 2 addresses the factors significantly affecting past tense usage based on the result of a step-up/step-down analysis. table 2 significant factors that affect past tense choice factor group varbrul weight (pi) tokens past/total percentage journals rf 0.596 68/92 73.9 mj 0.532 102/153 66.7 ieee 0.511 63/81 77.8 jms 0.304 33/71 46.5 verb types self-reporting 0.696 181/215 84.2 citation 0.273 85/182 46.7 voice active 0.361 75/133 56.4 passive 0.571 191/264 72.3 total 266/397 67.0 input 0.710 total chi-square = 3.6059 chi-square/cell = 0.2404 log likelihood = -206.673 limited chi-square = 12.592 (df = 6, p = .005) vi thong, nguyen 109 ijolte it can be seen in table 2 that all the factor weights are ranked from the highest to the lowest, meaning from the factor with better influence on the application value to factor with less influence. the total chi-square value equals 3.61 (df = 6, p < .05), which implies that past tense choice and the factor groups are independent. this is considered a crucial assumption in varbrul analysis. the result shows the input probability has a value of .710, meaning that the occurrence of past tenses for propose is averaged at 71.0% among the data. in terms of journal editions where the past propose occurs, it can be observed that different journals have different effect on the verb tenses. examples (1) -(4) illustrate how propose is used in each journal edition. (1) in this study we proposed a novel identification scheme which takes advantage of the device self-heating to effectively reduce the amount of experimental information required to extract the model. (rf1-10) (2) in [19], a data scrambling technique was proposed to protect cache data as follows: the first half of a word is scrambled with the first bit of the first half, and the second half is then xored with the scrambled result of the first half. (mj2-20) (3) the mm-wave bidirectional front end has been previously reported in [18] at 45 ghz, and recently, the wideband version at the e-band was proposed in [36]. (ieee2-16) (4) the epi-seal encapsulation process was proposed by researchers at the robert bosch research and technology center in palo alto and then demonstrated in a close collaboration with stanford university. (jms2-6) with the highest varbrul weight (.60), rf shows that it has the greatest influence on the past tense choice of propose. mj and ieee similarly indicate rather high varbrul weights except jms which has the value of .30, which implies that past tenses are relatively disfavored by jms. compared to hyland (1999) which ignored this factor, the current study can be considered as an in-depth investigation on reporting verbs when examining how the verbs are used across journals within the discipline. the finding of this study conveys an implication that there seems to be a tendency in verb tense choice across different journals. this phenomenon can be attributed to the characteristics of each journal, which are carefully observed by the writers. this characteristic can be considered as an identity of each journal. the varbrul results also indicate that types of propose decide its past tense usage. with a considerably high weight (.70), it can be understood that self-reporting propose are far frequently employed in past tenses. it means that to report their own study, procedures, and contribution the writer tends to use past tenses rather than present tenses. however, when citing other authors’ work, writers tend not to use past tenses for propose (varbrul weight = .28). the weight reveals that past tenses are disfavored by citation propose in electrical engineering. examples (5) (6) address the phenomenon. (1) in previous theoretical studies, we had proposed a thermodynamic analytical model to study the performance of a multi-stage configuration to generate high pressure. (jms2-4) (2) computing zeros of the determinant of arbitrarily complex matrices being numerically inefficient, rizzoli et al. [13] have proposed a good alternative, by making use of the nyquist approach. as defined above, propose in example (5) is a self-reporting verb while it reports the writer’s own work. with this function, past tenses are favored with 84.2% of probability. example (6) indicates a case propose functioning as a citation verb when it is used to cite the other authors’ work. different from self-reporting verb, citation propose vi thong, nguyen 110 ijolte is tended to use in present tenses with the probability percentage of 53.3. this phenomenon can be generalized as a tendency in propose usage in electrical engineering research articles. compared to the other studies on reporting verbs, this study emerges with its contribution to the field when it finds out the interaction between the verb types and tense choice. the factor of voices is also recognized to have a significant effect on tense usage. the varbrul weight of .58 shows an interesting finding that propose in past tenses tends to be slightly preferred to use with a passive voice. examples (7) and (8) show how propose is used in passive in the field. (1) although this expression has no specific meaning, it has been proposed to make a distinction with 'layer-by layer' growth. (mj1-16) (2) to create a dc-pumped ree laser, the idea of introducing rees into covalent semiconductors was proposed by bell in 1963[1]. (mj1-14) it can be seen from the examples that a passive voice is used to emphasize the research process, activity, or action rather than the agent. according to this analysis, its voice decides whether propose should be used in past or present. this phenomenon can be also seen as one of the identities of research writing in electronic engineering. in the current study, one factor group which is time periods was eliminated since the results showed that it had no interaction with the tense choice in research articles. table 3 reveals why these two factors are independent with the application value. table 3. eliminated factor groups that does not affect tense choice factor group varbrul weight (pi) tokens past/total percentage time periods: before 1999 0.410 73/115 63.5 present 0.537 193/282 68.4 even though the analysis indicates the insignificant effect of the two groups on verb tense choice, the results have certain implication. regarding the factor of time, the varbrul weights of before 1999 (.41) and present (.54) show that the choice of past tenses for the reporting propose is slightly increased. however, the percentages of propose in past tense used in both time periods imply that past tenses are more favored than present tenses. this finding can conflict with chen’s (2009) claim that present tenses are more preferred for reporting verbs in hard science research articles. therefore, it could be implied that tenses of reporting verbs can vary from each verb. according to swales & feak (2004), reporting verbs are used in past tenses when the author implies that the cited work is not very close to the current study, which means that the cited claims can be invalid now. this means that propose is used in electrical research articles when the author tends to argue toward the cited works. nevertheless, the finding from time factor of this study can indicate that propose has been constantly preferred to use in past tenses in electrical engineering across time. this tendency becomes nearly unchanged in this discipline. concerning the second research question which attempts to generalize in what pattern propose is used, the results can infer clearly that tenses of the verb are dependent with the journal editions and verb types. even though the varbrul analysis showed that time periods and voices are independent with the verb tense choice, there was certain difference in frequencies of past tense in each factor. therefore, it can be concluded that the most common pattern of propose in electrical journal is as a selfreporting verb put in past tense and passive voice. vi thong, nguyen 111 ijolte 4. conclusion while attempting to have an in-depth investigation of the reporting verb propose, this study has found factors that significantly affect the verb tenses, which has not been done before. the study demonstrates the usefulness of varbrul in sociolinguistic variation analysis. the results show that verb tenses are not dependent on the time periods and voices. this confirms that verb tenses of propose have become a tendency across time. this finding once again confirms the result of hyland (1999) that propose is still used in the same manner regardless time. although it is realized as an independent factor, the result on verb voices expresses a tendency of using propose in the passive in the field. regarding significant factors, journal editions and verb types somehow decide whether propose is used in past or present tenses. in different journals, propose is used in different manner, which tends to become an identity of the journal. it is interesting to find that self-reporting propose is more frequently used in past tenses. the sample size of the study is still restricted, which can affect the result of the study. moreover, the study only focuses on two types of the verb, so it can be difficult to generalize the whole phenomenon of the verb in the field. however, the study can provide an interesting direction for future studies on reporting verb analysis from sociolinguistic approach. this study introduces a new effective analysis method for investigating reporting verbs which has never been done before: varbrul analysis. references [1] anthony, l. 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(2015). goldvarb yosemite: a variable rule application for macintosh. department of linguistics, university of toronto. [20] shaw, p. m. (1992). reasons for the correlation of voice, tense and sentence function in reporting verbs. applied linguistics, 13, 302-317. [21] swales, j. m. (1990). genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. [22] swales, j. m. (2004). research genres. cambridge: cambridge university press. [23] swales, j. m., & feak, c. b. (2004). academic writing for graduate students. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. [24] thomas, s., & hawes, p. t. (1994). reporting verbs in medical journal articles. english for specific purposes, 13, 129-148. [25] thompson, g., & ye, y. (1991). evaluation in the reporting verbs used in academic papers. applied linguistics, 12(4), 365-382. [26] tomlin, r. s. (1981). clause-level syntax and information types in est discourse (mimeo). [27] stanley, r. m. (1984). the recognition of macrostructure: a pilot study. reading in a foreign language, 2, 156-168. ©2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). herman budiyono faculty of teacher training and education, universitas jambi, indonesia abstract this study aimed to describe the quality of the paragraph and its development pattern in the essay writing of elementary school (sekolah dasar – sd) students in jambi city (kota jambi – kj) (sdkj). this study utilized a "quantitative descriptive" design. the data were taken from the essays written by the fifth-grade students of sd-kj. 35 paragraphs from the essay writing of the fifth-grade students of sd-kj were analyzed. the data analysis steps were searching for frequency distribution of paragraph quality and development pattern; grouping the paragraph frequency distribution according to their quality; counting the percentage of each paragraph quality and type of development pattern; and presenting the results. regarding to paragraph quality, the results are: (1) paragraph completeness, good (5.71%), poor (68.57%), and bad (25.70%); (2) paragraph unity, good (34.58%); poor (51.42%); and bad (14.28%); (3) paragraph order, good (28.57%); poor (51.42%); and bad (20%); and (4) paragraph coherence, good (54.28%); poor (34.28%); and bad (11.42%). referring to the implementation of the paragraph development pattern, the results are paragraph development pattern of comparison and contradiction: 20%, analogy: 5.71%, giving examples: 8.57%, cause and effect: 48.57%; general-specific or specific-general: 11.42%, and classification: 5.71%. article history received 28 june 2020 accepted 18 august 2020 published 31 december 2020 keywords: elementary school students, essay, paragraph development, writing skill 1. introduction in order to conduct an effective learning of indonesian language (bahasa) in elementary schools, the learning process must be conducive. the process of "conducive learning" refers to the situations and conditions (atmosphere) of learning characterized as follows: based on active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun learning. to make this happen, one of the ways is the learning material should refer to the student's background. it must be in accordance with the children’ world which have the strength to rise and create a conducive learning atmosphere. a new view point of education which considers students not merely as objects of education who only receive whatever treatment is given by their teachers, but as subjects of education who must be involved in determining the learning material and learning patterns that will be received from educators (budimansyah, suparlan, and meirawan, 2009). based on a contextual approach, good learning material, in accordance with the "world of learners", is called authentic learning material. according to donovan, international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.11214 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.11214 97 h. budiyono bransford and pallegrino (1999), authentic learning is a learning approach that allows students to explore, discuss, and construct meaningfully concepts and relationships, which involve real problems and projects that are relevant to students. in accordance with this opinion, jonassen, howland, marra and crismond (2008) state that authentic learning is learning that is seamlessly integrated or implanted into "real life" meanings and situations. related to learning indonesian language in elementary schools, especially learning to write, authentic learning material can be extracted from the writing of students who are learning. it can be interpreted that the writing of elementary school students can be used as a reference for writing learning material in that levels. from it, the quality of paragraphs and patterns of development can be observed, studied, and analyzed. the results of the study and analysis can be described. then, the results of the description can be used as a reference for writing learning materials in elementary schools. based on information from elementary school teachers in jambi city (sd-kj), learning indonesian language, especially writing, is less interesting and less pleasing to students, which makes learning to write is less effective. one of the obstacles is that the learning material is not suitable for the situation and condition of the students. it is due the foundation which is not in accordance with the "world of children" who learn. based on this fact, this research is looking for appropriate references that can be used as a consideration for determining writing learning materials. for this reason, the researcher examined the quality of the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students and the pattern of paragraph development. the writing reviewed in this study is the paragraph in the essay writing of sd-kj students. this study aims to describe the quality of the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students and their paragraph development patterns. an essay consists of several paragraphs. even though it consists of several paragraphs, an essay discusses one topic. one topic is divided into several smaller subtopics, which are then written in paragraphs according to the importance of each subtopic. all paragraphs in an essay develop a large topic bound together by an introductory paragraph and a concluding paragraph (wahab and lestari, 1999). each essay has an introduction, body, and conclusion (kirszner and mandel, 1980). a good complete writing usually consists of three parts, namely (a) an introductory paragraph, (b) several explanatory paragraphs, and (c) a concluding paragraph (wahab & lestari, 1999). therefore, to be able to build a good complete essay, a writer must understand and be able to apply paragraph development according to its function and position and in accordance with the requirements of the paragraph being developed (budiyono and puji, 2016). the paragraphs that will be developed in an essay must be related to their respective functions and positions. the development of the introductory paragraph is adjusted to the characteristics of the introductory paragraph which will be positioned at the beginning of the writing. the development of several explanations is adjusted to the characteristics of the explanatory paragraphs which will be positioned in the middle of the writing. the development of the concluding paragraphs is adjusted to the characteristics of the concluding paragraphs which will be positioned at the end of the writing (budiyono, 2012). the introductory paragraph has several purposes, namely (1) attracting the reader's attention to the writing that will be presented, (2) giving hope to the reader, and (3) forming reasoning in the reader to read the entire writing (keraf, 1994; syafi'ie, 1988). therefore, the introductory paragraph in an essay must be able to attract the attention of the reader. if the introductory paragraph is able to attract the reader's attention, then the reader is attracted to the writing at hand, so they want to read it to the end. explanatory paragraphs are all paragraphs whose position is between the introductory paragraph and the concluding paragraph (keraf, 1994; syafi'ie, 1988). according to wahab and lestari (1999), this paragraph is called a content paragraph, which contains a description or explanation of the content of the writing which is translated into the body of the writing. the essence of the issue that the author will raise is contained in the paragraph. therefore, in developing explanatory paragraphs, we must pay attention to the relationship between the paragraphs in a relevant writing. the explanatory paragraph or content paragraph has two functions, namely (1) carrying various descriptions or explanations of the main ideas conveyed by the author and (2) maintaining the reader's attention (syafi'ie, 1988). the expectation of obtaining various kinds of information mentioned in the introductory paragraph is manifested in the explanatory paragraph. in essence, the explanatory paragraph presents the contents of the writing. when someone finishes reading all the explanations and understands the contents, it means that the reader has mastered the content of the writing he is reading. so that the international journal of language teaching and education 98 reader wants to read the entire paragraph in the writing, each explanatory paragraph is arranged in in the best way hence the reader keeps reading until the end. the concluding paragraph serves as the end of an essay. writing that discusses scientific or political subjects, predicting the future is an excellent conclusion. controversial writing that develops fresh thoughts or arguments, the best conclusion is a summary of the problem along with the author's personal views. for biographical writing, the final assessment of the person's work and influence is the best conclusion. writing that contains a description of a particular movement or activist, a good conclusion contains a statement about the absence of a problem. the paragraphs that will be developed in an essay, apart from being adjusted to their function and position, are also adapted to the requirements they apply (budiyono, 2012). these requirements include four elements, namely element completeness, unity, order, and coherence. the four paragraph requirements are more often applied to the body paragraph than to the other two paragraphs, namely the introduction paragraph and the conclusion paragraph. therefore, in this study, the focus was on the "content paragraph or explanatory paragraph" in the essay writing of sd-kj students. a paragraph has elemental completeness if the paragraph meets two conditions, namely (1) it has a main idea which is expressed in the main sentence and (2) has adequate supporting or explanatory sentences which serve to provide an explanation of the main idea (mccrimmon, 1963; wahab and lestari, 1999). therefore, the quality of applying the completeness of paragraph elements is based on the fulfillment on the two requirements as a criterion. a paragraph has unity if the paragraph meets two conditions, namely (1) only has one main idea and (2) sentences containing subordinate ideas (explanatory ideas) all together supporting the main idea (mccrimmon, 1963; parera, 1984; keraf, 1994; syafi'ie, 1988; gunawan, 2011). if in a paragraph there is only one subordinate idea (explanatory idea) that deviates from the main idea, the paragraph is considered ineligible to meet with the requirements of unity. in other words, the paragraph has no element of unity. paragraphs have an element of order if the ideas expressed in the paragraph are arranged in an order and systematic way, so that there are no jumping ideas. presentation of ideas in paragraphs in order and systematic will make it easier for readers to understand the messages to be conveyed in the paragraph (mccrimmon, 1963; lorch, 1984). the consecutive and systematic delivery of ideas in a paragraph will make it easier for readers to understand the content of the paragraph. paragraphs have an element of coherence if they have a compact relationship between one sentence and another. the sentences are closely intertwined and mutually supportive, so that paragraphs are easy to understand and easy to read (smith and liedlich, 1977; mccrimmon, 1963; wahab and lestari, 1999). thus, it can be said that a paragraph that fulfill the coherence requirements if the paragraph has two characteristics: (1) the sentences in the paragraph are closely linked, compact, and mutually supportive, and (2) paragraphs are easy to understand and easy to read (tarigan, 2008 ). based on the explanation described above, the review of the paragraph quality can be based on whether the elements of the paragraph requirements are fulfilled or not. the more complete the requirements elements that are fulfilled in a paragraph, the higher the quality level of the paragraph. conversely, the fewer elements of paragraph requirements that are fulfilled in a paragraph, the lower the level of quality of the paragraph. the basis used to determine the level of paragraph quality in this study is the accuracy or suitability of the paragraph requirements applied to the essay paragraphs of sd-kj students. the requirements of the paragraph are completeness element, unity, order and coherence. the four requirements are described in detail in table-1 below. table 1. paragraph requirements paragraph no. requirements criteria 1 completeness element a paragraph fulfills the completeness element if (1) has a main idea which is expressed in the main sentence and (2) has adequate explanatory sentences which function to provide an explanation to the main idea. 2 unity a paragraph fulfills the element of unity if it covers two elements, 99 h. budiyono namely (1) having only one main idea and (2) sentences containing explanatory ideas, all of which together support the main idea. 3 order the paragraph fulfills the element of order when the ideas expressed in the paragraph are arranged in an order and systematic way, so that no idea is jumping up and down. 4 coherence the paragraph fulfills the element of coherence if the paragraph has a compact relationship between one sentence and another. the sentences are closely intertwined and mutually supportive, so that paragraphs are easy to understand and easy to read. in order for the reader to easily and clearly understand about the main object or idea described in the essay paragraph, the writer can use various patterns of paragraph development. this method is closely related to the activity of linking one sentence with another sentence in the paragraph. the goal is that the main object or idea described is clear and easily understood by the reader. paragraph development is related to (a) the ability to fully detail the main ideas (main ideas) of paragraphs into subordinate ideas (explanatory ideas) and (b) the ability to sort subordinate ideas into a good order (keraf, 1994). according to syafi’ie (1988), to elaborate the main ideas and order the subordinates' ideas (explanatory ideas), there are three steps that need to be taken. these steps are (1) thinking of the main idea to be written, (2) thinking of logical information so that readers can understand the main idea of the author, and (3) thinking about how to convey information. paragraph development, either in terms of detailing main ideas or ordering details in an orderly way, can be accomplished through the use of various paragraph development patterns. the use of paragraph development patterns depends on the nature of the paragraph. the basis for paragraph development can occur because of (1) natural relationships, (2) logical relationships, and (3) illustrations. natural relationships are based on real conditions in nature (sequence of events, order of place, or point of view). the logical relationship is based on the author's response to the relation of the details. the basis for providing illustrations is to provide clarity of what is meant in the paragraph, for example by giving examples. in accordance with the basis of paragraph development, there are several patterns of paragraph development that the writer can use, namely (1) climax and anti-climax, (2) point of view, (3) comparisoncontradiction, (4) analogy, (5) giving examples, (6) ) process, (7) cause effect, (8) general-specific or specificgeneral, (9) classification, and (10) broad definition (keraf, 1994). each development pattern has its own characteristics. therefore, the study of paragraph development in the essay writing of sd-kj students is based on the characteristics of the paragraph development pattern. this is described in more detail in table-2 below. table 2. development patterns paragraph development patterns paragraph no. development pattern characteristic 1 climax-anti-climax (cac) the main idea of the paragraph are separated into several explanatory idea. the explanatory ideas are arranged in such a way as to put the explanatory idea which is considered less important at the beginning, then the explanatory idea which is higher importance, and ends with the explanatory idea which is the highest importance or position. on the other hand, the explanatory idea whose importance is considered the highest is placed at the beginning, followed by the explanatory idea which is of lower importance, and ends with the explanatory idea which has the least importance. international journal of language teaching and education 100 2 point of view (pv) the explanatory ideas presented are based on seeing something from a certain position. from that position, then slowly and sequentially the items in the room are drawn. the sequence, starting with the one closest to the position, then gradually works its way back. the expansion of the paragraph is also called "room sequence". 3 comparison and contradiction (cc) the explanatory ideas put forward, starting from certain aspects, show the similarities of two or more things (comparisons). on the other hand, the ideas expressed depart from certain aspects which indicate differences of two or more things (contradiction). 4 analogy (anl) paragraph explanatory ideas use a comparison of things. what is being compared is something that is less familiar to the public with something that is already known to the general public. 5 giving example (ge) the main ideas expressed in the paragraph are explained by explanatory ideas in the form of examples. this example serves to clarify the main purpose of idea that has been expressed. 6 process (prs) paragraph explanatory ideas are a sequence of actions to produce something. three things in the development of the process paragraph:(1) must know the details of the idea as a whole, (2) the intended process is divided into stages of the events, and (3) explains each stage in sufficiently clear detail so that the reader can see all process disclosed. 7 cause and effect (ce) the main idea of the paragraph is the cause, while the explanatory ideas function as the effect. on the other hand, the result can also be the main idea. to fully understand the effect that exists, it is necessary to convey a number of causes as details of the explanatory idea. 8 general-specific (gs) the main ideas of the paragraph is at the beginning of the paragraph, while the explanatory ideas are contained in the following sentences (general-specific). on the other hand, the details of the explanatory ideas are disclosed first, then end with their generalizations (specific-general). 9 classification (clf) grouping explanatory ideas that have certain similarities, namely (1) uniting the units into a group and (2) separating these units from other groups. 10 broad definition (bd) paragraphs use a broad definition development when the ideas expressed are in form of term. then, the term is defined hence it can be understood by the reader. the definition used is usually a broad definition. 2. research design and method this study used a quantitative descriptive design. the study population was all content paragraphs in the essay writing of 5th grade sd-kj students. the sampling was carried out in stages: (1) sub-district sampling, taking 50% randomly, 5 sub-districts were taken as the sample; (2) taking one sd randomly from each district, taking sd-tl, sd-kb, sd-pj, sd-jl, and sd-js; and (3) taking one class from each sample sd. each of the essay writing paragraph from elementary school students was taken 25%, there were 35 paragraphs taken (as the sample of this study). the data collected were analyzed quantitatively by 101 h. budiyono the following the steps: (1) searching for the frequency distribution of paragraph quality; (2) categorizing the frequency distribution based on its quality, referring to ferguson (1985), ary et al. (1982), and sugiyono (2008); (3) counting the percentage of each quality level and pattern of paragraph development; and (4) presenting the research results based on the review order. 3. result quality of paragraphs in elementary school students' essays the results showed that the quality of the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students in terms of the implementation of the requirements (completeness, unity, order, and coherence) is distributed as shown in table-3 below. table 3. frequency distribution of paragraph quality in elementary school students’ essays no. implication of paragraph requirements quality good poor bad 1 completeness 5,71 (%) 68,57 (%) 25,70 (%) 2 unity 34,58 (%) 51,42 (%) 14,28 (%) 3 order 28,57 (%) 51,42 (%) 20,00 (%) 4 coherence 54,28 (%) 34,28 (%) 11,42 (%) paragraph completeness from the explanation in table-3, it is known that the “completeness of the paragraphs” in the essays written by sd-kj students with good quality (g) = 5.71%; poor (p) = 68.57%; and bad (b) = 25.70%. based on table-3, the quality of the “completeness” of the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students can be clarified with the following graph: figure 1. graph of the quality of paragraphs completness in elementary school student essays paragraph unity from the explanation in table-3, it is known that the “unity of paragraphs” in the essays written by sdkj students with good quality (g) = 34.58%; poor (p) = 51.42%; and bad (b) = 14.28%. based on table-3, the quality of the “unity” of the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students can be clarified with the following graph: 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% b kb tb international journal of language teaching and education 102 figure 2. graph of the quality of the paragraph unity in sd-kj student essays paragraph order from the explanation in table-3, it is known that “paragraph order” in the essays of sd-kj students with good quality (g) = 28.57%; poor (p) = 51.42%; and bad (b) = 20.00%. based on the above table-3, the quality of the paragraph "order" in the essay writing of sd-kj students can be clarified with the following graph: figure 3. graph of the quality of paragraph order for sd-kj students' essays paragraph coherence from the explanation in table-3, it is known that the “paragraph coherence” in the essays of sd-kj students with good quality (g) = 54.28%; poor (p) = 34.28%; and bad (b) = 11.42%. based on table-3, the quality of paragraph "coherence" in the essay writing of sd-kj students can be clarified with the following graph: figure 4. graph of paragraph coherence quality in sd-kj student essays 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% b kb tb 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% b kb tb 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% b kb tb 103 h. budiyono paragraph development patterns in elementary school student essays the results showed that there were 6 (six) types of paragraph development patterns applied to the essay writing of sd-kj students. the six patterns of paragraph development are (1) comparison and contradiction; (2) analogy; (3) giving examples; (4) cause-effect; (5) general-specific or special-general; and (6) classification. in detail, the frequency distribution of the implication of the paragraph development pattern in the sd-kj essay is shown in table-4 below. table 4. frequency distribution of the application of paragraph development patterns in the essay writing of sd-kj students no. types of paragraph development patterns frequency of paragraph development patterns implementation 1 comparison-contradiction (cc) 20,00% 2 analogy (anl) 5,71% 3 giving example (ge) 8,57% 4 cause and effect (ce) 48,57% 5 general-specific / specific-general (gs) 11,42% 6 classification (cls) 5,71% total 100% from the description in table-4, it is known that the paragraphs in the essay writing of sd-kj students who implement the paragraph development pattern with the types of comparison and contradiction reached up to: 20.00%; analogy: 5.71%; giving examples: 8,57%; cause and effect: 48.57%; general-specific or specific-general: 11.42%; and classification: 5.71%. based on the explanation in table-4, the implementation of paragraph development patterns in the essay writing of sd-kj students can be clarified with the following graph: figure 5. graph of the implementation of paragpraph development pattern in sd-kj students’ essays information: cc: comparison-contradiction anl: analogy ge: giving example ca: cause and effect gs: general-specific or specific-general cls: classification 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% pp anl pc sa uk kls international journal of language teaching and education 104 4. discussion discussion of paragraph quality in elementary school student essays based on the research results that have been presented in table-5, the implementation of "completeness" of paragraphs in essay writing of sd-kj students with "good" quality is s 5.71%; "poor" reaches up to to 68.78%, and "bad" is 25.70%. the purpose of the three qualities of the paragraph each has different characteristics. for good quality paragraph, the characteristics are as follows: it has a main sentence (explicit / implicit); adequate explanatory sentences; and all explanatory sentences explain the main sentence completely. poor quality paragraphs have the following characteristics: they have a main sentence (explicit / implicit); the existing explanatory sentence is inadequate; and the existing explanatory sentences mostly explain the topic sentence. paragraph of bad quality, the characteristics are as follows: no topic (main idea); and have no explanatory ideas. the three characteristics of the quality of the paragraph completeness are explained in table-5 below. table 5. quality of paragraph completeness implementation in sd-kj student essays implementation of paragraph requirements quality good (5,71%) poor (68,57%) bad (25,70%) completeness the paragraph has a main sentence (explicit / implicit); adequate explanatory sentences; and all existing explanatory sentences explain the topic sentence completely. the paragraph has a main sentence (explicit / implicit); the existing explanatory sentence is inadequate; and some explanatory sentences explaining the topic sentence. the paragraph has no topic (main idea); and lacks detailed explanatory ideas. based on the research results that have been presented in table-6, the implementation of paragraphs "unity" in the essay writing of sd-kj students with "good" quality is 34.58%; "poor" reach up to 51.42%, and "bad" is 14.28%. the purpose of the three qualities of the unity of the paragraph each has different characteristics. good quality paragraphs fulfill the characteristics as follows: it has main idea and the explanatory ideas in the paragraph all focus on one main idea. the poor paragraph has the characteristics as follows: it has a main idea and some of its explanatory ideas do not focus on the main idea. the bad paragraph describes the following characteristics: it does not have a main idea and the existing ideas do not focus on one idea. the three characteristics of the quality of the unity of the paragraph, in detail and clearly, can be seen in table-6 below. table 6. quality of the implementation of paragraph unity in sd-kj student essays implementation of paragraph requirements quality good (34,58%) poor (51,42%) bad (14,28%) unity the paragraph has a main idea and the explanatory ideas in the paragraph all focus on one main idea. the paragraph has a main idea and some of the explanatory ideas are not focused on the main idea.. the paragraph does not have a main idea and the existing ideas do not focus on one idea. based on the research results that have been presented in table-7, the implementation of paragraphs "order" in the essays of sd-kj students with "good" quality is 28.57%; "poor" is up to 51.42%, and "bad" is up to 20.00%. the meaning of the three quality of the paragraph's consistency has different 105 h. budiyono characteristics. the characteristics of “good: paragraph are: the ideas forming the paragraph are all arranged coherently and systematically; and paragraphs is easy to understand. the paragraph with poor quality is characterized by the following characteristics: only a small part of the ideas forming the paragraph are arranged coherently and systematically; and paragraphs can still be understood. paragraphs with bad quality have the following characteristics: the ideas that form the paragraph are not all arranged coherently and systematically; and considered as incomprehensible paragraphs. those three characteristics, in detail and clearly, can be seen in table-7 below. table 7. quality of implementation of paragraph order in sd-kj students’ essays implementation of paragraph requirements quality good (28,57%) poor (51,42%) bad (20,00%) order paragraph-forming deas are all arranged coherently and systematically; paragraphs are easy to understand. only a small number of paragraph-forming ideas are arranged coherently and systematically; and paragraphs can still be understood. paragraph-forming deas are not all arranged in a coherent and systematic way; and considered as incomprehensible paragraphs. based on the research results presented in table-8, the application of paragraph "coherence" in the essays of sd-kj students with "good" quality is up to 54.28%; "poor" is 34.28%, and "bad" is 11.42%. the purpose of the three qualities of the coherence of the paragraph each has different characteristics. good paragraphs have the following characteristics: the sentences in the paragraph are all closely intertwined (using cohesion tools or logical relationships); and paragraphs are easy to understand. the paragraphs with poor quality are based on the following characteristics: some of the sentences in the paragraph are not closely intertwined (using cohesion tools or logical relationships); and paragraphs can still be understood. bad quality paragraphs have the following characteristics: the sentences in the paragraph are all not closely intertwined; and incomprehensible paragraphs. the three characteristics of the paragraph, in detail and clearly, can be seen in table-8 below. table 8. the quality of the implementation of paragraph coherence in the essay writing of sd-kj students implementation of paragraph requirements quality good (54,28%) poor (34,28%) bad (11,42%) coherence the sentences in the paragraph are all closely intertwined (using cohesion tools or logical relationships); paragraphs are easy to understand. some sentences in paragraphs are not closely intertwined (using cohesion tools or logical relationships); and paragraphs can still be understood. the sentences in the paragraph are not all tightly connected; and considered as incomprehensible paragraphs. paying attention to the descriptions of the research results that have been presented, which are in the form of the "paragraph quality", the level of students' ability in writing paragraphs is identified. writing (paragraphs) with "good" quality reflects the author (student) has the ability to write good quality paragraphs, as well as "poor" quality paragraphs reflect that students who write them have the ability to write paragraphs of poor quality (budiyono, 2010). international journal of language teaching and education 106 the results of the research in the form of paragraph quality levels can also provide information on the level of "difficulty order" of sd-kj students in understanding writing learning materials, especially "paragraph writing material". the level of difficulty can be seen from the "percentage of good quality written paragraphs of sd-kj students". paragraph writing learning materials related to the implementation of "paragraph requirements", the order of difficulty is as follows: (1) the easiest learning material for elementary students to understand is paragraph coherence; (2) more difficult material to be learnt is paragraphs "unity"; (3) the learning material is even more difficult after the unity of paragraphs, is the "order" of the paragraphs; and (4) the most difficult learning material is paragraph "completeness". discussion of paragraph development patterns in elementary school student essays based on the research results that have been presented in table-9,by looking at the highest to the lowest order regarding the percentage of the implementation of the paragraph development pattern, the order is as follows: (1) cause and effect: 48.57%; (2) comparison and contradiction: 20.00%; (3) general-specific or special-general: 11.42%; (4) giving examples: 8.57%; (5) analogy: 5.71%; and (6) classification: 5.71%. the six patterns of paragraph development have different characteristics. the percentages of the paragraph development pattern implementation and the characteristics of each patterns is presented in table-9 below. table 9. the order of the percentage of the implementation of the paragraph development pattern and its characteristics in the writing of sd-kj students essays no. types of paragraph development patterns implementation of the paragraph development pattern characteristics of the paragraph development pattern 1 cause-effect 48,57% the main idea of the paragraph is the cause, the explanatory ideas function as the effect. on the other hand, the result can also be the main idea. in order to fully understand the effect that exists it is necessary to state a number of causes as details of the explanatory ideas. 2 comparisoncontradiction 20,00% explanatory ideas in the paragraph, starting from certain aspects which show the similarities of two or more things (comparisons). on the other hand, the ideas in the paragraph depart from certain aspects which show the differences of two or more things (contradiction). 3 generalspecific 11,42% the main ideas of the paragraph are at the beginning of the paragraph, the explanatory ideas are found in the following sentences (general-specific). on the other hand, the details of the explanatory ideas are disclosed first, then end with their generalizations (general-specific). 4 giving example 8,57% the main ideas expressed in the paragraph are explained by explanatory ideas in the form of examples. this example serves to clarify the main purpose of idea that has been expressed. 5 analogy 5,71% paragraph explanatory ideas use a comparison of things. what is being 107 h. budiyono based on the research results, basically sd-kj students only recognize six patterns of paragraph development. of the 6 paragraph development patterns, the majority (48.7%) used a causal paragraph development pattern. others, comparison and contradiction (20%), general-specific or specificl-general (11.42%), giving examples (8.57%), analogy and classification (each 5.71%). from the order of the percentage level of the implementation of the paragraph development pattern, the level of ability and willingness of elementary students in applying the paragraph development pattern can be identified. the higher the percentage of the implementation of certain types of paragraph development patterns, the higher the level of ability and willingness of students to apply the paragraph development pattern. if it is related to the "selection of learning materials" required for "the learning process of writing in elementary schools, especially material on paragraph development patterns", the results of this study can be used as material for consideration in the framework of "determining and selecting learning materials proportionally". 5. conclusion based on the results of the research and discussion that has been presented, several conclusions can be drawn as follows; judging from the application of its elements, the paragraphs in the essay writing of sdkj students are concluded as follow (a) based on the implementation of completeness, paragraphs of good quality: 5.71%; poor quality: 68.57%; and bad quality: 25.70%; (b) based on the implementation of the unity, paragraphs of good quality: 34.58%; poor quality: 51.42%; and bad quality: 14.28%; (c) based on the implementation of its order, paragraphs of good quality: 28.57%; poor quality: 51.42%; and bad quality: 20%; and (d) based on the implementation of coherence, good quality paragraphs: 54.28%; poor quality: 34.28%; and bad quality: 11.42%. judging from the implementation of the development pattern, there are six development patterns in the written paragraphs of sd-kj students, namely (1) comparison and contradiction (20%); (2) analogy (5.71%); (3) giving examples (8.58%); (4) cause and effect (48.57%); (5) general-specific or specific-general (11.42%); and (6) classification (5.71%). of the six development patterns, the most widely used by sd-kj students is the "cause-effect" development pattern. conversely, the pattern of paragraph development that elementary students used the least is "analogy" and "classification". references ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & razavieh, a. 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(1988). retorika dalam menulis. [ rethorics in writing]. jakarta: p2lptk dirjen dikti depdikbud. tarigan, d. (2008). membina keterampilan menulis paragraf dan pengembangannya. [improving paragraph writing skills and its development]. bandung: angkasa. wahab, a. & lestari, l. a. (1999). menulis karya ilmiah. [ writing academic articles]. surabaya: airlangga university press. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 efl reading comprehension assessment: some grassroots’ voices lilik ulfiati universitas jambi, jambi, indonesia email: lilik.ulfiati@unja.ac.id how to cite this paper: ulfiati, l. (2018). efl reading comprehension assessment: some grassroots’ voices. international journal of language teaching and educat abstract this small-scale case study analyses one of the most debated parts in the field of teaching english as a foreign language (efl); and that is, the teachers and students’ perceptions and beliefs of efl reading comprehension assessment at a major university in indonesia. the research study involved, randomly selected five efl teachers and ninety-six efl students between the period of january and may in academic year 2017/2018. twenty-item likert scale questionnaires were distributed to the students. moreover, semi-structured interviewed was done to collect the data from the teachers. data analysis using descriptive qualitative methods indicate that efl students need detailed elaboration of their reading practices in answering comprehension questions. informing their reading results or scores only does not help them very much to practice the reading comprehension skills needed to comprehend the texts. furthermore, the data indicate that efl teachers encounter obstacles when they monitor various reading tasks and activities are benefit the students. they tended to assess the students’ reading comprehension based on the final correct answers achieved at the end of exercises. subject areas reading comprehension keywords efl, reading comprehension assessment, likert scale 1. introduction recent trends, the topmost priority of english language teaching in indonesia has been targeted to the drill and enhancement of learners’ four english skills; listening, speaking, reading, writing and three language components namely grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. nevertheless, learners’ involvement to assess their own reading comprehension skills is still lack of teachers’ attention and consideration. concerning the problem, sternberg and grigorenko (2002) explained that in formal approaches to non-dynamic assessment, the items are presented to the examinee who expected to answer https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5123 315 ijolte ion, 2(3), 315-324. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5123 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5123 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5123 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ lilik ulfiati successively, without taking any kind of feedback or intervention. later in the future the examiner receives an individual score or a set of scores as the only provided feedback and by that time, the examinee is already studying for one or more future tests. assessment, in the broad sense, means “any methods used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses” (collins& o’brien, 2003). moreover, crooks (2001) defines assessment is any process that provides information about the thinking, achievement or progress of students. because assessment is important in teaching and learning, every teacher should assess his/her students’ learning regularly. there are innovations in assessment procedures today, where the change is from summative assessment to formative one. these innovations involve thinking of alternatives, which require questioning the learning process and using learning and assessment activities together rather than habitual testing applications (charvade, jahandar & khodabandehlou, 2012). reading, as an active and interactive process (nunan, 2001), requires readers must combine bottom-up and top-down process. in this view, besides an interaction between the reader and the content, there is also an interaction between the reader and the writer. this latter interaction, which involves conveying of attitudes and assumptions, is called meta discourse (md). hyland (2005) stated that interactive devices available in the texts help the writers deal with the information flow and establish his or her intended meaning. they focus on ways of organizing discourse to predict readers’ knowledge and show the writer’s assessment of what needs to be made explicit to limit and guide what can be recovered from the text. on the other hand, by using interpersonal devices, the writers interact with the readers, express their views, support or reject an idea or inform the reader of their own personal interpretation and reaction about the content. reading comprehension is a complex process involving a combination of text and readers. it is widely reasonable that three key types of reading areas; accuracy (involves phonological and orthographic processing), fluency (includes time), and comprehension (ahmadi, hairul, & pourhossein, 2012; nichhd, 2000). readers, therefore, should consider three important models (bottom-up, top-down and interactive models) in the reading process. eskey (2005) confirmed that these three models facilitate reading comprehension and help readers to figure out texts and solve their problems while reading. firstly, bottom-up model confirms that the reading process is supported by each word in the text and a learner decodes each word to understand the meaning. another, the top-down model points out that reading process is supported mostly by a learner’s background knowledge and prior experience. the last model of reading comprehension is interactive model. it refers to the reading process which is supported by an interaction between the text 316 lilik ulfiati information and the learner’s background knowledge as well as interaction between different types of metacognitive reading strategies (grabe, 2004; eskey, 2005). english as foreign language (efl) learners at undergraduate level in indonesia generally have several unfavorable reading habits such as: (1) reading activity not every day, (2) uninterested reading e-text for their daily reading practices, (3) having less than five books to be read every week. the learners’ purposes, moreover, to read any english texts are due to doing assignments and their teachers’ instruction to do so (iftanti, 2012). the condition of reading and assessing reading in indonesia context can be identified that efl reading practice has been mainly focused on intensive reading. this reading is normally conducted in the classroom, uses a relatively short text accompanied by tasks, and is conducted with the help and/or intervention of a teacher (cahyono and widiati, 2006). in addition, firmanto (2005) found that reading was considered a boring and stressful activity because of some factors such as unsuitable texts (e.g., due to the text length or unfamiliar vocabularies), teachers scarcity in employing pre-reading activities (e.g., explaining some difficult words or activating the students prior knowledge), and monotonous post-reading activities (e.g., answering questions based on the texts and retelling the texts). as such, the exploration of these specific important issues in the indonesia efl context is quite crucial and it is hoped that this short research study can shed some light on them. 2. literature review reading comprehension is indeed important competences for successful efl university learners and they must be provided with this skill. hosseini and ghabanchi (2014) confirmed that the last few years have witnessed the paradigm shift in language teaching from the product and transmission to the process and transformation of knowledge. the evaluation process has also undergone a change from a testing culture to an assessment culture (gipps, 1994). while the former emphasizes the standardization of the test, the latter underlines what students are learning and what they can do with their knowledge (brown, 2004). as the learners need the reading comprehension competences not only for supporting their academic objectives but also their future professions, they must be familiar with the skills which are very important within their long-term life activities. therefore, it is necessary for the learners to identify what they learn, how they master the skills and why those skills are essential. by doing so, they can explore the acquired skills and knowledge to analyze, critique, and transform the norms, rule systems which are available in academic contexts or everyday life. reading skill is one of the key factors for efl learners' success not only in educational area, but also in 317 ijolte lilik ulfiati their social lives and it is also considered as the most essential skill in their academic life (sajadi & oghabi, 2011). 2..1. models of reading process many efl learners try to learn the target language and read various text genres supporting their academic purposes and daily needs. it is very disappointing if they do not comprehend what they are reading and why the texts are necessary to be figured out. there are three models of reading are widely known in efl/ esl contexts: the bottom-up model, the top-down model, and the interactive model (grabe, 2004; eskey, 2005). the bottom-up model of reading, essentially, focuses on the texts, teachers, readers begin reading by understanding the words, the letters and gradually improve toward larger linguistic chunks to sentences, and ending in meaning gough (1972). ahmadi, ismail and abdullah (2013) explained that in this bottom-up model, the whole reading process is based on the words and learners construct meaning from context by recognizing each word. this model believes that readers who utilize this process quickly become skilled readers. the skilled readers have ability to understand frequent letter chunks, prefixes, suffixes, and the original words quickly. so, this ability can release more memory ability in the brain for reading comprehension (pressley, 2000). the top-down model views reading as a process of reconstructing the meaning of the texts by fitting them into readers’ background knowledge. this model refers to a “notion” driven model where the students’ prior information and expectations help them to construct meaning from a reading text, eskey (2005) explains that the top-down model is based “from brain to text” and focuses on the whole reading process. according to ahmadi, hairul, and pourhossein (2012), the top-down model emphasizes on reading skills like prediction and summarizing as well as anticipating from texts. the top-down model affects both l1 and l2 reading instruction in improving the importance of prediction, guessing from the text, and getting the gist of a text’s meaning. in this reading process, the readers use their knowledge of vocabularies, sentences, and knowledge of the reading passages to comprehend the texts. topdown reading is the hypothesis-driven process in which readers, directed by their goals, expectations and strategic processing, actively control the comprehension process (grabe). the last reading process is called interactive model which combine both bottom-up and top-down models. ahmadi, ismail and abdulah (2013) explain that this model emphasizes the interrelationship between a reader and the text. therefore, there is an interaction between the bottom-up and top-down processes and this model indicates that either bottom-up or top-down models can by themselves describe the whole reading process. according to this 318 ijolte lilik ulfiati model, readers should interact within the text to comprehend what the passages tell the audience about. reading is interactive in two senses. on the one hand, there is the interaction between the reader and the text, in that readers use information from their background knowledge as well as information from the text to reconstruct the text information. on the other hand, there is a second level of interaction involving the simultaneous processing interaction between many component skills ranging from rapid lower-level automatic skills to higher-level strategic, comprehension skills. it is important to note that these two levels of interaction are complementary (kazemi, hosseini and kohandani, 2013). 2.2. assessing l2 reading nalliveettil (2014) affirmed that the language instructors should be aware that tasks and activities related to reading process can benefit the students in reading comprehension. to improve reading skills, undergraduate students should be trained to identify the elements that are general across different texts. the instructors, so, have fruitful roles to promote the learners’ awareness of reading practices. on the other hand, the undergraduate learners are necessary to be familiar with various reading skills to facilitate them comprehend the english text genres effectively especially in the efl context. to successfully read, comprehend and respond to the reading, therefore, the reader needs to be equipped with certain skills and ability types khonamri & karimabadi (2015). the instructors of efl, therefore, should assess regularly what reading tasks and activities being acquired by the students in comprehending the texts. however, charvade, jahandar & khodabandehlou (2012) stated that a test which is used to evaluate students causes they rely on their memorization ability and reproduce these pieces of information from their memory on the exam to score high and after the exam this information disappeared. this traditional assessment distracts the students from meaningful learning. also, many other factors may influence students' performances like anxiety, stress. efl reading teachers should be made aware of the key role of strategies in efl reading instruction and consider ways to incorporate them into their syllabi to enhance the efficiency of their teaching. in the case of students, the teachers need to help learners become efficient readers and improve their reading ability. they need to be independent and rely more on certain strategies rather than teacher (talebinejad, sadeghdaghighi & liaghat, 2015). the teachers should facilitate the leaners with various reading practices which are applicable in their daily reading activities. formative assessment such as reflective journals and portfolios can be implemented in class for s0074ddeeeudents themselves, peers and teacher to assess to enable students to regulate 319 ijolte lilik ulfiati their learning process and the performance of their english study. such assessing activities also contribute to the development of students’ critical thinking skills (tang, 2016) 3. methodology this study utilized a mixed method of investigation. a cross-sectional survey was implemented to collect data both quantitatively and qualitatively to triangulate them. the following sections explain the participants, instrument, data collection procedure as well as the data analysis methods. the present participants in the survey were 96 students majoring in english education study program, faculty of teacher training education in indonesia. they were 70 females and 26 male sophomores who were taking their reading for academic purposes course during the second academic semester of 2018. the students had passed their reading for general purposes course in which they were learned english basic grammar, general vocabulary, and reading comprehension strategies. moreover, five teachers of the reading course were involved in this study. there were two instruments designed to gather the data of the present study namely questionnaire and semi-structured interview. likert scale questionnaires, twenty-item were distributed students. the questionnaires were completely anonymous. the survey was divided into three sections: demographics, perception of reading assessment and perception about reading skills. to obtain more in-depth information, semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect qualitative data from the teachers. in this section, interview protocol was arranged comprising the questions to gain the data systematically. nevertheless, the order of the questions may change, or some questions may be added or omitted (lodico, et al., 2010). therefore, questions of interview session related to students and teachers’ problems, needs, interests, and opinions on the betterment of reading assessment. 3.1. data collection procedure the data were collected in the second semester of academic year 2017/2018 at english education study program, faculty of teacher training and education, jambi university. participants of the present study were selected randomly to respond the questionnaire components. the researcher explained obviously the objective of the research and the purposes of the questionnaires to both teachers and students before distributing them. the questionnaire comprised of three parts relating to the three teaching phases namely preactivities, whilst-activities and post-activities. the participants had to choose strongly to disagree, moderate disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, moderate agree and strongly agree to express their perceptions about the reading assessment and the reading skills which were needed to comprehend the english texts. they, therefore, were asked to specify what reading skills were necessary to the students. after the collecting the quantitative data, a group of twenty students were selected randomly from the list of eighty-eight students 320 ijolte lilik ulfiati to be interviewed. a semi-structured focus group interview was carried out and the questions concerned about their needs of reading skills, the practices of using reading skills in the classroom, opinions about the betterment of reading assessment, problems in using the reading skills and the like were asked. the interview session was recorded for data analysis. the questionnaire was distributed to explore the first question of the study, that is, the participants’ perceptions towards reading assessment in the contexts where english is a foreign language (efl). both teachers and students have various responses depending on the item asked. for example, when the teachers, as well as the students, were asked if they believe that reading assessment should be conducted during their reading activities in the classroom, most of the teachers, 85% and most of the students, 95%, agreed to the item. nevertheless, when asked if the reading assessment should be carried out by distributing reading tests, the teachers had most of agreement at 90% although 16% of the students agreed to the statement, 21% did not have an opinion and 73% disagreed with the statement. whereas most of the teachers (92%) and students (88%) agreed, that in principal, having reading skills will facilitate the readers (students) to identify the detailed information, figure out the meaning based on the contexts, recognize the authors’ purposes available in the texts, and distinguish the text patterns used by the writers expressing their ideas in the texts. by having so, the students will be guided to comprehend the reading texts easily. for the teachers, on the other hand, were confirmed that they would like to guide the practice of using the reading skills while the students comprehended the passages. the students did need much more explanation about their reading practices which were difficult and unsatisfied target. furthermore, most of the students (96%) felt that they need to be involved in the development and implementation of the reading assessment to help them being familiar with the various reading skills and most teacher participants (4 org/ 90%) seem do not agree to this. they think that involving the students to assess their reading will take time and need more detailed guidance in the application. in this part, there were various proposed suggestions chosen from semistructured interviews that were given to selected participants. a large percentage of students (82%) felt that they need to be clarified why the answers of their reading comprehension questions were wrong and what reading skills are useful to figure out the right ones. they, furthermore, confirmed that it is better if the reading practice done in the classroom is not merely focusing on answering the following comprehension questions. but, they should be trained to analyze why the answers are correct and the others are incorrect. thus, they could implement their reading skills not only for answering the comprehension questions of the passages but also being applicable for their future professions or daily activities. on the other hand, most of the teachers (82) felt that they need to be a more comprehensive training toward the implementation of reading assessment rubrics and the criteria. 321 ijolte lilik ulfiati 4. findings and discussion although this study has been a small scale one, it analyzed an important aspect of efl in indonesia context and that is reading comprehension assessment. the study is aimed at exploring both efl teachers and students’ perceptions or beliefs regarding to reading comprehension assessment at a major university in indonesia. from the data analysis, it can be figured out that this topic is very complex which has many causes contributing to its overall status. on one hand, we can obviously identify that students agree that there should be clarification or explanation to reading comprehension incorrect answers of their reading comprehension test and model to demonstrate the reading comprehension skills, but, teachers expressed that they should be trained how to go through the reading assessment rubrics and the criteria, especially if they have big class sizes. besides, the students believe that they are necessary to be familiar with the rubric and what it has expected them to achieve in the reading comprehension skill from the beginning at their study, to be completed with the skills and preparations before the reading examination. above all, the students’ 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(2000). what should comprehension instruction be the instruction of? in m. l. kamli, p. b. mosenthal, p. d. pearson, & r. barr (eds.), handbook of reading research. lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers mahwah, new jersey. [25] sternberg, r. j., & grigorenko, e. l. (2002). dynamic testing: the nature and measurement of learning potential. cambridge: cambridge university press. [26] talebinejad, m. r, sadeghdaghighi, a, & liaghat, f. (2015). application of reading strategies: a comparative study between iranian and indian efl students. theory and practice in language studies, 5(2), 356-363. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0502.16 [27] tang, l. 2016. exploration on cultivation of critical thinking in college intensive reading course. english language teaching, 9(3). doi: 10.5539/elt.v9n3p18 url: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n3p18 324 ijolte http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0502.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n3p18 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5204 113 ijolte emotional geographies of an efl teacher in asmat, papua: male perspective sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, jawa tengah, indonesia email: rhe10jeki@gmail.com; how to cite this paper: rejeki, s., kristina, d., & drajati, n. (2018). emotional geographies of an efl teacher in asmat, papua; male perspective. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 113-121. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.520 4 received: may 16,2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31,2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract teaching is not only about knowledge, cognition, and skill but also emotional relationships among the students, colleagues, and parents. particularly for teaching english in rural areas in indonesia, there are several challenges that should be handled: geographical feature of these area, their culture and the way of life, the quality of both students and teachers, and so on. this research paper investigates teacher emotions experienced by a male efl teacher in one of rural areas while dealing with those challenges. teacher emotions are one of significant aspect that could not be left behind in teaching and learning activity. this research will explore comprehensively the distance and closeness felt by the teacher while teaching english there. this qualitative research was conducted using a narrative case study approach. the data were collected from the participant’s journal and interview. referring to hargreaves framework, the findings reveal 5 emotional geographies of the participant. this research contributes to indonesian government as the one that concerns in 3t areas, efl teachers who must handle complex situations while teaching, and other researchers who are interested in conducting emotional geographic research. subject areas emotional geographies keywords culture, emotional geographies, efl teacher, rural area, teacher emotion 1. introduction teaching english in foreign language context particularly in indonesia has gain some attentions. several researches have been conducted related to teaching method and approach, book and other supporting material, teacher, student, curriculum, and so on. those are associated with cognitive aspect of teaching and learning process. in other hand, affective aspect of teaching and learning has not been explored yet. many research tends to focus on cognitive one meanwhile the affective aspect also plays significant part here. particularly in efl context, research on affective aspect focuses on foreign language anxiety. there is limited research on teacher emotion, for example, although it is important in the teaching and learning process. inevitably emotions emerge in the classroom activities as encountered by teachers while they are conducting the lesson. it is in line with hargreaves’s opinion mentioning http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 114 ijolte that teaching, learning, and leading are irretrievably emotional in character whether it is in good or bad way, by design or default (2000, p. 812). whether it is intentionally or unintentionally, teacher emotions do exist in the classroom and they influence the teaching process. this emotional practice can be seen obviously when teachers feels angry, joy, proud, disappointed and so on. those feelings are not seen as an individual issue but rather integrated to the interaction, organization, social, and cultural contexts in which those emotions emerge (hargreaves, 2001, p. 507). here teacher emotions are not regarded as their sin but a complex process involving several aspects outside the teachers. therefor it is essential to approach teacher emotions properly as the existence of emotions in the classroom may advantage or disadvantage the teaching and learning process. it will result a good or bad process depending on how these feelings are addressed. therefore, this research is attempting to investigate emotions experienced by a male efl teacher who had taught in asmat, one of rural area in indonesia. these emotions are analyzed through emotional geographic framework proposed by hargreaves. it is expected that this research will have contribution in promoting emotional understanding among school parties since the existence of emotions in the school context is influenced by other people; it is not merely about individual problem. 2. literature review education most study about teacher emotions in efl context have been done under the term language anxiety. some studies explained about how anxiety can hinder student progress (aida, 1994; burden, 2004; gardner &macintyre, 1987; horwitz, horwitz, &cope, 1986 as cited by cowie, 2011). in this study, cowie also cited some studies for instance bress (2006) who identified the main sources of stress among efl teachers and stanley (1999) who found that fear, judgement, and resistance kept the efl teachers from engaging with the analytical process of reflection. those studies address emotions in a specific way meanwhile there are several negative and positive emotions encountered by the teachers. emotional geography here presents as extensive approach in addressing teacher emotions in efl background. research on emotional geographies particularly in efl background, however, is still limited on certain subject. cowie (2011) investigated emotions of efl teachers in japan. these teachers did not come from japan. to survive teaching, there, they encountered some emotional misunderstandings and should manage them well. this study emphasized on different sociocultural background as the main source of teacher emotions. the other research is from yongcang liu (2016) who reported a narrative study of immigrant teacher in england. the researcher took a participant from china and due to some circumstances should teach english in england. the emotional understandings and misunderstandings encountered by participant related to the teacher professional community in there are presented comprehensively. both researchers tried to find out emotions experienced by teachers who should teach in foreign country meaning that they were challenged emotionally by different culture and working condition. sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 115 ijolte as suggested by cowie (2011) that emotions may be especially prominent for language teachers living in a foreign country since they engage varied emotional challenges because of some changes in their work environment. these changes are mostly caused by different culture of two nations. yet the challenge also comes from local context. it arises when efl teachers in indonesia should teach in rural areas in this country. although it is in local context, the teachers still experience different culture as there are a lot of tribes with their culture living in indonesia. they should deal with students, parents, and colleagues having different culture. moreover, physical geography of these areas also gives some burdens for the teachers. they are in remote areas which have limited facilities and rough terrain. in indonesia, the emotions of the teachers are challenges by physical geography and different culture as well. moreover, culture also influences the way man express their emotions. it is in line with hargreaves’ opinion (2000) that the ways teachers experience and express their emotions vary according to their gender, ethnocultural identity, and the stage of life and career. according to this opinion, the way male and female teacher express and encounter their emotions are different. this research is a part of my larger research about teacher emotions viewed from gender perspective. in this case, the researcher emphasizes on male perspective in seeing teacher emotions. it will present emotions of a male efl teacher having experience teaching in one of rural area in indonesia. the causes of teacher emotions based on male preposition will be illustrated in the findings of this research. 3. method a narrative case study was used in this research to investigate emotions experienced by the participant. narrative was applied here in order narrate past events of the participant and it would be comprehensively investigate through case study. the participant of this research was a male english teacher called pii (pseudonym) who had taught in asmat, one of rural areas in indonesia. he is from tana toraja, south sulawesi, indonesia. after graduated from universitas pendidikan indonesia in 2014, he did some freelance jobs as translator. then, he participated in a government program concerned with education in rural areas in indonesia called sm-3t (graduate teaching in frontier, outermost, and underdeveloped areas or it is known as sarjana mengajar di daerah terdepan, terluar dan tertinggal) in 2015.joining sm-3t program, pii was assigned to teach english in asmat, papua. asmat is one of regencies in timika, papua in which there were several villages connected by river in this regency. he was assigned to teach in one of places in that regency. at that time, he taught english for a year in a primary school there. this research will explore his emotion while teaching english in this school. the data of this research were events and stories told by the participant while he was teaching there. they were obtained through participant’ journals and interview. the participant narrated his emotional challenges while teaching english in papua. he wrote a story of how he experienced living and teaching in different ethnic that holds different sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 116 ijolte culture and indeed thought. moreover, he also explained the challenges of geographical feature in that place which is completely not easy. the researcher collected this journal and started to identify the story. then she reorganized the story in the form of summary. after that it was coded with hargreaves’s emotional geographic framework and labeled as physical, moral, sociocultural, professional, and political geographies. based on this, the researcher designed the interview. it is conducted to get more detail explanation related to the emotions emerged. the combination of journal and interview provided more comprehensive data for this research. 4. results and discussion 4.1. results research hargreaves proposed 5 terms in emotional geography as a framework to analyze teacher emotions. the findings of this research presented three of them; physical, sociocultural, and professional. those classifications were presented more detail in the following explanation below. physical geography compared to other regions in indonesia, asmat, papua was well known as one of the regions having distinctive features such as the culture, the people, and the physical geography. this region was classified as rural area by the government regarding the fact that it was still under-developed. pii also realized these certain features as he had some imagination of his working place. he thought that it was wild and remote. it would take for days walking in a vast tropical forest to reach the village he would teach. he understood that this place would not be easy and rough. however, his imagination was not completely true. arrived in asmat, he saw and experienced by himself that physical geography of asmat was quite different from what he expected before. he described the place as follows. kampung-kampung di asmat sulit dijangkau karena kampung-kampung di asmat itu seperti pulau-pulau yang dipisahkan oleh sungai-sungai yang lebarnya bisa berkalikali lipat lapangan sepakbola. jadi, satu-satunya moda transportasi ke kampungkampung, yah, hanya dengan transportasi air saja, seperti speedboat, perahu fiber, dan sebagainya. (it was difficult to reach villages in asmat because they like islands separated by rivers which many times wider than a football field. so, the only means of transportation there was water transportation such as boat, fiber boat, and so on.) quite different from his expectation, asmat was a regency consisted of several villages connected by river which was very wide. the people lived and did daily activities in the villages although sometimes they went to the forest for food gathering. the school in which pii taught also situated in the village. so, it was easy to go to school for him. the difficult part came up when he had to travel to this village from his place in toraja, south sulawesi. to reach asmat, he had to deal with some transportation. first, he needed to go to makassar. it took about 8 hours taking bus. second, he went to timika and it took two and a half hours using plane. third, he shipped to asmat and it was around 12 sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 117 ijolte hours. according to him, the most tiring of his trip was the third one when he took a ship to go to asmat. it was his first trip going somewhere using a ship and he shocked. he explained, “kita harus desak-desakaan naiknya sama nyari tempat. kalau telat dan penumpang banyak, berarti nggak dapat tempat (we had in a rush going to the ship. if there were many passengers and we were late, we would not get a seat)”. he was boring taking this ship in a long duration since he just slept, read, and talked with others. it was also annoying because the schedule of the ship was uncertain. moreover, it was also not safe travelling on the ship alone. according to him, he was afraid that his belongings would be taken if he was careless. the condition was even worse since some of passengers were drunk in the ship. it was so unpleasant for him. the other thing that worried him was about the transportation across the villages in asmat. if people wanted to go to other villages, boat was the only way to do that. it means that water transportation was needed to go from one village to another one. it was something new for him that he was much dependent on water transportation for daily activities. he was fine with this kind of transportation, however it turned out to be very difficult later. the problem came out since only some people had this boat meanwhile all people there were dependent on this. jadi, apabila kita ingin ke ibukota kabupaten misalnya, kita harus mencari-cari transportasi berhari-hari sebelum hari-h. kita harus tanya kesana kemari untuk mendapatkan transportasi yang tujuannya sama dengan kita. jadi, istilahnya kita ‘nebeng’ di perahunya orang. jadi, tak jarang kalau ada kegiatan di ibukota kabupaten, misalnya, kita sudah berhari-hari tiba, setelah menumpang di perahu orang, karena khawatir tak ada transportasi lagi kalau sudah hari-h nya. dan begitu pun sebaliknya ketika kembali ke tempat tugas lagi. (for example, if we wanted to go to the district, we had to search for the transportation days before the date. we had to go around and asked the people (who have boat) whether they would go to the same destination as us or not. in other words, we hitchhiked on their boat. so it was common for us, if there were events in which we had to come to the district, we already arrived there days before the date. it was caused by a worry that there would be no transportation that could be used at the date. it went the same when we came back to the village.) in that place, many people needed boat as their transportation meanwhile the availability of it was not sufficient. the number of the boat is not proportional to the number of passengers. so, they had to prepare it well if they wanted to go somewhere. instead mostly they could not do that. pii added that it would be so inconvenience if we had something urgent to be done and there was no boat that can be used. sociocultural geography teaching english in asmat particularly in primary school did not sound easy for pii. he was nervous at the first time coming to the class. he said that he did not have any experience teaching primary school students. also, he did not familiar with the students’ character and what material that was suitable for them. he used to think that it was not that sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 118 ijolte hard to be a good teacher. according to him, being passionate about teaching his students was the key to be a qualified teacher. unfortunately, it was not as what he thought. he needed more than passion in teaching here. however, he tried hard to deal with that inconvenient. one of problems that came up there was the students’ disruptive behavior. he explained that it was common for them to fight in the class. they also did not want to work and befriend with other students in that class. related to this phenomenon, pii guessed the causes as follow. ada beberapa perilaku siswa yang cukup mengganggu di kelas: mereka saling memukul, sering kali ribut di dalam kelas, dan mereka seperti terbagi dalam dua kubu berdasarkan dari mana asal daerahnya. di sekolah saya siswa berasal dari 2 desa yang berbeda dan biasanya ada ketegangan antara penduduk dua desa tersebut. mungkin inilah mengapa ada beberapa siswa yang tidak mau bekerja sama dengan siswa lain yang berasal dari daerah yang berbeda. (i found some disruptive behaviors in my class: students punched each other, they created much unnecessary noise, and the students had cliques based on which village they are from. in my school students came from two different villages and there was usually some tensions between the two villages. this was probably why some students from one village didn’t want to work with those from the other village). the student’s background or in this case the village they come from, based on his explanation, played significant role in the emergence of tension between the students. they came from different village although all of them belong to asmat. their villages were not far. it was just separated by a river. however, this such thing created a difference that mattered for them. this difference created a tension that hindered the learning process. they did want to cooperate with their classmates and even punched the others. pii was aware of this problem. he said, “the case was challenging because it seemed i couldn’t make them to work in harmony.” having this problem in his class, he tried to find a solution. saya menemukan sebuah cara untuk mengatasi persoalan ini ketika saya minta mereka membawa bekal sarapan ke sekolah setiap minggunya, hari itu disebut rabu berbagi. pada hari tersebut kami akan sarapan sama-sama dan makanan yang kami bawa harus dibagi dengan yang lain. awalnya beberapa siswa tidak mau melakukannya, tetapi akhirnya mereka melakukannya juga. hal ini, dalam beberapa hal, menyelesaikan problem di kelas saya, yaitu ketika mereka tidak mau bekerja sama dengan siswa dari desa lain. (i did find some solution to it when i asked them to bring their breakfast to school once every week, a day that we called, “rabu bagi”, or “sharing wednesday” in english. in this day, we would have breakfast together and what we had for breakfast had to be shared with others. at first, some students didn’t want to share their breakfast, but eventually they would. this, to some degree, resolved issue i had in class, in terms of students not wanting to work with their sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 119 ijolte peers from another village). as stated by pii, at the first time the students were reluctant to share their food. however, they eventually did that since this was an obligatory program in their school. from this experience sometimes, those who are in charge need to make or do something to fix the problem. it worked for this case. after that the classroom situation in his class was getting better. the students were not really fragmented by their background and it was good for teaching and learning activities. professional geography pii was a new comer in that school. he was just sent to that school due to sm-3t program and indeed it was his first time living and teaching in one of villages in asmat. he was from other province and it was possible that he felt different in this new situation since he interacted with new people having different value and culture. as a new comer, pii was trying to make a good relationship with his colleagues by doing his job well. however, he felt not good about the situation there. in that school he found some teachers who were not fully committed to their line of works and took time to disapprove many things that he found good. he explained the situation below. terkadang kesal juga menghadapi oknum guru yang menurut saya jauh dari pandangan saya bagaimana seorang guru harus bertindak. misalnya saja ada masalah, sejauh yang saya lihat, mereka hanya bisa menyalahkan orang lain dan tak bisa mengintrospeksi diri sendiri. tugas yang diberikan biasanya tak dikerjakan dengan baik. awal-awalnya saja berjalan lalu satu atau dua bulan kemudian, sudah dilupakan. mereka juga nampaknya tak mau bersusaha lebih untuk mencari jalan keluar dari masalah yang dihadapi. (sometimes it was annoying dealing with some teachers, in my opinion, who did not do something they supposed to do. for example, they tended to blame the others instead of looking at themselves when they had problems. they usually also did not do their duties well. it was only at the beginning that they did the work. one or two months later, they forgot all of them. moreover, it seemed that they did nothing more to find the solution of their problems.) this situation made him feel not comfortable working with other teachers. between him and his colleagues were different value of being a good teacher. they did not agree on how to act professionally. pii argued that the teachers should do something when having problems but his colleagues had different point of view. instead of finding the solution, they liked to blame other people. this condition created such a bad atmosphere for teacher’s relationships. pii, as a new teacher there, were not sure what should he do in such situations. setiap kali mereka menjelek-jelekkan guru lain di sekolah, saya hanya diam. saya khawatir kalau langsung berkonfrontasi dengan mereka malah akan membuat keadaan semakin buruk dan ini akan merusak hubungan saya dengan mereka baik di dalam maupun di luar sekolah. saya sudah melihat banyak hal terjadi, akan tetapi hal seperti ini belum pernah terjadi pada saya sebelumnya hingga saya bekerja di sekolah ini dan berhubungan dengan mereka. (every time they badmouthed others sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 120 ijolte in school, i only took my silence. i was worried that confronting them would only make things worse, and it would hurt my relationship with them, in and outside the school. sure, i had seen these things happened, but it had never occurred to me, personally, until i worked with the particular teachers.) pii just kept silent when he had different opinion with other teachers. he did not want to ruin the relationships between him and the teachers. so he just let them do whatever they wanted to do including badmouthing the others. he wanted to go extra miles to help the students. yet, his colleagues seemed not okay with that. even his colleagues accused those who built a good relationship with the villagers as merely ingratiating them. pii said that it felt like they were insulted when some people want to work hard and do good things. it was becoming more irritating for him that he talked less and less to them and avoided them. 4.2. discussion this research is trying to investigate teacher emotions of efl teacher in rural areas in indonesia. the findings showed that the male teacher who taught in this area experienced several emotions. these emotions were afraid, annoyed, challenged, bored, worried, and so on. they came up and the teacher felt them clearly. these feelings are not a matter of private individual anymore since something outside the individual gives significant influence on these emotions. in other words, these emotions are caused and influenced by something external for instance students, parents, and other colleagues. in regard with the findings of this research, the teacher felt worried when he was at the ship because it was possible that someone steals his belonging. in other occasion he felt challenged by the situation in which the students in his class seemed separated into two groups. in addition, he also felt annoyed because the teachers there did not do what they supposed to do. all of emotions presented here are not a matter of the male efl teacher only but it is rather caused by his environment. the emotions exist in interactions and relationships rather than as individual experiences (hargreaves, 2000). this result is also in line with opinion that seeing emotions as a social experience (harre, 1986; lutz, 1988; lutz & abulughod, 1990; lynch, 1990 in zembylas 2007). according to hargreaves (2000, 2001, 2005) there are 5 dimensions that caused teacher emotions: physical, moral, professional, sociocultural, and political. it means that the emergence of those emotions is influenced by those five causes. meanwhile cowie (2011) emphasized that the study of teacher emotions is necessary for language teachers living in a foreign country since they encounter some differences related to culture, social, and linguistic. this research supports cowie’s argument mentioning that those differences contribute to the emotions experienced by the teacher. however, this research emphasizes that the physical geography of the place where the teacher is working also significantly determines the teacher emotions. particularly in indonesia which is famous for its varied culture and its archipelago, physical geography of rural area here is very important because it significantly contribute to the emotions encountered by the teacher. sri rejeki, diah kristina, nur arifah drajati 121 ijolte the teacher feelings are much influence by this geography. 5. conclusion this research aims at investigating emotions experienced by a male efl teacher having experience in teaching in one of rural areas in indonesia. in regard with hargreaves’ framework, it presents three emotional geographies namely physical, sociocultural, and professional geography. in physical geography, the teacher felt worried because it was not safe taking ship to asmat. he also said that the transportation in that place made him inconvenience. related to sociocultural geography, the social background of the students caused some troubles in the classroom. however, he was challenged to solve this problem or at least reduce the tension between the students. in professional geography, he felt worried and powerless dealing with the teachers who do not have the same value in education as him. however, the findings of this study only explore one participant representing male perspective. it is recommended that further research related to gender perspective in emotional geography will be conducted. more female teachers and more male teachers are needed to conduct this research so comprehensively that it will completely represent gender. references [1] cowie, n. (2011). emotions that experienced english as a foreign language (efl) teachers feel about their students, their colleagues and their work. teaching and teacher education, 27(1), 235-242. [2] hargreaves, a. (2000). mixed emotions: teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with students. teaching and teacher education, 16(8), 811-826. [3] hargreaves, a. (2001). the emotional geographies of teachers’ relations with colleagues. international journal of educational research, 35(5), 503-527. [4] hargreaves, a. (2005). educational change takes ages: life, career and generationalfactors in teachers’ emotional responses to educational change. teaching and teacher education, 21(8), 967-983. [5] liu, y. (2016). the emotional geographies of language teaching. teacher development, 20(4), 482-497. [6] zembylas, m. (2007). theory and methodology in researching emotions in education. international journal of research & method in education, 30(1), 57-72. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 19 using video to improve pronunciation of the second years students of fki uir pekanbaru afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra universitas islam riau, riau, indonesia afrizal_head@yahoo.com, wanda18.w1@gmail.com how to cite this paper: afrizal, putra, a. i. (2018). using video to improve pronunciation of the second years students of fki uir pekanbaru. international journal of language teaching and education. 3(2), 19-24 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march,2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract the purpose of the research is to find out the use of video to improve students’ pronunciation. the study employed a classroom action research. the participants of this study were 37 students. they were the second year students of fkip (faculty of teacher training and education) in islamic university riau (uir) pekanbaru, indonesia. this study was conducted in two cycles. each cycle comprised four meetings. the data of this research were obtained through (1) observation sheets, (2) field notes, (3) interview, and (4) tests which consisted of consonants in detail, linking, and stress within target segments based on the phonetic symbols. the findings showed that the use of video in mastering pronunciation was able to improve students’ pronunciation. the study also revealed that the activities of using video enable students to enhance the quality of sound patterns they pronounce. in this case the researcher found that the key factors that enhance the quality of sound patterns were also influenced by familiar words, student’s basic needs and level. hence, those factors should be considered in learning and teaching pronunciation. moreover, the activity such as listening and imitating the way native speaker pronounces words and sentences as the lesson material can help students improve their pronunciation. the average class score of students’ pronunciation increased from 58.4 in the first cycle to 88.3 in the second cycle. material, media, classroom activities, classroom management, teacher’s approach, and teacher’s strategy were also significantly essential for the improvement of students’ pronunciation. subject areas language teaching keywords video, pronunciation introduction why is learning and teaching pronunciation very important? basically, the concept of learning and teaching pronunciation is the way of transferring different language expressions without the effects of their mother language. based on adult migrant english program research centre, the way we speak immediately conveys something about ourselves to the people around us. learners with good pronunciation in english are more likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas, whereas learners whose pronunciation is difficult to understand will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect (2002:1). open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 20 as a result, the concept of pronunciation is actually the context of practical ways related to communicative competence. when teachers teach pronunciation, they should apply the features of pronunciation, that are, segmental and supra-segmental features within communicative context so that esl/efl learners are able to speak and express english language without the effects of their mother tongue. nowadays, teaching pronunciation is granted as the least subject in some schools and universities in pekanbaru, riau because it is assumed as a complex and complicated subject that students and teachers have to face. some teachers believe that teaching pronunciation can be done just by introducing and getting their students to transcribe the phonetic symbols, pronouncing the phonetic symbols one by one in an isolated way, and attaining a native-like accent. but in fact, providing a media such as video, youtube, skype to teach pronunciation is also important. based on the researcher’s observation and discussion with one of english lecturers, in fact, in teaching pronunciation a teacher should always motivate students to speak english by providing the students some dialogue practices and get the students to understand the messages of the dialogue. unfortunately, sometimes teacher is not concerned with the distinctive features of pronunciation in the dialogues. one of the solution to solve the problem above is by having video. by using video, the students were hoped to be able to master segmental and supra-segmental features in pronunciation. literature review definition of pronunciation according to cook (1996) in abbas (2012) states that pronunciation is a set of habits of producing sounds. the habit of producing a sound is acquired by repeating it over and over again and by being corrected when it is pronounced wrongly. based on adult migrant english program research centre, pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that people use to make meaning. it includes attention to the particular sounds of a language (segmental aspects), aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm (suprasegmental aspects), how the voice is projected (voice quality). additionally, in its broadest definition, pronunciation refers to an attention to gestures and expressions that are closely related to the way people use a language. (2002). marriane, donna, and janet (2000) stated that “teachers should have student’s analysis of features, practice distinguishing similar sounds, and then use the feature which is under controlled and guided in communicative contexts”. sadiman (2000) classified the media into three kinds in general. the first kind of media is visual media. visual media are things or objects that can be seen. they can be divided into two kinds: projected visual media and non-projected visual media. projected visual media are ohp’s, slides, videostrips and motion pictures. stempleski (2002) stated that a video sequence contains not only words, but visual elements (and often sound effects and music) that provide essential evidence on behavior, character, and context, which are not usually in the script. additionally, hemey in cakir (2006) added that students like video because it is interesting, challenging, and stimulating to watch. video will motivate students by bringing a slice of real life into the classroom and by presenting language in its complete communicative context.moreover, video also can be useful for improving students’ creativity in language learning. they can make their own video by using video cameras for practicing their language. in addition, mayora (2006) mentions some advantages of using video in language teaching, they are: (1) the use of video can be more appealing and entertaining for the students than audio exclusive materials. (2) the use of video exposes students to authentic language in natural situations. (3) video provides a situational and visual context to language interactions. there are several ways to teach pronunciation using video, they are: afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 21 freeze framing and prediction freeze framing means stopping the picture on the screen by pressing the still or pause button. video gives us an additional dimension of information about the characters’ body language, facial expressions, emotions, reactions, and responses. silent viewing in silent viewing, the video segment is played with the sound off using only the picture. silent viewing arouses students’ interest, stimulates their thought, and develops skills of anticipation. sound on and vision off this activity can be interesting and useful to play a section of a video unit and remove the visual element from the presentation by obscuring the picture. through this activity, the students predict or reconstruct what has happened visually depending only what they have heard. repetition and role play a scene on video is replayed with certain pauses for repetition. when students have a clear understanding of the presentation, they are asked to act out scene using as much of the original version as they can remember. reproduction after the students have seen a section, they are asked to produce either what is being said, to articulate those sounds. the students will have benefit from experimenting in english, even though it is challenging and mistakes are made. dubbing activities this activity can be done when the students have the necessary language competence. in this activity, the students are asked to fill in the missing dialogues after watching a sound-off video episode. follow up activities it is important that a video presentation should lead to follow-up activity as the basis for further extended oral practice. discussion stimulates communication among students and it helps them to achieve communicative practice. the techniques above were applied into the classroom activities. the classroom activities were be divided into three stages as the following: previewing activities there are some experts propose activities that can be done in previewing activities. according to stempleski (2002), in previewing activities the teacher prepare the students to watch the video by tapping their background knowledge, stimulating interest in the topic, and lessening their fear of unfamiliar sounds. there are some steps that can be done in this stage: (1) the teacher prepares the students to watch the video. (2) the teacher builds the students’ background knowledge related to the topics discussed in the video. the topics are about the unfamilliar sounds such as thee “th” and so on. (3) the teacher leads the students into a discussion about what they have known related to the sounds they watched. (4) the teacher wrote lists of unfamilliar sounds and prepares questions to guide the students into the soounds articulated in the video. viewing activities experts had proposed activities that can be applied in viewing activities. according to stempleski (2002), this stage concerns with playing and replaying the entire sequence or relevant parts and requiring students to focus on important aspect. post viewing activities there are some steps that can be done in this stage: (1) the teacher plays the video. the students are asked to focus on important aspects in the video. (2) the teacher leads the students into discussion about the meaning of the sounds in the video. (3) the teacher also led the students in discussion about the three dimensions of teaching and learning pronunciation. (4) the teacher used video as a good model for the students in teaching pronunciation. (5) the students practiced the sounds on the video in pairs and indivually. post viewing activities according to stempleski (2002), this stage requires students to react to the video or to practice some particular language point. the range of post viewing afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 22 activities is enormous and includes things such as discussion, role-play, and debate. the stages can be explained in the following. there are some steps that can be done in this stage: (1) the teacher asked the students to produce sounds and practiced it in pairs and individually. (2) the students were asked to articulate sounds based on the video. methodology this classroom action research was conducted in two cycles. each cycle comprised four meetings. the research instruments used to collect data are in the forms of observation sheets, field notes, interview, and test (sentences with target segments). after managing the instruments, the researcher displayed the materials with the audio tape, then he implemented and practiced directly based on using audio lingual method in mastering segmental and supra-segmental features activities and finally he divided the work activities (individually or in pairs). the video used in this research consisted of recording sound and pictures. in this case, the researcher applied video as a program to improve the students’ pronunciation. the video will contain explanations, exercises, and practises for students. the students were showen real model of pronunciation through the video given.while watching the video, the students can focus on the content and imitate the vowels, consonants , and suprasegemnetal features as well displayed in the video. discussion the data intended to find related to the questions of (1)“to what extent can video improve students’ pronunciation? and (2) “what factors influence the changes of students’ pronunciation?”. the first meeting was conducted on thursday, 13th of march 2014. the topic was long and short vowel sounds (segmental features). the activities were implemented through three phases. teacher’s teaching activities from the observation sheet of teacher’s activities through video it could be seen that pre-teaching activities were not supposed to be improved because the teacher displayed a minimal pair activities to generate their interests. students’ learning activities based on the observation sheet of students’ activities of using video, most of the students did the indicator in terms of listening the materials from the video, paying attention to the teacher’s explanation about the target segments, and sound patterns of target segments. the followings are interview responded by the students. researcher : “what do you think about the material?” student 1 : “we think that there are some words we do not know how to pronounce, sir.” the second factor was the media used in using video researcher : “what do you think about the media used?” student 1 : “sir, we cannot listen to the audio tape because it is too noisy out there.” the third factor was classroom activities. researcher : “what do you think about classroom activities done by the teacher in the classroom?” student 4 : “i like the activity of drilling and repeating new words and also the dialogues, sir.” the fourth factor was classroom management. researcher : “what do you think about classroom management done by the teacher?” student 20 : “sir, it is motivated, but we need more practice to know new words and their sound patterns.” student 32 : “it is well managed from the beginning up to the end.” the fifth factor was teacher’s approach. researcher : “what do you think about the teacher behavior during the teaching and learning process in controlling the students in improving afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 23 pronunciation?” student 32 : “the teacher attempted to help us pronounce unfamiliar words.” the last factor was researcher’s strategy. researcher : “what do you think about the activities of using audio lingual method? do the activities help you improve your pronunciation?” student 1 : “using audio lingual method encourages us to know the sound patterns and improves my pronunciation.” the second meeting was held friday 14th of march 2014. the topic was consonants in detail (/ʃ/ and /ʒ/ sounds). the followings are interview responded by the students researcher : “what do you think about the material?” student 11 : “we think the material is quite difficult because we find lots of new vocabularies.” the other factors were classroom management, teacher’s approach, and teacher’s strategy. researcher : “what do you think about classroom management done by the teacher?” student 20 : “sir, we need more practice to know new words and their sound patterns.” researcher: “what about the teacher’s approach?” student 17 : “it is encouraged to be active in improving pronunciation.” the third meeting was conducted on thursday, 20th march 2014. the topic was linking. similar with teaching and learning activities done in the previous meeting, the activities were also implemented through three phases. conclusion according to the findings and discussion of the students’ pronunciation by using video during the two cycles of the classroom action research, it can be concluded that the use of video could improve the students’ pronunciation. in addition, the researchers and collaborator also observed that there were sixth important factors that supported the improvements. the first factor is materials used in the research. by having interesting materials, the students had willingness to have discussion and used english in speaking class. the second factor is the use of media in teaching speaking on transactional and interpersonal text. the video as one media used highly increased the student’s pronunciation. most of the students agreed that video was very helpful in gaining those more to speak in the classroom. most of the students expressed their agreement that video better improve their motivation to pronounce well in the classroom. the third factor is the classroom activity. the classroom activity that was applied by the researcher better improved the students’ participation to become more active in the teaching and learning process. the forth factor is the classroom management. in this research, the teacher’s control and guidance on students’ activities could improve students’ willingness to articulate. the students’ attitudes were very positive toward the teacher’ guidance since they can gain many benefits dealt with the process of understanding the materials. the fifth factor is teacher approach. as it was done in this research, the researcher tried hard to have good approach to the students.they made the classroom atmosphere enjoyable, so the students did not feel shy to speak in the classroom. the last factor is teacher strategy. the strategy which had been done by the researchers had built the students’ motivation and participation to become more active in pronunciation class. references dauer, m. r. (1993). accurate english. prentice hall regents: university of massachusetts. bennet, k. b. (2007). teaching pronunciation: an independent study course for teachers of adult english as second language learners. longmont, co 80501:northern colorado professional development centre. afrizal, al malikul ikhwanda putra international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 24 gilakjani, p. a. (2011). a study on the situation of pronunciation instruction in esl/efl classrooms. macrothink: macrothink institute. gilakjani, p. a. (2012). goals of english pronunciation instruction. international journal of language teaching: international journal of language teaching and research vol. 1, no.1. gilakjani, p. a. (2012). a study of factors affecting efl learners' english pronunciation learning and the strategies for instruction. department of english language translation islamic azad: university lahijan branch lahijan. gilakjani, p. a. (2012). the significance of pronunciation in english language teaching. international journal of language teaching: international journal of language teaching and research vol. 5, no.4. hatch & farhady. (1982). research design and statistics. los angeles: newbury house publishers, inc. kemmis & robin, m. (1988). the action research planner. victoria: deakin university press. lomax . (1995).”action research for professional practice”. british journal of in-service education, vol 21, no.1. retrieved, tuesday, 14 february, 2012. mckernan, j. (1996).”curriculum action research: a handbook of method and resources for the reflective practitioner. retrieved, 14 march, 2012. priyogustopo, a. (2009).”increasing student english vocabulary using video at the second year of senior high school al-islam 2 surakarta”. retrieved, wednesday, 21 march, 2012. richards, j. c. (1985). teaching listening and speaking from theory to practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. sil international. (1999).”group investigation”. retrieved, monday, 26 march 2012. slavin, e. r. (1995). cooperative learning: theory, research, and practice (2nd ed). america: allyn & bacon. simon &schuster company international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7962 ijolte investigating learner silent and verbal responses to tasks dat bao, yongde ye monash university, australia email corresponding authors: dat.bao@monash.edu how to cite this paper: bao, d., & ye, y. (2020). investigating learner silent and verbal responses to tasks. international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 61-72. retrieved from https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/ijolte/article/view/10469 received: june 28, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/ abstract this article reports a study on efl/esl learner perceptions of classroom tasks with reference to verbal or non-verbal participation, that is, how much speech and silence would be employed in response to a rage of task types. data were collected from 260 learners from indonesia and the philippines. the article begins by explaining why silence and speech are the focus of the discussion. secondly, it shares the literature review on how silence works in language learning and why it deserves a place in classroom teaching. thirdly, it highlights classroom tasks that trigger silent processing and explain why this is the case. finally, there are recommendations for task design in which similar activity types are introduced to assist the learning of reflective students. keywords task types, silence, talk, response, perception, exposure, learning focus 1. introduction: why conside silence in task performance this section highlights the rationale for considering silence in task performance. by and large, the literature on silence in relation to task performance is extremely minimal, to the extent of almost nonexitance. we would like to construct two major arguments to form the foundation of this project, namely the importance of silence in speech production, and why silence matters in tasks. both of these are drawn from occasional scholarly insights in elt. that is, from the part of the discourse that seems less commonly known. we argue that non-verbal in many cases exerts a strong influence over the production and quality of speech. as can be drawn from the relevant discourse, l2 development can be triggered by three important non-verbal factors, namely perception, social surrounding, and interlanguage thinking. the first factor is learners' perception in the mind. there is a logical connection between learners' linguistic insight and their production (pickering 2012), in the sense that improvement in thinking has potential to https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7962 https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/ijolte/article/view/10469 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dat bao, yongde ye ~ 62 ~ bring out improved verbal output. if the mind is well nurtured to rehearse and develop good processing skills, what the mind produces would reflect on the quality of speech. this internal-external transfer may work effectively with content and linguistic structures rather than in physical and motor performance. for example, it may not happen strongly in the case of accurate phonological production when learners are constrained by difficulty in articulating certain syllable types (flege, 1981) and pitch level to denote tones (willems, 1982). the second factor is comfort with the social surrounding where learning takes place, which plays a role in how well one learns and develops language competence. a study by hansen (2006) demonstrates that language learners develop l2 proficiency best when they feel contented rather than restless, and that social constraints have a damaging effect on their language development. this understanding suggests that learners who are forced to behave in ways they feel uncomfortable are likely to make slow l2 learning progress as their learning mechanism does not operate naturally. the third factor is the ability to use interlanguage, that is to say, employing useful features of the mother tongue to improve l2 communication. the mother tongue, which operates in ways inaudible to other interlocutors, may generate resources to process new information in the target language, which means that what learners have in their l1 system as a reasoning device can be used to process information in the target language. making learners frequently speak out in the target language without allowing this interlanguage processing is to demand l2 production too early and this may take away learners' opportunity for enhancing their learning repertoire. we would like to emphasise the need to connect tasks with silence rather than with talk alone. understanding silence with connection to task design is important because, as stickler stickler, batstone, duensing, & heins (2007) explain, task design has a strong influence on the amount of speaking or nonspeaking participation. arguably, the impact of a task can be altered by facilitating or constraining factors in the classroom situation. for instance, allowing time for rehearsal is a supporting factor that would pave the way for more open discussion (yashima, ikeda, & nakahira, 2013). scholars such as king (2013b); svalberg & askham (2013), yashima, ikeda & nakahira (2013), among others, based on empirical research have recognised task design and group dynamics as influential factors over how much students remain silent. for example, tasks might generate silence due to learning difficulty (svalberg, a. & askham, j., 2013). in many cases, even when tasks are developed with a spoken focus in mind, classroom situations might change its nature. for example, it might be difficulty for a class to share thoughts when students do not know each other well enough (yashima, ikeda & nakahira, 2013) or when peers already know information about each other and there is no need to find out anymore (carless, 2004); and such silent response might produce a less desirable effect on task aim and l2 development (king, 2013b). 2. research design and method this article reports a research study that follows up on a previous study to expand knowledge and understanding about the dynamics of learner speech and silence in task performance. the previous project was a qualitative, phenomenological study in which bao (2020) interviewed 10 east-asian participants about how they responded to classroom tasks through the use of both silence and talk, with analysis related to when silence and talk occur respectively. the present discussion responds to the appeal for further knowledge, beyond east-asian students, about the use of speech and silence in tasks. through a dat bao, yongde ye ~ 63 ~ questionnaire, it investigates the perception of 260 learners of english, including 191 from indonesia and 69 from the philippines. the questionnaire includes 12 task-type items each of which offers four options, namely silence, talk, silence then talk, talk then silence. the main question is: how would you respond to the given tasks? the task types are adopted from a research study by bao (2020) in which he collated the list from the literature, elt course materials, his own teaching experience. below is the list of task types for learners to express their own responses: 1. fluency tasks – which involve everyday topics such as hobbies, families, hello, planning aa trip, etc. 2. rehearsal activity – preparing a verbal report, working with a team towards an oral presentation, comparing ideas and viewpoints 3. exploratory tasks which involve some planning or methods (ex. you and friends are going to live on a desert island for a month: wat are things to bring with you) 4. communication and feedback tasks which involve mutual support and collaboration (such as producing a poster, a video clip, or a summary of a text) 5. collaborative projects such as writing a summary, making a movie, a poster, or joining a trip; game-like tasks which encourage teamwork, competition, and enjoyment 6. independent tasks – such as reading and answering questions in writing, making a summary of a story, etc. 7. pre-tasks or preparations – ex. gathering information from the internet, inviting personal reflection on experiences 8. post tasks/follow-up tasks – making personal comments, sharing further thoughts, looking for implications (ex. who is your favourite character? which country would you like to migrate to?) 9. deductive tasks – ex. form-focused exercises, analytical work, mind-challenging issues, building a framework, constructing logic, identifying gaps, evaluating a policy, etc. 10. discovery tasks/inductive tasks – ex. finding a method, noticing or generating rules, developing solutions. 11. creative/problem-solving tasks – discussing choices, problems, preferences, attitudes, viewpoints, looking for a solution to a challenging scenario, playing with imagination, writing a poem, constructing a story, building a model. 12. mixed type – group reports, movie or book discussion, forum discussion, excursion, gallery or museum visit. in responding to each task, each participant has a choice from these four options: talking spontaneously (t), keeping quietly and think much of the time (s), or use both silence and talk during the activity, whether you are silent first and then (st) or talk first and then silent (ts). after considering their own learning behaviour, participants then noted down their very brief response next to each activity type by using the above initials (s, t, st, or ts). overall, the present study is a replication of a study by bao (2020) whose findings show three task categories as will be presented in the next section. the three categories include classroom tasks that trigger silent processing, classroom tasks that elicit verbalisation, classroom tasks that involve both silence and talk. what we wish to find out in our project is whether the outcome of the study would be the same or dat bao, yongde ye ~ 64 ~ different if we implement exactly the same research design on two new populations of participants. while bao’s study (2020) investigate the perception of 10 international students of east-asian background in an australian university, this project examines the perception of 260 learners of english from indonesia and the philippines (191 and 69 participants respectively). we feel that ours is an exciting exploration because it would illuminate on whether task types can be fixed in generating similar responses from learners no matter where they come from, or whether learners would respond differently depending on their backgrounds and experiences. by looking for the answer, we would be able to decide whether it is possible or impossible to measure the nature of tasks through learner response. before we present data and discuss findings from our project, we would like to present the finding from bao’s (2020) study. this is important because later, we will need to refer back to these findings for a comparative angle, which is the main reason why we conduct this project. today there is an increased tendency for many journal articles to be processed from a larger academic project such as a master’s thesis or a phd dissertation. when this is the case, readers might need to be informed of where the article positions in the project and which part is taken out from the whole structure. to avoid confusion and to assist reading comfort, we would like to clarify that this article is an independent project on its own and does not come from a thesis. this study is originally designed by the first author and the process of data analysis were conducted by both authors. the result of our study is published for the first time in this journal and not elsewhere. to provide readers with a clear background of our research, we would like to present the findings from the previous study which we follow up as a way of developing new knowledge and expanding the field. 2.1. main findings from bao’s (2020) study classroom tasks that trigger silent processing four types of tasks that facilitate the silent learning mode are independent tasks (which allow students to work individually without much exchange of ideas, such as reading and writing work), pre-tasks or preparations (which involve gathering of information from the internet, reflecting on one’s own experiences, making choices based on preferences, and noting downs comments), deductive tasks (which involve written responses to form-focused language exercises), and discovery or inductive tasks (which require observing and thinking to draw on rules, functions, and methods). these types will be coded in blue in all the tables presented in this article. some common features among the above tasks include offering personal space and wait time, not requiring peer interaction, challenging the mind, inviting personal reflection, asking for a written response, and organising cognitive processing of rules or methods. such instructions encourage students to work alone and produce output such as a written summary, an idea, an account of experience, and solutions to problems. as on learner reveals: ‘tasks with thoughtful, complex, and demanding content will keep me in quiet thinking; those that require formal presentation in front of the class also prompt me to prepare my ideas in silence’. dat bao, yongde ye ~ 65 ~ classroom tasks that elicit verbalisation five task types that require more talk include fluency tasks (which involve spontaneous responses for verbal skills development), rehearsal tasks (such as preparing a verbal report, working with a team towards an oral presentation, comparing ideas and viewpoints) exploratory tasks (which involve peer discussion), communication and feedback tasks (which involves mutual support), collaborative projects (such as producing a poster, a video clip, or a summary, post-tasks (which follow up a main task for sharing further thoughts). these types will be coded in pink in all the tables presented in this article. the common characteristic of these activities is that they involve collaborating with classmates rather than functioning alone, with clear emphasis on fluency, rehearsal, communication, collaboration, and sharing. they prompt talk by requiring quick, spontaneous answers or reactions, which focus on the process rather than outcome and are often not of a cognitively demanding type. as several participants in this study elaborate, tasks that go well with their knowledge and experience will give them the confidence to speak out more. tasks of an informal nature that requires no right or wrong answer also make them feel relaxed enough to participate. classroom tasks that involve both silence and talk mixed-typed tasks that involve both modes of response often contain various layers or components, which require alternation between silence and talk. for example, a rehearsal activity for oral presentation will require silent work to be followed by speech. a problem-solving task might demand some thinking time before good ideas can be shared with peers. tasks that invite an exchange of attitudes, viewpoints, preferences, and experiences also prompt students to talk to one another. other group-based activities and team projects, such as making a movie, a poster, or joining a trip, also cannot take place without consulting partners. compared with activities that require an immediate response, these types demand team cooperation and mutual feedback, as well as involving extended durations of time and multiple steps to be completed. they are of multi-tasking nature due to the focus on both the process and the outcome in students’ performance. these types will be coded in green in all the tables presented in this article. 2.2. participant profiles this section now outlines the participants of our current project. although all participants are language learners, many of them are also school and university teachers, office workers, business people, researchers, students, and freelancers in between jobs. they are from indonesia and the philippines. being mature adult learners, they were invited to stay in the shoes of language learners to express how they would respond to classroom tasks. the reason for including teachers in this project is because we would like to utilise their classroom experience and educational maturity to make judgement on learning behaviour. we believe that all language teachers, without exception, have been language learners themselves. for this reason, their thinking can switch from a teacher view to a learner perspective, and when they do that, ideas can be enriched with classroom observation and learning experience. the participants’ ages range from 18 to 35 years old, which is the time when many students learn about education and teaching (18 – 25) and serve as teachers in their first couple of years (26 – 35). dat bao, yongde ye ~ 66 ~ moreover, in both contexts, there are approximately one-fifth of participants that are considered to have served in education for at least ten years (36 – 45) and around one-tenth of them have served at least more than 20 years in general (over 45). this could mean more voices echo from the younger educators or preservice learners, whose responses and opinions may impact greatly on the results, causing mild tendency towards them and gently overshadowing the perspectives from more experienced instructors. 3. findings and discussion: comparison among three participant groups this section discusses the similarities and differences in learner responses from the three groups of participants, namely 10 participants in australia, 191 participants in indonesia, and 69 participants in the philippines. findings from the first group were already reported in a previous research study (bao, 2020), while findings from the second and third groups are now presented in this study. the purpose of this comparison, again, is to see the extent to which the findings in bao’s (2020) study might have broader generalisability beyond its own participants and context. we approached this data analysis with a pragmatic analytical hypothesis. suppose the responses from the participants in this project prove to be too mutually too different, we would argue that the outcome of the previous study only applied to that case study and its significance is confined within that population of east-asian participants. on the contrary, if we find striking similarities across the three groups, we would take this to suggest that the findings in the previous project indeed has a wider significance beyond a case study. in this case, the choice of task types would elicit predictable responses from various learners despite various contexts. we believe that the outcome of our study will illuminate the extent to which task design can actually foresees students’ verbal and less verbal learning behaviour, that is, whether prediction should be practised when teachers design task. in case we fail to find evidence that can support the need to anticipate learner behaviour, we can then argue that learner decision to speak or remain silent is up to the learners themselves and task choices would be powerless in eliciting speech or requiring silence. below are data presentation and discussion fort each group. table 1. data from 191 participants from indonesia no task types silence % talk % silence and talk % talk and silence % 1 fluency tasks 29.3 39.2 27.2 4.2 2 rehearsal activity 39.7 18.3 35.6 6.3 3 exploratory task 33.0 27.7 30.9 8.4 4 communication & feedback tasks 32.5 19.9 39.8 7.9 5 collaborative projects 30.9 20.9 37.7 10.5 6 independent tasks 45.0 18.8 30.4 5.8 7 pre-task/follow-up tasks 43.5 18.8 29.8 7.9 8 deducative tasks 35.6 28.8 27.7 7.9 9 discovery tasks 39.8 18.8 34.6 6.8 10 discovery tasks/inductive tasks 39.3 14.7 38.2 7.9 11 creative/problem-solving tasks 31.4 20.9 41.4 5.2 12 mixed type 28.3 27.2 33.5 11.0 dat bao, yongde ye ~ 67 ~ among the twelve task types, it is notable that more participants from indonesia prefer remaining silent, even when it comes to tasks that usually elicit verbal contributions such as exploratory tasks and followup tasks. furthermore, the second favourable selection of task response is the mode of silence and talk, which is induced by tasks that manifest compatibilities with participants’ preferences. on top of that, pure talking response seldom takes place unless it is fluency tasks, and there is no apparent inclination towards talk and silence response. from the variation throughout the responses and tasks, it is assumed that many indonesian students tend to prioritise silence in response to classroom tasks. even though some of those tasks require verbal interactions with peers such as exploratory tasks and collaborative tasks, many of them would maintain their absence of sound for some reason before eventually speaking up. this phenomenon may date back to their classroom culture as well as the individualities of participants influenced by the sociocultural setting. talking and silence response lacks prevalence in students probably due to the lack of reflection process after discussions, besides their priorities with silence. this could mean the pedagogical choices teachers made may have neglected reflective learning, or that students manifest their unwillingness or unawareness of reflecting on knowledge and/or themselves in learning. table 2. data from 69 participants from the philippines no task types silence % talk % silence and talk % talk and silence % 1 fluency tasks 20.3 14.1 33.3 7.2 2 rehearsal activity 27.5 15.9 43.5 13.0 3 exploratory task 20.3 17.4 50.7 11.6 4 communication & feedback tasks 29.0 13.0 46.4 11.6 5 collaborative projects 17.4 21.7 40.6 20.3 6 independent tasks 44.9 14.5 34.8 5.8 7 pre-task/follow-up tasks 37.7 17.4 37.7 7.2 8 deducative tasks 21.7 18.8 44.9 14.5 9 discovery tasks 29.0 21.7 40.6 8.7 10 discovery tasks/inductive tasks 37.7 11.6 39.1 11.6 11 creative/problem-solving tasks 31.9 13.0 43.5 11.6 12 mixed type 20.3 11.6 50.7 17.4 by comparison, in the filipino context, students prefer silence and talk response over unmixed response with silence, along with their preference of responding to independent tasks and pre-tasks with silence, which makes perfect sense in this case. however, in highly interactive tasks such as fluency tasks and communication and feedback tasks, students still favour silence in the beginning. moreover, single-mode with oral contribution and its combination with silence shares fair amount of less partiality. therefore, it is assumed that students tend to spend some time thinking and/or processing given information before speaking up. this could mean filipino students considerably value their face fearing making mistakes, classroom culture in the philippines lay emphasis on accuracy and rigour, the sociocultural setting highlights silence as a form of respect and morality, or the teachers in filipino contexts are considered as overpowering, intimidating or somewhat neglectable with no force to be respected. dat bao, yongde ye ~ 68 ~ table 3. data from 10 international students from australia (bao, 2020) no task types silence % talk % silence and talk % talk and silence % 1 fluency tasks 0.0 70.0 0.0 20.0 2 rehearsal activity 0.0 40.0 10.0 40.0 3 exploratory task 10.0 70.0 0.0 20.0 4 communication & feedback tasks 0.0 80.0 0.0 20.0 5 collaborative projects 10.0 70.0 0.0 10.0 6 independent tasks 80.0 10.0 0.0 10.0 7 pre-task/follow-up tasks 80.0 10.0 0.0 0.0 8 deducative tasks 20.0 50.0 10.0 10.0 9 discovery tasks 60.0 20.0 0.0 10.0 10 discovery tasks/inductive tasks 60.0 10.0 0.0 20.0 11 creative/problem-solving tasks 20.0 20.0 10.0 50.0 12 mixed type 0.0 20.0 10.0 40.0 compared to indonesian and filipino students who learn over silence when it comes to classroom tasks, the international students in australia have a clear preference with single learning mode depending on the circumstances. basically, when the task requires thinking, collecting information or reflecting upon what they learn, they tend to keep quiet; when the task is associated with interactive segments, they tend to speak up and contribute to the group of study. additionally, it is also notable that they seldom implement silence and talk response and instead always talk in the first place. thus, apart from their linguistic confidence and sophisticated acculturation that allow them to speak up at any time, exterior factors may also result in the large amount of their verbal contributions in classroom learning, such as the comparatively ‘lay’ classroom culture in australia that emphasise ideas and creativity in lieu of rules and order, the smaller class size so that more voices would be valued, the higher tuition fees and the heavier life expenses that stimulate their motivation to make ‘sacrifices’ pay off, or fierce competition in the labour market as well as in higher academic pursuit that drive them to contribute more so as to benefit the most from classroom learning. table 4. comparing the three groups’ responses to one task type: fluency task number of participants context silence % talk % silence and talk % talk and silence % 10 australia 0.0 70.0 0.0 20.0 191 indonesia 29.3 39.2 27.2 4.2 69 philippines 20.3 14.1 33.3 7.2 international students in australia respond to fluency tasks with more verbal participation (70%) while the indonesian and filipino participants obviously consider some thinking time (29.3% and 20.3% respectively). this difference in behaviour makes sense considering if we think about participants’ context and experience. since the former group have spent two to eight years in australia where they use english on an everyday basis, most have developed both fluency and confidence to some extent. dat bao, yongde ye ~ 69 ~ it is also noticed that the decision of the latter two groups are more similar to each other (29.3% and 20.3%) than the former group, which seems more or less understandable as they both have less exposure to an authentic english-speaking environment. what does not seem explainable is that compared to indonesian participants, the filipino need slightly more reflection time and seem to talk less in response to fluency tasks. however, the filipino silence does not simply mean that they do not engage in talk at all; instead this group chooses to alternate between talk and silence (7.2%). in a word, the comparison within this category shows a strong pattern toward spontaneous talk among group members with extended experience and exposure in an english-speaking country; while the distribution of verbal and non-verbal responses to this task type among the other two groups remain fairly mixed, that is, both verbal and less verbal modes would be employed. 3.1. how this project expands knowledge about learner response to tasks what we draw from these cases of investigation only has a relative illuminative value in interpretation and conclusion as one of the first dialogues in this theme. based on the above data analysis, we would like to make a few comments with regard to how the choice of task design might predict learning behaviour. exposure to english as a factor in the degree of verbal response the more learners are exposed to an english communication environment, the more spontaneous they would be in verbal contribution during communication activities. by comparison of the data in pink across the three tables, there is a strong tendency among international students in australia to speak out in response to fluency tasks and the like, such as rehearsal, communication, and peer collaboration. on the contrary, the other two groups seem much more cautious about speaking: they prefer to keep silent and delay in participation. we do not have evidence with regard to why these groups do not spontaneously participate as in the case of the international group. the only data we have is the difference in participant profiles, which show contexts. with years of english communication on an everyday basis, the australian group seems to feel comfortable with quick veal participation (10% stay silent and up to 80% choose to talk). the indonesian participants, who are based in the country where english exposure is minimal, exhibit the most silent learning behaviour toward fluency tasks (nearly 40% stay silent), while the filipinos, who are exposed to both english and the mother tongue, seem to be less silent but only remain cautious in participating too soon (nearly 30% stay silent). requirement of high-quality content as a factor in the degree of thought processing comparison of the data in blue across the three tables shows that data in international students use more silence in idea processing. with tasks that require focus on meaning and high-quality ideas, such as discovery and preparations, the international group would prioritise the need to process information in silence. the other two groups seem quite similar, that is, more diverse, in their decision to speak and remain silent. among these participants, there is no outstanding patterns as far as any clear prioritisation toward silent or speech is concern. instead, different individuals to opt for very different combination dat bao, yongde ye ~ 70 ~ between the two modes, as we can see in the distribution of percentage across all columns. again, we do not have sufficient data evidence to explain why this is the case. we can only, based on reasoning and observation, argue that since academic study in english at an australian university is stressful and demanding in both timing and outcome, when it comes to produce content for presentations, students need a great deal of processing time to be able to produce high-quality ideas, in many cases affecting assessment outcome. in the meanwhile, english learning in indonesia and the philippines may be subject to less judgement toward content or meaning of speech but more emphasis on the process of communication. drawn from the above understanding, learners are not independent decision makers but factors such as history of l2 exposure and academic learning requirement would be influential factors in how students cope with tasks. an effective task-designer might like to develop this awareness and consider these elements when introducing classroom activities. most importantly, there is the need to spell out expectations so that students would know how to handle a task. in particular, task developers might consider providing explicit suggestions for silent processing, verbal responses, or self-talk when necessary. one example provided by wilkinson & olliver-gray (2006) is an instruction that guides students to write down how they feel during exam time and then compare their responses with peers. stickler, batstone, duensing & heins (2007) suggest that task designers can specify which part of a task does not involve speaking; and can allocate specific moments when students are expected to reflect or silently type their thoughts. such instructions show the evidence that materials developers can consider including learning strategies to assist students in coping with the learning process. the challenge of task development is that silence, after all, might not be equally favoured by all members in a learning community depending on who shares the learning environment and its broader social norms. it is therefore important for teachers to handle such diverse preferences, with clear expectations when conducting multiple sub-tasks that allow various learning modes to come into play. besides, it is important to note learner differences. in many cases different learners would naturally respond diversely the same tasks. for example, classroom tasks sometimes exhibit a stimulating quality that inspires students’ thinking. at other times, they might have a routine and humdrum characteristic. when learners are inspired, some mind find themselves spending more time in silent thinking; while others may prefer to speak out more with others. arguably, learners’ silent processing might occur quietly or at times it might develop into the occasional verbal articulation. for example, some reflective students prefer to quietly work on a written task, while other reflective counterparts might switch learning modes and share their thought with peers, especially when the task seems to require some exchange of ideas. some learners experience such moments of adjusting their participation mode. empirical research has found that peer influence is a factor which governs how much a learner is willing to participate in classroom discussion (see, for example, bao, 2014). however, findings from various case studies are often so diverse that they show no consistent formula with regards to what personality leads to talk and silence respectively. you might wish to reflect on your individual inclination in working with peers. to some extent, learners’ decision to speak out or to remain quite during a discussion might have to do with peers’ behaviour. dat bao, yongde ye ~ 71 ~ 4. concluding remarks the impact of tasks on silence and verbalisation is an extremely complex area. it would be impossible to come up with absolute rules for tasks to dictate the same responsive behaviour in all kinds of learners across all kinds of context. in many cases, it is teachers’ flexibility, supportive attitudes, and innovative pedagogical strategies that would improve task design by allowing both mental and verbal rehearsal to reach its optimum. although many communicative tasks might expect learners to switch to an impulsive learning mode, during the actual classroom process, some learners might choose to handle them in a more reflective manner. this is because some might need more self-monitoring time than others before verbal exchange can take place. when this happens, the quality of classroom tasks should not be measured by how much speaking occurs but by the depth of learner engagement. silence as mental rehearsal provides conditions for self-directed learning which may be either connected to or independent from the teaching. pedagogy founded on a profound understanding of productive silence can liberate learners from the constraint of having to produce impulsive, low-quality participation. silence needs to be managed with acute awareness of why, how, when and how long a student needs it to support their own learning and when the verbal mode of learning should take over. obligatory talk can be frustrating when learners are required to publicise their half-baked thoughts when they are unprepared to do so. silence training should be organised to include reflectivity, concentration, outcome and avoidance of idle, unproductive moments–the same way as talk that needs to be directed to enhance learning rather than become mere social time in the classroom. the structure of learning might fundamentally change when this knowledge is applied so that learners can employ both silence and talk as learning tools in conscious, informed ways. references bao, d. (2014). understanding silence and reticence: ways of participating in second language acquisition. london: bloomsbury. bao, d. (2020). silence, talk, and in-betweens: east-asian students’ responses to tasks. in jim king & seiko harumi (eds.). east-asian perspectives on silence. bristol, uk: multilingual matters, pp. 17-36. flege, j. e. (1981), ‘the phonological basis of foreign accent’, tesol quarterly, 15, 443–55. gilmore, p. (1985) silence and sulking: emotional displays in the classroom. in d. tannen and m. savilletroike (eds.) perspectives on silence (pp. 139-162). norwood, nj: ablex. hansen, j. g. (2006), acquiring a non-native phonology: linguistic constraints and social barriers. london: continuum. king, j. (2013b). classroom silence and learner-context interplay. in king j. (ed.) the dynamic interplay between context and the language learner. new york: palgrave macmillan. pickering, l. (2012), ‘second language speech production’, in the routledge handbook of second language acquisition. london and new york: routledge, pp. 335–48. stickler, u., batstone, c., duensing, a., & heins, b. (2007). distant classmates: speech silence in online and telephone language tutorials. european journal of open, distance and e-learning, 10(2). retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/?p=archives&year=2007&halfyear=2&..&article=277 svalberg, a. & askham, j., (2013). a dynamic perspective on student language teachers’ different learning http://www.eurodl.org/?p=archives&year=2007&halfyear=2&..&article=277 dat bao, yongde ye ~ 72 ~ pathways in a collaborative context. in king, j. (2013) classroom silence and learner-context interplay. in king j. (ed.) the dynamic interplay between context and the language learner. new york: palgrave macmillan, 172-193. vassilopoulos, s., and konstantinidis, g. (2012) teacher use of silence in elementary education. journal of teaching and learning 8 (1), 91-105. wilkinson, l., and olliver-gray, y. (2006) the significance of silence: differences in meaning, learning styles, and teaching strategies in cross-cultural settings. psychologia 49 (2), 74-88. willems, n. (1982), english intonation from a dutch point of view. dordrecht/ cinnaminson, nj: foris. yashima, t., ikeda, m. & nakahira, s., (2013). talk and silence in an efl classroom: interplay of learners and context. in king, j. (2013) classroom silence and learner-context interplay. in king j. (ed.) the dynamic interplay between context and the language learner. new york: palgrave macmillan, 104–126. journal homepage: https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte © 2022 the author submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if accepted for publication, copyright of the article shall be assigned to international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) and magister program of english education department, universitas jambi as publisher of the journal. copyright encompasses rights to reproduce and deliver the article in all form and media, including reprints, photographs, microfilms, and any other similar reproductions, as well as translations. content lists available at www.doaj.org → → → https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte http://www.doaj.org/ https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v6i2.20923 24 y. wu & x. kang the control-value theory (cvt) was concerned with the antecedents and effects of achievement emotions ( pekrun, 2006). on the one hand, the cvt posits that control and value appraisals are the two proximal antecedents for the generation of achievement emotions (burić, 2015; tze et al., 2022). on the other hand, the cvt also postulates that achievement emotions (e.g., academic enjoyment) affect learning strategies, motivation, and self-regulation of learning, which, in turn, would influence a student’s academic achievement (pekrun, 2006; pekrun et al., 2002; putwain et al., 2021). drawing on the cvt, the present study hypothesized that academic enjoyment is related to efl achievement via the mediators such as organizational strategy and behavioral engagement. academic enjoyment refers to the sense of pleasure that a student experience when studying a particular subject, which can also be used to refer to the degree to which a student like the subject they are studying (boliver & capsada-munsech, 2021). existing studies verified the domain-specificity of achievement emotions (goetz, pekrun, et al., 2006), indicating that students may experience different emotions in different subjects (e.g., efl, mathematics, and science). achievement emotions are suggested to be construed in a domain-specific way (dewaele & li, 2022). accordingly, the present study defines academic enjoyment as the sense of pleasure experienced in the efl learning process. academic enjoyment positively affects efl achievement (dewaele & alfawzan, 2018; dewaele & macintyre, 2014; kang & wu, 2022; li et al., 2020). for example, li et al. (2020) documented that academic enjoyment could positively affect efl in a sample of 1,307 chinese high school students. also, the cvt assumes that positive achievement emotions (e.g., academic enjoyment) have a positive influence on academic achievement (pekrun, 2006). both the theoretical hypothesis of the cvt and a series of empirical studies suggested that academic enjoyment positively predicts academic performance. however, research on academic enjoyment has just begun to unfold in the efl learning context (dewaele & macintyre, 2014). furthermore, previous studies exploring the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement were mainly conducted on college and high school students, and few studies took secondary school students as the participants. to address these limitations, the present study investigated the correlation between academic enjoyment and efl achievement in a sample of chinese secondary school students. organizational strategy is a kind of cognitive strategy, which refers to the strategy of integrating the internal connection between new knowledge and prior knowledge (mulcahy-ernt & caverly, 2018; pintrich et al., 1991), and thus, forming a new knowledge structure. specifically, organizational strategy concerns the selection, sequencing, outlining, realignment, and summarization of the important learning content (dowson & mcinerney, 2004). among the various learning strategies, griffiths et al. (2014) documented that organizational strategy was the most commonly used learning strategy adopted by efl learners in the confucian-heritage setting. existing studies have explored the positive effects of organizational strategy on academic outcomes (becirovic et al., 2021; donker et al., 2014; habók & magyar, 2018; kang & wu, 2022). for example, becirovic et al. (2021) documented that cognitive strategies were positively correlated with grade point average among high school students. in another study, kang and wu (2022) found that organizational strategy was positively correlated with efl achievement. in addition, the correlation between academic enjoyment and organizational strategy was also verified (goetz, hall, et al., 2006; kang & wu, 2022; king & areepattamannil, 2014). in a sample of 1,147 philippine secondary school students, king and areepattamannil (2014) explored the relationship between achievement emotions and learning strategies and found that positive achievement emotions (e.g., academic enjoyment) were positively correlated with cognitive strategies (e.g., organizational strategy). similarly, kang and wu (2022) found that academic enjoyment was positively correlated with organizational strategy. taken together, the previous correlational studies demonstrate that academic enjoyment might affect organizational strategy, which, in turn, might generate an influence on academic achievement. behavioral engagement refers to students’ positive and active involvement in learning tasks (fredricks et al., 2004). specifically, students with a high level of behavioral engagement might be more actively involved in academic-related activities and demonstrate a strong interest in academic tasks (hospel et al., 2016). similarly, nguyen et al. (2018) 25 y. wu & x. kang summarized the three prominent components of behavioral engagement, those are, good conduct, effort, and participation. unlike the other components of academic engagement (i.e., cognitive and psychological engagements), behavioral engagement was the only construct on which scholars reached a consensus (olivier et al., 2020; reeve & tseng, 2011). the predictive role of behavioral engagement on academic performance has been extensively explored (e.g., fredricks et al., 2004; lee, 2014; olivier et al., 2020). for example, in a study of belgian secondary school students, olivier et al. (2020) investigated the relationship between behavioral engagement and reading competence and found that behavioral engagement was positively correlated with students’ reading achievement. moreover, the correlation between academic enjoyment and behavioral engagement was also corroborated in the school setting (kang & wu, 2022; king & gaerlan, 2014; wang, 2022). for instance, in a study conducted among chinese college efl students, wang (2022) examined the effects of l2 enjoyment and academic motivation on academic engagement and found that enjoyment significantly influences academic engagement. altogether, existing studies demonstrated that behavioral engagement might mediate between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. the correlation between organizational strategy and behavioral engagement was also explored and confirmed in a number of studies (e.g., gettinger & walter, 2012; taghani & razavi, 2021). in addition, previous studies demonstrated that organizational strategy and behavioral engagement mediated the relationship between academic enjoyment and academic achievement, respectively. thus, the present study hypothesized that the chain of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement might also play a mediating role between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. the present study aimed to explore the mediating mechanism between academic enjoyment and efl achievement in the chinese efl context. english is one of the three exam-compulsory subjects (i.e., chinese, mathematics, and english) for chinese secondary school students. in addition to academic development, english is also of critical importance to the career advancement and social mobility of chinese students (cheng, 2008; wu & kang, 2021). thus, exploring the antecedents of efl achievement might have significant implications for improving the quality of efl education. as proposed, theoretically and empirically, organizational strategy, behavioral engagement, and the chain of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement might mediate the relationship between academic enjoyment and achievement. accordingly, this study endeavored to examine the following four hypotheses. h1: academic enjoyment will positively predict efl achievement. h2: organizational strategy mediates the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. h3: behavioral engagement mediates the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. h4: the chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement mediates the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. a cluster sampling method was adopted, and 525 seventh and eighth graders from one secondary school in kunming city, yunnan province, china, participated in the questionnaire survey. in terms of socioeconomic status, most of the students at this school come from middle-class families. if there are missing data in a questionnaire, the questionnaire will no longer be used. in total, 499 valid questionnaires were collected, and the effective rate of questionnaire collection was 95.05%. the ages of the participants ranged from 12 to 15, with an average of 13.64 (sd = 0.612). the participants comprised 266 boys (53.31%) and 233 girls (46.69%). all participants provided signed informed consent before taking part in the questionnaire survey. with the help of english teachers, the questionnaires were completed during one 45-min english class period. before conducting the questionnaire survey, english teachers were trained to ensure that participants’ responses were honest and voluntary. the questionnaire was designed and answered in chinese. to ensure the accuracy of the translated measures, translation-back-translation techniques were adopted to translate all measures from english to chinese (brislin, 1980). five-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used to measure the constructs. a high score means a stronger endorsement of the related measure. 26 y. wu & x. kang academic enjoyment was measured by the five-item scale developed by pekrun et al. (2011). the five-item scale was adapted to measure efl-related academic enjoyment (e.g., “i enjoy my english class”). cronbach’s alpha for efl-related academic enjoyment was 0.864, indicating that the internal consistency reliability of this scale was good. results of confirmatory factory analysis demonstrated that the model fit of the efl-related academic enjoyment scale was good:2 （5） = 13.541, 𝐶𝐹𝐼 = 0.993,𝑇𝐿𝐼 = 0.986,𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸𝐴 = 0.059,𝑆𝑅𝑀𝑅 = 0.020. in sum, the efl-related academic enjoyment scale was reliable and credible in measuring chinese secondary school students’ academic enjoyment of learning english. in this study, academic enjoyment was considered as a latent variable. participants’ organizational strategy in the efl learning context was measured using the five items adapted from the goal orientation and learning strategies survey developed by dowson and mcinerney (2004). an example item is “i study english by organizing my english notes”. the reliability of the organizational strategy scale was good with cronbach’s alpha equaled to 0.896. a good data-model fit was also obtained for the confirmatory factor analysis results were satisfactory: 2(5) = 14.588, 𝐶𝐹𝐼 = 0.993,𝑇𝐿𝐼 = 0.987,𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸𝐴 = 0.062, 𝑆𝑅𝑀𝑅 = 0.015. sem analysis also treated the organizational strategy measure as a latent variable. behavioral engagement was assessed by the four-item scale adapted from the engagement vs. dissatisfaction with learning questionnaire that developed by (skinner et al., 2009). a representative item on the behavioral engagement scale was “i try hard to do well in english”. cronbach’s alpha of the behavioral engagement scale was .841, indicating that the internal consistency reliability of this scale was good. in addition, confirmatory factor analysis results demonstrated that the model fit of this scale was satisfactory: 2（2） = 8.582, 𝐶𝐹𝐼 = 0.992,𝑇𝐿𝐼 = 0.975,𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸𝐴 = 0.081,𝑆𝑅𝑀𝑅 = 0.015. the behavioral engagement construct was also modelled as a latent variable in the present study. english scores on the final exam were used to represent the efl achievement of the participants. the english scores ranged from 0 to 120, with higher scores meaning higher levels of efl achievement. the english test papers were uniformly developed by the education bureau of kunming city and were centrally graded by the selected secondary school english teachers. in this study, efl achievement was treated as an observable variable. data were analyzed using spss version 22.0 and mplus 8.3 (muthén & muthén, 2017). specifically, data analysis was performed in two stages. first, a sequence of confirmatory factor analyses was carried out to evaluate the reliability and validity of the three latent variables mentioned above (e.g., academic enjoyment, organizational strategy, and behavioral engagement). second, path coefficients of direct and indirect effects of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement between academic enjoyment and efl achievement were examined by conducting confirmatory factor analyses (cfas). precisely, the mediating effects of organizational strategy, behavioral engagement, and chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement were assessed by employing bootstrapping technique with 5000 bootstrap resamples. if zero does not exist in the 95% bias-corrected and accelerated confidence intervals (bca 95% ci), it can be concluded that the indirect effect is significant (preacher & hayes, 2008). harman’s single-factor test was carried out in this study to exclude the possible measurement errors caused by common method bias (podsakoff et al., 2003). results of single-factor cfa were 2/𝑑𝑓 = 11.263,𝐶𝐹𝐼 = 0.805,𝑇𝐿𝐼 = 0.770,𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸𝐴 = 0.143,𝑆𝑅𝑀𝑅 = 0.073, showing that the model fit was not good. thus, it could be deduced that there was no common method bias in the present study. 27 y. wu & x. kang results of descriptive statistics and correlations among academic enjoyment, organizational strategy, behavioral engagement, and efl achievement were demonstrated in table 1. the results showed that academic enjoyment was positively correlated with organizational strategy, behavioral engagement, and efl achievement. besides, the correlations between organizational strategy and behavioral engagement, and efl achievement were significant. also, the positive correlation between behavioral engagement and efl achievement was confirmed. as shown in table 1, academic enjoyment was positively correlated with efl achievement, indicating that hypothesis 1 was supported. table 1. descriptive statistics and correlational coefficients of the study variables academic enjoyment organizational strategy behavioral engagement efl achievement academic enjoyment organizational strategy 0.591** behavioral engagement 0.658** 0.676** efl achievement 0.333** 0.294** 0.422** mean 3.757 2.883 2.965 90.644 sd 0.714 0.589 0.547 22.010 note. **𝑝 < 0.01. the proposed hypotheses (h1 to h4) were assessed by carrying out latent variable sem. initially, a number of fit indices of the proposed model (see figure 1) were evaluated. results showed that the proposed model had appropriate fit indices, with 2(85) = 189.809, 𝐶𝐹𝐼 = 0.975,𝑇𝐿𝐼 = 0.969,𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸𝐴 = 0.050,𝑆𝑅𝑀𝑅 = 0.040. figure 1 serial mediating model between academic enjoyment and efl achievement note. ***p < .001, ns denote non-significant. standardized path coefficients and standard error are presented. as shown in figure 1, all path coefficients expected for the organizational strategy and academic enjoyment to efl achievement were significant. this study adopted the point estimate and the bca 95% cis to examine the mediation model. specifically, the point estimates of the mediation effect in path one (academic enjoyment→behavioral engagement→efl achievement) were 0.198, and the bca 95% cis of this path were [0.105, 0.319], suggesting that 28 y. wu & x. kang behavioral engagement had a significant effect between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. this finding supported h1. the point estimates of the indrect effect in path two (academic enjoyment→organizational strategy→behavioral engagement→ efl achievement) were 0.135, and the bca 95% cis of this path were [0.073, 0.229], indicating that the chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement mediated the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. thus, h4 was supported. the point estimate for the mediation effect for path three (academic enjoyment→organizatinal strategy→efl achievement) was -0.042, and the bca 95% cis of this path were [-0.133, 0.049], showing that the mediating effect of organizational strategy between academic enjoyment and efl achievement was not significant because zero was contained. this finding meant that h2 was not supported. as shown in table 2, the bca 95% cis of the direct effect between academic enjoyment and efl achievement were [0.087, 0.232], indicating that the direct effect was not significant. the nonsignificant direct effect between academic enjoyment and efl achievement meant that organizational strategy and behavioral engagement served a complete mediating role between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. the total indirect effect was 0.291, and the total effect was 0.370, and thus, the total mediating effect size equaled to 78.65% for pm (mediating effect divided by the total effect) = 0.291/0.370 = 0.786. particularly, behavioral engagement accounted for 53.5% of the total mediation effect, while the chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement took up 36.5% of the total mediation effect. table 2. mediating effects of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement in the relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement path point estimate parameters bootstrap 5000 times 95% ci bias-corrected s.e. est./s.e. lower upper enjoyment→organizational strategy → achievement -0.042 0.047 -0.898 -0.133 0.049 enjoyment→engagement→achievement 0.198 0.054 3.659 0.105 0.319 enjoyment→organizational strategy→engagement→achievement 0.135 0.038 3.573 0.073 0.229 total indirect 0.291 0.060 4.865 0.176 0.416 direct effect 0.079 0.080 0.983 -0.087 0.232 total effect 0.370 0.047 7.900 0.275 0.459 note. bca 95% cis not containing zero are demonstrated in bold. drawing upon the cvt, a growing number of studies have been conducted concerning achievement emotions in the efl contexts (e.g., dewaele & li, 2022; kang & wu, 2022; westphal et al., 2018). the existing studies have explored the correlations between achievement emotions (e.g., academic enjoyment) and efl-related outcomes (e.g., academic engagement, learning motivation, and academic achievement). however, the existing research on the mediating mechanism between academic enjoyment and academic achievement was relatively limited. additionally, previous studies on academic enjoyment and achievement have primarily been conducted in high school and college groups, and secondary school students were rarely explored. to fill the gaps, the present study explored the mediating mechanism between academic enjoyment and efl achievement in a sample of chinese secondary school students. results of correlation analysis showed that academic enjoyment was positively correlated with efl achievement, indicating that h1 was supported. this finding is consistent with previous studies investigating the relationship between academic enjoyment and academic outcomes (e.g., dewaele & alfawzan, 2018; dewaele & macintyre, 2014). the contribution of this finding to literature is twofold. first, the present study, conducted in the context of confucian heritage culture, provides empirical evidence for the correlation between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. second, this finding validated the theoretical hypothesis of the cvt that achievement emotions could affect academic achievement (pekrun, 2006). results of the mediation analysis showed that the mediating effect of organizational strategy between academic enjoyment and efl achievement was insignificant, suggesting that h2 was not supported. this finding was inconsistent 29 y. wu & x. kang with existing studies (e.g., ahmed et al., 2013; kang & wu, 2022). there are two possible reasons why this finding is inconsistent with previous research. first, the effect of organizational strategy on academic achievement probably be indirect. in other words, the organizational strategy might affect academic achievement through mediators such as academic self-efficacy (yip, 2012), and student engagement (jusuf et al., 2019). second, this study is a chain mediation study exploring the mediation mechanism between academic enjoyment and efl achievement, and thus, the specific mediation effect of path three (academic enjoyment→organizatinal strategy→efl achievement) might be influenced by the indirect effects of other paths (hayes, 2009). results of sem analyses also indicated that behavioral engagement plays a mediating role between academic enjoyment and efl achievement, showing that h3 was supported. this finding is in line with existing studies that achievement emotions might act upon academic achievement through academic engagement (king & gaerlan, 2014; pekrun, 2006). on the one hand, this finding verified the theoretical assumptions of the cvt that achievement emotions would affect academic achievement via the mediators such as learning motivation and academic engagement (pekrun, 2006). on the other hand, the mediation mechanism between academic enjoyment and academic achievement was explored in the chinese efl context, contributing to a better understanding of how academic enjoyment acts on efl achievement. specifically, the mediation effect of behavioral engagement was 53.5%, indicating that academic enjoyment mainly affects efl achievement via behavioral engagement. the chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement also played a mediating role between academic enjoyment and efl achievement, indicating that h4 was supported. the mediation effect of this chain path (academic enjoyment→organizational strategy→behavioral engagement→ efl achievement) was 36.5%, showing that academic enjoyment could also positively affect efl achievement by affecting organizational strategy and behavioral engagement. this finding shed new light on how academic enjoyment affected efl performance. specifically, efl students with a high level of academic enjoyment are more inclined to adopt an organizational strategy that will promote their involvement and initiative in learning efl and then enhance their efl achievement. with the continuous deepening of the concepts and applications of positive psychology in the field of foreign language education, identifying the consequences of academic enjoyment and the mediation mechanism between academic enjoyment and efl achievement have both theoretical and practical significance. practically, academic enjoyment could positively affect efl achievement through behavioral engagement or the chain relation of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement, implying that enhancing efl students’ pleasurable emotional experience might be a possible way to improve students’ achievement. specifically, parents’ encouragement and praise (gunderson et al., 2018), english teachers’ adoption of open, extrovert, and agreeable teaching attitudes (ahmadi-azad et al., 2020), and the creation of a mutual-help classroom atmosphere (mohammad hosseini et al., 2022) are the possible routes to enhance students’ academic enjoyment, which, in turn, positively affect efl students’ achievement via the mediators of organizational strategy and behavioral engagement. moreover, these findings elaborated the theoretical hypothesis of the cvt on a domain-specific approach (pekrun, 2006), that is, elucidating the mechanism by which academic enjoyment affects efl achievement. despite the meaningful findings, however, there are three limitations that need to be addressed. first, the crosssectional design of the present study prevents us from comprehensively understanding the relationship and mechanism between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. future studies are recommended to adopt a longitudinal design to reveal the causal relationship between academic enjoyment and efl achievement. second, age, gender, and socioeconomic status differences exist in achievement emotions and academic achievement (erturan & jansen, 2015; pekrun et al., 2017, 2022), suggesting that future studies should control for these variables when exploring the mechanism between academic enjoyment and achievement. thirdly, the conduct of the present study was limited to one secondary school in kunming city, which could not represent the whole picture of chinese secondary school efl learners. thus, future research is encouraged to recruit participants from more secondary schools to guarantee the generalisability of the findings. 30 y. wu & x. kang the present study 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(2012). learning strategies and self-efficacy as predictors of academic performance: a preliminary study. quality in higher education, 18(1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2012.667263 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5048 122 ijolte language use and sustainable development: opportunities and challenges for policy-makers and educators in northeast vietnamese areas ngo ngan ha1, maya khemlani david2, 1. hanoi university of science and technology, vietnam, 2. aei, university of malaya, malaysia. email: ha.ngonganha@hust.edu.vn how to cite this paper: ngo, h., & david, m. (2018). language use and sustainable dev language use and sustainable development: opportunities and challenges for policy-makers and educators in northeast vietnamese areas. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 122-130. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5048 received: may 16, 2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31, 2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract vietnam represents a country with 54 ethnic groups; however, the majority (88%) of the population are of vietnamese heritage. some of the other ethnic groups such as tay, thai, muong, hoa, khmer, and nung have a population of around 1 million each, while the brau, roman, and odu consist only of a hundred people each. living in northern vietnam, close to the chinese border (see figure 1), the tay people speak a language of the central tai language group called though, t'o, tai tho, ngan, phen, thu lao, or pa di. tay remains one of 10 ethnic languages used by 1 million speakers (buoi, 2003). the tày ethnic group has a rich culture of wedding songs, poems, dance, and music and celebrate various festivals. wet rice cultivation, canal digging and grain threshing on wooden racks are part of the tày traditions. their villages situated near the foothills often bear the names of nearby mountains, rivers, or fields. this study discusses the status and role of the tày language in northeast vietnam. it discusses factors, which have affected the habitual use of the tay language, the connection between language shift and development and provides a model for the sustainability and promotion of minority languages. it remains fundamentally imperative to strengthen and to foster positive attitudes of the community towards the tày language. tày’s young people must be enlightened to the reality their tày non-usage could render their mother tongue defunct, which means their history stands to be lost. subject areas educational leadership / language education keywords tay language, vietnam minority languages, northeast vietnam, language education. 1. introduction the vietnam represents a country with 54 ethnic groups; however, the majority (88%) of the population are of vietnamese heritage. some of the other ethnic groups such as tày, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 123 ijolte thai, muong, hoa, khmer, and nung have a population of around 1 million each, while the brau, roman, and odu consist only of a hundred people each. living in northern vietnam, close to the chinese border (see figure 1), the tay people speak a language of the central tai language group called thô, t'o, tai tho, ngan, phen, thu lao, or pa di. tay remains one of 10 ethnic languages used by 1 million speakers (buoi, 2003). the tay ethnic group has a rich culture of wedding songs, poems, dance, and music and celebrate various festivals. wet rice cultivation, canal digging and grain threshing on wooden racks are part of the tày traditions. their villages situated near the foothills often bear the names of nearby mountains, rivers, or fields. this study discusses the status and role of the tày language in northeast vietnam. it discusses factors, which have affected the habitual use of the tày language, the connection between language shift and development and provides a model for the sustainability and promotion of minority languages. 1.1. earlier studies of language shift this s although tày children speak their first words in their mother tongue, their vernacular gradually expands beyond tày as they communicate with family members or villagers. particularly, as they grow up, the children’s exposure to the kinh language results in a high juvenile bilingual rate in northeastern vietnam areas (le ha, p., ha, v. h., & dat, 2014). however, according to the open door (doi moi) policy accelerated the decline in the use of the tày language. due to globalization, tày–vietnamese bilingualism shifted to vietnamese–english bilingualism. following vietnam’s independence from the french in maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 124 ijolte 1945, vietnamese became the national language. since vietnamese reflects the national language, its dominance contributed to its use by the tay community (nguyen, 2012). furthermore, with internationalization english gained prominence. increased external relations posed a critical threat to the tày language (nguyen, 2012) to the point, there has been a change in language use in tày families. moreover, as northeastern vietnam borders five countries where chinese proves the dominant language of trade and commerce and due to greater trade contact with the chinese on the northern border areas, the use of the tày language continues to diminish. according to kosonen (2004), the younger generation prefers to speak vietnamese, english and chinese rather than their mother tongue. 1.2. language policy the government has prioritized education as the key factor towards the long-term development of the tày language, and minority languages in general. several governmental acts prioritize tay language maintenance. the government also maintained ethnic languages in the national curriculum as compulsory components at primary educational levels in bilingual and multilingual areas of the country the constitution of the democratic republic of vietnam states: "at local elementary schools, people of ethnic minorities have the right to learn in their own language" (dorian, 1981, p. xxx) and the primary education law issued on 10/12/1988 explains: "the state creates favorable conditions for people of ethnic minorities to learn their ethnic voice and writings. the vietnamese constitution of 1946 and 1992 states that all minority groups have the right to maintain their mother tongue in their schooling as well as to use their languages to preserve their culture, le ha, p., ha, v. h., & dat, b. (2014). the teaching and learning of ethnic languages shall comply with the regulations of the government". it is clear then that ethnic languages receive the special support of the state of vietnam, which could facilitate tày language preservation. several schools and colleges in the mountainous areas cater to students from ethnic minorities and students from the tày minority and other minority dialects can enter universities with lower scores. thai nguyen university, tay bac university (located in son la), and recently the university of tan trao (located in tuyen quang) accept students from the mountainous areas in north vietnam. however, despite the fact, the government awards privileges to citizens who retain their mother tongue, the tay language is used only in a few domains. maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 125 ijolte 1. method this study administered a written questionnaire to survey the language used by people in three northeastern provinces of vietnam, cao bang, bac kan and lang son. the survey sample included people cross three generations– grandparents (over 50 years old), parents (20-50 years), and children (01-20 years old) (refer table 1) who live in urban areas, in the suburbs, and in remotes areas. the questionnaire included both closed and openended questions. inherent in its design, the survey elicited participants’ opinions, attitude, and language about heritage language maintenance in northeastern vietnam. to ensure clarity and comprehension, the survey comprised simply worded questions in vietnamese. the questionnaire addresses major issues relating to the status and role of the tày language in northeastern vietnam, including intergenerational language transmission as well as attitude towards the tày language and language maintenance the analysis employed descriptive statistical output on the data obtained. refer to table 1 to review the survey sample demographics: table 1. sample characteristics for the tày language survey in northeastern vietnam generation cao bang province bac kan province lang son province 1. g1grandparents (over 50 years old) 148 148 84 2. g2-parents (20-50 years old) 148 149 84 3. g3-children (01-20 years old) 148 149 84 total 444 446 252 3. findings and discussions 3.1. finding tày languageusage/non-usage the study reveals the following details: intergenerational language transmission in the home, the elderly and middle-aged communicate in their mother tongue frequently, but the younger generation often speaks vietnamese. specifically, the latter use approximately 40% tày and approximately 62% vietnamese. in 18.7% of multigenerational families, the initial language of the children is vietnamese, not tày. the children only wanted maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 126 ijolte to know vietnamese and english. thus, the emerging reality is that small families consisting of two generations–young parents and young children; or families consisting of only young spouses habitually use vietnamese and the tày ed language is not heard by the children. it is clear then that the language’s very existence stands at risk if it is not being transmitted to the younger members of the community. the tày language usage in specific domains educational domain from the survey results in pac nam, bac kan, and cao bang, 87% of the respondents expressed a lack of desire to teach or to learn the tày language. social and political domain when celebrating cultural activities, people speak vietnamese. furthermore, in political life in the village, like public meetings vietnamese remains the prominent language. while village meetings use both vietnamese and tày, 68% of the respondents stated they speak tày and 59% said they used vietnamese. as for communication in the marketplace, 64.39% of the respondents reported, they used tày and 49.24% of the respondents said they used vietnamese. although tay is not being used for intergenerational transmission it is still being used by some of the respondents in these domains. religious domain the tày language is used to express spiritual and material values through the generations. only the native tongue can convey the inherent cultural essence encapsulated in such beliefs and values. all the respondents said they used tày for worship. however, they used vietnamese for writing and storytelling. survey of language transmission across generations in the three provinces of cao bang clearly reflected the relegation of tày to the cultural and religious realms. language shift and globalization globalization has diminished tày language salience. as vietnam internationalizes, global languages, like english, continue to gain a prominence. this is due to the widespread use of english since the open-door policy (doi moi) as well as the dominating use of chinese in the borders of neighboring areas in the northeastern region. learning languages, like english and chinese, also hold the promise of a more prosperous life for such language skills prove marketable. with globalization and the increased functionality of vietnamese, tay’s practicality in the vietnamese delta wanes. the affluence of some members of this speech community continues to lead to a language shift. due to urbanization, some tày people have achieved unprecedented prosperity; thus, their demand for consumer goods like modern vehicles has increased. to negotiate the purchase of these luxury items, the transaction requires the ability to verbalize in maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 127 ijolte vietnamese, not in tày. in fact, communication media, like advertising programs, telephone conversations, and television shows use vietnamese. in fact, the vietnamese language dominates the economy, diplomacy, defense, science, education, transportation, etc. meanwhile, the tày language is limited to the cultural and spiritual domains the picture of the potential tày language extinction in northeast and the way it makes for sd (spell out) provides a warning for many other minority languages. in the next section a model for language revitalization is provided. figure 2. general model for tày language maintenance and development the schools compile curriculum, organize ethnic language teaching, training teachers, educate on ethnic awareness and traditions. local authorities manage programs and projects, connect language communities, and search for external support. non-government organizations provide financial and technical support as well as seek external aid. members of the tày community represent the most important element in the language programs success. therefore, community members must be enlightened as to their responsibilities and cultural pride in the acquirement, use, and preservation of their ethnic language. they must protect and develop the language’s voice through generations, dismaya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 128 ijolte seminate tày to the community, and foster other ethnic group’s acceptance of the tày language. tày language revitalization use of a minority and dying language in more domains and across generations is crucial for the survival of any language. most of the children (90%) and mothers (75%) do not want to learn or teach the tày language. such a negative attitude proves detrimental to tày language revitalization and survival. vietnam must implement language programs to arrest the tày language decline. assistance from researchers, including local and central authorities, plus education agencies in which schools play a key role is urgent. furthermore, non-government organizations and prominent members of the tày 3.2. discussions use most of the tày people do not display much enthusiasm for their mother tongue, and the younger generation continues to abandon their ethnic language and replace tày with vietnamese and other languages. one of the main reasons for such negative sentiments remains the school curriculum where the medium of instruction is generally vietnamese. tày only exists in select places, such as the training centers, ethnic boarding schools, etc. to encourage the use of the tày language it is important to improve the attitude of the speech community towards its own ethnic language. this survey illuminates where and why people speak or fail to speak tày. once experts understand the underlying reasons for lack of use of the heritage language, then communities can design effective solutions to encourage use of the heritage language. fostering a positive attitude toward tay beyond cultural and religious domains opens the door for operationalizing other programs. these include instituting a character system, standardizing and developing tày literature tradition, developing the curriculum, teaching the tày language in schools and in public learning centers. such programs could foster a positive attitude and perception of the heritage language. community members must view their ethnic language as both an integrative (social cohesion within speech community) and instrumental (ability to achieve specific utility based objectives) tool for a heritage language to gain stature in the eyes of the members of the community. based on the survey results of tày language in cao bang, bac kan, and lang son, the process of promoting the status and role of the tày language should be integrated with the process of maintaining social sustainability within the northeast region of vietnam. this process comprises four main factors: 1. economics: the tày language must be a regional language, which plays a significant role in communication and commercial exchange in the border areas. 2. culture: the tày community possesses an enormously invaluable collection of ancient literature and poems as well as folk songs. hence, use of the tày language maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 129 ijolte helps in the maintaining of tày culture. 3. education: failing to teach the tày language in schools poses an obstacle to the preservation of traditional educational values and adversely affects academic results. 4. demography: the number of members of the tày community continues to increase but the number of its native language users has been falling and vietnamese and chinese continue to replace the tày language. it remains fundamentally imperative to strengthen and to foster positive attitudes of the community towards the tày language. tày’s young people must be enlightened to the reality their tày nonusage could render their mother tongue defunct, which means their history stands to be lost. 5. conclusions this study proposes a model for language maintenance and development to expand the use of a heritage language, in this case the tay language. proficiency in the tày language and speakers conversing in tày across generations and domains must be encouraged. raising active awareness and positive attitudes toward acquiring and using their heritage language will facilitate the preservation of the tày language. indeed, the constant use of other ethnic minority languages must be considered crucial elements for sustainable development within the region. references [1] bang, p. (1985). the construction of ethnic minority languages in the northern mountainous provinces of vietnam. journal of ethnology (6), 17–19. [2] bang, p. (1991). la van lot. lgonslgong: ethnic culture publishing house. [3] bang, p. (1994). phongslư, (collection, transcription of nom, amending the compilation, translation). lgonslgong: ethnic culture publishing house [4] buoi, k. t. (2003). multilingual education in the community of minority peoples of vietnam. national university, ho chi minh cit, vietnam. retrieved from http://palaso.org/ldc/parallel_papers/bui_khanh_ thea.pdf [5] chau, h. t. (1991). the situation of language exposure and teaching of ethnic minority languages in the mountains of northern vietnam," international conference on language education, cooperation and development. proceedings of the international on language education, cooperation and development (pp. 283-290). hcmc proceedings of the international conference. [6] chau, h. t. (2001). development of phonetic alphabet for ethnic minorities in vietnam. ethnic culture publishing house. http://palaso.org/ldc/parallel_papers/bui_khanh_ maya khemlani david, ngo ngan ha 130 ijolte [7] dien, k. (1985). demographic characteristics of ethnic minorities in northern mountainous provinces. journal of ethnology (1), p. 25-30., 25–33. [8] dinh, p. t. (2010). multilingual education as a way towards achieving quality universal primary education in vietnam: good practices and policy implications. language mdg conference, semeo. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.4965 71 ijolte increasing global awareness through professional learning community: a study from lattice dion e. ginanto michigan state university, michigan, united stated email: ginantod@msu.edu how to cite this paper: ginanto, d. (2018). increasing global awareness through professional learning community: a study from lattice. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 7186. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.4965 received: may 16, 2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31, 2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract using three components of plcs by dufour (2004), i explored the learning communities at lattice (linking all types of teachers to international, cross-cultural education). dufour (2004) argued that plcs is a form of learning communities held at the school level to improve the school quality. it means plcs happen in the school context. however, easton (2011) contended that learning community could happen inside or outside schools. this paper intends to analyze a learning community at lattice in creating more global perspective teachers. the study found that plc s can also occur outside schools by including participants other than teachers. based on the interviews and observations analysis, this study found that lattice did reflect plcs and significantly helped k-12 educators foster their global understanding. subject areas professional learning communities (plcs) keywords plc, professional development, lattice, learning communities 1. introduction the world is getting smaller and borderless. we can easily witness what is happening in other countries within seconds. a single click can access any sources and information from around the world. the students and teachers across countries could easily exchange knowledge by sitting in front of the screen (spreen, 2009; al-smadi, 2008). we are now calling ourselves as global citizens. as a global citizen, there must be consequences. there must be norms and ethics that every global citizen holds. however, not all global citizens understand the cultural diversity. there are still groups who prefer referring it as cultural differences to cultural diversity. we still read the news about oppression. we still hear the new forms of segregation around us. however, the marginalization against race, ethics, language, religions, and so forth is still occurring at schools around the world. we need to stop this marginalization. we need to start (teaching about diversity) in the classrooms because http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dion e. ginanto 72 ijolte schools are the basis of social changes, especially for new generations. however, not all schools are ready for the issue of differences and multiculturalism (al-smadi, 2008; papanastasiou and conway, 2002). in the us schools setting, for example, research keeps showing the misunderstandings and mistreatment against minority students (al-smadi, 2008). we need to prepare teachers and the student teachers about global awareness (spreen, 2009; al-smadi, 2008). creating a professional community that addresses the issues of global understanding is believed to be an effective way to disseminate the legacy of pluralism for teachers (schwille, 2017). one form of learning communities, which has been implemented so far in greater lansing area, michigan, is named lattice (linking all types of teachers to international cross-cultural education). this paper discusses the form of learning community in lattice, and how lattice promotes global awareness to its members. 2. literature review 2.1. the definition of plc first, plcs is a collective effort of individuals and groups who want to work collaboratively to increase the best possible outcomes for the students’ success (toole &louis, 2002; mitchell & sackney, 2000; king & newmann, 2001). rosenholtz (1989) contended that when teachers have opportunities to collaborate with any inquiries, the teachers, therefore, will feel supported, and as a result, they will be more committed in the classrooms. collaboration is the key element of plcs (louis et al., 1995). dufour, dofour, and eaker (2012) describe plcs as an activity in which teachers are working in a team continuously in a school setting to improve the student's achievement. plcs enable teachers to work in teams (not just in a group) by focusing their activities on the success of their students (stall et al., 2006). easton (2011) argued that learning in professional communities is aimed to fix the problems, involve many individuals, encourage discoveries, and move quickly from mistakes. she continued that learning can occur everywhere such as at schools or outside schools, and is self-organized according to its purpose, passion, and environment. also, lunenburg (2010) stressed the importance of shared vision among stakeholders. in this case, stakeholders include board of education, superintendent, faculty, support staffworks together to achieve a shared vision. thus, plc is a group of people (who have interests in education) who meet regularly by sharing knowledge and expertise to certain topics; who have the spirit of collaborating with others; and who have the same vision to increase student achievement. 2.2. components of plcs there are three components of plcs, according to dufour (2004): 1) ensuring that students learn; 2) focusing on results, and 3) creating a culture of collaboration. dion e. ginanto 73 ijolte further, dufour (2004) asserted that improving schools by developing plcs is becoming a trend in many schools in the united states of america and beyond. in line with this, sparks (in schmoker, 2006) emphasized that professional learning communities are indeed the best form of staff development so far. ensuring that students learn in plcs, teaching focuses shift from ‘focus on teaching’ to ‘focus on learning.’ this means that teachers should understand that their job is not merely teaching, but also to make sure that their students learn (dufour, 2005). in addition, dufour listed four important questions to make sure that students learn: “(1) what do we want each student to learn?; (2) how will we know when each student has learned it; (3) how will we respond when a student experiences difficulties; and (4) what will we do if they already know it” (p. 26). these four questions need to be as teachers’ consideration to increase students’ motivation and engagement in the classrooms. to ensure that the students learn, the next step would be work in collaboration. because according to (stall et al., 2006) the teaching goals will never be achieved without collaborating with others. creating a culture of collaboration “the powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systemic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice” (dufour, 2005, p. 36). teachers’ collaboration is one of the challenges that our educational problems face. dufour (2005) argued that even though there has been a lot study showing the importance of collaboration, there are still schools whose teachers work in isolation. by collaborating with others, it creates a shift from working in groups to work in a team. there are many ways collaboration in learning communities such as superficial exchanges (louis et al., 1995), practice and feedback sharing (hord, 2004) or exchanging ideas which create a feeling of intercedence (stoll et al., 2006). in the end, all our efforts are dedicated to the success of the students. plcs is not called plcs if its end goal is not for the students’ success (louis et al., 1995). 2.3. focusing on results even though plcs focus on results, it does not mean that plc does not value its process. every member of plcs participates in an ongoing process identifying problems or current level of student achievement, and then creating visions to improve to the current levels, then working together to achieve the goals, and finally creating evidence or evaluation of the progress (dufour, 2005). i concur stall et al., 2006 ideas about plcs that the “key purpose of plcs is to enhance teachers’ effectiveness as professionals, for students’ ultimate benefit” (p. 229). therefore, all kind of professional learnings in the communities should address the problems or challenges that hinder the student's positive outcomes. dion e. ginanto 74 ijolte characteristics of plc characteristics of plc are features that make learning communities make an impact on its members. there are at least five characteristics of professional learning communities that yield positive outcomes: shared values and vision, collective responsibility, and reflective professional inquiry, collaboration, and group, as well as individual, learning is promoted). shared values and visions to make sure that students are learning, shared visions among individuals in the school are imperative. guided by a school principal, teachers and administrators need to promote the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a community-supported school vision. (whitehead, boschee, & decker, 2013). collective responsibility having collective responsibility creates a sustainable commitment, and eventually it “puts peer pressure and accountability on those who do not do their fair share and eases isolation” (louise et al., 2006). the ultimate philosophy of plc is people working together, helping each other succeed in daily interactions with all school stakeholders, and collectively achieving the goals. (lunenburg, 2010) reflective professional inquiry there are several activities that can be deployed to reflect teachers’ professional inquiry, including reflective dialogue among teachers, conversations about serious educational issues, frequent examining of teachers’ practices, observation and case analysis, joint planning and curriculum development, new knowledge seeking, and application of new ideas and information to problem-solving and solutions addressing students’ needs (louise et al., 2006). collaboration as mentioned in earlier notes, collaboration is the backbone of a plc. louise et al. (2006) defined collaboration as “…staff involvement in developmental activities with consequences for several people, going beyond superficial exchanges of help, support, or assistance” (p. 227). any form of teamwork is started with collaboration. team building will not be built without the existence of collaboration. through collaboration, teachers will not know that they are alone in dealing with students or any school problems or concerns. group, as well as individual, learning is promoted the best educators are the great learners (drago & severson, 2009). in an effective plc, everybody in the school is a learner; students are learners, teachers are learners, and administrators are learners. an effective plc reflects a communal rather than solitary learning. the school learning community, therefore, allows its participants to engage in a serious way about any data or information which then be interpreted, dion e. ginanto 75 ijolte processed and delivered to them (louise et al., 2006). 2.4. what is lattice? lattice stands for linking all types of teachers to international cross-cultural education. according to the lattice brochure, “lattice is a learning community and international network that cultivates and supports a global perspective in k-12 classrooms through personal and professional development opportunities” (lattice brochure, n.d). as a professional learning opportunity for educators, lattice members meet monthly during the academic year for professional development. the word lattice cannot be separated from sally mcclintoch the founder and the backbone of lattice. a school principal retiree, who then began teaching at michigan state university, brought her spirit of globalizing k-12 teachers into the community. she was inspired by her sabbatical work with her spouse in poland and china, which was able to change the way she saw the world (schwille, 2017). she then thought if k-12 teachers get the opportunity to do sabbatical works then teachers will get the good benefits from it (schwille, 2017). however, sabbatical works would be difficult to be realized, and then she thought a different way of global interaction. sally together with michigan state university (msu) faculties, k-12 teachers, and school principals established lattice in 1995 (schwille, 2017). the response to lattice was positive, and lattice is still active today (schwille, 2017). lattice agenda focuses on current issues which promote global understanding for teachers and administrators which are practical and applicable (al-smadi, 2008). lynn bartley, a former associate principal of local high school, mentioned: “as a school administrator, i see lattice as an educator’s window that allows us to look into the wide world with an open mind, which is an important shift from the traditional view” (lattice brochures, n.d.). the international graduate students also benefitted from their participation in lattice. as mentioned by dwi yuliantoro, a graduate student at michigan state university, “i feel very privileged to be a part of this community of committed educators who view the world as their classroom” (lattice brochures, n.d.). there are five opportunities that its members benefit from: “(1) meet and connect with people from around the world; (2) learn about local and global issues from msu experts and others; (3) talk about experiences that shape your worldview; (4) gain inspiration from the committed educators you come to know; and (5) enjoy traditional foods from around the world” (lattice brochure, n.d). what is global awareness? a study conducted by spreen (2009) and al-smadi (2008) found that there are still schools in the us settings that are struggling on addressing the issues of inequality, inequity, discrimination, and multiculturalism. spreen (2009) argued that most of the universities in the us do not think globally, and do not produce graduates with dion e. ginanto 76 ijolte international skills. therefore, spreen (2009) contended that it is critical to change our concept of teaching from being local to be more aware of the global issues. teachers and administrators need to find a new way to reform the educational structure by having more knowledge and skills to reflect upon and openly discuss the issue they face (al-smadi, 2008). further, spreen (2009) listed eight global competencies for educators: (a) ability to understand and respect the cultures of others peoples; (b) work effectively with people from other countries and cultures with respect, open-mindedness, and understanding; (c) have had experience with persons from other cultures and demonstrate flexibility and respect when working in a team with people from other cultural/national backgrounds; (d) understand categories of similarity and difference among human beings and their cultures, and ask how and why particular similarities and differences exist; (e) self-assessed with respect to how to handle intercultural/international experiences; (f) translate knowledge and experience of one culture to learn about another; (g) recognize the existence and importance of non-verbal communication and its difference in varied cultures; and (h) recognize and analyze stereotypes (p.8). professional learning community at lattice fulan (2005) listed three level for professional learning communities: the school level, the district/regional level, and the state or province level. in this case, lattice is more in an informal setting beyond the three offered by fulan (2005): community level. informal community level means that the members of lattice will not always be teachers. it could be university students, retired teachers, community, etc. however, the focus will remain the same: ensuring students learn, creating a culture of collaboration, and focusing on results. the topics can be discussed and be based on the members’ needs and interests. schwille (2017) argued that short-term training will not be able to change the teachers’ perspective on global understanding. therefore, lattice comes to offer a long-term learning community in which k-12 teachers are getting to know international students and learn from each other. that way, according to schwille (2017) k-12 teachers would be able to transform teachers to be global educators through ongoing interaction and discussion in lattice sessions. similarly, al-smadi (2008) argued that lattice is a “unique model of promoting diversity and multiculturalism as its agenda focuses on educators to foster a high understanding of diversity, ethnicity, gender, language, and religion” (p. 46). also, papanastasiou and conway (2002) defined lattice as an in-service teacher’s education focuses on various relevant topics to enhance international cross-cultural understanding. the term in-service here does not exclusively describe k-12 teachers, but it also serves internationally oriented faculty members at michigan state university as well as local and international graduate students. dion e. ginanto 77 ijolte in lattice community, its members benefit from its learning activates. from its brochures, lattice divides its members into two main parts: 1. lattice teachers: (1) earn sbceu credits; (2) provide your students with the global perspective they will need to succeed in the 21st century; (3) connect with international graduate students and invite them to visit your classrooms; (4) prepare your students to thrive in our shrinking world; (5) learn about free and lowcost professional development opportunities in the u.s. and abroad. 2. lattice graduate students: (1) learn more about the u.s. educational system; (2) network with k-12 teachers and share your culture in their classrooms and at lattice sessions; (3) receive a stipend when you participate in all monthly lattice sessions; (4) be eligible to apply for lattice fellowships (lattice brochures, n.d). lattice is a form of professional learning community consisting of k-12 teachers, graduate students (international and local), faculty member at michigan state university, visiting scholars, and community (retired teachers, retired faculty members, and others who are interested in education) meet regularly to exchange knowledge and information about education and current issues using the global/international lenses (schwille, 2017). 3. method this study is intended to answer the following questions: (1) what does plc look like in lattice? (2) what elements of plc reflected in lattice activities?; and (3) does lattice increase global awareness for its members? this study was conducted at linking all types of teachers to international cross-cultural education (lattice) sessions during fall semester 2016. there were four interviewees in this study. the first interviewee, antonio (pseudonym), is a master student at k-12 educational administration, michigan state university. he has become a member of lattice since 2015. the second participant, maria, is an educator in michigan. she was a former social studies teacher. she is a technology expert for teachers professional development and is currently holding a position as an instructional specialist. she has been a member of lattice for quite a long time. the third participant was a visiting scholar from china, chen. chen had become a lattice member for one year. the last participant was a faculty member at michigan state university, brown. brown was one of the lattice founders. there were two methods of collecting the data: (1) participant observation. the researcher took notes and maintained a journal, to record the phenomena happening at lattice activities for fall 2016 sessions. i observed and at the same time became an active participant in the sessions. i engaged in the table discussion, did the activities, and gave feedback and questions to the large group as well. the session started at 12:30 and finished at 4:00 pm. i jot down some important aspect of plcs elements as i participated in the session activities or programs at the same time. dion e. ginanto 78 ijolte (2) interviews. open-ended questions were used to gather a deeper response from the participants (glesne, 2011). the interviewee was asked to describe their perceptions on lattice and plc which included: opinions on the elements of plc at lattice, their perception on lattice, and their perception of lattice’s vision to increase global awareness to its member. the interviews lasted approximately for 25 minutes. in analyzing the data, i used analytic matrices (miles & huberman, 1994). the columns of the matrix consisted of names of interviewees; and i put three elements of plc (dufour, 2004) into the rows. i chose dufour elements of plcs as my theoretical framework, because even though dufour’s theory is intended for improving school quality within the school; but at the same time, i also agree with easton (2011) that learning can occur both inside and outside the school. i also added one additional row “global awareness” into the matrixes. i analyzed the analytic matrices to identify what plc elements at lattice as well as whether lattice is truly reflecting global awareness to its members. 4. findings and discussions the observation and interview provided evidence that lattice activities are considered as a professional learning community. lattice offers a new model of learning communities that go beyond the conventional plcs which are commonly held at schools or is institutionalized by district or state officials. lattice, however, inclusively engage all parties who are interested in education to join the session. 4.1. professional learning community in lattice from the observation, i conducted september to november 2016; i noticed that the characteristics of plcs are reflected in lattice activity. a shared value, collective responsibility, reflective professional inquiry, collaboration, group/individual learning is promoted, were observed in lattice for september, october, and november sessions. lattice members have the same visions which are to cultivate and support a global perspective in k-12 classrooms. the diverse members in lattice (local teachers, international students, faculties at msu, community) who are blended into roundtables to discuss and share the global perspectives toward a better education proved that lattice has a shared vision in a collective responsibility as well as in a reflective inquiry. from my three observations, i noticed that all sessions contain a meaningful quality of collaboration, which values individual and group learning. from the interview, antonio explained that lattice is a true example of a professional learning community: “i see some ingredients or components that every plc should have. first one is, it must be a community that shares something in common, and here we what have something in common is education and passion to help discover a new way to teach better, from various school and classroom so that students’ outcome and students dion e. ginanto 79 ijolte learning can be improved. another thing which is interesting is that commitment to lifelong learning.” in this case, antonio highlighted one of the plc characteristics i mentioned before: shared values and visions. this is the unique of lattice, even though the participants are coming from diverse backgrounds, but they do come with a shared vision/value. another interviewee, maria, also agreed that lattice is a form of plc: “i also believe that lattice is also a real professional learning community. we use that term a lot. the reason that it is a true form of plc is that we meet once a month, so we have long-term plcs which is so rare.” this response indicates that the professional development that teachers usually have at schools is somewhat good; lattice, in this case, comes to fulfill the consistency of the learning community which is held every month with different topics which schools may not offer. similarly, brown argued that lattice does reflect the spirit of the professional learning community by sharing our ideas “but then we are all in it together and yes, we all bring our own strengths, but we also bring areas of weakness.” also, chen, a visiting scholar from china, argued that lattice session allows its members to discuss a similar interest: “it provides people with same interests a chance to exchange their work experience and enhance their professional skills.” both brown and chen agreed that lattice echoed the plc characteristics: collaboration, collective responsibility, and reflective professional inquiry. from both interviews and observation analysis, it can be concluded that lattice is a true form of a professional learning community. not to mention from the lattice brochure that lattice called itself as a learning community: “lattice is a learning community and international network that cultivates and supports a global perspective in k-12 classrooms through personal and professional development opportunities.” (lattice brochure, n.d). 4.2. elements of plc in lattice the three elements of plcs mentioned in above literature could be observed in lattice sessions held from september to november 2016. collaboration through my observations, i saw that the professional learning in lattice truly mirrored the collaboration practices. the table discussions, collaborative works, and peers’ interactions were observed during fall 2016 sessions. when i asked maria whether lattice activities represent collaboration, here is her respond: “absolutely. you can’t foster international relation without at one point to getting collaborate internationally. so many international educators are going into the classroom to the local teachers. there are also local teachers who are participating in a project such as dion e. ginanto 80 ijolte chinese art project that the 4-h sponsored. where students from china sent art painting to students in michigan and vice versa. and of course, it is all in the essence that the local teachers get a chance to collaborate with teachers, which is so unbelievably creative.” during my observation, the discussion tables are managed to have diverse participants. the facilitator will remind people to sit with people who are from different countries. similarly, both chen and brown highlighted the mutual interest among members with foster collaboration. brown responded, “learning a community to be a community to be a real community there has to be real mutuality.” like brown, chen answered: “it provides people with same interests a chance to exchange their work experience and enhance their professional skills.” in addition, antonio also agreed that collaboration is the key for lattice activities. by collaborating at lattice sessions, the educators would benefit a lot from their teaching practices: “i believe that as a teacher or educator you benefit so much from collaborating with other educators as well. that way together everyone can reflect on teaching practice, teaching methods, so the problem we encounter in education, we can look up how can come up with solutions that can help us how to become good educators; so that we can hold a better classroom experiences.” learning communities in lattice is not only able engaging all participants to exchange knowledge and information; but it also able to make its participants understand that the different views and debate are considered the foundation of improvement. that way all participants are eager to participate in all conversation including the difficult knowledge on religion, oppression, and marginalization. focus on student learning lattice session offers its members, activities which enable them to focus on student learning. from international students’ perspective, antonio highlighted that lattice activity would increase their value on the assignments especially the real practice and application that they will not get from the campus classroom: “like i said it is a monthly session. so, we could take back to the classroom, to the school, to build the skills and knowledge and then apply them. so, you have time at least one month to apply them, then you can come back and reflect why it did not work.” in addition, as an educator, maria viewed lattice’s learning community contributed significantly to the teachers’ perspective on students learning. she also stressed the importance of the long-life education for teachers to foster student learning: “imagine if students only went to school only meet twice a year… so then the teachers only meet twice a year. so, when the teachers constantly meet in a community with other teachers, that it fosters growth in the professional development of a teacher.” i also have a note on my observation journal, that both facilitator and lattice dion e. ginanto 81 ijolte members at the end of the session will have a discussion and sharing sessions on how they can utilize what they had learned today into their classroom. i also noticed that lattice topics and activities are driven to be relevant to the current situation which enables teachers to develop their curriculum and materials based on the authentic experience gained in lattice. focus on results brown shared his personal experience on his participation in lattice “i have learned so much from the interaction with teachers learning more about here and there.” brown also highlighted that it is obvious that not only k-12 educators who benefitted from their interaction with international students: “actually they get a rich understanding of the world and even of their own country. and a lot of international students do not have experience outside of their home country and even of their region.” in line with brown’s response on who benefitted from the participation at lattice, chen mentioned: “through participation in lattice, i’ve gained some insights into the core value of american education, especially in elementary school and high school levels.” from the perspective of an educator, maria connected lattice activities to the effort on increasing student awareness on their global perspectives: “i mean students today becoming more globalized no matter how much we try to control their access to information; the information is everywhere it's in their pocket. it is not something new. so, the fact that we are as lattice trying to globalize their educators. it likes a domino makes the students make the teachers delivery like content delivery a lot more global therefore multisided and it makes students completely able to see more side of a single issue. through my observation, i learned that the guided questions that were prepared by the lattice planning team were designed to connect the topics on the day of professional development to the school classroom practices. lattice members were expected to work collegiality and collaboratively to help everybody foster students’ achievement as well as students’ global awareness. i also notice that lattice prepared its participants to the relevant questions that student may ask including those on radicalism, islamophobia, race and gender issue, and other difficult questions. lattice educators so far have been able to help students understand through their involvement in lattice professional development. 4.3. lattice fosters global understanding increasing global awareness is becoming the number one goal in lattice. when being asked whether lattice fosters global understanding, maria responded: “oh, my goodness. again, i was a social studies teacher, i taught geography, history, economics, business. you know i taught in a rural area where…. even though dion e. ginanto 82 ijolte i have international background myself i feel i am still isolated. i lived abroad as i was growing up, but as an adult, i live pretty much in michigan. i try my very best to travel abroad, but still, it's very personal. because it was personal and because i was personal for me it was predictable. i do know the answer because i wrote all the questions. but suddenly i started attending lattice where i was able to meet people from around the world where they answer the same question so different. i was also in a place that i can meet a teacher like myself. they are immigrants from other countries, and how they teach here in the us. how our interpretation is. so, i find a lot of commonality from the teacher all around the world. but specifically, it broadens the way i see the world as an international it's cool to teach global studies. i eat international food also.” maria’s testimony on lattice reflected on sally mcclintock's view that inspired her to form a learning community for teachers. in line with maria, antonio also agreed that his experience on lattice had brought him into a deeper awareness of global issues: for me that’s …. i could never have learned that if i do not come to that short special time. i was doing a personal study, every time i come to lattice i learn about global education, global practices, global trends, issues, and concerns. for me, i mean it makes me to become globally aware, of things you know on global issues on kids’ education, equality, and … how to i mean what is k-12 education looks like in japan, at that time we have somebody from japan that gives her experience of certain things that their government does to improve k-12 education that our government didn’t do. they also can learn from what we do and what we didn’t do. so, it is very interesting to interact with people from diverse cultures.” maria added that lattice created a professional development’s atmosphere that fosters the open-mindedness of its members: “we are doing it in a very safe environment, in a very open environment, in a very open-minded setting. we also have diversity members; it is very well balanced global perspective. i think on “aha” moment is that every time i leave lattice i always walk away knowing something that i didn’t know before. what professional development do you find like this.” similarly, brown argued that lattice influences the way teachers see the curriculum: “…professional goal in term of helping teachers internationalize their curriculum in a way that was meaningful to the teachers.” in addition, he also stressed constructivism as a teaching approach modeled by lattice: “in term of lattice modeling ways in which in terminology that even we use outside of international in terms of teacher education is sort of constructivism and so that you work with student who constructs become part of their own production of knowledge and so forth.” chen, who just came from china amazed by how diverse the lattice members is: “i was shocked by it’s the cultural diversity and the stress on extra-curriculum activities.” he added that all lattice participants are encouraged to engage in a dion e. ginanto 83 ijolte conversation regardless their cultural backgrounds: “students from different cultural backgrounds have their lives and studies happily. and the students enjoy the time at school by pride, participation, and honor they gain from many activities.” also, from my observation, i noticed that lattice had come up with the local and international topics and then tried to engage discussion around how to connect the topics into teaching and learning in the classroom. the highlight of my lattice observation was that the participants in addition to learning contents, they also learn other people cultures thought, international costumes, and the languages. through my observation and interview, lattice does reflect the professional learning community both from its element and its characteristics. here are some common topics appeared from the interview regarding the elements of plc at lattice. figure1: element of plc at lattice figure 1 illustrates how professional learning communities at lattice looks like. within collaboration elements, there were common topics which found in lattice sessions including interaction, togetherness, linking, supportiveness, mutuality, and same interests. within focus on result i found some common topics: exchange ideas, conversation, participation, question, growth, relaxing atmosphere, and safe environment. finally, the common topics found in focus on learning element include goals, engagement, experience, solution, thoughtfulness, and understanding. these three elements make lattice as a learning community beyond the school contact that fosters global understanding. 4.4. engaging communities in professional development dion e. ginanto 84 ijolte lattice has been a phenomenal learning community which successfully empowers communities outside the school. lattice member which consists of k-12 educators, graduate international students, visiting scholars, university staff/professors, and those who have passion in education give a message that professional learning can also be conducted outside the school and at the same time involving communities as resources. professional development has been exclusively conducted inside or around the school context (stoll et al., 2006) and managed by the school-related personnel. the outside player of learning community so far was only the speaker or panelists. lattice, however, offers a new paradigm of learning communities and professional development, by empowering the communities which has a strong connection to education. by having outsider elements in the process of professional development, lattice has not only benefitting the collaboration atmosphere but at the same time lattice members also benefited the diverse knowledge and information. learning communities by lattice fills the gap between the conventional professional development and has some potential benefits if applied in other contexts or settings. lattice offered a solution to the missing link between school and universities, as well as school and communities in general. lattice also offers a real-life experience of international graduate students who will be a future teacher and leader. the university students not only learn from their involvement but at the same time, they also become resources and teachers to their fellow lattice members who want to know more about educational system outside the united states of america. lattice learning communities should apply to all context. in global south context in which english is not spoken daily will be a good prospect to adapt lattice idea. learning communities which aims at improving cross-cultural education quality will be more likely suitable for english teachers. english teachers are those who expose the most of global understanding and diversity knowledge and cultures as its topics and curriculum include not only the language piece but also its culture. lattice could be a model for both student teachers and educators in responding to the rapidly changing and developing educational setting. lattice learning communities is a learning model that promotes global understanding. in addition, lattice also increases collaboration among teachers and beyond, which hopefully able to fill the gap of the current professional development for teachers. therefore, school principals, superintendent, university leaders are recommended to create a similar learning community in their educational settings. 5. conclusion as the world become borderless, students connect to the other world easily and quickly. as a result, the students will interact with the various cultural backgrounds, languages, traditions, and rules. as an educator or future educators, we need to prepare ourselves to scaffold students in interacting with the more global world. one way dion e. ginanto 85 ijolte to equip teachers’ ability and quality on global awareness pedagogy is by teaching them on global understanding. however, our mainstream professional development has not really tapped into this kind of issues. one learning community that offers teachers and students teachers on the issues of increasing teachers’ competency on global issues and awareness is plcs at lattice. the monthly meetings which consist of diverse participants who have the same vision on global education: teachers, international students, msu faculties, visiting scholars, and community; allow them to foster collegial activities toward a better global awareness both from outsider and insider perspectives. the global understanding that teachers and students benefit from is expected to decrease the marginalization and oppression, which often occurred in schools’ settings. also, lattice offers a way of engaging teachers and education stakeholders in authentic and valuable learning experiences. lattice is therefore highly recommended to be branched to other states, or even other countries to create a global citizen who sees the world as their classroom references [1] al-smadi, r.t. (2008). professional development for peace: linking all types of teachers to international, cross-cultural education. in lin, j., brantmeier, e.j., & bruhn, c. (eds.), transforming education for peace. north carolina: information age publishing. [2] atknison, e. (2004). thinking outside the box: an exercise in heresy. qualitative inquiry, (10), 111-129. [3] dofour, r. (2004) what is a professional learning community. ascd journal, 61(8), 6-11. [4] drago-severson, e. (2009). learning adult learning: supporting adult development in our school. california: corwin. [5] dufour, dofour & eaker. (2012). a big picture look at professional learning community. solution tree. [6] easton, l. b. (2011). professional learning communities by design: putting the learning back to plcs. california: corwin. [7] fullan, m. (2005). professional learning communities writ large. in dufour, r., eaker, r., dufour, r. (eds.), on common ground the power of professional learning communities (p. 209). national education services: indiana. [8] glesne, c. (2011). becoming qualitative researchers. pearson. boston: massachusetts [9] miles, m., & huberman, m. (1994). qualitative data analysis. thousand oaks, ca: sage. [10] lattice brochure (n.d) lattice: linking all types of teachers to international cross-cultural education. [11] louise, et al., (2006). professional learning communities: a review of the dion e. ginanto 86 ijolte literature. journal of educational change, (7) 221-258. [12] lunenberg, f. c., (2010). creating a professional learning community. national forum of educational administration and supervision journal, 27, 1-7 [13] papanastasiou, e. c., conway, p. f. (2002). teacher professional development through lattice an international-intercultural project. studies in educational evaluation, 28(2002), 305-328. [14] rosenholtz, s. (1989). teachers’ workplace: the social organization of schools. new york: teachers college press. [15] schmoker, m. (2004). start here for improving teaching and learning. school administrator. 61(10), 48. [16] schwille & john. (2017). internationalizing a school of education. international race and education series. east lansing: michigan state university press. [17] spreen, c. a. (2009). teaching global awareness. teac’s 10th annual meeting. chicago. [18] stoll, l., bolam, r., mcmahon, a., wallace, m., & thomas, s. (2006). professional learning communities: a review of the literature. journal of educational change, 7, 221-258. [19] whitehead, b., bjoschee, f., & decker, r. (2013). the principal: leadership for a global society. los angeles ca: sage. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5689 275 ijolte ideational meanings of teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri english department semarang state university, semarang, indonesia email: sri.mulatsih@dsn.dinus.ac.id how to cite this paper: mulatsih, s., saleh, m., warsono, w., & yuliasri, i. (2018). ideational meanings of teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 275-285. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5689 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this study is aimed at describing the ideational meanings of teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes. it reveals what processes, participants and circumstances are found in the teachers’ utterances. the data were taken from the reading and writing classes conducted at a university in semarang city. the data were collected by video recording the teaching and learning processes in reading and writing classes, then they were analyzed by segmenting the utterances into clauses; identifying the process, participants, and circumstances; classifying the processes, participants and circumstances based on their type; and interpreting the data. the results showed that the processes mostly found in the teachers’ utterances in reading class are relational ones with carrier and attribute as participants, the second are mental processes with sense and phenomenon as the participants, while in those of writing class are material with actor and goal as participants and the second are relational with carrier and attribute as participants. relational processes are dominant in reading class because the teacher explained many terms or vocabularies found in the text to make the students really understand them. that material processes are dominant in writing class is caused by the fact that in writing class the teacher often asks the students to do some actions like writing or doing something. subject areas systemic functional linguistics keywords ideational meanings, processes, participants, reading and writing classes 1. introduction reading and writing are two different skills. reading is considered as a receptive skill, while writing is a productive one. the way to teach these two skills should also be different. reading is a complex cognitive process of under-standing symbols to construct or derive meaning. when we read, we use our eyes to receive written symbols (letters, punctuation marks, and spaces) and we use our brain to convert them into https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5689 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5689 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 276 ijolte words, sentences, and paragraphs that communicate something to us. reading can be silent (in our head) or aloud (so that other people can hear). as mentioned above, reading is a receptive skill – through reading we can receive some information. writing, on the other hand, is fundamental in learning to think and press one’s thought in ways that reach others. the ability to use language coherently and powerfully and to write in ways that connect with others across cultural boundaries and within communities is essential to active citizenship and to success in almost profession. [1] writing is not only a tool for communication, but it also serves as a means of learning, thinking, and organizing knowledge or ideas. in other words, writing is a complex activity involving some stages of composition task completion [2]. undoubtedly, this skill particularly in an efl context (i.e., indonesia) has been considered one of the most difficult skills for learners to master [3]. the difficulties are due not only to the need to generate and organize ideas using the appropriate choices of vocabulary, sentence, and paragraph organization but also to turn such ideas into a readable text along with a rhetoric pattern [4]. moreover, indonesian learners often encounter difficulties in transferring ideas from their native language--indonesian into the target language--english. this case calls for teachers’ greater attention to help the learners to be successful in a writing skill. in teaching reading and writing the teachers usually use several modes (resources of meanings) such as spoken languages (utterances), written languages, pictures or gestures [5]. teachers’ utterances become very important in both classes because they can support the understanding of the students toward the topics given in those classes. since teachers’ utterances are also considered as the sources of meaning, based on systemic functional linguistics, they contribute meanings. the meanings can be ideational, interpersonal, or textual. the focus of this study is ideational meanings of their utterances in teaching reading and writing. it is aimed at figuring out the processes, participants, and circumstances used by the teachers in reading and writing classes. there are several previous studies that discuss about ideational meanings. two of them are the ones conducted by [14], and [15). [14] discusses about the ideational metafunction in joseph conrad’s heart of darkness, a critical discourse analysis. the results show that the dominant process used in that novella are material and actor as the participants. this finding is in line with the ideology of the author of the novella that is against the racist and imperialist. [15] discusses about the ideational meaning of butanes folklore, a systemic functional linguistics study. the results show that material process and actor as the participant is dominant in this study. this shows that the life of butonese was oriented with the action which represented the horizontal dimension. while the dominancy of actor as the participant shows that butonese people are mostly working people. the difference between those two previous studies with this study lies in the sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 277 ijolte kinds of data. both studies use written data, while this study uses spoken ones. those two previous studies use literary data, those are novella and folklore, while this study uses data taken from classroom discourse. it is expected that this study will give the insight to the teaching and learning processes, especially in teaching reading and writing. 2. literature review in this part there are several theories that are presented, they are systemic functional linguistics, ideational meanings which covers processes, participants, and circumstances, and teaching reading and writing. 2.1. systemic functional linguistics (sfl) systemic functional linguistics is a study that is proposed by reference [6]. it is an approach on a language which is centered on how people use language with each other in accomplishing every social life. it studies about how the meanings of the texts are realized because of the process of making meaning by choosing. it focuses and concerns on the meaning of the language that is based on the context. sfl has three different systems of type meanings to understand the meaning of the text according to the context of situation related with the three items from previous paragraph (field, tenor, and mode). those systems will help on understanding the topic of the text, knowing how the person produces the text and the form of the text whether it is written or spoken. in sfl, since language is viewed as a resource for making meanings, there are three different types of meaning in language, they are ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning. these types of meaning are called three strands of meaning. reference [6] says that the fundamental components of meaning in language are functional ones. the first function is the interpersonal function, the second one is ideational, and the third one in textual [7]. these functional components are called metafunctions. furthermore, halliday says that functional grammar is based on the premise that language has two major functions, metafunctions, for its users, it is a means of reflecting on things – though the only things it is possible to act on by means of a symbolic system such as languages are humans (and some animals). reference [6] calls these two functions the ideational content’ function, and interpersonal function. since the focus of this study is ideational meanings, the writers will explain the ideational meanings in detail in the following part. 2.2. ideational meanings ideational metafunction is used to represent experience [8]. ideation is concerned with how our experience of reality, material and symbolic reality – is construed in discourse. while reference [9] describe the ideational meaning as follows: ideational meaning is meanings about phenomena – about things (living and non-living, abstract and concrete), about goings on (what the things are and do) and the circumstances sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 278 ijolte surrounding these happenings and doings. these meanings are realized in wordings through participants, processes, and circumstances. the ideational meanings, meanings about things and ideas, are realized in the clause by options from transitivity that can be broken down into three functional constituents, they are processes, participants, and circumstances. reference [7] states that transitivity is the interpretation in language of process, the participants therein, and the circumstantial features associated with them. processes the core or the nucleus of the clause as representation of experience is the process. the process represents the happening or event. the clause is on about, whether it is a matter of a ‘happening’, ‘doing’, ‘thinking’, ‘saying’, ‘being’, ‘having’, etc. the term ‘process’ is understood in a very broad sense, to cover all phenomena to which a specification of time may be attached – in english, anything that can be expressed by a verb, whether physical or not, state, or relation. process may be of different types and involve different numbers and kind of participants [7]. while reference [9] maintains that processes are central to transitivity and realized by verbs. it is supported by the statement given by reference [10] that a process is realized in the grammar by means of a verbal group, which is either word, belonging to the class verb, or a group of words with a class verb word as the head or nucleus of the group. according to reference [9], there are seven types of processes. the types of processes can be seen on table 1. table 1. seven types of process material behavioral mental verbal relational existential meteorological doing behaving sensing saying being existing weathering bodily, physically, materially physiologically and psychologically emotionally, intellectually, sensory lingually, signaling equal to, or some attribute of there exists participants participants represent things or people involved in carrying out the process or things or people affected by process. according to reference [10] a participant can be a person, a place, or an object (this is the notion of “thing ness”), and in the grammar of a clause participant is most commonly realized by nominal group. for instance, “he kicked the cat” is a clause in which he and the cat are realized by nominal group. furthermore [5] elaborated the potential participant roles in each process as follows: the potential roles in material processes are an actor (or doer of the process), a goal (or thing affected by the process), a range (or thing unaffected by the process), a sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 279 ijolte beneficiary of the process; in mental processes are sense (or doer of the process) and phenomenon; the main participant in behavioral process is the behaver, in verbal processes are sawyer (or doer of the process) and receiver (addressee of the speech), target (the participant which is the object of the talk), and verbiage; in existential processes the participant known as the existent; while in relational attribute clauses the participant carrying the characteristics is known as attributive and in relational identifying are token and value. circumstances circumstance is any peace of circumstantial information about the process within its own clause. circumstances are realized by adverbial groups, prepositional phrases and even by nominal group. circumstances are usually answer the question such as where, when, why, how, how many etc. [10]. circumstances are divided into many kinds. as stated in reference [9], circumstances are divided into seven kinds. they are time (temporal); place (spatial); manner, which consists of means, quality, and comparison; cause including reason, purpose, and behalf; accompaniment; matter and the last one is role. 2.3. teaching reading and writing the purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. a person who needs to know whether she can afford to eat at a restaurant needs to comprehend the pricing information provided on the menu but does not need to recognize the name of every appetizer listed. a person reading poetry for enjoyment needs to recognize the words the poet uses and the ways they are put together but does not need to identify main idea and supporting details. however, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognize ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens. teaching writing is a complex problem. it requires teachers with a great interest as well as professionalism in writing activities. not, many teachers are interested in teaching writing, for they will have lots of burden on them correcting the students’ writing from time to time. besides, most efl students don’t like writing. often, they reach university level without any experience on writing compositions in english. this reality is, of course, an irony of education outcome since no one will doubt how important writing skill is. teaching reading and writing can be done by several approaches, one of them is by genre-based approach. according to reference [12], genre-based approach is defined as the way to language and literacy education that combines an understanding of genre and genre teaching together in the writing /reading class. in genre-based approach, there are four stages that should be done, they are buildsri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 280 ijolte ing knowledge of the field (bkof), modelling of text, joint construction, and independent construction [13]. bkof is the point at which overall knowledge of the cultural and social context of the topic is built and developed. modelling involves introducing the learners to a model of the genre they will be writing/reading. in this stage, there is explicit focus on analyzing the genre through a model text related to the course topic. at joint construction stage, the aim is for the teachers to work with the learners to construct a similar text. independent construction stage occurs only after group or pair construction has shown that the learners have gained control of the field and the mode. 3. method this method consists of research design, source of data, participants, unit of analysis, technique of data collection, and technique of data analysis. this study is designed as a descriptive qualitative one that is intended to describe the ideational meanings of teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes. the source of the data is the teaching and learning process in two english classrooms, reading and writing classes, in an english department of a university in semarang. both reading and writing classes use genre-based approach in the teaching and learning process. the text taught by both teachers is procedure one. the unit of analysis in this study are the clauses found in teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes. the participants are the lecturers of reading and writing classes. the data of this study were collected by recording the teaching and learning processes of reading and writing classes and transcribing the teachers’ utterances. the data were analyzed using the framework proposed by [5] with the following steps: segmenting the utterances into clauses, identifying the processes, participants, and circumstances in every clause, classifying the processes, participants, and circumstances based on their types, interpreting the data and drawing conclusion. 4. finding and discussion as mentioned in the previous part, ideational meanings of teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes are realized in processes, participants, and circumstances the teachers used in teaching and learning processes. the processes they use can be seen in table 2 below: table 2. processes in teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes. sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 281 ijolte types of processes reading class writing class no ∑ % ∑ % 1 2 3 4 5 6 material mental verbal behavioral relational existential 48 16,27 69 33,99 63 21,35 27 13,30 32 10,84 42 20,68 18 6.10 7 3,44 127 43,05 54 26,60 7 2,37 4 1,97 total 295 100 203 100 table 2 shows that the most dominant process used by the teacher in reading class is relational (43,03%), and the second is mental (21,35%). relational processes are used mostly by the teacher in this class because the teacher often explained several difficult terms or vocabularies found in the text. this was done to make the students really understand the meanings of the terms. the second processes used frequently by the teacher in reading class is mental since the teacher often asked the students’ understanding about the text by using mental processes. in writing class, the most dominant process is material, and the second is relational. material process is mostly used in writing class because the teacher often asks the students to do some doing verbs. table 3. participants in teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes types of participants reading class writing class no ∑ % ∑ % 1 2 3 4 5 6 actorgoal sense-phenomenon sayer-verbiage behaver-behavior carrier-attribute existential-existent 48 16,27 69 33,99 63 21,35 27 13,30 32 10,84 42 20,68 18 6.10 7 3,44 127 43,05 54 26,60 7 2,37 4 1,97 total 295 100 203 100 table 3 shows that in line with the processes used, the dominant participant found in reading class is carrier and attribute, and the second position is sense and phenomenon. in writing class, the dominant participant is actor and goal, and the second rank is carrier and attribute. table 4. circumstances in teachers’ utterances in reading and writing classes no types of circumstances reading class writing class ∑ % ∑ % 1 2 3 4 place 3 18,75 4 23,52 time 5 31,25 2 11,76 manner 6 37,5 8 47,05 cause 2 12,5 3 17,64 total 16 100 17 100 table 4 shows that the circumstances of manner are dominant in both reading and writing classes. it happens because both teachers explain some terms or give the sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 282 ijolte instruction by using some circumstances of manner to make the explanation or instruction clear. relational processes as stated in the previous part, relational processes are dominant both in reading and writing because this process is usually used to ask, to explain or to give the definition of certain terms to make the students understand those terms. the following are the examples of relational processes in reading and writing classes. (1) what is the text about? (source: reading class) what is the text about? attribute relational process: attributive carrier (2) it is a fiber glass. (source: reading class) it is a fiber glass carrier relational process: attributive attribute (3) it has an instruction in it. (source: reading class) it has an instruction in it token relational process: identifying value circumstances of place (4) the social function of procedure text is how something is accomplished. (source: writing class) the social function of procedure text is how something is accomplished carrier relational process: attributive attribute (5) the main characteristics of the procedure text is the steps. (source: writing class) the main characteristics of the procedure text is the steps carrier relational process attributive attribute material processes material processes are dominantly used in writing class because in teaching writing the teacher needs to tell the students some doing activities such as reading, writing etc. the following are the examples of material processes used by the teacher in writing class. (6) this morning we are going to discuss about procedure text. (source: writing sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 283 ijolte class) this morning we are going to discuss about procedure text circa of time actor material process goal (7) we cannot do it ourselves. (source: writing class) we cannot do it ourselves actor material process goal circ. of manner (8) i have read several books before. (source: writing class) i have read several books before actor material process goal circ. of time mental processes mental processes are also dominant used by the teacher in reading class to know the students’ perception and understanding about the text being explained. the examples of mental process can be seen below: (9) please look at the text. (source: reading class) please look at at the text mental process phenomenon (10) what you think about the text? (source: reading class) what you think about the text sense mental process phenomenon (11) why it needs instruction? (source: reading class) why it needs instruction sense mental process phenomenon (12) now you understand the definition of this word. (source: reading class) now you understand the definition of this word circ. of time sense mental process phenomenon in examples (9), (10), (11), and (12) mental processes such as look at, think about, needs, and understand are used by the teacher to make the students pay attention of the materials and to ask the students’ perception of the materials being given in the classroom. 5. conclusion based on the previous discussion, it can be concluded that: a. the dominant process used by the teacher in reading class is relational process with carrier and attribute as the participants, and the second one is mental with sense and phenomenon as the participants, while in writing class, the dominant process used by the teacher is material with actor and goal as the participants, and the second is relational with the carrier and attribute as the participants. the sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 284 ijolte dominancy of relational process in reading class is caused by the context that in reading class there are several difficult terms or words that the students don’t understand, and the teacher tries to explain the definition or the meaning of those terms. those material processes are used mostly in writing class because in writing class the teacher asks and shows the students to make and write some doing activities. b. the circumstances that are dominantly used for both teachers in reading and writing classes is circumstances of manner because both teachers want to explain something clearly by using that circumstances. references [1] foong, k.p. (1999). teaching writing: a look at purposes, writing tasks, and implications.the english teacher, 28. retrieved on december 17 , 2014, from http://www.melta.org.my/et/1999/main3.html(foong) [2] watskins, p. (2004). writing. english teaching professional issue, 30, 40-41. [3] lewitt, p.j. (1990). how to cook a tasty essay. english teaching forum. vol. 26, 17 – 23. [4] richards, j.c., & renandya, w.a. (2002). methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. [5] bull, g & anstey, m (2010 a), evolving pedagogies; reading and writing in a multimodal world, education services australia, melbourne. [6] halliday, m.a.k., & matthiessen, c. (1994). halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (fourth edition). london: routledge. [7] kress, g. (2009). multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, london: routledge. [8] martin, j., & rose, d. (2003). working with discourse: meaning beyond the clause. new york: continuum. [9] gerot, linda and wignell, peter. (1994). making sense of functional grammar. new south wales: gerd stabler. [10] butt, d., fahey, r., spinks, s., &yallops, c. (2001). using functional grammar: an explorer’s guide (second edition). sydney: nceltr, macquarie university. [11] derewianka, beverly. (1990). exploring how texts work. australia: primary english teaching association [12] hammond, jennifer and derewianka, b. (2001). genre. in carter, r. and nunan, d. the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other language. (pp.186-193). cambridge university press. [13] hyland, ken. (2004). genre and second language writing. usa: the university of michigan press. [14] alaei. mahya, ahangin. saedah. 2016. a study of ideational metafunction in joseph conrad’s hearth of darkness: a critical discourse analysis. english lanhttp://www.melta.org.my/et/1999/main3.html(foong) sri mulatsih, mursid saleh, warsono, issy yuliasri 285 ijolte guage teaching journal. vol. 9 no. 4 2016. canadian center of science and education. [15] gusnawaty, yastiana. yuli, yassi. abdul hakim. 2017. ideational meaning of butonese folklore: a systemic functional linguistic study. rupkhata journal on interdisiplinary studies in humanities. vol. ix no. 1.2017. contact salwa fadilah firdaus salwa19003@mail.unpad.ac.id universitas padjadjaran ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). a corpus-based study of self-mention markers in english research articles salwa fadila firdaus*, ypsi soeria soemantri, susi yuliawati universitas padjadjaran, indonesia abstract the current research aimed at investigating the authorial identity through explicit self-mention markers (i, me, my, we, us, and our) in english research articles written by indonesian authors. for this purpose, we employed a mix-methods research design consisting of two analysis phases. first, the quantitative analysis was represented by analyzing the frequency of self-mention markers in the corpus of 200 linguistics and applied linguistics research articles using the corpus tool antconc ver. 3.9.5 (anthony, 2020). the corpus was compiled from ten journals indexed in sinta 1 and 2 in the latest five years (2017-2021). second, the qualitative phase was represented by concordance analysis to interpret the discourse function of self-mention markers in use. we refer to hyland's taxonomy (hyland, 2002). our findings have discovered that indonesian authors use self-mention in various functions. this research shows the novice authors the extent to which authors can exploit self-mention markers in english research articles and how expert authors in reputable national journals use self mention markers to obtain essential functions to mark their authorial identity. thus, this research is expected to add insight to eap/esl courses to encourage novice writers to construct and represent their identity in conveying their arguments firmly using these self-mentions markers. article history received november 30, 2021 accepted december 18, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: corpus-based, academic writing, self-mention markers, authorial identity 1. introduction academic writings are often regarded as objective and impersonal kind of writing. in other words, academic writing authors cannot include their personal views in conveying their research. on the other hand, hyland (2001) states that authors cannot entirely refrain from presenting themselves in the text. thus, academic writing, which is regarded as faceless and dry, is shifted. academic writing has always been seen as a process for sharing knowledge among the discourse community in the same field. until recently, academic writings, particularly research articles (ras), are regarded as arena to create identity in which authors strive for recognition in their academic community (afsari & kuhi, 2016). that is what hyland (2001), (2002a), (2002b) refers to authorial identity. authorial identity refers to how the authors represent themselves to emphasize their main contribution and credibility. scholars refer to authorial identity as authors' authority, authors' visibility, authorial stance, and authorial voice (dontcheva-navrátilová, 2013; garzone, 2014; hyland, 2002a; ivanič, 1998; kuo, 1999; matsuda & tardy, 2007). according to ivanič (1998), there are three aspects of identity. first, autobiographical self refers to the authors' background experience that added to their writing. the second is the discoursal self, which denotes the authors' identity based on the convention of discourse community adopted to claim membership in the discourse community. third, the most notable aspects of identity are the authorial self or self as the author. it concerns how authors take a stance, expressing opinions and beliefs in their writing, validates authors' ownership of their self-confidence to contribute ideas to their discourse community. international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15695 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15695 38 s. f. firdaus, y. s. soemantri & s. yuliawati since research articles tend to be written in a more competitive setting, the authors should then explicitly present their convincing argument and reliable findings on their writing to project their authorial identity. in constructing authorial identity to achieve their academic credibility, authors use various linguistic strategies. the fundamental strategy is to use self-mention markers, which are indicated by the first person pronouns (e.g., i, me, my, we, us, and our) (hyland, 2002a; ivanič, 1998; kuo, 1999; tang & john, 1999). the authors feel that it is necessary to link their findings into the academic community by showing an appealing significance and contribution to their research. hyland & jiang (2017) on their research, they found the use of this feature rose 45% from 19652015, which mainly happened in the soft science domain compared to the hard science domain. studies on investigating authorial identity through self-mention markers have been widely done across various genres, such as theses, dissertations, and student essays (afsari & kuhi, 2016; castillo-hajan et al., 2019; daryaee motlagh, 2021). some identified the self-mention markers across nationalities and disciplines (al-shujairi, 2020; alyouse & alotaibi, 2019; hyland, 2002a; yu, 2021). for instance, in his corpus-based analysis, hyland (2002a) compared various disciplines (biology, physics, mechanical, electronic engineering, applied linguistics, business studies, philosophy, and sociology) written by non-native novice writers and expert writers. his research suggested that students underused the self-mention markers since they are not the expertise of the field, which in results self-effacing in claiming the findings are most likely happening in their writing. meanwhile, when they explain the steps taken in their research, they are willing to exploit self-mention markers. similarly, al-shujairi (2020) and yu (2021) compared research articles in language studies. they discovered self-mention markers the non-native authors largely employ us in these fields. yu (2021) argued that the lack of self-mention markers is affected by the authors' culture and the authors' proficiency and competitiveness to publish international papers. regarding different genres, in their study, afsari & kuhi (2016) investigate the use of selfmention markers in 20 master theses by english postgraduates. the result found that these english authors frequently use the first-person pronoun i, which is in line with (rahimivand & kuhi, 2014) that l1 authors are most likely to present themselves in first-person pronoun i, especially in soft science fields. in contrast with expert writers, (castillo-hajan et al., 2019) on their study found that first-person pronoun is the least favored in students' essays. unlike the result in afasari & kuhi (2016), the results of ma and ph.d. non-native english and applied linguistics students in daryaee motlagh (2021) found that they tend to use third person markers throughout the main sections of text. we believe that different authors' background mainly causes these diverse results. writing an appropriate research article is difficult even for native authors, but it is even more so for non-native english authors. those non-native authors also have their own beliefs and culture attached to them when writing academic writing in a second language or foreign language. so when they write in english, they may carry those writing norms that intervene with other conventions. non-native authors in asia, as investigated in aminifard (2020), stick with the traditional view in academic writing. the comparison of authors from three different nationalities showed that most authors are reluctant to reveal their identity through first-person pronouns. they are hardly using the first pronouns to claim their findings. we argue that non-native authors are not familiar yet with the shifting convention, especially in the soft science field. thus, they still hold their academic convention. meanwhile, hyland (2002a) sees these self-mention markers as essential for successful academic writing. it is seen as a strategy that allows the authors to interact with their potential readers to negotiate the ideas, novelty research, and reliable findings. the studies, as mentioned earlier, have focused on comparing genres, nationalities, and disciplines and most of their findings suggest that non-native authors of english use fewer selfmention markers to justify the objectivity of their writings. apparently, the indonesian academic writing style also promotes objectivity and emphasizes that no personal pronouns should be involved, especially in writing formal writing such as research articles for publication. in addition, yuliawati et al. (2020) added that indonesian authors favor passive construction in writing research articles. furthermore, indonesian academics have gained significant encouragement for academics to publish nationally and internationally to push the quality of indonesia's publication (adnan, 2014). this became the problem indonesian authors faced, who are most likely to adhere to the traditional convention and not be familiar with the english academic discourse. although the indonesian academic convention encourages objectivity, there is still no clear result on how they construct the authorial identity in research articles in the indonesian context to international journal of language teaching and education 39 date. thus, we decided to conduct this research that focuses on investigating indonesian authors constructing their authorial identity using self-mention markers in ten reputable national journals. also, we would like to see whether indonesian authors in reputable national journals have confidently presented their identity or not. for this purpose, our research has two main aims. first, we purpose to identify a corpus of english research articles written by indonesian authors to track down the self-mention markers that construct the authorial identity. to do this, we use frequency analysis using antconc ver.3.9.5 (anthony, 2020). second, since self-mention markers perform several functions, we also analyze the discourse function by referring to hyland's taxonomy hyland (2002a) in categorizing the function using concordance analysis. this research aims to help indonesian authors in linguistics and applied linguistics to argue and state their findings convincingly in their writing. 2. method as a signature of the corpus research (biber & reppen, 2015; cheng, 2012), this research adopted a mixed-method research design. mix-method design is believed to facilitate a deeper understanding of the research objectives of creswell & creswell (2018), which is the authorial identity in this context. there are two steps taken for the research. in the first step, we employ quantitative analysis, which sought to obtain the frequency of explicit self-mention markers (i, me, my, we, us, our). in the second phase, we employ a qualitative analysis that helps us explore the function of self-mention markers. in this case, we referred to hyland's (hyland, 2002a) taxonomy on discourse function. his taxonomy consists of five categories: expressing self-benefits, stating a purpose, explaining a procedure, elaborating an argument, and stating results/claims. however, we only take four-category since expressing self benefits will only appear on students writing that is meant to the students "to reflect on their learning experience," which is mainly not occurring in the ra genre (lorés-sanz, 2011; mur dueñas, 2007). before we begin to analyze the corpus, we set the criteria to compile the corpus that suits our purpose, such as national journal indexed in sinta (specifically sinta 1-2), journals that were published during the period 2017-2021, and english medium journals that only concerned with linguistics, applied linguistics, or language teaching were written by indonesian writers only. having specified the data for our corpus, we began to build the corpus by selecting journals in linguistics and applied linguistics. we chose this field because the authors deal with english which; we assumed that authors in this field have more expertise in writing english academic writing such as research articles. however, these fields commonly use qualitative and quantitative approaches. therefore, the corpus of this research does not set apart the research articles that applied quantitative or qualitative approaches. (dobakhti & hassan, 2017) found no significant differences between quantitative and qualitative research articles using self-mention markers. all the selected journals are english medium national journals indexed in sinta 1 and 2. in indonesia, the credible national journals are the journals that have been validated by sinta, which indexed the journals' quality. moreover, the journals indexed in sinta 1 and sinta 2 acquired the highest category in national journal rank. most of the previous studies built their corpus by selecting from a single journal to ensure the representation of our corpus, we decided to select ten. following ariannejad (2020), harwood (2005) and hyland (2001), to limit the number of ras taken from each journal and considering that this corpus needs to be edited and cleaned manually, we decided to take 20 ras from each journal which was believed to be a representative number of each identified group. in total, we gathered 200 ras published in 2017-2021, which are hoped to be representative and balanced from ten journals. regarding the nativity of the research articles authors, since there are multi-cultured authors from each journal, we only select authors from indonesia, which was intended for our research purpose. knowing the fact that the nativity of each author is impossible to be traced one by one by asking the authors nativity personally, following the previous studies (molino, 2010; utomo & suryani, 2019; wang & jiang, 2018), we considered authors' nativity from their name and affiliation. once we had done the data collecting process, we began to do the data cleaning process. all of the research articles for our corpus were downloaded in pdf format, which means they have to be formatted into text and should be cleaned from any extra information that is unnecessary for our analysis, such as journals' names, page numbers, footnotes, headings, tables, figures, authors' names, acknowledgments, and references. we also code every research article into era-001-1a to ease the identification of the articles. 40 s. f. firdaus, y. s. soemantri & s. yuliawati we utilized a corpus tool in creating and conducting the analysis, namely antconc ver. 3.5.9 (anthony, 2020). in total, we obtain 969,187 words from the corpus to trace the occurrences of selfmention markers during 2017-2021. the corpus profile is shown in table 1. table 1. corpus of research articles written by indonesian authors research articles texts words linguistics and applied linguistics 200 969,187 as mentioned earlier that this research conducts two steps of analysis. at the beginning of corpus analysis, the first step is usually the frequency analysis, and it is the key idea in corpus and points out to the researcher what to be analyzed (baker et al., 2006). thus we initiate the frequency analysis, which is used to trace the occurrences of self-mention markers in the corpus using the wordlist feature in antconc. after gaining the frequency, we used concordance analysis to separate the corpus's exclusive and inclusive self-mention markers. suppose there are self-mention markers other than the authors are excluded. moreover, concordance analysis is also employed to assist us in uncovering the most common realization of the function of self-mention markers in the corpus used by the indonesian authors in their writing. finally, examples of the concordance analysis were provided to illustrate how these authors employ the self-mention markers in their research articles. 3. findings and discussions this research demonstrated the various form of self-mention markers that occurred based on the frequency analysis. the wordlist feature in antconc counts the self-mention markers in our corpus, which produces the frequency of each self-mention marker. at the beginning of frequency analysis, we found that the first pronoun i occupied the highest frequency with 1791 occurrences, followed by we (856) and the other pronouns such as my (433), our (302), us (216), and me (176). based on our initial finding, we assume that indonesian authors are firm in projecting their identity in their writing because they use those self markers in such numbers. we take this result to further analysis to unravel our first assumption, as stated in our procedure. then, we employ the concordance analysis. however, when we applied the concordance analysis, we were surprised that the numbers were decreasing significantly. it is found that in the frequency the self-mention markers are mainly referring to extracts, interview transcripts, abbreviation, for instance "….he uttered: "erm, at home, i already prepared some words for this part (pointing at the screen), but it was not spoken out.", "…e.g., tomorrow i have a job to send a parcel…". the first pronoun i was primarily found to be an example or extract of their object research instead of referring to the authors. therefore, we provide the frequency of self-mention markers that the authors actually use to refer to themselves: table 2. frequency analysis of self-mention markers self-mention markers i me my we us our frequency 72 0 27 154 37 42 from table 2, we can see that now the pronoun we is the most frequent with 154 occurrences. although the frequency of the pronoun i is frequently decreasing, the pronoun i sits in the second position with 72 occurrences. the possessive pronouns such as our and my are also decreasing significantly, but having these occurrences may indicate that the authors want to flag their ownership of their research. in contrast with the pronoun us, the pronoun me is not found in the corpus to refer to the authors. interestingly, these occurrences may indicate that some authors are willing to use this explicit pronoun since the authors in this corpus were not entirely co-authors, some single authors as well. the appearances of subjective pronouns in this corpus point out that the authors marked their authorial stance in arguing and claiming their work on their research (khedri, 2016). thus, it may also indicate that the authors in journals sinta 1 and 2 are more aware of how to promote themselves using these pronouns, which contrasts with authors who refuse to use self-mention markers such as first-person pronouns (yotimart & aziz, 2017). in other words, the findings harmonize with the idea that research articles are shifting to a more international journal of language teaching and education 41 impersonal way. it clearly demonstrates that the research articles are no longer faceless as they used to be. these self-mention markers can be used in various ways. thus, we analyze their function in detail based on their context in the corpus. as we mentioned earlier, we adopted four categories of hyland's taxonomy in categorizing their functions. the following table presents the function of each self-mention marker employed by the authors. table 3. the discourse function of the self-mention markers in the corpus (%) function total i me my we us our stating a goal/purpose 13% 5% 1% 5% 2% explaining a procedure 43% 11% 2% 23% 4% 3% elaborating an argument 17% 3% 2% 8% 1% 3% stating results/claims 27% 3% 4% 10% 6% 4% table 3 illustrates the function used by authors in their writing. it appears that the authors employed the self-mention markers both in high-risk and low-risk functions. in line with molino (2010), these self-mention markers are commonly associated with defining the research procedure, emphasizing the data and result found in their writing. however, most self-mention markers indicate a low-risk function, explaining a procedure, comprising 43% in total. while the high-risk function, stating results/claims, comprised 27% of the occurrences. the other high-risk function, elaborating an argument, slightly outnumbered the other low risk-function, stating a goal/purpose. the pronoun i, my, we, us, and our are seen to be fulfilled almost every function except me because we did not find this pronoun used by the authors to refer to themselves. explaining procedure at this point, we describe each function extracted from the samples that we found based on the categories. we start by describing the highest function among those four categories. our findings align with (al-shujairi, 2020; khedri & kritsis, 2020) that explaining procedure was used mainly by the authors. as suggested by its name, explaining the procedure, we found that they mainly used the self-mention markers in the method section of the research articles. in explaining the procedure, the authors preferred to employ the pronoun i and we as seen in the following examples: 1. further, we calculated the percentage of their occurrences; we counted the number of variants used in each type, divided by total of variants in that type, an multiplied by 100 %. (era012-1a) 2. …we employed both member-checking and external review to establish trustworthiness in the data. (era-122-2g) 3. i utilized antconc to explore the use of personal pronouns. (era-159-2h) 4. although the rtc consists of approximately 75 million twitter posts, i randomly chose 1000 tweets for each gender using the excel rand formula from 1-gram tweets of rtc. (era-159-2h) 5. i collected data for one semester (five months) by examining comments from the subject, notes from classroom observations, course materials, and the text written for an assignment. (era040-1b) these examples show that the authors construct their identity as the researchers by being willing to use the self-mention markers in research procedures or steps on their writing. it also demonstrates that authors are highlighting themselves as performers of the research process to the readers. the verbs such as calculated, counted, utilized, chose, and collected assisted with the pronoun i and we as their subject indicate their procedure was successfully done by the agent or the subject of the process. in this case, they simply marked their personal contribution to their research to display their ability to conduct the research procedure and research decision as in examples (4) and (5). 42 s. f. firdaus, y. s. soemantri & s. yuliawati from this finding, we can say that authors of linguistics and applied linguistics project themselves well in explaining a procedure by emphasizing their professional abilities in the research procedure, as seen in example (3). however, this function is categorized as one of the low-risk functions, which hyland (2002a) stated that low-risk function only simply signposting the readers. such function carries a minor threat or rejection. stating result/claims in most cases, non-native authors tend to downplay the self-mention markers when stating claim/results as found in işık-taş (2018). interestingly, we found that indonesian authors employ 27% of the self-mention markers to state their findings in their articles. furthermore, we found subjective pronouns, but we also noticed the use of possessive pronouns in stating results/claims. the following examples illustrated how authors make use of these self-mention markers: 1. similarly, in this study we found that gender played an important role in the students' proficiency in writing essay (era-047-1c) 2. based on the finding we noticed that several flouting maxims happen during the interview. (era-185-2j) 3. to this case, i conclude that jâ' gives a negative meaning to the command it embodies. (ra 013-1a) 4. i offer ten excerpts of data where the participants made use of jâ' in their conversations (era013-1a) 5. our research finding portrays the majority of evaluation shifts occurred in the 'graduation of attitude' domain. (era-166-2i) 6. our interview data unpack a salient gendered racialization experienced by andin during her first year of study in the community of practice. (era-122-2g) 7. my classroom observations have revealed that the students participating in my study use english in their efl classes relatively confidently. (era-54-1c) when the authors explicitly state their results and knowledge claims, they promote their unique findings, and this high-risk function can potentially object the readers (hyland, 2002a). furthermore, it can also promote their worth noting findings as they evaluate, interpret and claim membership to the discourse community. as a result, it makes this function commonly appears in the discussion section or conclusion section. we would assume that these authors are considered to be assertive in stating their result explicitly collocating with cognitive verbs as in reporting their findings (we found and we noticed), conveying knowledge claims, or offering the interpretation (i offer and i conclude). as can be seen in examples (10), (11), and (12), possessive pronouns are performed in stating the results. possessive pronoun our followed by the research term such as research findings and interview data suggest their ownership and originality of their findings to the potential readers. it goes the same as when the authors used the pronoun my followed by the classroom observation that the authors emphasize their consistent confidence in revealing their reliable result and mark their persistent willingness to discuss the result of their observation to the readers directly. hyland (2001) mentioned that these possessive pronouns are also used for marketing the authors' contribution and flag their involvement in research outcomes. also, it implies responsibility for and commitment to the findings (li, 2021). elaborating an argument the findings revealed that the authors consciously set out a line of reasoning using first-person pronouns in elaborating an argument. moreover, hyland (2002a) added that only professional academics chose to do this in academic writing. besides, elaborating an argument is included in the high-risk function that may indicate a face-threatening. international journal of language teaching and education 43 1. further, we calculated the percentage of their occurrences; we counted the number of variants used in each type, divided by total of variants in that type, and multiplied by 100 %. (era-0121a) 2. …we employed both member-checking and external review to establish trustworthiness in the data. (era-122-2g) 3. i utilised antconc to explore the use of personal pronouns. (era-159-2h) 4. although the rtc consists of approximately 75 million twitter posts, i randomly chose 1000 tweets for each gender using excel rand formula from 1-gram tweets of rtc. (era-159-2h) 5. i collected data for one semester (five months) by examining comments from the subject, notes from classroom observations, course materials, and the text written for an assignment. (era040-1b) the authors use the function of elaborating an argument to express their opinion or argument to the theory, their works, their research process, and the method applied in their study. in this section, professional academic writers are required to perform the authorial identity to convey their original interpretations of findings to the discourse community. these examples show the authors' confidence in self-assertion to their argument whether they reflect their argument, suggestion, or doubt. even in examples (17) and (18), the authors decided to use the pronoun i followed by the verb argue to point out their argumentation. it indicates that authors are not avoiding themselves in using to i to stress their authorial identity. additionally, hyland & tse (2005) and wu & paltridge (2021) mentioned that the higher frequency of i imply the authors are more comfortable using i to increase authoritativeness. stating a purpose/goal the least function that appears in our corpus is stating a purpose/goal. this function referred to flagging the research intention or focus and providing a clear structure for the text. despite the low-risk function reflected in this function, they do explicitly present the authorial identity and be responsible for their research decisions. the authors need to present their confidences while introducing the research purposes to reflect their certainty of conducting the research (walková, 2019). in example (19), the authors present what they intend to do in each research process step indicated by the verb aim. the authors also mentioned their goal in their articles, as demonstrated in example (22) using the first person pronoun i collocate with the verb focus. 1. therefore, we aim to see how our researched participant constructs her identities as a graduate student during the university classroom participation and to what extent her identity changes over time. (era-122-2g) 2. in this research we sought to assess the translation classification and quality of the english version of the novel 'laskar pelangi' (the rainbow troops). (era-036-1b) 3. through the corpus-driven approach, i intend to explore how each gender utilises language by looking to the personal pronouns and the verb accompanying them. (era-159-2h) 4. as mentioned earlier, the main goal of this article is to review empirical studies in the last decade. i focus on out-of-school literacy practices and opportunities available at the environment that help esl learners develop their literacy skills. (era-62-1c) the functions implied from self-mention markers showed that indonesian authors are more adapted to this linguistic strategy despite their collective culture, unlike other non-native authors in aminifard (2020), karahan (2013) and yotimart & aziz (2017) that downplayed their selfmention markers in their writings. the use of self-mention markers in academic texts does not necessarily make it less objective, but in certain sections of the research articles, such as in the findings section, self-mention markers can project and promote their authorial identity to be recognized as a credible scholar in their field for claiming their findings. moreover, authors in 44 s. f. firdaus, y. s. soemantri & s. yuliawati applied linguistics are moving towards the tendency to express their stance more subjectively in recent years (dontcheva-navrátilová, 2013), as we have discovered in our research. accordingly, if there are no explicit self-mention markers in their writing at all, tang & john (1999)mentioned that the authors would leave the potential readers in doubt and confuse their findings. the readers would hesitate to accept the findings if the authors did not convey their argument convincingly (loan & pramoolsook, 2015) conclusion this research focused on identifying authorial identity through explicit self-mention markers in the corpus of english research articles in the field of linguistics and applied linguistics by indonesian authors. as discussed earlier, the findings have discovered that the indonesian authors are not completely impersonal in writing the research articles. it is implied that the authors tend to be aware of how to exploit the self-mention markers in academic writings in the last five years. in other words, we assume that they understand their academic convention to market their identity as credible scholars. furthermore, we also think that the authors in these high-ranking national journals are professional and competent authors who are conscious of using self-mention markers to mark their authorial identity. this assumption is supported by our frequency analysis result that the authors have explicitly projected their identity by using various kinds of self-mention markers, particularly subjective pronoun we and i followed by other pronouns such as my, our, and us. regarding the function from the employment of self-mention markers, the findings are also in line with (alyouse & alotaibi, 2019) that we found that indonesian authors tend to be confident and reliable in using the pronouns to explain the research procedure, which comprises 43%. on the other hand, about 27% of indonesian authors are considered assertive when they state results/claims by using the self-mention markers, then elaborating arguments 17% and stating a goal/purpose 13%. knowing that research articles publication is now in a competitive setting, we expect that this research serves pedagogical impact that contributes to eap/esp courses and novice writers, especially in linguistics and applied linguistics fields. writing instructors in indonesia are suggested to introduce and encourage our novice writers' to acknowledge self-mention markers in presenting convincing arguments that in line with the academic writing norms to project authorial identity as competent scholars. this research also showed how expert authors employ self-mention markers to fulfil particular functions in their writings. since our research only focuses on the employment of self–mention markers in linguistics and applied linguistics, we suggest that future researchers conduct comparative research in identifying the authorial identity through self-mention markers. future researchers can compare english research articles in another field, such as in hard science by indonesian authors, to gain a deeper insight on how authors in our country, as non-native speakers of english, project their identity through various forms of self-mention markers. references adnan, z. 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(2020). penulisan akademik perspektif linguistik dan analisis wacana (n. darmayanti (ed.); 1st ed.). unpad press. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5753 227 ijolte designing multimedia-based presentation in academic speaking classroom: students’ strategies denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati master degree of english education department universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: dentymarga@gmail.com how to cite this paper: sukma, d., nurkamto, j., & drajati, n. (2018). designing multimedia-based presentation in academic speaking classroom. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 227-237. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5753 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract educational technology is substantially aimed at assisting the teaching and learning process especially in material delivery that can be done using powerpoint presentation. particularly, the integration of text-based material and a variety of media promote the likelihood that the audience experiences the effective information processing. therefore, multimedia-based presentation that is accompanied by verbal explanation must be designed as effective as possible in order to foster the audience’s understanding. the current research was aimed at investigating the strategies employed by the students in designing multimedia-based presentation in academic speaking classroom. this qualitative research was carried out using case study approach to obtain the in-depth information. the data were collected through observation, document analysis, and interview. the results show that the students’ strategies in designing multimedia-based presentation are mainly to foster the audience’s thinking process. those strategies are using heading to lead to thesis, using bullet list to create sequential delivery, and using the additional element to engage the audience. to make the slide gets into the logical manner, a transitional device is also required. this research will contribute to the teaching and learning process that uses presentation as the method of material delivery. the teacher and the student are expected to know the strategies to design an effective presentation that can promote the audience’s way to process the information. subject areas academic speaking keywords academic speaking, educational technology, information processing, material delivery, multimedia-based presentation 1. introduction educational technology has been widely used in this century since it offers various ways of development to attain the academic objectives (shoffner, 2013). it is believed that the technology will greatly influence how the education goes. in the developed world, the range of technology tools has been exploited; therefore, it is now commonly found in the classroom (mercer, hennesy, & warwick, https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5753 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5753 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 228 ijolte 2017). the practice of technology also becomes the integral aspects of those disciplines (pasternak, hallman, & rush, 2016). ploetzner, fillisch, gewald, & ruf (2016), in their discussion of media and technology, agree that the age of information digitalization greatly combines the static and dynamic learning to become interactive. it indicates that more researches regarding to the implementation of technology in the learning process is also required as the benchmark and guideline for the stakeholders in education to apply technology in their teaching. moreover, being a student in tertiary level also requires the skills that need to be practiced and mastered particularly in language learning areas. one of those skills is in the area of speaking skill in which the students are required to present their works in the classroom. educational technology contribute to the implementation of academic presentation since it is mostly done using the technology especially powerpoint presentation. in this case, presentation in academic context refers to the terms of information and knowledge transfer in which the presenter plays the role as the primary source. the role of the presenter is also assisted by the use of educational technology to enhance the quality of the presentation. notably, the individual presentation in academic speaking classroom is an attempt to prepare the students to present their researches in international conference, seminar, or workshop. the teaching and learning concerning on academic speaking is required to be carried out since english is the foreign language for the students. hence, other than the speaking skill concerning on the presentation delivery, the idea of preparing the presentation slides is also important. therefore, the students are in effort to prepare the presentation which is welldesigned, effective, and understandable. in the practice, mayer (2003) believes that the students will learn better when the presentation is available in two forms: words and picture which is later called as multimedia learning. the presentation that consists of the text-based material that is accompanied by a variety of media e.g. picture, animation, graphic, etc promote to the audience’s well-structured way of thinking. moreover, the presentation that is full of words may hinder the information processing (mayer, 2009). thus, multimedia-based presentation is used in academic speaking classroom in order to enhance the audience’s understanding by arousing their attention toward the presentation. to investigate this phenomenon, the current study attempts to investigate the students’ strategies in designing multimedia-based presentation. multimedia-based presentation used by the students in tertiary level is required since the heavy text-based presentation seems problematic in two ways (hertz, kerkhof, & woerkum, 2016). first, the presentation which is full of text will turn to be the presenter’s speaking notes; therefore, the presenter tend to read the whole text appear on-screen than making an eye-contact with the audidenty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 229 ijolte ence. it will lead the presentation to be less interactive. notably, eye contact becomes the most important component of effective physical delivery in order to build rapport and reduce the speaker’s feeling of isolation (dulzan & yalcin, 2015). second, the heavy text-based material can also interfere the presenter’s spoken words. it may distract the audience’s information process. therefore, multimedia-based presentation is now commonly used by the presenter in the international conference or the teacher in the classroom since it can employ different kinds of media other than text. however, only a few of the researches discuss about how the presenter designs the presentation and how the audience understand it since the previous studies concern more on the outcome (dubois & vial, 2000; garcia-rodicio, 2014; scielzo, fiore, cuevas, & klein, 2003). this research will primarily concern on the process of making presentation than the final result that may be attained by the audience. the previous researches have not investigated the process of designing multimedia-based presentation. hence, this issue is indeed needed to be explored in order to get the insight of the importance of the process in designing multimedia-based presentation before it is presented to the audience. therefore, the present study is nested within the more specific scope to fill the gap. as this research focuses on the use of technology in higher education, the way how the students have the strategies in making effective presentation and how they attempt to solve the common problems that might be encountered by the audience are considered important to be investigated. 2. literature review in regard to the importance of academic speaking in tertiary level, some experts have agreed that the students need to function it effectively since the colleges mostly focus on the writing and reading skill (ferris & tag, 1996). the current study has limited the scope of research by concerning on the academic speaking presentation using english in the university level. in case of that, the recent studies were conducted in order to disseminate the information about the significant function of academic speaking in tertiary level. the research conducted by simona (2015, p. 69) shows that knowing the rules of giving an effective academic presentation and gaining experience in preparing and delivering such presentations within the english language course represent the prerequisites for successful communication for career purposes in the society. internet and technology also contribute to the preparation of an interesting and attractive presentation by having the technological support such as powerpoint (simona, 2015). hadfield-law (2001) defines presentations making as a way to get a message across effectively in order to make a difference. it conceptually refers to the ability in making yourself understood by others. the theories that have been mentioned indicate that the preparation of a presentation is important denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 230 ijolte even though several presenters consider it as the simple thing. nevertheless, it becomes the basic step that must be done successfully in order to perform a successful presentation. in terms of language learning, the integration of words and pictures is considered to support the instructional materials when mixing the modality and replacing the text with narration (zolna, 2007, p. 142). many educators have agreed the statement saying that multimedia improve learning. the combination of audio and pictorial information eases the brain to process and integrate the information. in attempt to simplify the knowledge or information in the classroom, instructional media are considerably used to foster the learning as it contains words and pictures (mayer, 2004). however, combining words and picture can not guarantee that an effective presentation can be created. the structure of the words and additional elements, the number of words and lines, the use of transition, the use of phrase and full sentence will possibly affect the effectiveness of a presentation. preparing the presentation covers how the students design the slides and how they do the rehearsal before performing the presentation. as what the experts concern on the preparation, several aspects must be considered. first, the control of the length of a presentation that becomes the focus of a presentation (hertz & kerkhof, 2016; garner, gaudelli, zappe, & alley, 2009). hertz and kerkhof (2016) believe that the length of the presentation can influence the presenter’s performance as it has the indirect relationship with the speaking anxiety that might be encountered by the presenter. second, the slide structure covering the form of heading and body that become the primary focus in an academic presentation (garner et al., 2009). they concern on the slide that consists of the topic phrase headline supported by a bullet-list. it also deals with the idea of dividing the larger scope of materials into several sub-chapters in order to simplify the slide. it is also related to the tactic in making the audience knows what is presented easily without being distracted by the large amount of information put on the slides. third, the use of table, picture, graph, sound effect, visual effect, video clips, and so on to present the complex material (bartsch & cobern, 2003). however, it must be noted that those additional elements must be related to the material so that the extraneous material can be minimized (moreno & mayer, 2009). the integration of those additional elements inserted on the slide that is also delivered by using on-screen text and the narration or verbal explanation are later called as multimedia-based presentation. this research is part of the researcher’s larger research concerning on the implementation of multimedia-based presentation in academic speaking classroom covering the preparation, the performance, and its effect on the audience’s cognitive engagement. this current research specified the students’ strategies in the preparation stage in order to explore how those strategies can denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 231 ijolte help the presenter in delivering the effective and attractive presentation. 3. method a case study approach was used in this research as an attempt to investigate the students’ strategies in designing multimedia-based presentation. woodside (2010) believes that case study acts as an emic view for an occurence of the event including the deep understanding of the processes or other concept variables. it leads the researcher to thoroughly describe and understand the context to be presented as a comprehensible finding in qualitative study. the current study was carried out in master degree of english education department in one of the state universities in surakarta, indonesia. there were 3 students attending academic speaking course in master degree of english education department who become the informants in this study. the three students were those that have presented using powerpoint in academic speaking classroom. this study employes purposive sampling in which the informants were chosen based on the certain criteria. the criteria of choosing the informants were the students attending academic speaking classroom, presenting their research, and using multimedia in their presentation. the data were collected through suevey questionnaire, observation and interview. it was to know the result of their presentation design and how they deal with it. the document analysis is also carried out in order to analyze the structure and the characteristics of their slides that were confirmed through in-depth interview with the informants. to validate the data, the researchers employed member checking confirming the data which is done by the participants of the study to check the accuracy of the data (creswell, 2012) and source triangulation by finding the supporting data from the informants and observational field notes. the researchers analyzed the data by using several stages according to yin (2002) in which the stages consisted of preparation of data analysis, exploration of the data through coding, interpretation of the meaning, and validation of the data analysis. 4. result and discussion 4.1 results based on the data that have been obtained, several findings were revealed to answer the problem statements. the coverage of the research is in the scope of presenters’ strategies in designing multimedia-based presentation in academic speaking classroom that are analyzed by using document analysis based on the presenters’ presentation documents, the observation based on the presenters’ performance, and the in-depth interview based on the result of document analysis and observation. furthermore, the implementation of the students’ strategies can be observed from the classroom presentation. below are the denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 232 ijolte findings of the current research that later be justified to other relevant theories. using heading to lead to the thesis based on the interview, rz states that “heading is important to let the audience know what we are going to deliver in a presentation and to help us in delivering each slide by order.” moreover, the observation shows that the texts of each slide were not mentioned as a whole since rz only mentioned the heading that is followed by verbal explanation. it indicates that the heading becomes the guideline for rz to explain the topic of each slide. afterwards, she developed the material using her own words. it corresponds to the ty’s statement that says “heading is functioned to be the reminder for me about the content of the slide and it also leads the audience to understand the content.” ty performed the presentation by showing not only the text or heading of her slide, but also the visual elements describing the content such as graphic, chart, and so on. she used those elements to show the theories of her research. she stated that inserting the heading which is followed by the visual elements will be efficient to make the audience know two key points of “what and how”. “what” is represented by the heading and “how” is represented by the visual element that follows. therefore, the thesis of the slide can be recognized by the audience easily. hr also agrees that the main idea is put on the heading so the audience will recognize the context of the slide from the first time. she stated that “the audience tends to catch the information which is brief and clear so that is why i put the main idea of each slide in a heading to introduce the context.” in sum up, the heading employed by the presenter is aimed at assisting the audiences to guide them in comprehending each slide at a glance. it is also functioned as the “reminder” for the presenters about the main idea of each slide. using bullet list to create sequential delivery in terms of the slide density and the bullet list in a presentation, hr states that “i avoid to put too many words in my slide. i tend to use the bullet list to divide the materials into some points.” she believes that the large number of full sentences will distract the audience’s attention. hr used the bullet list to trigger her in explain the material sequentially. additionally, she prefers to put the brief information on the slide, while the explanation is put on the presentation slides which can be in a ‘hidden format’. the notes that can only be read by the presenter is aimed at making the presenter to read the notes without being noticed by the audience. moreover, hr believes that the bullet is aimed at avoiding the full text to be shown on the slide. “the more information we put, the denser the slide we make. the denser the slide, the harder the audience to understand the material.” denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 233 ijolte moreover, the result of the observation shows that there are also the presenters that replace the bullet or numbering with the icons. as what can be seen in the presentation shown by ty that she put the icons to make the material sequential instead of putting the bullets or numbering. she states that “the icon will work better because it will also decorate the slides and make them more attractive.” therefore, she believes that the icon followed by the key phrases will create the good combination for presentation. in another case, ty used bullet list as the summary of the whole slides. “i summarize the whole presentation into one slide in the opening by using bullet list or numbering and is followed by confirming the audience’s understanding.” it is reflected on her presentation when she closed the presentation by summarizing the materials and asked the audience whether or not they catch the information well. additional elements to engage the audience the visual elements that they used are in the form of picture, chart, icon, graphic, and animation. after confirmed to the presenters, they state that the visual elements has more than the decorative function. it has the broader function to the presentation since the visual elements can make the audience back on track. ty mentions that “visual talks more” to describe the importance of visual elements. rz agrees with the statement by saying that “visual elements are used to clarify the material and to attract the audience. the usage is not merely as decorative element yet it also represents the context of the material.” furthermore, based on the observation, ty also used the visual element which is in the form of photo to interact with the audience. when she shows the picture of herself and her friends, she then asked the audience to spot the picture of herself. the audience’s responses were vary, some of them tried to point the slides and the rest answered the questions orally. therefore, ty finds that the visual elements are also used as a means to create interactive presentation. it is in line with the opinion stated by rz in which she also used the picture of korean menu on her slide. she said that the picture is used to engage the students and make them back on track. it is shown in the observation that she asked one of the audience to name the menu she shown on the slide. after confirmed in the interview, she stated that it was done to make the audience focus on her slide. “i saw that one of my friends was sleepy during my presentation, then i called him and asked him to name the korean food that appear on the screen. that is how the picture works”. the result reveals that the additional elements are used to make the presentation interactive and also to engage the audience to participate in the presentation. transitional device to intertwine each slide denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 234 ijolte transitional device is one of the aspect in the presentation which is mostly ignored by the presenters. the importance of transitional devices is also stated by hr by saying that “one slide to another slide must be linked altogether, we need to state the relation between the current slide with the next one before continuing the presentation.” it is represented in the presentation performed by hr in which she avoids to stop explaining while she moves to the next slide. she relates the previous slide to the next slide using oral transition so that the audience does not realize that the slide has been changed. another strategy is employed by ty that prefers to use the animation as the transitional device. “i prefer use the animation since it is more attractive, i also used to put the hyperlink and action as the transitional devices. those two work well for me.” she believes that the interesting transition will enhance the audience’s interest to get to know more about the next slide. 4.1 discussion based on the above-mentioned results, the discussion was done to relate to other theories.the use of heading corresponds to the theory proposed by hosseini (2013) in which she emphasizes the importance of organizing the concept. she suggests to put the main concept in each slide to create the logical manner of presentation. it indicates that the heading is able to show what to offer in each slide. shepherd (2006) also agrees that the heading as well as the subheading is used to keep the audience ‘on track’. the use of heading in the form of phrase as what has been practiced by the presenters represents the coherence effect that enables the audience to learn more deeply when the extranous material is excluded (mayer, 2003). hence, the text-based slide is avoided to reduce the cognitive load that might be encountered by the audience. sukma, nurkamto, & drajati (2018) also conclude that one of the effective strategies to help the audience process the information is by providing keywords or phrases in a presentation. the strategy in using the bullet list to create the sequential delivery corresponds to the preparation stages proposed by hosseini (2013). hosseini (2013) suggests to use the bullet points to show some subcategories. this idea is also stated by shwom and keller (2003) by suggesting to keep only one idea for each bullet. it also becomes the strategy to plan the structure of the presentation which is presented through bullet list (simona, 2015). the principle of 6x6 stated by hosseini (2013) is also performed by the students in which most of the slides denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 235 ijolte containing the bullet list have less than 6 bulleted items. however, some of the slides also ignore the 6 x 6 principle since they consist of more than 6 words in each bullet. the strategies employed by the presenters to divide the material into some sub-categories are in line with the statement that text on powerpoint slides interferes with the spoken words of the presenters (hertz, kerkhof, & woerkum, 2016). in order to make the information processing run well, mayer (2009) also stresses his finding about information transfer that may be disrupted if the words are used excessively on each slide. henceforth, the multimedia effect will take place when the points projected on the slide is combined with icons that replace the bullet and numbering. the multimedia effect proposed by mayer (2003) enables the audience to learn more deeply from words and pictures (icon). the additional elements in multimedia-based presentation becomes the basis to design the presentation. the importance of those elements are also shown in the theory stated by hosseini (2013) in which the multimedia presentation is successful if it includes good use of audio-visual characteristics, e.g. design, color, animation, sound, and so on. the visual element is used to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of a presentation and the auditory element is used to attract the audience in illustrating certain principles (shepherd, 2006). bartsch and cobern (2003) also agree that the picture as one of the visual elements makes the audience find the fact that the information is interesting so that they will always pay attention to the presentation later on. the use of hyperlink as one of the transitional devices is in line with the theory proposed by stacy (2017) in which she believes that hyperlink is used to electronically “connect” the word or picture to a slide in a completely different presentation. moreover, this problem is also addressed by goto and kashihara (2016) that concern on consideration of the connection between slides. they believe that it is the first step for the audience to grasp the structure of a presentation as what already mentioned by shepherd (2006) who believes in the idea of knowing the structure of a presentation through the corresponding transitional device. below is the model that can be drawn to describe the strategy employed by the students in designing multimedia-based presentation. denty marga sukma, joko nurkamto, nur arifah drajati 236 ijolte figure 1. strategy model employed by the students in multimedia-based presentation 5. conclusion substantially, multimedia-based presentation is used to assist the presenter in delivering an effective presentation as well as to assist the audience to comprehend the material more easily. therefore, there must be specific strategies employed by the presenters in designing multimedia-based presentation. the result shows that there are three basic strategies that are used by the presenters: using heading to lead to the thesis, using bullet list to create the sequential delivery, and using additional element to engage the audience. those three strategies must be executed in some conditions, one of them is by putting the effective transitional device to keep the audience ‘on track’. the use of transitional devices is intertwined with the effectiveness of those strategies since they affect each other. 6. acknowledgements i would like to thank to all of the first-year students in english education department for allowing me to observe in academis speaking classroom. the great thanks is also addressed to the supervisors that have guided me so that this research can be carried out. references [1] bartsch, r. a., & cobern, k. m. 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(2018). multimedia-based pesentation: exploring interactivity emergence in academic speaking classroom. science, engineering, education, and evelopment studies. (1) (1) [17] zolna, j. s. (2007). does multimodal presentation encourage integration of multimedia materials? a pilot study. 51st annual meeting of the human factors and ergonomics society, hfes 2007, 1, 141–145. [18] robert k. yin, r. k. (2002). case study research: design and methods, third edition. applied social research methods series, vol 5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.08.173 https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490615620416 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0959-47520200016-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2012.09.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.08.261 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2017.03.018 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5744 216 ijolte blended learning in a paragraph writing course: a case study anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi master degree of english education department universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: amuhtia@student.uns.ac.id how to cite this paper: muhtia, a., suparno, s., & sumardi, s. (2018). blended learning in a paragraph writing course: a case study. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 206-216. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5744 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract blended learning, the instructional approach integrating online learning with faceto-face learning, is one of the approaches gaining widespread acceptance among educational practitioners. combining the strengths of online learning and face-toface learning is believed to be able to enhance the quality of learning. different subjects may have different designs of blended learning because there is no specific formula for the best practice of blended learning. this paper reports a study investigating the implementation of blended learning in a paragraph writing course. the purposes were to investigate the blended learning activities carried out in the paragraph writing course and to find out the extent to which it affected students’ writing paragraph performance. the participants of this case study, who were selected purposively, involved one lecturer and six students of a paragraph writing class. the techniques for collecting data included interviews, observations, and document analysis, and data were analyzed using miles and huberman’s interactive model. ten blended learning activities, including five activities in face-to-face settings and five activities online, were identified in the course. the students’ paragraph writing performance seen from the result of final test was satisfying, indicating that the use of blended learning had a positive effect on students’ writing performance. subject areas writing keywords blended learning, face-to-face, online, paragraph writing 1. introduction among four language skills, writing is apparently the most challenging skill for efl learners. zemach and islam (2007) assert that writing is “one of the most difficult skills to master in both a first language and a second language” (p. iv). students not only need to have adequate vocabulary to express their thoughts, but they also need to be attentive to grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. in addition, the students should make their pieces of writing unified and coherent to be understandable. for efl students the complexity of mastering english writing skills is doubled with the fact that english is a foreign language. efl students need to get exposed to https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5744 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5744 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 217 ijolte the english language as much as possible and should be provided with sufficient writing activities and practices. the opportunities for students to get in touch with english and practice the writing skills in the class, however, are limited. advanced technology, especially the internet technology, may provide such opportunities. one of the breakthroughs the internet technology has established in education is the emergence of online learning. through this learning channel, instructional activities can be performed outside the classroom time. some teachers have fully used the online learning in their practices, but online learning alone is considered not sufficient because students have diverse learning preferences and some practical tasks cannot be performed online (epignosis llc, 2014). thus, combining the online learning with face-to-face learning is seen a good choice because it combines the strengths of both learning channels to provide more learning opportunities that students need. garrison and vaughan (2008) emphasize that blended learning approaches are believed to be able to enhance learning experiences. several studies have investigated the implementation of blended learning in writing classes. liu (2013) conducted a study at a university in beijing investigating the implementation of blended learning in an academic writing course. the results showed the improvement of students’ academic skill, the increase in student-student and student-teacher interactions, the decline in communication anxiety, and the development of learning autonomy. tuomainen (2016) studied the implementation of blended learning in an eap (english for academic purposes) course for academic writing and presentation skills in a finland university. the study showed that the students favored blended learning in the course and appreciated the flexibility and convenience of blended learning. while both previous studies investigated the use of blended learning in academic writing, this present study investigated the implementation of blended learning in a paragraph writing course and it described the main activities in both learning channels in more detail which were not carried out in the previous studies. a detailed investigation about learning activities was intended to reveal the benefits and/or drawbacks of each activity that can be kept or should be improved. the aims of the study were to find out the blended learning activities in the paragraph writing course and to reveal the extent to which the use of blended learning affected students’ paragraph writing performance. 2. literature review 2.1. paragraph writing in academic writing, the goal of a paragraph is to support a claim or idea that helps build the whole purpose of the writing (bryson, 2014). this implies that paragraphs play an important role in academic writing. good paragraphing helps the reader understand the text because ideas need to be organized to make them make sense, and “keeping one idea to one paragraph is the most basic rule of good paragraphing” (“best ielts preparation”, 2013). zemach and rumisek (2005) define a paragraph as anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 218 ijolte “a group of sentences about a single topic” (p. 11), and the sentences explain the main idea of the topic. savage and shafiei (2007) describe three elements of paragraph organization, namely the topic sentence, supporting sentences, concluding sentence. these elements should be unified and need to be organized coherently. these may not be easy as students could find it challenging to find ideas to include in their writing, and thus students need clear guidance, positive feedback, and interesting ideas to write about (zemach and islam, 2007). 2.2. blended learning blended learning is an instructional approach which combines face-to-face learning with online learning (garrison & vaughan, 2008; thorne, 2003; macdonald, 2008). different scholars, however, propose different concepts about blended learning. garrison and vaughan (2008) assert that blended learning is not an addition of online learning into face-to-face learning but “restructuring and replacing traditional class contact hours.” meanwhile, thorne (2003) states that one learning type can be “a supplement to other types of training and learning” (p. 47). among several models of blended learning in higher education identified by twigg (2003), namely supplemental, replacement, emporium, and buffet, auster (2016) suggests that supplemental model and replacement model are seemingly the most relevant models of blended learning. the supplemental model seems to fit thorne’s interpretation of blended learning while the replacement model suits the garrison and vaughan’s. 2.3. process approach to writing zemach and rumisek (2005) state that to create a good piece of writing a writer must go through several steps of the writing process. this process, which is called the process approach to writing, includes the steps of pre-writing, drafting, reviewing, and revising (badger & white, 2000). unlike the product approach which emphasizes on form, this process approach focuses on the facilitation of students’ writing. the role of a teacher is to guide learners through the writing process to develop strategies for generating ideas, drafting, and refining ideas (hyland, 2003). he adds that this could be reached through providing pre-writing activities to generate ideas, brainstorming, and outlining. 3. methodology the case study was used as the research method in this study, which was conducted at the english education department of a university in indonesia from may to july 2018. one lecturer and six undergraduate students of a paragraph writing class were purposively chosen as the participants. the six students were selected as the respondents among 27 students based on their level of writing competence; high, medium, and low, where each level was represented by two students. observations, anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 219 ijolte interviews, and document analysis were used as the techniques for collecting data. the observations were conducted both in the classroom and on the online platform to reveal the instructional activities taking place in the two learning modes. the interview to the lecturer was carried out to probe the teaching and learning activities in the blended paragraph writing course, while the interviews to the six students were conducted to confirm the information gathered from the lecturer using open ended questions. meanwhile, the document analysis was intended to get the supporting data from several sources, such as syllabus and lesson plans. two techniques were used to obtain the trustworthiness of data, namely triangulation and member checking. the triangulation in this study involved checking the information collected from different methods, namely observations, interviews, and document analysis, while member checking was done by taking the conclusion or information back to the participants so that they could determine the accuracy of the conclusion. data were then analyzed using the miles and huberman’s interactive model (2014). three major steps of the analysis consist of data condensation, data display, and drawing and verifying conclusions. data condensation involves the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting, and/or transforming the data from field notes, interview, documents, and other empirical materials. data display is a compressed assembly of information that allows conclusion drawing and action, helping the researcher understand what is happening and to do something either to analyze further or to act. drawing and verifying conclusions are carried out from the onset of data collection by identifying patterns, explanations, and causal flows. the three steps are interwoven before, during, and after data collection in parallel form. 4. findings and discussion the paragraph writing course was an introductory to writing course series. the series consisted of basic writing, paragraph writing, essay writing, and academic writing. this 2-credit university course was the prerequisite course for essay writing and was offered in semester four. the blended learning approach used in the course involved the activities in face-to-face learning settings which were regularly conducted once a week for sixteen meetings and supplemented with the activities on online learning platform. it indicated that the supplemental model of blended learning was used in this paragraph writing course. schoology, a learning management system, was used as the online learning platform in the course. the syllabus and materials were uploaded on the online learning platform covering the course topics: the elements of a paragraph, process of paragraph writing (pre-writing), process of paragraph writing (writing supporting sentences), unity, coherence, descriptive paragraph, process paragraph, classification paragraph, definition paragraph, comparison-contrast paragraph, cause-effect paragraph, and opinion paragraph. the materials were uploaded before classroom meetings to allow students to pre-read the materials. anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 220 ijolte 4.1. blended learning activities there were ten main learning activities identified in the blended paragraph writing course, five activities on schoology (online) and five activities in the classroom (faceto-face). 1) uploading materials before face-to-face meetings, the course materials were uploaded on schoology. in addition to enabling students to preview the materials that were going to be discussed in the classroom, the uploading was intended to make the materials accessible anytime and anywhere. students could read or download them from their mobile devices, such as smartphone, laptop, or tablet. if students pre-read the material and become more prepared, the classroom time can be used for deeper analysis and discussion (bowyer, 2017) rather than for lecturing. from the interview, however, it was found out that most students did not pre-read the materials. instead, they preferred listening to the lecturer’s explanation first before reviewing the materials afterward. it indicated that the lecture-based learning was still favored by the students. although the time for lectures in blended learning is not eliminated, garrison and vaughan (2008) emphasize that the major goal of blended learning is “to reduce lecturing while increasing inquiry and discourse” (p. 72). to engage students with the prereading activity, garrison and vaughan (2008) suggest providing students with online follow-up quizzes, self-assessment, survey, or discussion forum so that students will read the material to accomplish the tasks. 2) online quizzes online quizzes in this paragraph writing course were provided after the topics were discussed in face-to-face sessions. there were three online quizzes given during the course, namely the quizzes for identifying the topic sentences, paragraph unity, and transition signals. the quizzes were intended to strengthen what students already learned in the classroom and to be used as the students’ self-assessment. each quiz could be retaken multiple times during a certain time until the students attained the desired score. in her study, davis (2018) reveals that such repeatable quizzing can improve knowledge retention and student motivation. figure 1 shows the screenshot of a quiz. 3) online writing assignments when the course topics were about the types of paragraphs (descriptive, process, classification, definition, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, and opinion paragraphs), the lecturer assigned students to write a paragraph each week based on the type of a paragraph already learned in the classroom. the writing assignments were submitted or conducted on schoology. the online writing assignments were done outside classroom hours to provide students with plenty of time to implement the steps in the writing process to produce good paragraphs. from the interviews, students admitted that this activity helped them a lot in improving their writing skill. the students had one week to complete the assignment before the following classroom meeting. these anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 221 ijolte paragraph writing assignments were not graded but used for student portfolios. a study conducted by bridge and appleyard (2008) revealed that students found online assignment submission time-saving and paperless. macdonald (2008) also asserts that online word processors make writing easier. figure 1. a quiz on schoology 4) displaying the assignments the writing assignments on schoology were not submitted on the “submission” tool that would be directed to the lecturer’s page but posted on the “updates” page where all members could see and read. the “updates” page is like the wall on facebook, which is equipped with space for comments and other text-rich editor tools. by displaying the assignments on schoology, the lecturer wanted to motivate students to write and allow them to learn from each other’s pieces of writing. berger (2003, as cited in ebner, 2016) suggests that making work public to student’s peers could increase student motivation and engagement. figure 2 shows a screenshot of students’ pieces of writing displayed on schoology. 5) online feedback the comment section on the “updates” page where the writing assignments were posted could be used as the space for giving online feedback. the feedback could be appraisal comments or corrective feedback. although the lecturer already asked students to pass their comments on their friends’ pieces of writing, only a few students give comments to their friends’ work since it was not compulsory. some students, however, showed their “like” by clicking the “like” button. that students are hesitant giving online feedback is also admitted by jensen (2016) in his study. therefore, if it is considered necessary to have online feedback, such as for peer-review activity or anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 222 ijolte for increasing student-to-student interaction, the activity should be made compulsory. figure 2. a display of students’ writing assignments on schoology 6) lecturing a brief lecture was delivered by the lecturer to introduce a new topic each week in the classroom. the lectures were intended to explain new concepts such as the characteristics of a paragraph type, but the lectures were maintained brief. although lecturing is considered a relatively ineffective teaching method (knight, 2005), there are some merits of lecturing, one of which is providing guidelines on how to learn a topic and what to learn (brown & manogue, 2001). garrison and vaughan (2008) emphasize that the lecturing time in blended learning should be reduced and replaced with interactive and collaborative learning activities. 7) class discussion class discussion was one of the dominant activities in the classroom. after introducing the day topic, the lecturer showed the class a model paragraph of a new paragraph type and asked students to identify the paragraph for the topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence. the results of the exercises were then discussed together in the class. in this session, students were not only discussed the results but they could also ask questions related to the topic. it is in line with what stein and graham (2014) state that the class discussions give “opportunities for teachers to direct student exploration of a topic, and for students to test ideas, ask questions, and debate points” (p. 150). 8) pair work/group work the exercises in the classroom were mostly done in pairs or groups, such as anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 223 ijolte identifying the elements of a paragraph model and making the outline for their own paragraphs. the group work can increase the interaction between students and the lecturer and among the students themselves (macdonald, 2008). the collaborative learning in groups also results in stronger solutions and supports sharing for better learning (sansivero, 2016). the climate for collaborative learning is strongly encouraged in the practices of blended learning (garrison & vaughan, 2008). figure 3. a sample of students’ group work (a paper-glue activity) 9) teacher-student conferencing this face-to-face conferencing is an activity to give feedback on student writing. the writing assignments that were previously submitted and displayed on schoology would be discussed in class and the lecturer gave some feedback on students’ assignments in general without giving grades on each student’ work. giving grades can be discouraging, so it is better to provide actionable feedback that students can use for the following writing exercises (garrison & vaughan, 2008). spencer (2015) states that the teacher-student conferencing on students’ work could help students in self reflection, provide advice, and review the mastery (spencer, 2015). 10) portfolios the students had to print out and gather all writing assignments posted on schoology to make writing portfolios. the portfolios were used to see students’ writing progress and used as part of the summative assessment. hyland (2003) argues that the portfolio project can reduce student anxiety in assessment because the student work was the refined work after receiving feedback from the instructors or peers. in this paragraph writing course, portfolio assessment was not the only assessment, middle and final tests were still used to assess students’ paragraph writing performance. it is in line with the study by birgin and baki (2007) that the traditional assessment methods are still needed in addition to the alternative method, such as portfolio, to get more reliable information about students’ performance. anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 224 ijolte 4.2. students’ paragraph writing performance in order to find out the extent to which the use of blended learning in the paragraph writing course affected students’ paragraph writing performance, the students’ scores of the final test were analyzed. in the final test students were asked to write two paragraphs from several types of paragraphs they could choose with the topics already provided. the scores of the final test were classified into letter grades; a+ (the average score from 90-100), a (80-89.9), b+ (75-79.9), b (70-74.9), c+ (65-69.9), and c (60-64.9). among 27 students, five students got an a+, more than a half get an a, four got b+, and only one student got a b which was the lowest grade in the class. this result can be clearly illustrated in the following bar chart. figure 4. a bar chart of students’ grades for paragraph writing it can be seen from the bar chart that most students got an a, which is considered a very good grade. moreover, the lecturer conveyed her satisfaction over students’ writing performance by saying, i teach them outlining, and the techniques for brainstorming such as clustering and listing, with the intention that they can apply the techniques when they need to write. in the middle and final tests, they applied brainstorming and then outlining; they organize (ideas), the step after (finding) a topic sentence. many students made improvements in their writing skills compared to what they did in early days. this indicates that the use of blended learning had a positive effect on the students’ paragraph writing performance. the classroom time was efficiently used for the exploration of paragraphs and techniques of writing process, and the writing activity were done on schoology. it is in line with the study conducted by ghahari and amerigolestan (2013) that a blended learning method has created a more desirable condition to enhance students’ writing performance. 5. conclusions the blended learning in the paragraph writing course included ten main activities, five in the face-to-face setting and five on the online platform. some activities apparently need to be enhanced, such as a need for online follow-up quizzes before face-to anggri muhtia, suparno, sumardi 225 ijolte face meeting to engage students into pre-reading and a required activity for students’ commentary on each other’s work to increase student-to-student interaction. the activity that students found very helpful was the weekly online writing assignments because it encouraged them to practice writing regularly and it was more convenient to accomplish the writing assignments online. the analysis of students’ final test scores described that the use of blended learning in the paragraph writing course affected the students’ writing performance in a good way. references [1] auster, c, j. 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(2005). academic writing: from paragraph to essay. oxford: mcmillan. contact nur mahmudi nurmahmudi8@yahoo.co universitas islam malang, indonesia ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract although many studies have been done to uncover speaking anxiety in efl contexts, very little attention is directed to capturing efl students’ speaking anxiety using narrative study as the research design. to fill the gap, the present study was designed to explore anxiety level of indonesian efl students in public speaking class and how the participant deal with his anxiety. this research used a narrative inquiry as the design. data were collected through online interviewing. data analysis followed clandinin and cain’s (2008) three-dimensional space of narrative inquiry. findings revealed three kinds of anxiety experienced by the students in learning speaking, namely trait anxiety, situational-specific anxiety, and state anxiety macintyre and gardner (1991). furthermore, the causes of speaking anxiety were communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation (horwitz, horwitz & cope, 1986). this paper ends with suggestions form future research investigation. article history received 15 april 2021 accepted 17 june 2021 published 04 july 2021 keywords: anxiety, public speaking, efl students 1. introduction in a globalized world, english is learned by people across the globe, and for education, this language has been the most important tool for communication globally. however, formal educations have been criticized for not facilitating the learning of english adequately for the students. such phenomenon indicates that school-based english instruction is likely to be ineffective, as many secondary students lack the capacity to communicate effectively in english (cahyono & widiaty, 2011). as a result, many students enroll in english classes outside of school. an english course is is preferred to assist students who require further teaching and supervision in order to understand the language. in the context of english as a foreign language (efl), english speaking can be extremely daunting for students, moreover in a public area. oftentimes, english students encountered anxiety in the english-speaking practice. anxiety is an emotional disorder that is characterized by deep and viable feelings of fear or worry. something that makes the person feels anxious, such as when speaking to the public, taking the test, face interview, etc. anxiety comes naturally. it has happened to everyone at some point in their lives. anxiety is now considered a normal aspect of life. anxiety is a state of mind marked by worry and apprehension over what could occur, both in terms of the immediate situation and strange events. the description of anxiety is feelings of distress and discomfort, and chaotic thought with much regret. this is very influential on the body, until the body feels shivering; causing much sweat, beating the heart quickly, nausea in the stomach, weakening of the body, decreased productivity capacity, until many humans escaped the imagination as a form of temporary therapy. anxiety is a widespread sensation of fear or lack of self-confidence with no defined source or form. many studies have been conducted to investigate students’ anxiety in public speaking classes. recent research by aripin, noorezam, and rahmat (2020) reveal that although speaking international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i1.13771 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i1.13771 17 n. mahmudi & m. anugerahwati anxiety is one of the most visible concerns in the language classroom, determining or identifying the existence of anxiety during an oral presentation by simply glancing at the uttered words is challenging. as a result, it is thought that analyzing kinesics' physical movements, face expressions, hand and body movements can offer important information concerning speaking anxiety. dincer, ozcelik, ozer, and bahcecik (2020) conveyed that public speaking anxiety in a group surveys ranged from 21% to 33%, indicating that public speaking is a costly and disabling fear. in both university and community samples, public speaking has been identified as the single most dreaded situation. (bartholomay & houlihan, 2016) reveal that anxiety problems may have a number of detrimental consequences. anxiety about social situations, especially public speaking, may have a negative impact on someone job prospects. according to theophillia (2018), anxiety is a reaction that occurs when someone is scared of something or some activities. anxiety causes apprehension and disorder in human’s mind, such as anxiety over the negative outcomes that can arise when the students speak in public. furthermore, anxious making mistakes, anxious about not being able to communicate knowledge effectively and other anxieties that really make them mentally down before. when a viewed from previous studies, many researchers have been conducted research about anxiety in public speaking, yet they did not discuss more specific and without knowing the participant lived story about the anxiety in public speaking. according to (bartholomay & houlihan, 2016) one in every five persons suffers from public speaking anxiety, which is one of the most common types of anxiety. (gallegoa, mchugh, villatte, & lappalainen, 2020) reveal that as university students go through their studies and into their jobs, public speaking is a vital talent to master and practice. (lindner et al., 2018) stated that public speaking anxiety is a frequent problem that may be effectively cured with exposure therapy. research on anxiety in public speaking has also been studied by kelsen (2019) in foreign language (fl) learning scenarios. it was found that personality characteristics and anxiety have been recognized as having an impact. furthermore, research has shown that personality traits have a part in predicting an individual's proclivity for anxiety. however, few researches have looked at the relationship between personality and anxiety in english as foreign language (efl) contexts, especially when it comes to giving presentations. suleimenova (2013) also took a part of this research. he said that anxiety is described as mental discomfort or unease brought on by a dread of danger or catastrophe. excessive and exaggerated worry over commonplace events is referred to as general anxiety. it's a persistent anxiety that's unreasonable or out of proportion and it takes over and disrupts daily tasks like job, school, relationships, and social activities. according to cagatay (2015,) learning a foreign language entails both cognitive and emotive characteristics on the side of the students. anxiety is one of the most commonly encountered issues in the emotive dimensions of the language acquisition process. the aforementioned studies were carried out on formal schooling. thus, it is important for researchers to investigate public speaking anxiety in non-formal institution. moreover, in the pandemic era, it is essential to investigate anxiety level of indonesian efl students and explain how the students anticipate their anxiety in a public speaking class. on the other hand, he wants to know the teaching learning process of public speaking class. the researcher uses a narrative inquiry as approaches. the researcher decided using narrative inquiry because he wants to hear how anxiety level of indonesian efl students and explain how the student anticipates his anxiety in a public speaking class. the narrative approach refers to (clandinin & caine, 2008) statement which states that narrative inquiry is first and foremost a way of understanding experience. as a result, it is both a view of the phenomena of someone experience and a method for narrative inquiring into experience, allowing for a more in-depth examination of individual perceptions over time and in detail. the researchers take care of location, temporality and sociality from inside a three-dimensional, methodological narrative space for exploration of both the researcher’s and the participant’s context, starting with a narrative view of experience. in light of the above problems, this study investigated anxiety level of an indonesian efl student in a public speaking class. international journal of language teaching and education 18 2. literature review the nature of anxiety anxiety feeling can appear when someone will speak in public because of nervousness. feelings of anxiety can be seen with signs such as trembling, pallor, producing excessive sweating, nervousness, controlling eyes contact, unstable movement and body language when speaking in public. anandari (2015) found that embarrassment, unease, and a negative attitude about someone's performance were among the reasons of speaking anxiety among the students in their study;and apprehension of being badly judged by the audience (irawan, warni, & wijirahayu, 2018); and likewise in ahmed’s (2016) study which indicated that the students were primarily terrified of failing or making mistakes in their speeches, as well as being embarrassed by their classmates. when the students refer to the sign above when giving public speaking, they are anxious. students who exhibit more of the abovementioned characteristics must help students reduce the sense of anxiety that exists in them before anxiety becomes a serious problem for students. there are two kinds of anxiety santriza (2018). it was explained as follows: table 1. the kinds of anxiety no anxiety definition 1. trait anxiety trait anxiety is a kind of anxiety in many ways that a person experience. brown (1994) revealed trait anxiety is a more lasting anxiety propensity. in this example, a person feels worried all of the time, even in non-threatening situations. furthermore, anxiety may be a person's personality trait. as mentioned by ormod (2011) clarified even in non-threatening situations, trait anxiety can arise. 2. state anxiety state anxiety is a type of anxiety that develops when a person accepts a situation as hazardous, damaging, or threatening to him or her spielberg (1992). it suggests that state anxiety is just transient; it only happens when someone perceives a damaging or unsafe situation, and it will dissipate after the scary occurrence has passed. to understand more about the concept of language anxiety, macintyre and gardner (1991) identified three types of anxiety. it was explained as follows: table 2. the kinds of anxiety no anxiety definition 1. trait anxiety (a personality trait) woodrow (2006) considered trait anxiety is a personality trait that is relatively consistent. an individual who suffers from this anxiety is prone to experience anxiety in a range of settings. 2. state anxiety (an emotional state) state anxiety is a transitory phenomenon that occurs at a certain time. 3. situation specific anxiety (anxiety in a well-defined situation) situation specific anxiety is a symptom that occurs only in certain settings. anxiety of this nature is induced by a variety of factors. anxiety is a natural emotion-related behavior that might be seen as "healthy" felman (2020). in pakistan, approximately 75% of students said they were afraid of public speaking raja (2017). it's understandable that public speaking anxiety or fear of public speaking affects many people (knight, johnson, & stewart, 2016). it represents a speaker's emotional reaction, which might lead to an awkward scenario while speaking in front of a group. this claim is in line with liu’s (2007) lack of vocabulary, low english proficiency, lack of preparation, lack of practice, fear of making mistakes and being laughed at, fear of losing face, fear of being the center 19 n. mahmudi & m. anugerahwati of attention, fear of not being able to follow and understand others, inability to express ideas, and the last memory disassociation were among the nine factors that affected students' anxiety. the anxiety in public speaking anxiety among students is a result of their lack of english class skills, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and word use. it will certainly decrease their confidence in speaking english in front of the public, thus reducing their ability to speak in public. in the context of state anxiety, where they only feel nervous when facing english lessons, particularly public speaking, the anxiety faced by students is included. instead of taking the risk of falling again, students who have suffered failure to speak will opt quietly. they are worried that classmates will laugh at them and eventually reduce their confidence. as mentioned by lanefeldt (2011), speaking anxiety has a significant effect on a person’s self-confidence as they speak up and demonstrate what they know. in conclusion, anxiety is a serious issue that can endanger students' ability to speak english, especially public speaking. as we all know, public speaking is an essential component in interacting with people. in this situation, by developing an efficient and fun classroom environment, the teacher must be able to support students to feel relaxed and not feel stressed. (horwitz, horwitz & cope, 1986) revealed that in language learning, there are three types of anxiety. they are communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation: table 3. three types of anxiety a. communicative apprehension communicative apprehension is described as a sensation of shyness as a result of dread affecting one's ability to communicate with others. in this scenario, students who have difficulty speaking in groups have a hard time speaking in a foreign language lesson. in a communicative scenario, students have less control. as a result, it has an impact on their public speaking. b. test anxiety when students are concerned about failing an exam, they develop test anxiety. since the exam, students who are nervous about testing in a foreign language class might be offered a difficulty test and quizzes. even students who had done their homework made mistakes on the examination. c. fear of negative evaluation students who are not just anxious when taking a test are said to have a fear of bad assessment. in highly socially evaluative situations, such as job interviews or speaking in a foreign language class, they may feel uneasy. the causes of students’ anxiety can be divided into three categories. first, communicative apprehension happens when students are unable to talk in front of others. second, test anxiety occurs when the students are concerned about taking an english test. the last, the students experience fear of negative assessment when they are anxiously confronted with a social evaluation situation, such as a job interview or speaking in a foreign language class. there has been a significant uptick in research into foreign language anxiety, particularly as it relates to speaking abilities. suleimenova (2013) noted that concerns about communication ability among second or foreign language learners have risen in recent years, leading to increased speaking anxiety. foreign language learners in his research claimed that they are stressed, frightened, and apprehensive when learning to speak in the target language and that they have a "mental barrier" towards learning the language. likewise, karatas et al. (2016) supported suleimenova (2013) the idea that students in a language course must present themselves orally in front of their peers and engage in group discussions. when communication skills are emphasized in the language classroom, students will be scared to execute such tasks and see them adversely. as previously said, public speaking anxiety is a significant and complicated issue that a variety of factors may cause and has major implications. in addition, previous research shows that foreign language anxiety is a key factor that influences foreign language learners' performance and acquisition atas (2015). moreover, as reviewed, most studies on anxiety in public speaking focused on students in formal school, with little research targeting a non-formal international journal of language teaching and education 20 school. as a result, two research issues were addressed in this research: (1) how is the anxiety level of indonesian efl students in a public speaking class at the english course? (2) how does the student anticipate his anxiety in a public speaking class at the english course? 3. method this research investigates the anxiety level of indonesian efl students in a public speaking class; therefore, it was conducted using qualitative method and narrative inquiry as design. to explore student experiences, it is very suitable to use narrative inquiry. narrative inquiry is the first and most important way to understand experiences. over the last few decades, researchers have turned to narrative to understand experiences (clandinin & caine, 2008). in recent research, many researchers haven’t used a narrative inquiry approach in investigating and exploring student experiences (kelsen, 2019; suleimenova, 2013; cagatay, 2015). the research above became the researcher's reference for choosing narrative inquiry as an approach or method to explore anxiety in a public speaking class. as creswell (2012) proposes, as a design, "narrative research" focuses on "studying a single person, acquiring data through the collecting of stories, describing unique experiences, and debating the significance of those experiences for "the individual." john dewey's theory of experience cited on (clandinin & caine, 2008) provides a foundation for attending experience through three-dimensional space for narrative inquiry, namely the dimensions of temporary, place and sociality. this threedimensional space of narrative inquiry allows for investigation into the multi-level life experiences of researchers and participants. this place situates and understands the tales told and lived in the greater cultural, social, and institutional narrative. the focus on relationships between the researcher and the participant distinguishes narrative inquiry. profile of participant the researcher first met boy (pseudonym, male, 23 years old) in one english course in pare. he had a big curiosity in english. he desired to continue his study abroad. his junior and senior high school was in islamic boarding school based in paiton, east java, indonesia. he studied in islamic boarding school for many years. thus, he was good in arabic. at that time, he had graduated from islamic boarding school. he was interested in english so he came to kampung inggris pare to study english. he stayed in kampung inggris pare for many years. he showed how he struggled to study english. the researcher and boy stayed at the same camp. they met every day and every time. they studied together. he studied diligently. when he had to speak english in front of many people, boy was nervous, but his english was adequate. he looked sweaty all over, his hands were trembling and he had no idea to speak. he was speechless. he pushed and challenged himself to have good english and confidence by joining debate competition and speech competition. he also joined international public speaking club. that is toastmasters. “toastmasters” is an international public speaking club for those who want to improve their public speaking skills and leadership. finally, he knew what he should do to be confident. now his english and confidence are better than before. at that time, boy said that he wanted to be teacher in one of english courses in pare. he shared a lot of his struggle of being teacher in that english course. while he became a teacher in english course, he also continued his study in one of the universities in kediri, east java, indonesia. it means that he never stops to learn. when this research commenced, he has just graduated from the university. thus, he is in pare for many years, he starts from being student until being a teacher. he wants to continue his study abroad. he wants to get good score in ielts. therefore, in this study, i opt for the subjectivity of meanings from the participant’s lived experiences rather than the objectivity of the experiences. data collection method in this research, data collection was needed to describe the anxiety level of indonesian efl students in a public speaking class. in this qualitative research, the researcher used one-on-one interviews. one-on-one interviews are best for interviewing participants who aren’t afraid to speak up, who are good at speaking, and who can freely express their opinions (creswell, 2012). the interview takes place several times, running around 50 to 60 minutes. the researcher and the participant are in the online interview because it is impossible for the researcher to hold face to face interview during covid19 pandemic. the researcher employs an online interview setting with zoom application, whatsapp chat and voice note. due to some problems during the interview (such as internet connection and the 21 n. mahmudi & m. anugerahwati participant activity), the interview was done twice on february 25th and march 13th, 2021. the instrument of the interview applied in this study was validated by two experts (polkinghorne, 2007). (polkinghorne, 2007) stated that the goal of the validation process is to persuade readers that the evidence supporting the argument is good enough to justify the claim as a foundation for understanding a human activity. data analysis organizing enormous volumes of data, transferring it from spoken or written words to tapes files, and deciding whether to analyze data by hand or by computer are all part of the initial data preparation process (creswell, 2012). the researcher begins to collect the stories and information from the participants into a computer folder for analysis because data organization is very important in qualitative research. the large amount of information collected during the research. the researcher reads many times the interview transcripts and construes the analyzed documents obtained in the data collection. whenever the researcher reads participant data, it means the researcher is developing a deeper understanding of the information provided by the participants. agar (1980) also suggested researchers "read the transcript at whole several times. immerse yourself in the details; try to understand the interview whole before breaking it into parts” (p. 103). afterward, the researcher constructs a life story of the participant using holistic content presentation. this type of content analysis excludes preliminary categories in a narrative study. after constructing the participant's life story, the researcher begins to analyze the transcript using a three-dimensional space of narrative inquiry: the dimension of time, person-social, and place (clandinin & caine, 2008). furthermore, the researcher conducts member checking asking for feedback on whether the analyzed data is following what was conveyed by the participant. the researcher also had a conversation with the participant via whatsapp to clarify any vague sentences in the storied experiences. 4. findings the findings of this research were explained using clandinin and connelly’s (2000) narrative frameworks: past, present, and future dimensions of a story. after interviewing the student, the researcher found a variety of problems that were anxiety factors in student. past experiences the researcher’s initial inquiry to the participant’s lived experiences was about his personal reasons of learning english and continued with past english achievement and classroom learning. it is very intriguing to see how the participant shared his intrinsic motivation in learning english. it is depicted in the interview. excerpt 1 i really loved english since i was second grade or third grade of elementary school. i remembered that my sister taught me english. i studied with her at home. she asked me to memories some daily words and vocabularies such as days, numbers, animals, fruits and others. she gave me some english songs. then when i graduated from my elementary school, i went to islamic boarding school. i studied english there from junior high school to senior high school. beside that i also stayed in english camp or the common name as english dormitory, so we always spoke english for our daily communication. my dad also helped me. he gave me some games in computer. when i could pass the game, there were english songs that made me really happy. when the researcher asked about his past experience of starting to study and love english, boy shared that he started to study and love english since he was kid, but he felt bored. he almost gave up studying english because he could not speak english well, but he motivated himself to study english. excerpt 2 i was really curious about english when i was kid. i also got experience that learning english for me was so much boring or something kind of i can’t stand on it. when i was second grade of junior high school, i almost gave up because i international journal of language teaching and education 22 couldn’t speak english after two years learning so i told to my teacher that i wanted to give up learning english but then i just keep trying again and again up to now. i just kept going on. boy encountered some problems associated with his self-competence. boy shared that he got bad experience to speak english in public when he was in school. he did not want to be center attention. before he came forward and delivered his speech, he already prepared the speech before, but everything was gone. excerpt 3 i remembered that it was 2010. it was just like opening ceremony or mc. i just did well in the opening “excellency, honorable”. in the middle of the speech everything was gone. i couldn’t remember anything. i was just silent. my hands were trembling. i was sweaty. my heart beating was so fast. it happened because i was really nervous, worry, and anxiety being center attention of people. i was so scared to speak in public. actually, i prepared one week. my teacher gave time to memorize but when i was on the stage, i just memorized three sentences. start from that moment when my teacher asked me to be the next participant for public speaking, i said “i was afraid of being center attention because the audiences looked at me”. boy added an explanation during the interview. he felt anxiety when he had to speak in public. excerpt 4 i felt anxiety before i performed. i was really nervous because that was the first time for me to speak in public. i was in first grade of junior high school. i was really trembling, nervous and anxiety. i couldn’t handle on it and finally i couldn’t remember all the text that i have memorized. finally, i was blank and i stopped. when my teacher asked me to speak in public, i always said that i didn’t want to speak in public. i got used to say that word. for one year i stopped doing public speaking because of really bad, nervous, anxiety and panict. i run to cafeteria to skip that moment. i run to the toilet if my teachers chose me to be the speaker. that was the bad thing happened to me. when the time goes by, i can handle myself how to be more confident and how to control my emotion and stabilize my felling when i speak in public. in the context of anticipating anxiety in public speaking, boy shared that he ever joined debate and public speaking competition to make his confidence better. excerpt 5 it was second grade of senior high school. some universities held english olympiad. i encouraged myself to participate on that competition. i was lost because the best school in malang became number one. so in semifinal i had just placed myself in number fourteen. i was really proud of me because it was my first time. when i was in university, i joined debate competition. it was third semester. i got top number three. i also joined public speaking competition when i was forth semester and i got the first one. i also joined news anchor in my university, i got number two. for the international, i joined toastmasters’ competition but i didn’t get any champion. present experiences the research also inquired participant’s lived experiences of studying english in public speaking class. in the interview, boy shared that he never joined public speaking class before. he learned to speak in public by himself. the first time he joined public speaking class was in kampung inggris pare. boy shared that: 23 n. mahmudi & m. anugerahwati excerpt 6 the first i joined public speaking class. it was in kampung inggris pare. i never joined public speaking class before, i just trained myself, i just encouraged myself to speak in public. i started to speak in public and being center of people 2011 as i told you before. when i was junior high school i didn’t become speaker again because i failed. and 2015 i joined public speaking class in pare. boy got experiences and lessons. he contended that the way the teacher in a public speaking class taught and gave feedback. in the interview, boy shared that: excerpt 7 i joined public speaking class. the class was really fun because the teacher gave very detail feedback in every single performance of the students. she gave corrections like performance, language, grammar, title, content. she really gave detail feedback. what i learned on that class was how to make good a speech, and how to make good title, body language, vocal variety, eyes contact and facial expression. boy added an explanation during the interview: excerpt 8 when one student finished delivering the speech, the teacher gave feedback directly. teacher gave good feedback. she never said bad thing from us. she chose to use good sentence and motivation. the way that she gave feedback was always positive even we made mistakes she never said “your grammar is bad, your english is bad, your pronunciation is bad”. she never said that words. boy also shared that the teacher used media in public speaking class to support the teaching and learning process. the teacher used camcorders and lcd projector. the teacher wanted the student to practice to do public speaking in front of camera. the student should give good eyes contact with the camera. then the teacher gave an evaluation while watching together the performances that already recorded by the teacher with lcd projector. boy shared that: excerpt 9 the teacher used whiteboard, marker, and camcorders. she used camcorders because she really wanted us to practice to speak on camera. she recorded our performance. the teacher gave really clear and detailed feedback while we watched our performance by lcd projector that was already recorded by her. she said that we should do well on gesture, eyes contact, facial expression, vocal variety, stance, movement and others. the teacher showed us the videos about the best public speaking such as toastmasters and ted talk. the teacher also encouraged us by giving some stories, by giving motivational sentence to make us be more confidence so we really believed that we could speak in public. boy added an explanation during the interview. he describes the process of teaching and learning in a public speaking class. excerpt 10 it was really nice and understandable. it was easy to engaged with the lesson because the teacher explained the lessons very detail like body language, how we could make good the title for the speech, vocal variety, intonation in public speaking. i thought that it was clear enough for the teacher explanation to the students. the english course had five classrooms and one hall for learning english which was facilitated by the owner of the english course with ac, fan, whiteboard, chairs, lcd projector, laptop and adequate equipments. it really supported me to study. international journal of language teaching and education 24 boy was not good on memorizing, so he made some points and practices again and again. he did not care what the people thought. the important thing was that he just wanted to do the best, so he tried to control his mindset. he shared the way he handled and conquered his anxiety. excerpt 11 i solved and conquered my anxiety when i spoke in public. i did preparation. i was a kind of person that i was not really good in memorizing because it would make me only focused on that speech. so, i just made some points. i could improve my speech. so, i made some points and i practiced it. when i was on the stage, i just took a deep breath and i enjoyed. i just didn’t care what people were going to say about me. “people cared or didn’t care” i don’t care about it. what i did that it was just practice. future expectations at the end of the data collection, the researcher inquired about participant’s future goals in terms of public speaking anxiety and trained for his future career. this was done to construe the participants’ reflections after exploring his past and future lived experiences. the participant agreed that becoming a professional public speaker who could enjoy, relax and having good confidence was vital for the future career. he assumed that someone who had good communication skill, it would help the future career. “if you can tell, you can sell” means that when someone has good communication skill, he has power. boy in the interview shared that: excerpt 12 i tried to handle myself to speak english in public. i built my confidence. now i really enjoyed when i spoke in public. i believed that public speaking made us easier to get along with others. public speaking class is really required today because company requires employees who have good skill in communication. and one of skill in communication is public speaking i guess. boy got motivations and suggestions from his teacher in public speaking class to be the best public speaker. in the interview, boy shared that: excerpt 13 okay, well actually my teacher just said that practice, practice, prepare, practice only that word. i meant that before i performed, i had to prepare and practice. i practiced in front of mirror and in my room because there were no people. only that, prepare, practice, then perform that was the simple word that i always did. boy shared his best experiences and suggestions for english learners to decrease their anxiety when speaking in public. he also gave the best advice and suggestion for english learner to be good public speaker. he shared it in the interview: excerpt 14 when we want to become public speaker, it starts from our mindset because the difficult thing is not only being speaker in public but also the difficult is from mindset, for example how if i make mistake because english is not my language, how if i make mistake in grammar and pronunciation, how if my audiences don’t understand what i have delivered then i am useless. so the problem is not only nervous but also delivering language. my suggestion is that change our mindset beside that we need practice. to change our mindset it is not taken in short term. it takes long term. we just say to ourselves that we can do it and we just believe that people understand us as long as we do good. if we want to be good speaker, we need process, we need long term may some weeks, some months or even years. boy added an explanation during the interview: 25 n. mahmudi & m. anugerahwati excerpt 15 when i am on the stage, i keep myself calm and relax. i will see the audience first to give the interaction. i will see from the right to the left for 10 to 15 second. i take a deep breath and i relax. i start and see the audience eyes. of course i prepare before i perform and i practice. well, first thing if we are english learners, don’t think that english is hard. second change our mindset such as when we make mistake don’t judge ourselves, never think negative like people will say “ah, your grammar and pronunciation is bad”. for sure that you have to do is that you just go on. when you have good communication skill, you can have good carrier. when you want to apply for job, you have to have good communication skill. when you have good communication skill, you have power. lastly, boy contended that his feeling when he became a student and teacher. he became creative and innovative in learning and teaching. it is depicted in the interview with him: excerpt 16 when i was as student, i learned many things from teacher. that was the best that i got. i became teacher. it started 2015. at that time i finished my senior high school then my dad asked me to study english in pare for two months. then i told to my teacher that i really want to be teacher because i am still postpone to continue my study in university. 2016 i continued my study in one of universities. i got many trainings. the best thing that i got was pre-service english teacher training. when i was six semester, i got golden opportunity from us embassy to study english with them. for two weeks in bali with them i got much experiences. from that i knew how to teach english to student. i learned some lesson plans. i learned some activities how to create the materials and the lessons for the different level of students. the second opportunity, i got online learning form u.s. embassy for two weeks. i learned about technology integrated with learning english and teaching english. so i learned the true online learning from teacher all over the world. i learned every day. maybe ten hours in a week and that was two weeks online learning. it was good for me and it was also free. 5. discussions based on the analysis, the researchers discovered that student who was learning to speak in public had three different levels of anxiety. there were trait anxiety, situational-specific anxiety, and state anxiety. it was happend to boy. boy had trait anxiety because he was afraid of being the focus of attention. the researchers discovered that the anxiey level that happened to boy was influenced his confidence to speak english in public. the finding is in line with the previous research by miskam and saidalvi (2019) who stated that when students are expected to speak english in front of their peers, they become self-conscious. as a result, when asked to speak english in class, he got nervous. the student's constraints in doing public speaking were the same as the problems he faced when he has to be friend with his mindset. furthermore, situational specific anxiety described boy's anxiety as a result of his lack of preparation. these statements supported (xiangming, liu & zhang, 2020) stating that their lack of english ability was frequently an impediment to their participation in classroom learning activities. they were also nervous about having to speak english without any preparation. they would feel more at ease with talks in the language class if they were completely prepared in advance, for example, for certain themes. boy's worry was also related to a lack of preparation. boy also stated that speaking english with preparation made him feel less nervous and more confident. he also admitted that he was anxious when he had to speak in front of many people. he did not want to be center of attention. however, he also admitted that he was anxious only in front of public. he is afraid if he cannot be good speaker. he gets out from comfort zone. so, in order to speak english in front of a large group of people, he attempts to remain cool and relaxed. something for sure that he did practice in front of mirror and in his room. he wants to do the best in his public speaking because he wants to have good communication skill that it will be usefull for others. international journal of language teaching and education 26 finally, state anxiety was experienced by boy in learning public speaking since he felt anxious giving an english speech. he was also anxious if he made mistake in public speaking. in addition, he felt anxious due to lack of vocabulary and fear of being center of attention. it means that he experienced a combination of trait and situation-specific anxiety. meanwhile, dealing with causes of anxiety in speaking english, it was revealed three causes of anxiety. they were communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. this finding is line with asysyifa, handayani, and rizkiani (2019) who claimed that students were nervous about speaking because of a lack of preparation, a fear of falling behind in understanding the material or what the teacher was saying, a fear of making mistakes, a fear of being laughed at by their peers, and a lack of confidence in their ability to spell, pronounce, and select english words. 6. conclusions and suggestion the present study has sought to investigate the anxiety level of indonesian efl students in a public speaking class. there are two significant points can be attracted as a conclusion. first, there were three kinds of anxiety experienced by the student in learning public speaking namely trait anxiety, situational-specific anxiety, and state anxiety. second, the anxieties were experienced by the student in learning public speaking such as communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. at first, he feels nervous, shy, fear of mispronounced, trembling, blank and afraid being center of attention. while waiting for his turn to do public speaking, student feels uneasy, nervous, and anxious. not all practices done by student are completed properly. factors that make student anxious and not confident when speaking in public are fear of being laughed, fear of mispronounced, fear of making mistakes, fear of being center of attention, lack of vocabulary, memorizing but when practice becomes forgotten or blank. the way student does self-control so that he can complete public speaking is to assume all audiences are friends, try to be confident, so that he is calm, change the mindset, practice then relax. the findings of this study show that high levels of anxiety can lead to a variety of outcomes, including a lack of confidence in one's abilities, difficulty speaking in public, minimal conversation participation, failure to initiate conversation, and eventually becoming selfconscious and inhibited speakers. this can lead to increased anxiety, as fear of failure, panic, and the introduction of new information can overwhelm foreign language learners. all of these negative circumstances may impact their attempt to learn english, obstructing their learning and, as a result, causing them to do poorly in their spoken english. as suggested, this research can motivate the teacher to have outside of class to improve students’ achievement and motivation because outside of the main class minimize the students’ anxiety for optimal output in learing process. in addition, the next researchers are also expected to explore on the same topic so that they can find a better finding. acknowledgment this paper is based on the first author’s thesis in the graduate program of elt, university of islam malang, east java, indonesia. special thanks are addressed to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their feedback on the earlier version of this paper. references agar, m. 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(2020). technological impact on language anxiety dynamic. elsevier paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5182 from teaching of sundanese’s teenager speaking ability in batam: spoken discourse analysis frangky silitonga1, lilis puji astuti2 1. universiti tun hussein onn malaysia, johor, malaysia 2. universitas putera batam, batam, indonesia email: frangkyka@gmail.com how to cite this paper: silitonga, f., & astuti, l. (2018). from teaching of sundanese’s teenager speaking ability in batam: spoken discourse analysis. international journal of language teaching and educat abstract the local language is a language used as a characteristic of a tribe or certain people in a region. it is used as a communication tool in daily life of a tribe who lived either on a small area, province or a wider area. the existence of local language is closely related to the existence of tribe and culture which is generated from one generation to another. sundanese is one of local languages in indonesia, which become the main supporting element of the traditions and customs of the sundanese. the ability to speak sundanese is one of the important aspects to preserve the sundanese culture. the use of sundanese lin daily conversation in a family will root the way of life and habits of children in the sundanese family. it aims at maintaining love toward their ancestor language. some sundanese families in batam, including the teenager, think that the sundanese language is not necessary to be learnt at this era. some reasons were because it is not taught in school, not a requirement in entering college, and not considered as a priority language to seek for job. as a result, sundanese will slowly disappear from the sundanese people. from the observation, it is found that only few of families are aware about the importance of maintaining sundanese as prime culture. the observation to 11 (eleven) teenagers shows that only 24 % of participants have the ability in speaking sundanese. subject areas discourse analysis keywords discourse , sundanese, spoken, teenager 1. introduction in general discourse analysis, the language is the cultural heritage of the ancestors which is used as a primary communication tool by humans. through the language we can distinguish cultures and tribes one from another. a tribe without the native language is just like a tree without fruit, new testament 325 ijolte ion, 2(3), 325-333. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5182 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5182 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5182 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti (matthew 7: 16-18). just as the trees which identified by its fruit, a nation is recognized by the language used. language characterizes the identity of the nation. some experts say that language is a central element and expression of identity and the importance key to preserve group identity. the main function of language is as a tool of communication (mulyati et al, 2014)”. discourse as a communication will be effective if both parties (communicants and communicators) have common understanding regarding the language and how to use it. without understanding, the language has no meaning and may be misunderstood. there are seven functions of language according to mulyati at al cited halliday (2014); 1) instrumental, language is used as a tool to gain needs (e.g. “i want a slice of apple pie”). 2) regulatory, language is used to control or to tell others what to do (e.g. “go to library quickly”). 3) interactional, language is used to make contact with others and to form relation (e.g. “how are you, dear “.), 4) personal, language is used to express feeling (e.g. “i am happy”), 5) heuristic; language is used to gain knowledge about the environments (e.g. “what is the function of the microscope?”). 6) imaginative, language is used to create ideas. here language is used to tell stories, to write novels, and to make jokes. 7) informative, the use of language to convey information. language is an identity of the nation (http://badanbahasa.kemdikbud.go.id). in other word, the existence of the nation or tribe can be represented through the language used. language plays an important role in the development of culture. this form is very important because the language deliver the culture by generation to generation. indonesian local languages should be preserved so they will not be disappeared and displaced by other foreign languages. the nation and tribe have their specific identity. as a communication and social tool, language is placed as main thing in human life. in term of language, indonesia is one of the countries that have variety of languages which come from the diversity of culture and tribe as well. each of tribe has their own unique and distinctive identity which is different from one and another. based on the results of the 2010 population census, indonesia have about 2,500 languages, or nearly twice the number of types of tribes that reached as much as 1,340 nations. (bps, 2010). one of them is sundanese. one of the unique characteristic of sundanese is language’s manner (undak–usuk basa) which barely possessed by other languages and also the intonation in using the language, which known a ‘lentong” (during speaking of language level, the speakers also have to use the rhythm to make it harmony) (wibisana, 2011). in addition, lentong is the composition of words to form a sentence, when spoken will be heard have a rule drops or rises interspersed with long pauses or short. that is, in pronouncing sentence it always refers to songs describe the content or meaning of the phrase or sentence. 326 ijolte http://badanbahasa.kemdikbud.go.id/ frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti the writer, who has been living in batam island for almost 20 years, found out that some children whose both parent are pure sundanese tribe or half sundanese (which only mother or father is sundanese), hardly either to speak or to understand sundanese. according ekadjati (1993), children whose both parents or one of parent still use sundanese connotation. the second concept is the basis of culture. people who are not sundanese origin but raised in sundanese way, they ended up loving sundanese. they can be called as the sundanese. one of the sundanese book’s author, wibisana (2011), said that “apan basa the ciciren bangsa, kusabab kitu eksistensi urang sunda gumantung kana sikepna ngamumule basa indungna” (the language is an identity of the tribe, therefore the sundanese tribe’s existence is depend on how sundanese people preserve its mother tongue). un educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) in (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unesco-half-worldslanguages-will-disappear-by-2100-1498154) had predicted that half of the world's languages will be extinct by the end of this century. the organization warned that over 2,000 of the 7,000 official languages used around the world have only 1,000 speakers or fewer. this matter has motivated the writer to write the term paper based on a theme “sundanese teenager speaking ability in sundanese family in batam”. this research aims to know how far the teenagers understand to respond in sundanese conversation and the reason behind it. 2. literature review 2.1 the definition of language leeuwen states that critical discourse analysis model related to event and social agent in certain groups are exposed in news. this model tries to investigate the marginal group in discourse (oktavia & silitonga, 2016). generally, people use language in daily life for communication. language is an expression that contains a view to communicate with others. something is meant by speaker can be understood by the listener or the speaker expressed through language. the definition of language is varying. there are many statements from the expert about the definition of language. webster’s new collegiate dictionary (1981) “language is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures or marks having understood meaning”. in other word, language is a tool to express feeling or ideas either by words, sign, or gestures which can be understood by the interlocutors. language is a group of sounds which arranged orderly and pronounced orally. it is uttered to express thoughts (bahasa indonesia, 2014). it means that language is a verbal communication to convey ideas. language is the key to unlock the treasures of knowledge. by the language, we can master science and technology. (bahasa indonesia, 2014). language is the main 327 ijolte http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unesco-half-worlds-languages-will-disappear-by-2100-1498154 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unesco-half-worlds-languages-will-disappear-by-2100-1498154 frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti instrument to acquire knowledge, science, and technology. language is arbiter which has seven characteristic (bahasa indonesia, 2014). they are; language is beautiful; in essence the language is a sound. if this sounds conveyed by blending the sound of the vowel or a consonant will produce a beauty that is not owned by other. the beauty of the language is because the variety sound blended between vowels and consonants come out together instead of monotone sound such as an animal produces; guk guk guk, meow meow meow. a culture tends to be kept alive; it has to be passed on from one generation to the next generation. in order for this cultural inheritance went smoothly, psychologically necessary social awareness and the willingness of the previous generation and the readiness or the willingness of the next generation. however, there some important factors need to be considered in order this culture inheritance, one of them namely the ability to speak its language accordingly. through the language this cultural inheritance could take place. language and culture is as two sides of a coin, which always closely intertwined. if one exist, the other was alive, otherwise if one dies the other is dead. according to cambridge dictionary, the definition of teenager is a person whose age between 13 to 19 years old. the teenager period is called adolescence. it is a transition period from childhood to adulthood. on this period, some changes occur in term of hormonal, physical, psychological and social. adolescent phase is an important development period of the individual life which teenagers’ body stretched from the end of childhood to early adulthood. it has a direct impact and long-term impact that happened during this period. in addition, this period also has an important impact on physical and psychological development of individuals, where there is physical and psychological development of rapid and important. in this period, it requires a child to leave the properties of infantile and must learn new patterns of behavior and attitudes. during the transition in this period, a person is often confused because they are in demand to behave in accordance with his age, but on the contrary if the individual tries to behave like adults, people often say that they behave too mature for their age. in this period, an adjustment to the peer group has an important role for teenagers. they were trying to find identity with the outfits, speaking style and behave as similar to other. one way to convince their teens is by using a status symbol, such as cars, clothes and other objects that can be seen by others. adolescence is an opportunity for children and a pivotal time for us to build on their development in the first decade of life, to help them navigate risks and vulnerabilities, and to set them on the path to fulfilling their potential, unicef (adolescence an age of opportunity, 2011). this period is called a critical time in which the role of parents, the environment, education, and the community give large impact on their future and the nation. sutardi (2012) mentioned that adolescence is a critical 328 ijolte frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti period that will determine the future of a person. 2.2 speaking ability yule (2010) stated that child acquires language principally through a process of imitating adult. base on the theory, it is concluded that an ability to speak is not learned inheritance. the process of language acquisition has some basic requirements. in order to speak a language, a child must be able to hear the language used. they develop listening competence before they develop the ability to speak. their ability to listen is acquired because children are required to respond the spoken language from their parent. richards & rodgers (2001) stated that once foundation in listening comprehension has been established, speech evolves naturally and effortlessly out of it. in case of speaking sundanese, children have to be introduced into sundanese as earlier as possible. when sundanese is formed into habit in daily conversation, it will last for long time in their brain. 2.3 teenagers restriction to speak sundanese parents are those who contact directly with their children. there is famous sundanese proved said that “anak merak kukuncungan, uyah mah tara tees ka luhur” (children naturally mimics the nature and character of their parents). related to the teenagers’ ability in speaking sundanese, parent is a main role for the children. when the parents have no interest to speak their mother tongue, their children will also not interest. this case happened in batam where the community is heterogenic that the major language used is bahasa indonesia. moreover, while parents are working, they leave their baby to the caregiver who is not sundanese. so, the caregiver will communicate with the baby with common language. additionally, sundanese is not taught in batam school as a local language as part of the curriculum. foreign language such as english and mandarin attract parents and teenager’s attention more than sundanese language. parents are proud having children who have ability in speaking foreign language rather than speak their local language. the teenagers also are not interested to learn their local language. besides, job field or university are not required someone to speak local language. thus, teenagers have little interest to learn their local language. 2.4 sundanese language indonesia is a multilingual country which has tribe and ethnic diversity. sundanese is one of cultures in indonesia with a considerable population in west java. based on the population census in 2010, sundanese is second most tribe in indonesia with 15.5 percent of indonesian population. sundanese, called 329 ijolte frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti basa sunda, is used by people for variety of communications purposes. sundanese was supposed to be found in 14th century based on the inscription that found in kawali ciamis. many inscriptions estimated were made during the reign of king niskala wastukancana (1397-1475). actually, sundanese language has been used orally by the sundanese community long before that era. there is a possibility that the kw'un lun language which has mentioned by “berita cina” used as a spoken language in the archipelago before the 10th century by the people of west java, presumably as sundanese (ancient), although the truth is not still unknown (west java tourism department, 2015). in other perception, sundanese term is related to hindu culture. in literature adiparwa, a famous first part of the book mahabrata, was regarded holy by hindus. it mentioned that there were two figures giant kings named sunda and upasunda. (kebudayaan sunda, 2014). sundanese has some dialects such priangan, cirebon, and banten. each dialect has a distinctive vocabulary, intonation, and even of its own undak– usuk (language level) as well, but each dialect is able to be understood each other (rosidi, 1984). one characteristic of sundanese language is developed through teaching in schools and teacher education. balai pustaka books are also concerned about the undak-usuk (language level). undak-usuk (language level) is divided into levels; very rough, rough, medium, polite and very polite. (sundanesse culture, 2015). in indonesia dictionary, sundanese is divided into three levels; impolite, standard and polite (kamus besar bahasa indonesia, 2010). the difference of the undak-usuk (language manner) can be seen in below sentences; basa lemes (polite language) visitor : punteun pa, bade tumaros di palih mana pak lurah linggih? (excuse me; do you know where the village chef house is?) answer : di palih kencaen tanggal jeruk anu itu, mangga ku abdi di jajapkeun, kalereusan rorompok simkuring caket ka bumi pak lurah. (in the left of that orange tree, let me accompany you. it is coincidence that my house is just nearby him) basa loma (standard language) speaker : meta, nyaho teu di mana ari imah si budi? (meta, do you know where budi’s house is?) my friend : di belah kencaen tangkal jeruk. hayu lah jeung urang indit kaditu. kabeneran imah urang deket jeung imah manehna) (in the left of that orange tree, let me accompany you. it is coincidence that my house is just nearby him). basa kasar (impolite words) is used when oneself is angry or when 330 ijolte frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti someone i speaking related to their pet. sok tah nyatu heula (eat your food, goat), mangga tuang heula pa guru (please have a meal sir / teacher), sok dahar heula meta (have your meal meta) batam city is located directly adjacent to singapore and malaysia which consists of ± 400 islets. the total of its area is 3,990 km2 consisting of 1380.85 km2 mainland and an area of 2,950 km2 ocean. (batam tourism department, 2014). population data in batam per december 31, 2014 is 1,030,528 inhabitants. batam is one of the fastest economic growth population city in indonesia. the economic growth is average 7% greater than the national economic growth. the native of batam island is malay. the cultural roots can be traced in the island of tanjung pinang. in 1970, batam was designed as environment industrial areas which were supported by the development authority. in the 90s, the municipality of administrative batam changed its status to the autonomous region, named as the batam city government. as an industrial city, batam is a promising object and the main destinations of job seekers from indonesia. the number of job opportunities and high value of the minimum wage of the city attract job seekers coming to batam. thus, batam is a magnetic in the eyes of both tourist and job seeker. 3. methodology the type of this research is qualitative method. sugiyono (2011) stated that qualitative research has the natural setting as the direct source of data and the researcher as the key instrument. non-probability sampling and precisely purposive sampling were utilized in this research. the data were collected from junior and senior high school students. the data were gained from observation and interview. structured observation was used to collect the data. the process of observation was noted and recorded. this research used semi-structured interview. the participants were teenagers and their parents. the teenagers were asked to answer the questions with either sundanese or indonesian. in the end of interview, the teenagers were questioned about what is their opinion about the topic discussed (silitonga, 2017). after implementing the research, the researcher interviewed the parents regarding their teenagers’ abilities in the speaking sundanese skill. the researcher also carried the interview after accomplishing the research to know the parents’ response toward their teenagers speaking ability. 4. findings and discussion the result is presented in two categories: “unable” and “able”. the percentage shows the ability of the teenager to speak in sundanese. 331 ijolte frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti total question percentage conclusion 14 42.8% unable 15 6% unable 15 20% unable 14 0% unable 19 47% unable 15 0% unable 16 6% unable 17 5% unable 17 17% unable 4 0 unable 13 100% able 159 76% unable table 4.1. ability of the teenager to speak in sundanese the reasons for their inability in speaking of language in sundanese teenagers in batam are: 1) the parents do not use the language in daily conversation. 2) the teenagers are accustomed to use indonesian because their environment mostly use indonesian as daily language. 3) lack of loyalty to the own language because they think sundanese give no advantages in academic purpose and job field. 5. conclusions sundanese might be disappeared from sundanese family in batam. it will shift to indonesian and english. in this case, parents seem failed to inherit their local language to their children. sundanese in batam are preferred to learn and use the languages that give more benefit to them. it causes the sundanese teenagers fail to recognize their identity. there are some recommendations to make sundanese keep exists, especially in batam. it can be started by introducing sundanese as earlier as possible to the children through singing sundanese song, telling sundanese folks, watching sundanese movies, or joining sundanese club in batam. references [1] carstairs-mccarthy (2002). an introduction to english morphology: words and their structure, great britain. edinburgh university press ltd. 332 ijolte frangky silitonga, lilis puji astuti [2] ekadjati, (2014). kebudayaan sunda. bandung: pt dunia pustaka jaya. [3] handayani, dhona, n., & silitong f. (2017). efl students’ ability to identify singular and plural nouns in paragraph. ellite: journal of english language, literature, and teaching. [4] hewings, (2013). advance grammar in use. italy: cambridge university press. [5] koenig, m. (2002). the impact of government policies on territorially based ethnic or nationalist movements. international journal on multicultural societies, 4(2). [6] mainizar, (2013). marwah: peranan orang tua dalam pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa pada anak usia 2-6 tahun. 12(1) [7] mulyati at all (2014), bahasa indonesia, tangerang: universitas terbuka. [8] richards, j. c., rodgers, t. s. (2011). approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). united states of america: cambridge university press. [9] sallabank, j. (2010). language endangerment: problems and solutions. 50-87 [10] saputra, s. (2007). webster’s kamus lengkap inggris-indonesia, indonesiainggris. batam: karisma publishing group. [11] silitonga, f. (2017). the teenegers’ characteristics in gender written text by discourse analysis at batam. kajian linguistik dan sastra, 6175. [12] silitonga, oktavia f. y. (2017). implementasi analisis wacana kritis perspektif leeuwen dalam berita politik surat kabar padang ekspres terhadap pembelajaran bahasa berbasis teks. [13] sugiyono, (2011). metode penelitian kuantitatif, kualitatif dan r&d. bandung: alfa beta. [14] wibisana, (2011). ngamumule basa sunda. bandung: pt. kiblat utama. [15] yule, (2010). the study of language. new york: cambridge university press. 333 ijolte paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 32 the implementation of project-based learning to improve students’ speaking skill diki riswandi universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia dikiriswandi@outlook.com how to cite this paper: riswandi, d. (2018). the implementation of project-based learning to improve students’ speaking skill. international journal of language teaching and education. 5 (2), 32-40 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this study addresses specific teaching methods, which are believed to achieve a beneficial outcome to students’ learning ability. project based learning is a modern teaching method. the core idea of project based learning is to connect student's experiences with school life and to provoke students to acquire new knowledge. this study aims at (1) describing to what extent the use of project-based learning can improve the students' speaking skill and (2) describing the teaching and learning process when project-based learning is implemented in the class. the subject of the study is the seventh-grade students of one of junior high schools in surakarta. the method of the study was classroom action research with two cycles. furthermore, the data were collected through speaking assessment. the finding showed that there was improvement in the students' speaking skill. some aspects which are improved including students' fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and comprehension. to conclude, pbl (project-based learning) help student in improving their speaking skill. subject areas language teaching keywords project-based learning, speaking skill introduction english as an international language plays important role in many parts of our life nowadays (naved 2015, para. 4). mastering english, especially speaking skill, is importantly needed for the students to allow them to communicate with other people globally (linse 2005). in indonesia, english is used as a foreign language. it is infrequently used as medium language to communicate daily (broughton, 2003). further, english is only used in the classroom and some particular requirements in a proficiency test. as the compulsory subject in every level of education, english is thought to the students for at least six years (in junior and senior high school level). due to the limit of time for english lesson, one of highly reputed junior high school in surakarta initiates themselves to have extra speaking class besides english regular class. the students in this class are expected to be able to communicate in english. in the end the students should be able to communicate with their friends, teachers, and people around them in accurate, fluent and appropriate way. based on the preliminary study, students have problems in speaking english. the researcher found that the students' speaking ability is still low, unsatisfying, open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 33 and far from the expectations. the students put less attention to the class. they also have low learning motivation and interest. they feel shy, nervous, and lack of confidence when answering questions from teacher or presentation. furthermore, they cannot express their ideas using appropriate vocabulary and correct grammatical forms during presentation; the students can speak in two or three sentences in english and switch to their mother tongue (javanese) and second language (indonesian); moreover, they often feel hesitate to pronounce the words, and most of them mispronounce the words. besides, the atmosphere of the class did not support any speaking activities. the teacher used a monotonous method that makes the students bored and loses interest in the subjects. the teacher also do not try to create some instructional media to facilitate students to speak. as a consequence, the students were reluctant and unmotivated to speak. the situation of the class described above becomes problems that should be solved by the teacher as they involved directly in the teaching-learning process, and they are key players controlling the students' to get success for their students’ learning. the teacher is required to make a good learning environment that can encourage and motivate the students to study. it is important to make students feel comfort, have interest and motivation to learn english. to actively engage the students in the learning process and enhance their motivation, it is highly recommended for the teacher to create a good media, make a conducive situation and creative activities. it is in line with nunan (1999) who stated that teachers should help their students by establishing strategies to manage all forms of communication to ensure that all students have fair and equitable opportunities to develop their interpersonal speaking and listening skills through large and small group discussions. project-based learning (pbl) is one of the methods recommended to be applied. pbl refers to a method allowing “students to design, plan, and carry out an extended project that produces a publicly exhibited output such as a product, publication, or presentation” (patton 2012). through pbl, the learners are engaged in determined communication to complete authentic activities (project-work), so that they have the chance to practice and use authentic language in a natural context (fragoulis, 2009). also, fauziati (2014) mentioned that pbl allows the student to work on the project that gives the students chances not only to learn and practice english but also to develop varied important skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, and presentation. the objectives of the study are (1) to describe to what extent the use of project-based learning can improve the students’ speaking skill and (2) to describe the teaching and learning process when project-based learning is implemented in the class. literature review fauziati (2014, p. 166) stated that project-based approach (pbl) is one of the methods that has already existed for many years ago. thomas (2000) said that project is defined as compound tasks based on problems faced by students, conducted in certain periods of time and culminated in realistic products that might be in the form of presentation, exhibition, publication, etc. patton (2012) mentioned, in pbl students are the ones who design the project and plan what need to do to carry. another opinion comes from markham et. al (2003), he said that pbl is a systematic teaching method occupying students through an extended inquiry process. in short, pbl is a method that allow students to learn through a project which is decided by themselves associated by help from teachers. it allow them actively involved in the learning process. there are some stages of pbl implementation according to fauziati (2014), namely starting the project, developing the project, reporting to the class, and assessing the project. in addition, kriwas (1999, as cited in bell, 2010).) also mention four stages in implementing pbl, namely speculation, designing the project, conducting the project, and evaluation. however, both fauziati (2014) and kriwas (1999) have the same stages in applying the pbl. the first stage in pbl is speculation in which diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 34 teachers provide the choice of project topics initially based on curriculum and discuss them with the students. in this stage, teachers and students speculate possibilities that will lead to the projects smoothly (bell, 2010). the second stage is designing the project activities, referring to organizing the structure of a project activity that includes group formation, role assigning, concerning methodology decision, information source, etc. the third stage is conducting the project. in this stage, the students are working on the project they planned and designed in the earlier stage. the students are asked to collect and discuss the problems with their friends before they consult it the teacher. afterward, they need to present their final products that could be in the form of presentation, performance, publication, etc. in front of the class, other classes, teachers, or the other media allowed by the teacher. the last stage is the evaluation. this stage refers to "the assessment of activities of the participants and discussion about whether the initial aims and goals have been achieved, implementation of the process, and final products” (brinia, 2006, as cited in fragoulis, 2009). fragoulis (2009) and bell (2010) state that there are many benefits of implementing pbl in teaching english as foreign language. 1) pbl gives contextual and meaningful learning for students. 2) pbl can create an optimal environment to practice speaking english. 3) pbl can also make students actively engage in project learning. 4) pbl enhances the students’ interest, motivation, engagement, and enjoyment. 5). pbl promotes social learning that can enhance collaborative skills. 6) pbl can give an optimal opportunity to improve students’ language skill. in addition, several advantages of incorporating project work in second and foreign language settings have also been recommended by the other experts. fried-booth (2002) mentioned that the process leading to the end-product of project-work offers chances for learners to improve their confidence and independence. stoller (2006) said that students exhibit increased self-esteem, and positive attitudes concerning with learning. students’ independence is improved especially when they are actively involved in project planning, for instance when they choose the topics of their project. a further commonly mentioned advantage relates to students’ better social, cooperative skills, and group cohesiveness (papagiannopoulos et al., 2000) method to investigate the use of pbl in teaching and learning, a qualitative approach using an action research (ar) method was employed in this study. according to kemmis, et al. (2014) classroom action research typically involves the use of qualitative, interpretive modes of inquiry and data collection by teachers (often with help from academic partners) with a view to teachers making judgments about how to improve their practices. the aim of investigating this study was to solve the problems happened in the classroom that is faced by the students. it is in line with latief (2008) who argued that classroom action research is the research design that is constructed for improving the quality of learning in the classroom. in addition, mcniff and whitehead (2011) said that action research is an inquiry form enabling practitioners everywhere to investigate and evaluate their work. this study was conducted in one of the junior high schools in surakarta. kemmis et al. (2014) mention some steps in each cycle of action research. they e described the spiral of self-reflection regarding a spiral of self-reflective cycles of: • planning a change, • acting and observing the process and consequences of the change, • reflecting on these processes and consequences, and then • re-planning, • acting and observing, • reflecting, and so on… to collect the data, the researcher used some instruments such as observation checklist, field notes, performance tests, questionnaire, and interview. observation checklist was used to obtain the data about diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 35 students' activities in teaching speaking by using pbl in the classroom. the observation checklist is focused on how the students involved in the pre-task based phase, the task cycle, and language focus phase. field notes were used to jot down any data that were not covered in the observation checklist. thus, the field notes might utilize to identify some aspects reflected in teaching and learning process, such as appropriate teaching instruction, things to be improved, and students' interaction with the peers that are beyond the coverage of the observation checklist. speaking test was in the form of the result of the speaking test which was used for describing the students' speaking ability; the students' mean score, and the individual score after implementing the strategy. this test was administered at the end of the cycle. the test was in the form of performance test, in which the students were asked to perform the conversation in a group. the students, in a group, chose the topic by themselves. to confirm the validity of the data, therefore, the triangulation method is used. at the end of the cycle, the questionnaire is administered to the students. this is used to confirm the data of the students’ performance test and their feeling. in addition, some students also are selected to be interviewed. in this case, the researcher only chose three students to be interviewed. the site for this study is one of junior high schools in surakarta. the participants were ix grade students which consist of 28 students. for speaking assessments, they are conducted three times (pre-test, post-test in cycle 1, and post-test in cycle 2). the speaking assessment sheet used contains five aspects of speaking skill, namely comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and pronunciation. each aspect has its criteria scaled from 1-20. thus, the total score of all aspects is 100. the criteria of speaking is adopted from harries, 1984, and brown, 2004 which is cited from maulany (2013) diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 36 table 1: criteria of speaking aspects categories score 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 17-20 comprehension unable to comprehend the material so that unable to express/respond the questions correctly. has great difficulty understanding what is said, often misunderstands the qs understands most of what is said at slower-than-normal speed with many repetitions. understands nearly everything at normal speed, although occasional repetition may be necessary. appears to understand everything without difficulty vocabulary vocabulary limitations so extreme as to make conversation in l2 virtually impossible so that the student speaks in l1 all the time. produces 1-3 english words (brands or place names such as kfc, kraton, etc. do not count as english word/vocabulary) due to very limited vocabulary produces 4-6 english words. speaks mostly in l2 with few l1 words speaks in l2with accurate english words grammar unidentified because of speaking in l1 all the time. answers mostly in l1, with 1-3 english words/phrases (madsen, 1983). produces inconsistent and incorrect sentences/ phrases (e.g. i can walking around, buy food, some the game, etc.). produces some phrases instead of complete sentences with consistent and accurate word order (e.g. 1. gasibu. 2. seeing many people. produces complete and accurate sentences (e.g. 1. this is gasibu, 2. i can see many people there. fluency unidentified because of speaking in l1 all the time. speaks mostly in l1 tries to speak in l2 but so halting with so many pauses and “er..” speaks mostly inl2 with some long pauses and hesitancy. speaks in l2 less fluently due to few problems of vocabulary/select ion of the word. speaks in l2 very fluently and effortlessly. pronunciation unidentified because of speaking in l1 all the time. speaks mostly in l1, but produces 1-3 english words. needs some repetition in pronouncing the words to understand them. speaks mostly in l1, but produces 1-3 english words and pronounce them in intelligible mother tongue accent. speaks mostly in l2 intelligible with mother tongue accent speaks in l2 intelligibly and has few traces of a foreign accent. result and discussion cycle 1 cycle one had been done for three meetings. the data findings were based on the result of data analysis from observation sheets, field notes, test, and questionnaire. there are four stages in this teaching and learning activities as what mentioned by fauziati (2014) and kriwas (1999). however, in this cycle, the writer used the term proposed by fauziati (2014) namely starting the project, developing the project, reporting to the class, and assessing the project. the first stage is starting the project. the activities in the class were started by greeting, checking the diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 37 students' attendance list, and telling the learning objectives and the tasks assigned. this activity consist of brainstorming and activating background knowledge and context of the students before having speaking practice. to start the projects, the teacher showed some picture and video related to the project. in this case, the teacher used video from ted. it was about a presentation from high school students from bali who presented their movement “bye-bye plastic bag” to the audience. the students watched the video comprehensively. after watching the video, the students were asked to sit in a group of four to five. the teacher gave them the instruction to plan one movement they concern, and they had to create this movement. after discussing the movement, they were asked to develop the movement and create a concept of the movement. this discussion session required student to interact with other students about the project. the second stage is developing a project. this stage is not finished in one day; the students had to continue this stage out of the class as homework. they need to work together as a team out of the class. while developing the project, they can ask the teacher and friends about the obstacle they face. the third stage, held in the third meeting, is presentation time. they present the movement they had in front of the class in a group. it was a group presentation. while presentation, the students were allowed to bring any aid such as a poster, ppt, picture, etc. in this stage, students had a chance to explore their ability to speak english either in a group or personally. the presentation time also becomes the assessment from the teacher on this cycle. the last stage is assessing the project. in this phase, not only the teacher can give the assessment but also their classmate. all the students gave the comment or suggestion about their friends' performance. after the comment and suggestion given by both the students and the teacher, it was time for the teacher to had some evaluation of the teaching and learning. the teacher asked the students about the lesson and activity of the day. reflection was taken into account. afterward, the class was closed. the result was obtained through observation, speaking test, questionnaire, and interview. firstly, based on the teachers’ observation on students’ group discussion, students involve actively in the discussion. it was found that 80% 95% of the students gave contribution in the group discussion and project. this finding showed that there was an improvement regarding students' motivation and interest in this speaking class. however, some students are passive. it may be caused by the lack of vocabulary that the students have or the willingness to be involved. from the performance test conducted at the end of the cycle or in the third meeting, the result of the students speaking test was improved even though it was not significant. in the preliminary study, the average score of the students’ speaking test was 65.1 from 28 students, while the maximum score was 71. however, the average score of speaking in cycle 1 was 71.7 from 28 students while the maximum score is 75. the score is shown in the following table: average score of each indicator of speaking total fluency (1 – 20) vocabul ary (1 – 20) pronunc iation (1 – 20) grammar (1 – 20) compre hension (1 – 20) preliminary 13.1 12.8 13.5 12.2 13.5 65.1 cycle one 15.0 14.0 14.3 14.5 13.9 71.7 diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 38 this is also supported by the result of the questionnaire administered to the students, 89% of the students said that they like the class, 93% said that working in a group is helpful for them, and 93% of the students were motivated to learn english in a group. afterward, the teacher interviewed three students. all of them said that working in a group is so helpful and interesting. cycle two cycle 1 had been done efficaciously. it shows that the activity of the learning and teaching using pbl is succeeded. however, it is still found that the students' speaking improvement was not so significant. therefore, there were still some points that need to be improved by the teacher. first, the students in cycle two were set up in group 5 – 6. second, the teacher asked students to bring one laptop per group. the students then had chances to find out information about their project from several online sources. third, the students will not present the project in front of the class instead of presenting it in the form of video. in short, the project in the second cycle continues the project in the first cycle (video is the addition for the final project). in the second cycle, the teacher also gave guidance on what students need to do. they now not only create a concept of their movement but also make it as like the real movement. they need to create the attribute of their movement such as name, logo, motto, etc. in addition, the revision in cycle 2 also focused on helping students to enrich their vocabulary, improve their pronunciation and improve the students’ idea by developing material, teaching instruction. this is based on the result of students' speaking score in the cycle one which showed low score in all aspects of vocabulary, pronunciation, and content. in this cycle, the students had more time to discuss and work with their friends. the result of the cycle two is obtained through the observation, test, questionnaire, and the interview. first, based on the teachers' observation when they had a discussion with their group, most of the students involve actively. it was found that 95% 100% of the students contribute and give the idea to the group project. the situation of the class was more conducive since all of the students follow the class seriously. this finding showed that there was a significant improvement regarding students' motivation and interest in this speaking class in comparison with the preliminary study and cycle one. based on the result of the speaking test, which is in the form of video recording, there was a significant improvement of the students' achievement. the average score of students' speaking test was 80.1; the highest score was 85 out of 25 students. the score is shown in the following table: average score of each indicator of speaking total fluency (1 – 20) vocabul ary (1 – 20) pronunc iation (1 – 20) grammar (1 – 20) compre hension (1 – 20) preliminary 13.1 12.8 13.5 12.2 13.5 65.1 cycle one 15.0 14.0 14.3 14.5 13.9 71.7 cycle two 17.1 15.5 16.1 15.0 16.4 80.1 this is also supported by the result of a questionnaire administered to the students, 100% of the students said that they like the class, 100% said that working in the group help them, and 100% of the students were motivated to learn english when they are in a group. afterward, the teacher also had an interview with three students. all of them said that working in a group is helpful and interesting. diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 39 the use of pbl in teaching speaking was designed to make the students motivated and enjoy the class. allowing students to work in groups support students to involve actively in the class (fauziati 2014). in addition, working in a group also helps the student learn about speaking concerning on the way of speaking (fluency), vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and content of what to speak. discuss with the group allow student to have an opportunity to give and share information orally to the group’s members. at this point, intensive and extensive speaking performances unconsciously done by the students. conclusion based on the research findings conducted in this study, it could be concluded that the implementation of pbl in teaching speaking can improve the students' speaking skills and motivation. this improvement is proven by the students' speaking achievement, and the score gained. the score of the speaking test has fulfilled the criteria of success. in addition, the students actively involved in learning activities and had high motivation when they work in a group in the speaking class. sharing an idea using english in a group can help the students train their pronunciation, enrich their vocabulary, and make them easier to find an idea in producing sentences while speaking. the students can get information faster and feel more confident in dealing with the lesson as they not only depend on their speaking skills but also on their comprehension. references bell, s. (2010). project-based learning for the 21st century: skill for the future. the cleaning house, 83: 39-43. broughton, g., brumfit, c., flavell, r., hill, p., & pincas, a. (2003). teaching english as a foreign language second edition. new york: routledge. fauziati, endang. (2014). methods of teaching english as a foreign language: traditional method, designer method, communicative method, and scientific approach. fragoulis, l. (2009). project-based learning in teaching of english as a foreign language in greek primary schools: from theory to practice. (a journal). english language teaching. vol. 2 september 2009. fried-booth, d., l. (2002). project work (2nd ed.). new york: oxford university press. kemmis, s., mctaggart, r., & nixon, r. 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(2000). local history in the framework of teaching, athens: oedb. (in greek). patton, a. (2012). work that matters: the teacher’s guide to project -based learning. the paul hamlyn foundation. patton, a. (2012). work that matters: the teacher’s guide to project-based learning. the paul hamlyn foundation. skehan, p. (1998). a cognitive approach to language learning. oxford: oxford university press. stoller, f. (2006). establishing a theoretical foundation for project-based learning in second and foreign language contexts. in beckett, g., h. & p. c. diki riswandi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 40 miller (eds.), project-based second and foreign language education: the past, present, and future (pp. 19-40). greenwich, connecticut: information age publishing. thomas, j.w. (2000). a review of research on pbl. http://www.bobpearlman.org/bestpractices/pbl. research.pdf. july 17, 2012. maulany, darni bilqis. (2013) the use of project-based learning in improving the students’ speaking skill. journal of english and education 2013, 1(1), 30-42. dauer, m rebecca. 1993. accurate english. prentice hall regents: university of massachusetts. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5678 205 ijolte interpersonal realizations of pedagogic discourse in indonesian efl classrooms sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa department of linguistics, doctoral program, universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: soenklaten@gmail.com how to cite this paper: sunardi, s., tarjana, m. s., poedjosoedarmo, s., & santosa, r. (2018). interpersonal realizations of pedagogic discourse in indonesian efl classrooms. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 205-215. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5678 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this paper describes the lexicogrammatical realizations of interpersonal meaning in english as a foreign language (efl) classrooms in indonesian university context. the realizational grammatical patterns are presented using mood system in systemic functional linguistics (sfl). the data of this study were three efl classrooms taken from three english departments in indonesian universities in semarang city. data analyses were done by transcribing the lectures and then divided them into clauses from which the lexicogrammatical realizations of pedagogic mood were identified and classified based on mood system as suggested by halliday& matthiessen in sfl perspectives. the results of the study show that interpersonally, the clauses used in the efl classrooms are predominated by declarative clause, interrogative clause, and imperative clause. the predominance of declarative clause is influenced by the teacher-centered teaching method used in the classrooms. this method poses lecturer as an expert and students as novice. in this situation, lecturer dominates in giving information about the learning materials. besides, interrogative clause is also used by lecturer to know the students’ understanding of the learning materials. finally, imperative clause is also used to ask students to do something relating to the understanding of the learning materials. subject areas classroom discourse analysis keywords interpersonal meaning, lexicogrammatical realization, pedagogic discourse, systemic functional linguistics 1. introduction an english teaching and learning activity can be considered as a genre from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics because the activities are arranged in stages to achieve the teaching and learning goals. seen as a discourse, such teaching and learning activity is called as a pedagogic discourse (christie, 1995: 223). the existence of genre characteristics in a teaching-learning episode shows that pedagogic discourse is a structured language behavior (christie, 2002: 3). one of the structured https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5678 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5678 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 206 ijolte characteristics of a pedagogic discourse is reflected from its overall staged-activities and its linguistic features used in carrying out the teaching-learning activities to achieve the learning objectives. the specific lexicogrammatically features used in each teaching-learning step shows certain meanings communicated in the step. one of the meanings is the interpersonal meaning referring to the social relations between teacher and students in the classroom. english pedagogic discourse has been the focuses of some studies under systemic functional linguistics (sfl). for example, christie (1991, 1995), referring pedagogic discourse as a curriculum genre, studied writing planning classrooms and social science classrooms of primary schools in australia. they found that the schematic structure of the writing curriculum genre was task orientation ̂ task specification ̂ task, where ^ means ‘is followed by’. she also found two registers operating in curriculum genre: regulative register and instructional register. regulative register deals with directing and sequencing the learning activities to achieve the learning goals, while instructional register has to do with learning the instructional content. another study on english as a second language (esl) classroom discourse was conducted by sinar (2002), which focused on the realization of experiential meaning. reference [4] stated that the lecture discourse was experientially predominated using relational process to focus on the transformation of intellectual values. another esl classroom was also studied by love & suherdi (1996), which focused on the realization of interpersonal meaning through the negotiation of knowledge between teacher and students in letter writing classroom. it was found that in the phase of establishing a context of shared experience, students were the primary knower, while teacher was the secondary knower; in the phase of explaining the schematic structure and the language features of the text, teacher was the primary knower, while students were the secondary knower; and in the phase of review, teacher was the primary knower, while students were the secondary knower. nevertheless, the above study on interpersonal meaning realization as stated in love & suherdi (1996) focused on the classroom of english as second language in australian context. the interpersonal relationship between teacher and students in this study was portrayed by using exchange structure during the negotiation of knowledge and action in the classroom. so far, no study of interpersonal meaning realization of efl classroom in indonesian context is ever conducted. some efl classroom studies in indonesian context in the literature include emilia (2005) and wiratno (2018), which focus more on student’s ability in producing certain text type or genre, i.e. argumentative and news genres. they do not describe the lexicogrammatically features of how teacher and students interact in unfolding the classroom discourse. that is why, the present study describes the lexicogrammatically realization of interpersonal meaning as one of the multifunctional meanings exchanged in efl classroom in indonesian context. the realizationally pattern is presented by using mood system network in sfl as stated by matthiessen (1995) and halliday & sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 207 ijolte matthiessen (2014). 2. literature review 2.1. metafunctions sfl is a theory of language which perceives language as social semiotics: language is used to accomplish everyday social life (eggins, 2004: 2). language is viewed as a resource for making not just one meaning at a time, but three strands of meanings simultaneously (eggins & slade, 1997: 48). these three types of meaning are referred to as metafunctions (martin, 2009: 11). so, there are three metafunctional meanings language represents in its use in social interaction: ideational, interpersonal, and textual (matthiessen, 1995: 47). language-in-use represents ideational meaning because whatever it is used for, it construes human experience. ideational meaning falls into two: experiential and logical meanings. experiential meaning construes linguistic unit as representation of a process and its related participants and circumstance, while logical meaning refers to the interdependency and logico-semantic relation of one linguistic unit to the others. besides ideational meaning, language-in-use also represents interpersonal meaning at the same time. it is the meaning that enacts language user’s personal and social relationships with the other people around him/her. finally, the third meaning represented by language-in-use is textual meaning, that is, the meaning referring to the construction of ideational and interpersonal meanings as a message into a cohesive text. in social interaction, the metafunctional meanings (discourse semantics) are realized through the choice of words and their order (lexicogrammar), which is in turn realized through phonology/graphology. martin (2009: 12) presents the realizations of these levels of language in meaning-making system as in figure 1. figure 1. levels of language because the focus of this study is only the interpersonal meaning, this paper only discusses the lexicogrammar system for realizing the interpersonal meaning. as stated by eggins & slade (1997: 53-54), there are four main types of lexicogrammatical patterns which represent and enact the social relationships of participants in interaction. these patterns include the uses of mood of clauses, the attitudinal and sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 208 ijolte expressive lexis, the speech functions, and the generic structures. this paper only focuses on the realization of interpersonal meaning through the lexicogrammatically patterns of mood of clauses used in the discourse under study. 2.2. mood system the term mood refers to the primary interpersonal system of clauses by considering the occurrence of functional mood elements of subject and finite in a clause. according to this system, a clause is considered to consist of two functional elements: mood and residue. mood is the combination of functional constituents of subject and finite of a clause, while residue is the combination of predicator, complement, and adjunct of a clause. halliday & matthiessen (2014: 24) classify english clauses as three basic types of interact, as stated in figure 2. figure 2. mood system as figure 2 shows that there are two major types of english clause: indicative clause and imperative clause. indicative clause is concerned with the exchange of information (the negotiation of propositions), while imperative clause is concerned with the performance of an action to provide a service or to exchange goods (the negotiation of proposals). within indicative clauses, there are interrogative clause which concerns the demanding of information and declarative clause which concerns the giving of information. interrogative clause can be divided any further into yes-no interrogative for polar question and why-interrogative for content question. mood type of a clause has to do with the occurrence and sequence of certain negotiable elements of clause structure. each mood type involves a different configuration of a set of basic clause constituents. full english clause consists of some functional elements: subject, finite, predicator, complement, and adjunct. of these elements, subject and finite constitute pivotal constituents of a clause. egging (2004) and butt, et al. (2001) define the functional elements of a clause as the following. subject is the person or thing which becomes the concern of the clause. subject is generally realized by a nominal group. finite is the part of the verbal group in the clause which shows tense, modality, and polarity. in a clause with a verbal group consisting sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 209 ijolte of more than one word, the finite is the first element in the verbal group. predicator is the other part of the verbal group in the clause which describes the action or process involved in the clause. in a clause with a verbal group consisting of only one word, the word functions as both finite and predicator. complement is the participant which is somehow implicated in the clause but is not pivotal participant. complement is also realized by a nominal group. finally, adjunct is an element which adds extra information about the events expressed in the clause through circumstantial, interpersonal, or textual information. adjunct is typically realized by adverbial group or prepositional phrase. in terms of the presence of mood elements, a clause can be declarative, interrogative, or imperative. a declarative clause is clause in which the subject occurs before the finite (subject ^ finite, where ^ means ‘is followed by’). the following clause is an example of declarative clause. (1) we will distinguish first the characteristics of the five phrases. we will distinguish first the characteristics of the five phrases. subject finite predicator adjunct complement mood residue an interrogative clause is a clause in which the finite precedes the subject. there are two types of interrogative clause: yes/no interrogative and wh-interrogative. the following clauses are examples of interrogative clauses. (2) do you find adjective phrase in this sentence? do you find adjective phrase in this sentence? finite subject predicator complement adjunct mood residue (3) what do you find in this sentence? what do you find in this sentence? complement finite subject predicator adjunct mood residue imperative clause is a clause which typically does not contain the elements of subject or finite but consists of only a predicator, plus any of the non-core participants of complement and adjunct. the following is an example of imperative clause. (4) find an adjective phrase in this sentence. find an adjective phrase in this sentence. predicator complement adjunct residue 3. method the data of this study were video-taped english lectures taken from three english departments in some indonesian universities where english was used as a foreign sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 210 ijolte language (efl). there were three efl classrooms analyzed in this study, which were coded as genre-1, genre-2, and genre-3. the lecturers of these genres were non-native english speakers. when the genres were video-taped, the classes talked about content lessons in english language, such as english phrases, english clauses elements, and translation strategies. in addition, the learning method employed by the lecturers in the three genres was conventional method. data analyses were done by transcribing the lectures by referring to the transcription symbols as suggested in eggins & slade (1997). to get the validity of the lecture transcriptions, they were consulted to the lecturers to make sure that the transcriptions transcribed the real utterances of the lectures. the transcribed utterances were then divided into clauses from which the lexicogrammatically realizations of pedagogic mood were identified and classified based on mood system network as suggested by matthiessen (1995) and halliday & matthiessen (2014). 4. findings and discussion based on the identification of the clause types used in the three genres under study, the mood types can be presented in table 1. table 1. the mood types used in the efl classrooms genre-1 genre-2 genre-3 no clause type n % n % n % 1 minor clause 35 2 4 2 declarative: full 367 49.4 346 32.0 362 54.6 3 declarative: elliptical 106 27.7 556 51.5 183 27.6 4 yes/no interrogative: full 36 4.8 16 1.5 49 7.4 5 yes/no interrogative: elliptical 29 3.9 37 3.4 24 3.6 6 wh-interrogative: full 58 7.8 20 1.9 18 2.7 7 wh-interrogative: elliptical 14 1.9 78 7.2 9 1.4 8 imperative: full 27 3.6 25 2.3 17 2.6 9 imperative: elliptical 6 0.8 2 0.2 1 0.2 total 743 100 1080 100 663 100 4.1. minor clauses genre-1 uses more minor clauses compared to genre-2 and genre-3. in genre-1 there are 35 minor clauses used by lecturer and students in learning activity, while in genre-2 and genre-3 there are successively only 2 and 4 minor clauses. in the three efl classrooms, minor clauses are more frequently used by lecturer than students. the minor clauses are commonly used by the lecturer at the beginning of the lecture (greeting) and at the end of the meeting for leave taking. additionally, minor clauses are also used for filler when explaining the learning materials to the students or used for feedback. some minor clauses used in the efl classrooms can be exemplified in table 2. sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 211 ijolte table 2. some minor clauses used in the efl classrooms genre speaker clause no minor clauses genre-1 lecturer 1 good evening everybody student 2 good evening sir lecturer 106 come on! lecturer 203 okay? lecturer 204 okay lecturer 497 okay lecturer 790 bye bye student 791 see you genre-2 lecturer 1 ok. uhm, good afternoon, class student 2 good afternoon genre-3 lecturer 1 okay so good evening everybody student 2 good evening lecturer 714 bye student 715 bye sir 4.2. declarative clause in terms of using declarative clause in the classrooms, lecturer dominates in using declarative clauses compared to the students. for example, in genre-1 the lecturer used 482 declarative clauses (15.9%); in genre-2 the lecturer used 688 declarative clauses (76.3%); and in genre-3 the lecturer used 214 declarative clauses (23.7%). this shows the fact that lecturer is more dominant in giving information concerning with learning activity. lecturer’s predominance in using declarative clauses in the genres has something to do with the role relationships or tenor between lecturer and students. there is unequal power shared by lecturer and students. this happens partly because of the learning method employed in the genre, which is a conventional method where lecturer is considered as the center of the teaching-learning activities. in this lecturer-centered method, lecturer is positioned as an expert, that is, a person who is more experienced in and has more accesses to the learning materials. on the other hand, students are positioned as a novice, that is, a person who is new in or inexperienced in the learning materials. in the teaching-learning activities, lecturer is responsible to transfer the knowledge to the students, while students mostly listen and understand lecturer’s explanations. in the system of clause as exchange, lecturer takes a speech role of giving, and the commodity exchanged is information. the combination of speech role ‘giving’ and commodity ‘information’ makes a speech function of statement or the act of giving information [14]. in mood system, a clause which is used to give information is a declarative clause, which is signified by the presence of sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 212 ijolte the subject before the finite. the following are some declarative clauses used in the efl classrooms. (5) the possibilities of the phrase that we can make or that we can produce will be one of the five phrases. the possibilities of the phrase [[that we can make or that we can produce]] will be one of the five phrases. subject finite predicator complement mood residue (6) it can be a noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, verb phrase, or prepositional phrase. it can be a noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, verb phrase, or prepositional phrase. subject finite predicator complement mood residue (7) the phrase the five students talks about students. the phrase the five students talks about students subject finite predicator complement mood residue 4.3. interrogative clause the second dominant clause used by lecturers in the efl classroom under study was interrogative clause, both yes/no interrogative and wh-interrogative. wh-interrogative clauses were used more (52.5%) than yes/no interrogative clauses (47.5%). the lecturers used interrogative clauses for demanding information from the students. lecturer’s use of interrogative clause in the classroom is also influenced by his/her higher power in relation to students. as the center of the teaching-learning activities, lecturer’s responsibilities include both transferring knowledge to students and ensuring students’ understanding of the learning materials. in the system of clause as exchange, lecturer does not only give information concerning the topic discussed in the classroom but also demands information from the students to know the extent of their understanding of the learning materials. in other words, lecturer should use both speech functions of statement and question. in mood system, speech function of question is realized through interrogative clause, which is signified by the mood structure of finite preceding subject. to demand information from students, lecturer used both why-interrogative and yes/no interrogative. the more frequently used wh-interrogatives rather than yes/no interrogatives in the classroom have something to do with lecturer’s responsibility to guarantee students’ understanding of the learning materials. wh-interrogative clause is an interrogative clause consisting of wh-question word, such as what, who, when, sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 213 ijolte how, etc. the use of wh-question word is to probe for a missing element of clause structure (eggins & slade, 1997: 87). for example, when probes for a circumstantial adjunct, who probes for the subject, and what probes for either subject or the complement of a clause. in classroom context under study, lecturer used wh-interrogative to get detailed information about the parts of the learning materials already understood or not yet understood by students. such information cannot be provided by using yes/no interrogative clause, because yes/no interrogative clause demands only a yes or no response from students without further information about the response. to elicit additional information, lecturer used an interrogative clause by using a whquestion word to probe for the intended additional information. table 3 presents examples of yes/no interrogative and wh-interrogatives clauses used in the efl classroom. l is for lecturer and s is for student. table 3. examples of yes/no interrogative and wh-interrogative clauses speaker clause mood l okay, for example, i have a sentence like this: the students in this class are studying english everyday. [l writes the sentence on the white board]. declarative: full do you think that the sentence has a noun phrase? yes/no interrogative s yes. declarative: elliptical l yes. declarative: elliptical what is it? wh-interrogative s the students. declarative: elliptical l the students. declarative: elliptical okay, that’s right. declarative: full the students is a noun phrase declarative: full as examples in table 3 show that to know students’ understanding of the concept of noun phrase discussed in the classroom, lecture gave an example of sentence and made a question about the sentence. firstly, a yes/no interrogative clause was used to know if there was a noun phrase in the sentence. the yes/no question was responded by students with ‘yes’, telling that they found a noun phrase in the sentence. the answer ‘yes’ by students did not inform the facts that they really identified the intended noun phrase. then, a further question with what question word was used to ensure that students could identify which phrase in the sentence was the intended noun phrase. this wh-interrogative clause was answered by students by saying ‘the students’. the answer ensured lecturer that students really understood the concept of noun phrase and could identify a noun phrase in a real use. some other interrogative clauses used in the efl classrooms are exemplified in the following examples: (8) do you find adjective phrase? sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 214 ijolte do you find adjective phrase? finite subject predicator complement mood residue (9) what is the type of this phrase? what is the type of this phrase? complement finite subject residue mood 4.4. imperative clause another clause type which is frequently used in the efl classrooms is imperative clause. the use of imperative clause in the classroom is also influenced by the role relationships between lecturer and students. as the center of the teaching-learning activities, lecturer is responsible for students’ understanding of the learning materials. in this context, lecturer is entitled to ask students to do something in relation to understanding the learning materials. in the system of clause as exchange, lecturer uses speech function of command, the combination of speech role ‘giving’ and commodity exchanged ‘goods & services’. in the mood system, command is congruently realized by an imperative clause. full imperative clauses are more frequently used in the classrooms than the elliptical imperative clauses. this is done for the clarity of command given to the students. the clarity of the command will decrease when commands are stated by using predicator only without complement and adjunct. some imperative clauses used in the classrooms are presented in table 4. table 4. some imperative clauses used on the efl classrooms no predicator complement adjunct clause type 1 find an adjective, for example clever. imperative: full 2 make another word in front of the word clever. imperative: full 3 pay attention to the words very beautifully. imperative: full 4 pay attention to the combination of the words will, have, and attended. imperative: full 5 remember imperative: elliptical 6 read imperative: elliptical as the examples in table 4 show that lecturer uses imperative clause to require students to do an action in relation to understanding the learning materials. the intended action is realized by predicator in material processes, such as find, make, give, analyze, or mental processes, such as pay attention, remember, accompanied by complement referring to things concerning the learning materials, such as an adjective, another word, the words ‘very beautifully’, the clause structures, your work, your partner’s work. 5. conclusion sunardi, m. sri samiati tarjana, soepomo poedjosoedarmo, riyadi santosa 215 ijolte interpersonally, the clauses used in the efl classrooms are predominated by declarative clause, interrogative clause, and imperative clause. the predominance of declarative clause is influenced by the teacher-centered teaching method used in the classrooms. this method poses lecturer as an expert and students as a novice. in this situation, lecturer dominates in giving information about the learning materials. besides, interrogative clause is also used by lecturer to know the students’ understanding on the learning materials. finally, imperative clause is also used to ask students to do something concerning understanding the learning materials. references [1] butt, d., fahey, r., spinks, s., & yallops, c. 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(2014). halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (fourth edition). london: routledge. [9] love, k., & suherdi, d. (1996). the negotiation of knowledge in an adult english as a second language classroom. linguistics and education, 8: 229-267. [10] martin, j.r. (2009). genre and language learning: a social semiotic perspective. linguistics and education, 20: 10-21. [11] martin, j.r., matthiessen, c.m.i.m, & painter, c. (2010). deploying functional grammar. beijing: the commercial press. [12] matthiessen, c.m.i.m. (1995). lexicogrammatical cartography: english systems. tokyo: international language sciences publishers. [13] sinar, t. s. (2002). phasal and experiential realizations in lecture discourse: a systemic functional perspectives. (ph.d. thesis, faculty of languages and linguistics, university of malaya, malaysia). retrieved from http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/id/eprint/232 [14] wiratno, t. (2018). teaching news writing in english: from genre to lexicogrammar. pertanika journal of social sciences & humanities, 26 (2): 909 928. ©2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). heny hartono soegijapranata catholic university, indonesia abstract teachers’ communicative competence should add the general teaching competencies of in-service teachers at bilingual programs. this challenges teachers to meet the standard of a competent speaker. unfortunately, schools hardly assess teachers’ communicative competence. this study aimed to find out the level of in-service teachers’ communicative competence and the correlation among the level of communicative competence aspects. this sequential explanatory study involved 82 in-service teachers who taught in english. all of the participants participated in the quantitative data collection, and 12 of them were involved in the qualitative data collection. the results of this study reveal that the subjects of this study were found in the safe zone. it indicates that teachers of english speaking programs under this study can perform their tasks adequately, although they cannot be called competent yet. the spearman correlational analysis found out that the coefficient correlation was above 0.76, indicating a very strong correlation between the overall communicative competence and its aspects and strong positive correlations among the communicative competence aspects. the results of qualitative data analysis confirm that participants’ communicative competence in each aspect of the communicative competence affects the overall communicative competence. the results of this study provide valuable input of teachers’ communicative competence, which can be further followed up with suitable training to improve teacher’s english competence. article history received 28 june 2020 accepted 18 august 2020 published 31 december 2020 keywords: in-service teachers, communicative competence, assessment 1. introduction along with the prominent role of english as an international language, the number of english speakers is significantly increasing in the last few decades. english is claimed as a global language because of the number of its speakers and more on who the speakers are (crystal, 2003). in indonesia, english itself is one among other foreign languages such as chinese and arabic, which are commonly taught and used in this country. using english as the medium of instruction in class can be challenging for local teachers within the foreign language context. as a foreign language, english is mostly taught as a subject at school. teachers and students rarely use english as the medium of communication both inside and outside the classrooms. teachers commonly use the national language or mixed language of indonesian and english in delivering the english subject at schools. thus, english is primary used in the classroom setting. in other words, the exposure to english as the target language is so little outside the classroom. with these facts, most schools do not use english as the medium of instruction except those which run english speaking programs such as bilingual or immersion programs. the english speaking programs in indonesia are commonly partial immersions with some variants of the curriculum. some schools opt to use english in almost all subjects except for the indonesian language, local (traditional) language, and other foreign languages. several other schools only teach some international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.12178 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.12178 110 h. hartono subjects in the target language. some of the subjects are mathematics, science, ict (information and communication technology) and arts. mainly, schools prefer to teach mathematics and science in english to produce globally competitive graduates because mathematics and science are seen as the base for technology development. almost all indonesian schools that offer immersion and bilingual programs include english as the language of instruction, although some also use other foreign languages such as arabic, mandarin, and french. despite the attraction of other foreign languages, english as the most widely used international language has always been the most favourite target language of bilingual or multilingual schools. in fact, english has got its first place as foreign language in indonesia. educational institutions have caught this beneficial situation, especially from the private or non-government sector to open immersion programs. in reality, these programs are commonly found in big cities (capital city of provinces) in indonesia. the use of english as the language of instruction has become a part of marketing strategies for private schools to get more students. nowadays, more and more schools open and offer immersion programs with various programs that sound marketable. some labels are used to name the programs with attractive names such as “smart class”, “special class”, “international class”, etc. the main characteristic of the programs is the use of english in some or all subjects at the schools. the schools may use national curriculum, modified curriculum or a curriculum which is adopted from other countries. these programs are different from international schools which have international students, use international curriculum, and use english as the main and only language of instruction. due to the high tuition fee and the expensive books used by the students, the target of immersion programs is middle-upper families. the facilities offered in this program are commonly above the ones of the regular programs. usually, there are two teachers in one class and the classes are in small sizes where there are fewer students compared to the number of students in regular class. in basic education level, the classrooms are commonly designed in such a way to enable teacher and students have communicative interaction. some schools may also hire native speakers of english to teach. some schools are under the category of transitional bilingual schools where l1 or mixed language is still used in the first years, but in the higher level, all content subjects are taught in english. some others apply enrichment model in which students are expected to be bilingual and biliterate by having high proficiency in both languages as well as having cultural awareness in both languages. thus, students are expected to be ready and able to participate in the global community because they can adapt themselves in the target language culture without losing their identity in the first language culture. teachers are one among other determining factors of the bilingual program’s success. therefore, teachers’ communicative competence in the target language is important. in fact, due to several factors, not all teachers in these bilingual programs are communicatively competent. teachers’ educational background and experiences dealing with teaching in english are some among other factors which cause the lack of communicative competence. this study tried to see in-service teachers’ communicative competence particularly their oral competence. most of the discussion in this paper will be based on the aspects of communicative competence proposed by celce-murcia (2007). the result of this study provides a description of in-service teachers’ communicative competence and a discussion on how the level of teachers’ communicative competence may affect their performance as teachers of bilingual programs. in addition, this study also presented the results of correlational analysis among the levels of the teachers’ communicative competence aspects. 2. methodology this research was designed as a sequential explanatory study that started with quantitative data analysis and qualitative data analysis. creswell (2008, p. 211) mentions that this kind of research strategy is characterized by collecting and analysing quantitative data at the first phase and based on the result of the first phase, the qualitative method is employed at the second phase. further, creswell says, “a sequential explanatory design is typically used to explain and interpret quantitative results by collecting and analyzing follow-up qualitative data”. in this study, the quantitative data were collected through an assessment namely the communicative competence assessment. the in-service teachers’ communicative competence level was measured with communicative competence assessment tools. the tool had been developed by the writer international journal of language teaching and education 111 in her previous educational research and development study. this instrument was adopted from communicative competence assessment designed by pillar (2011). the communicative competence assessment was modified and developed based on the needs of communicative competence assessment for teachers. the communicative competence assessment tool consists of three assessment sets: selfassessment, receptive –productive assessment, and performance assessment. the results of the three components of communicative competence assessment give the final score indicating the participant’s communicative competence level. the results of the assessment also show the participants’ level in each aspect of communicative competence. table 1 below describes the communicative competence level classification. in general, the communicative competence level is classified into five levels of competence. table1. communicative competence band descriptor final score description 1 intermittent communicator: communication occurs only sporadically. 2 limited communicator: receptive/productive skills do not allow continuous communication. 3 moderate communicator: gets by without serious breakdowns. however, misunderstandings and errors cause difficulties. 4 competent communicator: copes well but has occasional misunderstandings or makes occasional noticeable errors. 5 good communicator: copes well and performs competently. this study involved 82 teachers from 6 schools that offered bilingual programs in semarang, the capital city of central java province. all of the participants contributed to the quantitative data collection while 12 were involved in the qualitative data collection. this research aimed to address the following research questions: 1. how is the communicative competence of in-service teachers at bilingual program? 2. is there a significant correlation between each aspect of communicative competence and the overall communicative competence level? if yes, how is the correlation? 3. is there a significant correlation among each aspect of communicative competence? if yes, how is the correlation? the results of the communicative competence was quantitatively analysed with descriptive analysis to determine the participants’ level of communicative competence. with this analysis, the writers also got the results of participants’ level of communicative competence level in each aspect. next, a correlation analysis using spearman rho was applied to see if there was a significant correlation among communicative competence aspects and the correlation between each aspect and the overall communicative competence level. the analysis was to prove the hypothesis that there was a significant correlation among each aspect of communicative competence and the overall communicative competence level and among each aspect of communicative competence. to confirm the results of the quantitative analysis, the writers also analysed the results of focus group discussion and in-depth interviews with 12 teachers as representatives of each school involved in this study. 3. results and discussion based on the assessment results, it can be concluded that overall, the in-service teachers’ communicative competence under this study falls in moderate level category. 2.44% of the respondents were categorized as intermittent communicators, 23.17% were limited communicators, 25.61% were moderate communicators, and 48.78% were considered competent communicators. with this result, it can be said that the in-service teachers under this study have been able to perform their role as teachers of bilingual programs. although some errors still occasionally appear, it should not be major barriers for a classroom interaction. a complete data of the teachers’ average communicative competence is presented in the following table: 112 h. hartono table2. result of communicative competence assessment lc soc sc fc dc ic overall score 3.5 3.7 3.7 2.9 3.6 3.6 3.5 overall, the results can be summarized in this following graph: graph1. communicative competence level interestingly, three out of the six schools involved in this study outperformed the other schools. the indepth interview results revealed that these schools run bilingual program in the form of immersion program. the teachers were recruited and prepared specifically for the bilingual programs. they graduated from english department or other majors with previous teaching experiences at international schools. meanwhile, other schools did not recruit special teachers for the bilingual program. those teachers were teachers from regular program who were assigned to teach their subjects in bilingual mode. seen from the demographic data, 32 participants (36 % of the total participants) were english department graduates and 50 participants (64% of the total participants) were non-english department graduates. referring to the result of communicative competence assessment in table 1, among the six aspects of communicative competence namely the linguistic competence, sociocultural competence, discourse competence, interactional competence, formulaic competence, and strategic competence, the weakest competence is the formulaic competence. the average of formulaic competence is 2.9 or under the limited level category. meanwhile, the sociocultural and strategic aspects share the highest level of competence that the in-service teachers under this study achieve. in average, their communicative competence level is 3.5 or in moderate level. the following graph illustrates the teachers’ communicative competence in each aspect. the results of the correlational analysis (graph 2) among the variables of communicative competence aspects and the educational background indicate that there is a significant correlation between each single communicative competence aspect and the overall communicative competence. the statistics results of spearman’s rho show that the significant value (2 tailed) of each aspect towards the communicative competence is 0,00 or <0,05 meaning that there is a significant relationship between the communicative competence aspect and the overall competence. as shown in table 3 below, the correlation coefficients are between 0.76-0.99, indicating that the correlation is very strong at 0.01 significant level. 2 19 21 40 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 communicative competence intermittent limited moderate competent international journal of language teaching and education 113 graph 2. the average communicative competence aspects the correlation coefficient of linguistics competence and the communicative competence is 0.939 meaning that the correlation is very strong and positive. it means that the higher linguistic competence level, the higher the communicative competence. linguistics competence also has very strong relationships with other aspects of communicative competence. the coefficient correlation between linguistic competence and all other aspects of communicative competence is above 0.76 (0.766 for sociocultural competence, 0.866 for strategic competence, 0.791 for formulaic competence, 0.845 for discourse competence, and 0.841 for interactional competence) indicating very strong correlations. these results confirm that communicative language ability should cover the knowledge about the target language and how to use the target language. in other words, communicative competence is comprised of language proficiency and communicative proficiency. it confirms that language proficiency covers linguistic knowledge and the ability to use the language appropriately in various contexts (abdurrahman and abu ayyash, 2019; light & mcnaughton, 2014; kumar, 2020). during the in-depth interview with the participants, the writers noted that most of the participants were worried about their limited vocabularies, their inability to pronounce english words accurately, and grammar in general. as it can be seen from table 3, the coefficient correlation of sociolinguistics competence and communicative competence is 0.796 which shows very strong correlation. this value is the least among other aspects but it still indicates that the correlation is very strong. meanwhile, the correlation between sociocultural competence and other aspects of communicative competence is strong (0.698 for strategic competence, 0,718 for formulaic competence, 0.653 for discourse competence, and 0.54 for interactional competence). to be a competent speaker, the in-service teachers need to have knowledge of the target language sociocultural background. their ability to adapt themselves with the target language culture affects their ability to communicate in the target language effectively. the sociocultural competence is gained through some stages, including learning from educational materials, gaining experiences, and demonstrating the ability (safina, 2014). in the educational field, in-service teachers must demonstrate and perform their knowledge and skills related to sociocultural competence in their roles as educators. the correlation between strategic competence and other aspects of competence also indicates strong and very strong correlation (0.886 for linguistic competence, 0.698 for sociocultural competence, 0.723 for formulaic competence, 0.803 for discourse competence, 0.816 for interactional competence). it confirms that to compensate for the communication breakdowns, non-native speakers need to have basic communicative abilities, including the other communicative competence aspects. in general, there are significant correlations among the aspects of communicative competence although not all correlations indicate very strong relationship. the correlation is in positive mode indicating that the higher level of communicative competence aspect, the higher the communicative competence level. the results indicate that the hypothesis can be accepted. the results of qualitative data analysis confirm that participants’ communicative competence in each aspect of the communicative competence affects their communicative competence in general. 3.5 3.7 3.7 2.9 3.6 3.6 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 cc aspects linguistic sociocultural strategic formulaic discourse interactional 114 h. hartono implication comparing the averages of each communicative competence aspect described in graph 2 above, it seems that sociocultural and strategic competence share the same average and appears as the highest achieved competences among the other aspects of communicative competence. sociocultural competence which is defined as the ability to use the language appropriately according to the sociocultural context (celcemurcia, 2007) was generally copped well by the in-service teachers under this study. as teachers, they had table3. correlational analysis of communicative competence aspects correlations lc soc sc fc dc ic cc spearman's rho lc correlation coefficient 1.000 .766** .886** .791** .845** .841** .939** sig. (2tailed) . .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 soc correlation coefficient .766** 1.000 .698** .718** .653** .654** .796** sig. (2tailed) .000 . .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 sc correlation coefficient .886** .698** 1.000 .723** .803** .816** .889** sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 . .000 .000 .000 .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 fc correlation coefficient .791** .718** .723** 1.000 .735** .713** .851** sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .000 . .000 .000 .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 dc correlation coefficient .845** .653** .803** .735** 1.000 .889** .904** sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 . .000 .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 ic correlation coefficient .841** .654** .816** .713** .889** 1.000 .883** sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 . .000 n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 cc correlation coefficient .939** .796** .889** .851** .904** .883** 1.000 sig. (2tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 . n 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). international journal of language teaching and education 115 been well trained to respect others and to respect differences. moreover, with the socio-graphical background of indonesia as an archipelago with thousands ethnics, indonesian teachers get used to get along with others from different sociocultural background. in fact, it is just something common to learn the differences as well. another factor which may result in high level of communicative competence is the ability of the inservice teachers to articulate themselves in such a way to maintain the communication smooth. this ability refers to the strategic competence which allows the speakers to compensate the communication breakdowns. as teachers also use mime, non-verbal expression, and other means such as drawing and gestures while teaching, it seems that teachers know how to maintain the classroom communication. teachers’ ability to create a communicative communication in the classroom reflects their strategic competence. discourse, interactional, and linguistic competences are interrelated in which three of these communicative competence aspects challenge teachers’ linguistic knowledge. their ability and sensitivity to choose the right words for certain discourse or to perform certain speech acts as they practice the interactional competence, rely much on their language and grammatical knowledge. tracing back to a few last decades, the english teaching practice in indonesia was focused more on grammar teaching. indonesian students used to learn english as a subject at school. this had led them to a good proficiency in written english. good knowledge in language and grammatical often helps teachers in oral communication. however, oral communication needs more than just grammar mastery. teachers are mostly confronted with oral communication when dealing with students in a classroom discourse. they need to be skillful in selecting and using appropriate words and expressions. as non-native speakers, teachers often feel insecure when handling an oral communication. occhipinti (2009) also mentions that speaking activity tends to make someone feel insecure easily, especially if the speakers are not confident with their competences. reflecting to the level of each aspect, the writer’s attention was drawn to the poor formulaic competence possessed by the in-service teachers. ellis (1994) in his discussion about the developmental pattern of second language acquisition explains that similar to the first language acquisition, the second language acquisition also allows learners to follow order and sequence of developmental pattern. the use of formulaic expressions helps second language learners keep communication smooth especially in unplanned language use in which the second language speakers tend to deliberately pay attention to the language form by using explicit language or grammatical knowledge or by translating (ellis, 1994). in unplanned language use, teachers tend to translate from the first language to the target language. it is even worse when they translate word by word. if only they can apply formulaic speech that consists of fixed and memorized chunks, they will overcome their nervousness in unpredictable situations such as when students ask something out of the context or when the interaction with students develops into more intimate and intensive conversation. native speakers commonly use the formulaic speech itself as reflection of language behavior. it consists of routines, patterns, lexical phrases, or even longer expressions such as fixed and predictable greetings. pawley and seyder (1983 as cited in ellis, 1994, p.85) maintain that “achieving native-like control involves not only learning a rule system but also memorized sequences and lexicalized sentence stem”. practices that stimulate the use of formulaic speech can boost teachers’ formulaic competence. a list of everyday or classroom expressions is recommended to teachers. teachers may also enrich their bank of expressions by watching some online english tutorials in you tube. the more memorized chunks they have, the easier they compensate with communication breakdowns. in other words, the formulaic speech can help teachers develop their formulaic competence and strategic competence. in fact, it can lessen their burden when dealing with unplanned or unexpected situations which challenge them to keep the communication going. the memorized expressions can also help teachers develop their linguistic competence because they can refer to the structure of the fixed expressions they use. moreover, they can also learn about the target culture through the expressions, when and how the expressions are said appropriately within certain discourse. up to this point, the writer argues that formulaic competence is crucial for a second language speaker. teachers of bilingual program can be trained to equip themselves with formulaic speech. the formulaic speech can help teachers survive in unpredictable language use. in relation to teachers’ professional development, english training that focuses on communicative competence enhancement can support teachers' professional competence. therefore, the results of this 116 h. hartono study may describe how the level of in-service teachers’ communicative competence was, especially the oral communicative competence which was crucial to support the teaching and learning process. it is in line with the common perception that for non-native speakers, speaking skill is often seen as the most important and even the most difficult skill to acquire (young, 1990). further, designing effective teacher professional development programs including training or workshops, should consider the teachers' needs to improve the quality of the education (lear, 2019). 4. results and discussion the results of this study reveal that the subjects of this study were found in safe zone. it indicates that teachers of bilingual programs under this study can perform their tasks adequately, yet they cannot be called competent. most of them can handle classroom routines such as opening the class with greetings, delivering the materials, and closing the classes. however, they still find difficulties and make mistakes in unpredicted situations, such as when students ask questions or give students feedback. the study results can be a reference for schools with bilingual programs to maintain and improve teachers’ communicative competence through professional training. schools may schedule periodic trainings as a part of teacher’s professional development. this study was limited in participant number and the area of research setting. for further research, a bigger number of teachers from wider range of area can be considered. in addition, it will also be beneficial if a similar study is conducted with pre-service teachers as the participants in the future. references abdulrahman, n. c. ., & ayyash , e. a. s. a.-. (2019). linguistic competence, communicative competence and interactional competence. journal of advances in linguistics, 10, 1600– 1616. https://doi.org/10.24297/jal.v10i0.8530 celce-murcia, m. (2007). rethinking the communicative competence in language teaching. in e. a. soler, & m. p. jorda, intercultural language use and language leraning (pp. 41-57). dordrecht: springer. cresswell, j. w. (2008). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 3rd edition. california: sage publication. crystal, d. (2003). english as a global language. new york : cambridge university press. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. new york: oxford university press. kumar, t. (2020). assessing language need and proficiency of english graduates of prince sattam bin abdulaziz university for designing pre-placement training and workshops. the asian esp journal. july 16 (4 9). 153 168 lear, m.f. (2019). voices of english teachers on professional development. the asian esp journal. june 15 (1.2), 198-224. light, j & mcnaughton, d. (2014). communicative competence for individuals who require augmentative and alternative communication: a new definition for a new era of communication?. augmentative and alternative communication, 30(1), 1-8. minnisa, s. s. (2014). formation of socio-cultural competence in foreign language teaching. procedia social and behavioral sciences. 136 (2014 ) 80 – 83. occhipinti, a. (2009). foreign language anxiety in in-class speaking activities acknowledgments. foreign language anxiety in in-class speaking activities, 1–112. pilar, g. (2011). a framework for testing communicative competence. partium journal of english studies, 2(1). 24-37. young, d. j. (1990). an investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. foreign language annals. 23(6). 539–567 https://doi.org/10.24297/jal.v10i0.8530 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 25 teaching reading skills to non-english native speaker students: the numbered head together (nht) technique and students’ reading ability in bengkulu yarni valentina gultom universitas jambi, jambi, indonesia yarnivalentina@gmail.com how to cite this paper: gultom, y. a. (2018). teaching reading skills to non-english native speaker students: the numbered head together (nht) technique and students’ reading ability in bengkulu. international journal of language teaching and education. 4(2), 25-31 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract the purpose of this quantitative study with a quasi-experimental approach was to examine the significant increase and difference of students’ achievement in reading after being taught through the numbered head together (nht) technique with recount texts for the second grade students at one junior high school in bengkulu, indonesia. the sample of this study was 72 secondgrade students divided into two classes: experimental class and control class. the experimental class was taught through the numbered head together (nht) technique while the control class was taught using conventional method. to collect the data, pre-test and post-test techniques were used. the result of paired sample t-test showed that there was a significant positive effect of numbered head together (nht) technique toward the students’ reading ability. implications of findings and suggestions are discussed. subject areas language teaching keywords nht technique, reading ability, junior high school introduction cooperative learning helps students to solve their problems on learning process. in this kind of learning method, students work together in group and are expected to share equal portion of thinking. when they learned cooperatively, they can find and discuss their difficulties with their friends. different people have different idea, different point of view, and different knowledge. therefore, when students work and collaborate together, they will complete each other. for two heads are better than one (o’keefe, 2010). on the other hand, students tend to work individually especially when it comes to reading activity. cooperative learning is not always be the first alternative technique to gain an effective reading activity in the classroom. reading is an activity which is done to gain information or verify existing knowledge in order to open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 26 enhance knowledge of the language being read. cooperative learning accommodates various teaching techniques to create a virtuous teaching and learning atmosphere. numbered head together (nht) technique is one of the cooperative learning techniques in which the students sit in groups and solve some problems given. in implementing this activity, the classroom teacher is about to divide the students into several groups then give a number for each member of the group. some questions or problems are delivered to the students based on the reading texts that have been given beforehand. nht technique is considered appropriate to be implemented for junior high school students since the technique presents a fun and enjoyable learning. besides, nht technique is possible to build students’ interest in reading for it provokes the students to be active and activate their critical thinking. this technique trains the students to be a cooperative person, rather than an individual person. several researchers have implemented numbered head together technique on students’ reading skill and gained positive result on it. the examples are research done by indah (2010) and japar (2008). indah (2010) found that nht technique was effective to improve students’ reading achievement especially their understanding on narrative texts. at the same way, japar (2008) found that numbered head together (nht) technique was successful in improving students’ reading comprehension. besides, the finding also showed that nht technique was effective in enhancing the students’ participation, especially in raising their hands competitively to answer the questions during the answer-checking session. this research was conducted to see whether numbered head together (nht) technique would give positive effect to students’ reading ability for the second grade students of one of junior high schools in bengkulu indonesia. the guided research question was: “is there any positive effect of numbered head together (nht) technique toward students’ reading ability at the second grade students of one of junior high schools in bengkulu indonesia?”. literature review according to pang (2003) reading is a complex activity in understanding written text that involves both perception and thought. pang (2003) further said that in reading activity there were two related processes, they are word recognition and comprehension. word recognition refers to the process of realizing how a text or written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences, and connected texts. it indicates that reading plays a crucial part in education. it cannot be separated with the educational goal. through reading, the readers will get more information and broaden their knowledge. for children and adults, the ability to read will open up new world and opportunities. it enables the reader to gain new knowledge and learn many things on it. reading is not only about reading to gain information or to broaden knowledge, but reading can also be used for getting self-pleasure and enjoyableness. for many learners, beginning to read the foreign language involves learning the entire new set of written symbols. it is preferable to begin reading only after the learners have some basic knowledge of the spoken language. byrnes (1989) stated, “traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language is to have access to the literature written in that language”. students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. besides, reading is also an understanding. according to ur (1996) when someone reads, but they do not understand about what they have read, means they are not reading in this sense. in reading, the readers should use their background knowledge; means the reader bring their knowledge, emotion, experience, and culture to what they read. ur (1996) continued that when learners begin to read a text, or where there is a little or no helpful context, we rely on decoding letters to understand words; but as soon as there is a meaningful context we tend to bring our own interpretation to the words. in english language teaching, there are some methods that can be effectively used to improve students’ understanding and motivation in reading. reading yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 27 activity can be conducted cooperatively in a group instead of individually. kagan (1994) mentioned that cooperative learning was a teaching arrangement that refers to small, heterogeneous groups of students working together to achieve a common goal. students work together to learn and are responsible for their teammates' learning as well as their own. they discuss together and share about a problem they found to get one solution. in addition, kagan (1994) also mentioned 4 basic elements of cooperative learning as follows: (1) positive interdependence which occurs when individuals or teams are positively correlated, (2) individual accountability which occurs when all students in a group are held accountably for doing a share of the work and for mastery of the material to be learned, (3) equal participation which occurs when each member of the group is afforded equal shares of responsibility and input, (4) simultaneous interaction which occurs when class time is designed to allow many student interactions during the period. implementing cooperative learning in the classroom is usually enjoyable and fun. cooperative learning consists of many interesting activities. one of them is numbered head together (nht) technique. olsen and kagan (as cited in japar, 2008) said that nht technique can be utilized repeatedly with a variety of curriculum materials and can be applied to almost all subjects’ areas, to every grade level, and to any places in a lesson. it means nht is not only applicable in reading activity, but it also can be applied in other activities like in speaking or writing. this technique also ensures that each member knows the answer to problems or questions asked by the teacher. because no one knows which number will be called, all of the team members must be prepared. the students should be responsible with the questions addressed to them. they should have reason on their answer. the other students have to respond their friend’s answer, whether they agree or not. if they do not agree, they should explain the reason. actually, this technique teaches the students to think critically and has several steps as the following: first, teacher will divide the students into groups of four and give each student a number from one to four. second, teacher will come up with a question or a problem to the class. third, teacher have students gather to think about the question and to make sure everyone in their group understands and can give an answer. fourth, teacher asks the question and call out a number randomly. and the last, the student with that called number is about to rise hands, and when called on, the student answers for his or her team. methodology in order to know whether there was a positive effect using nht technique towards students’ reading ability, this research was relied on quantitative method using a quasi experimental approach. two classes are chosen as the samples. one class acted as an experimental group and the other class was the control group. experimental group was the group that had been taught by using nht technique in teaching reading. on the other hand, the control group was taught without using nht technique. the successfulness of the treatment was determined by using pre-test and post-test, to see the students’ improvement. the population employed in this research was 264 students; 134 male students and 130 female students. they were the eighth grade students of one junior high school in bengkulu. from the population, the samples were chosen by using simple cluster sampling method in which the qualification of the students is equal. the students have been taught by the same teacher and they learned from the same text book. the teacher utilized recount text as the reading genre. in using the technique, students are placed in groups, and one group consists of four to five students. each member of the group is given a number (from one to the maximum number in each group). the given number is intended to help students concentrate on doing their task since they will be called upon by the teacher to give the answer based on the number they have. next, students were given questions based on the text that the they had read. the teacher will process a question and students “put their heads together” to find the answer of the questions. teacher will call a number randomly to yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 28 answer the question. this research administered pre-test and post-test as the instruments of data collection. the pre-test and post-test were designed in multiple choice items. the students were asked to answer the questions by choosing the appropriate answer on their answer sheets. the items were different for both pre and post-test in order to get a stronger result. the items were created according to the standard competence and indicator of the syllabus. both of the tests were designed in the same difficulty level. the items had been tried out first to the students who did not belong to either control or experimental class but they had similar qualification and academic backgrounds with the sample of this research. it was done to get the information of the validity and the reliability of the items. the tryout of the tests was about 60 items; 30 items for pre-test, 30 items for post-test. the items which were valid and reliable were used to get data in preand the post-test. the formula used to find out the validity of the tests was facility value by heaton (1998) meanwhile the formula to measure the reliability of the tests was kuder richardson 21 (kr21) by gay (1990). before coming to the class to start the teaching reading process, the researcher carried out pre-test for the students to measure the students’ reading comprehension before doing the treatment. the pre-test was done to both experimental and control group. after knowing the pre-test score, the researcher applied nht technique to experimental class meanwhile the control class was taught conventionally without using nht technique. the research process applied on experimental group explained by the following steps. first, a pre-test was carried out to the students, in order to measure their ability in reading. second, the treatment (nht technique) was conducted to this group with the following procedures: (1) students were divided into some groups; one group consisted of 5-6 students. (2) each member of the group was given number from 1 until the total amount of the group. (3) students read the text individually. (4) the teacher addressed some questions based on the text. (5) the teacher called students’ number randomly to answer the questions. (6) the teacher together with students discussed the answer. third, post-test was administered to the students after five meetings of the treatment. fourth, teacher evaluated the students’ work. on the other hand, the following procedures are conducted to the control class: first, a pre-test was carried out to the students. second, there was no special treatment carried out for this group. the teaching reading activity was done as follows: (1) the teacher handed out a text to the students. (2) the teacher asked the students whether there were any unfamiliar vocabulary found in the reading text. (4) students were given some time to answer the question given based on the text. third, after five meetings, the researcher administrated post-test to the students. fourth, the teacher valuated the students’ work. finally, all data from experiment and control class were analyzed by using t-test technique by sirkin (1999). it was done to know whether the nht technique affected the students’ reading ability or not. finding and discussion since the main instruments of this study were pre-test and post-test, the instrument should be tried out first to get the validity and reliability of the test. the try out instrument was conducted in another class which has the same qualification and academic background with the sample of this research. after the try out, the items were analyzed by using the criteria of facility value (f. v) and discrimination index (d. i). the accepted items were those with fv 0.3 – 0.7 and di ≥ 0.3. the reading items were focused on recount text which consists of 30 multiple-choice items. in pre-test, the total amounts of the valid items were about 20 items. meanwhile, the total amounts of the valid items in post-test were 22 items. the valid items were then used in the pre-test and post-test for both experimental and control class. on the other hand, in order to know the consistency of the instrument, it is important to know the reliability of the instrument itself. in this case, the researcher used yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 29 different items for both pre-test and post test. to keep the instrument reliable, the researcher made test qualifications to both tests, where both of the tests have the same difficulties. to measure the reliability, the researcher employed kr 21 formula by gay (1990). the result of the analysis showed that the reliability index for pre-test and post-test is equal, they are 8.2. thus, the instrument was acceptable to be used in pre-test and post-test. after getting the valid and reliable items of the test, the pre-test was conducted to both control and experimental class. it was administrated before the treatment. it was done to prove that the control and experimental class were in the same qualification. the result of the pre-test was calculated by a special formula to indicate the t-count of the test. the t-count was compared with the t-table. in the analysis of pre-test result, it was showed that the t-count was 1.42. it means that the t-count was smaller than the t-table (1.42<2.00). as a result, h0 was accepted and h1 was rejected. it means there was no significant difference in pre-test score average between experimental and the control class. in the other words, those samples were accepted for the experiment. after doing the treatment for five meetings to the experimental class, the post-test was given at the end of the treatment period in order to know the effect of the method. to find out the t-count of the post-test score, the t-test formula was used. the t-count was compared to the t-table (2.00). in the analysis of pre-test result, the sdiff was 1.98 and the t-count was 9.73. it means the t-count was bigger than the t-table (9.73>2.00). as a result, h1 was accepted and h0 was rejected. it means there was significant difference in post-test score average between experimental and the control class. in the other words, there was significant difference of using numbered head technique toward students’ reading ability. after implementing the treatment, the result showed that there was a high improvement to the experimental class from its pre-test and post-test score. the improvement can be seen in the chart below: chart 1: comparison of pre-test and post-test result based on the result of the research, it can be concluded that numbered head together technique is one of effective techniques that can be taught to enhance students’ reading ability for junior high school students. by learning and discussing in group, the students were able to solve the problems together and it also helped the students to make the learning process more communicative. besides, it also fulfilled them with social learning theories which taught them how to build social interaction with others. therefore, numbered head together technique can be conducted as one alternative strategy in teaching and learning process. that is to 69.44 66.38 87.25 67.97 0 20 40 60 80 100 experimental class control class mean score of pre-test mean score of post test yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 30 warm up the activity in the classroom, it also build students’ participation to be more active. this technique is fun to be implemented in the classroom. through this technique, students have to work together to ensure there is one product to their meaning. they must check that everyone can understand and answer the question. waugh (2003) stated that after direct instruction of the material, the group supports each member and provides opportunities for practice, rehearsal, and discussion of content material. in short, numbered head together technique instructs students how to have a strong group and work collaboratively to build a good team work. those explanations proved that numbered head together is an effective technique to build students interest and motivation in reading ability. in applying this technique in one of junior high school in bengkulu, the researcher found that the students were very active in giving their contribution. they read the text and answered the question carefully. they eagerly competed so they did not loose with the other teams. they also activated their critical thinking in giving their opinions and arguing their reasons. compared to the control class, the experimental class seemed to be more talkative and had a big enthusiasm in doing their tasks, answering the questions, and arguing their opinion. this kind of atmosphere appeared because they have the same chance to talk and share their thought. the technique did not obligate the students to answer or talk correctly, so they were free to share their ideas. obviously, this technique could motivate them and build their confidence and responsibility. this situation created a more dynamic atmosphere in the classroom. there are several advantages found by the researcher in conducting this technique. firstly, numbered head together technique helped the students to not only focus on teacher’s teaching but also learn together with their friends. through this technique, students can learn more from their friends, and share ideas one to each other. waugh (2003) mentioned that through numbered head together technique, the students who have a lower understanding can learn from those who have a better understanding. it means, the students are supposed to be more active than the teacher. they found the problem by themselves; they also should solve it by themselves. the role of the teacher here is as the instructor and as the manager who have to control and manage the classroom. secondly, the researcher found that the students became more active in arguing their opinion. kagan (1994) mentioned that indirectly, this technique trains students to share some information actively and it also makes the learning process more productive. thirdly, the researcher found that through nht technique students are capable to learn how to build interaction to others, being a cooperative person, and not only focus on themselves. ray (2008) argued that cooperative learning instructs students to develop their social interaction. it motivates them to make a relation to others in sharing, asking, or arguing their thought. fourthly, the researcher found that classroom atmosphere turned to be more alive and dynamic. actually, this technique was integrated with speaking activity, where the students will keep speaking to their friends. olsen and kagan (1994) said that numbered head together technique can be utilized repeatedly with a variety of curriculum materials and can be applied to almost all subjects’ area. the last but not least, nht technique also gave students motivation, interest, pleasure, and enjoyableness. it also built up students’ confidence, and understanding. in addition, in conducting this technique, the researcher found that the students were so enthusiast in raising their hand when the teacher gave a chance for them to answer or to argue their opinion. students had a big desire for the teacher to pick them. it happened because they want to show to the other teams that they were able to answer the questions and they would not be loose against the other team. in the experimental class of this study especially, the researcher found that the technique helped the students to get back their motivation after their tired activity. it gave pleasure and relaxing feeling for them. besides, it was also effective to improve their reading ability. the proof of the improvement can be seen from yarni valentina gultom international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 31 the post-test score average of experimental and control class. the score average of the experimental group was 87,25 meanwhile the control group was 67,97. the result of t-count analysis of the post-test score was about 9,73. it means t-count is bigger than t-table (9,73>2,00). in other words, there is a significant difference of using numbered head together technique toward student’s reading ability. conclusion the purpose of this quantitative study with a quasi-experimental approach was to examine the significant increase and difference of students’ achievement in reading after being taught through the numbered head together (nht) technique with recount texts for the second grade students at one junior high school in bengkulu, indonesia. after doing the research, the researcher can conclude that nht gave a positive effect to the students’ reading ability to the second grade of one junior high school in bengkulu, indonesia. the data analysis of post-test showed that the students who were taught by using numbered head together technique got a higher score than the students who were not taught by using this technique. the result also indicates that h1 was accepted and h0 was rejected. in the other words, the treatment of this research was successful. references byrnes, h. (1998). reading in the beginning and intermediate college foreign language class.retrieved from: http://www.springerlink.com/ gay, l. r. (1990). educational research: competencies for analysis and application, 3rd ed. florida: macmillan publishing heaton, j. b. (1998). writing english language tests, 2nd edition. new york: longman. indah, n. s. (2010). the effect of using cooperative learning nht (numbered head together) type on the students' reading achievement (an experimental study of second grade students of smp n 6 tegal in academic year 2010/2011).undergraduate.paper.universitaspan casakti, tegal. japar, a. (2008). improving the students’ reading comprehension through numbered heads together technique.undergraduate.paper.universitasneg eri malang. kagan, s. (1994).cooperative learning. california: kagan publishing. key, j, p. (1997). module 13: experimental research and design. retrieved from: http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic /aged5980a/5980/index.htm o’keefe, m., f. (2010).two heads are better than one: a practical analysis. retrieved on 28 march 2012. from: http://www.expertbusinessadvice.com/ pang, s. e., muaka, a., bernhardt, e. b., &kamil, m. l. (2003).teaching reading. retrieved from: http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/dept/smec/iae sirkin, r. m. (1999). statistics for the social sciences (3rd edition). new delhi: sage pubication. syamsudding, h. (2012). numbered head together as method in teaching english. retrieved on 5 march 2012. from: http://heyrasyamsuddin.blogspot.com/2012/01/ numbered head together technique.html ur, p. (1996). english language teaching theory and practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. waugh, d., harrison, j.,&eric, t. (2003).numbered heads together.university of hull. retrieved from: http://www.eazhull.org.uk/nlc/news.htm paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5754 303 ijolte computer-based software for grammar test: what students think about it? widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi english department, universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: solihat.widyani@gmail.com how to cite this paper: solihat, w., ngadiso, n., & supriyadi, s. (2018). computer-based software for grammar test: what the students think about it?. international journal of language teachi abstract a test is conducted to know the students’ competencies toward the material that they have been learned. making the test is not easy because the lecturers have to consider the material or skill which will be tested, in this case is grammar. the lecturers also must use the test media which is appropriate and interesting. nowadays, the utilizing of technology in education context has increased, especially in conducting the test. the aim of this research is to show the students’ perception toward computer-based software for grammar test. this research used mixed method with descriptive analysis design. it was used individual interview technique and distributed questionnaire. for the interview, it was used qualitative data. for the questionnaire, it was used quantitative data. thus, the qualitative and quantitative data were supported each other. the participants were from 40 english department students in one of university in serang. the data were collected from questionnaire and interview with some students. the result shows that almost all students give positive response and perception toward computer-based software for grammar test. the students become more interesting to do the grammar test with the computer-based software and they are facilitated in conducting the test because they get benefits from it. subject areas language teaching keywords computer-based software, grammar test, perception 1. introduction grammar is one of the important aspects which have to be learned by the students while learning english in indonesia. every student in each level learns grammar in order to master english structure. lock (1995) stated that grammar is a set of rules which include the grammatical structures of language and they are two aspects which ng and education, 2(3), 303-314. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5754 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5754 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5754 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 304 ijolte have to be considered; the internal structure of the word and the arrangement of words. thus, grammar is the core of english because it is the structures of language. the indicators of grammar which must be considered when reading, writing, speaking, and listening are the meaning, the rule, the form, and the pattern. those indicators should be delivered well by the teachers because it will make the students master english well. learning grammar is a must when students are expected to acquire a language (saraswati, 2015). grammar becomes one of the crucial subjects which must be mastered in learning english because grammar is a core of english and its structure. grammar is a dominant subject in school and university in english department because there are four semesters of learning grammar. it shows that grammar is important to be learned by the students but they always assume it as one of the difficult subjects because of the differences between indonesian and english grammar. in reality, teaching english grammar is basically just the same as any other subjects. the problems might come from the lack of motivation of the students and teaching process delivered by the lecturer while teaching grammar. the other cause of this problem might come from the absence of media to fulfill the teaching and learning needs of the lecturer and the learners especially in grammar subject. grammar test is important to be conducted in order to know the students’ achievement in grammar ability. testing of grammar is one of the major components of language testing. the ability in mastering the language can be seen in how the students master the grammar ability because it is the basic knowledge of language. madsen (1983) said that grammar test is designed to measure students’ proficiency. grammar is related to syntax and it involves the relationship of words in a sentence, such as word order, the using of connectives, negative and question forms. madsen also stated that there are two basic ways in measuring grammar ability; individual testing and group testing. individual testing is the best way to know every student’s achievement in grammar ability individually. besides, group testing is the best way to make the students more unified and do the test collaboratively. moreover, there are some basic types of tests which are usually used by the teacher in testing grammar to measure the students’ achievement in grammar ability. heaton (1988) stated that there are some types of tests which are mostly used to test the students’ grammar achievement. the types of tests are multiple choice, error correction, completion items, transformation items, items involving the changing of words, ‘broken sentence item’, pairing and matching items, and combination and addition items. the teacher usually uses multiple choice tests because it is easier to be corrected and score. moreover the students also like to do the test in multiple choice types. nowadays, schools are integrating all sorts of new technologies in their classes, such as computers, tablets, interactive whiteboards or even mobile phones (pardo, 2014). utilizing technologies in education area has increased because of the widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 305 ijolte globalization process. most of universities in indonesia have supplied lcd projector in every class and language laboratory to support the learning process. both students and teacher have different needs in utilizing the technology in the classroom. the students can enhance their ability in using technology and the lecturer can be assisted with technology in teaching and learning process. moreover, facilitating technology in the classroom makes the learning process easier. the learners who receive computer-based lessons outperform those who use paper-based materials (pardo, 2014). luecht and sireci (2011) stated that computer-based test has been significantly grown over the past four decades as an alternative way to paper and pencil test. however, the implementation of cbt is neither easy nor inexpensive. computer-based testing (cbt) has emerged as one of most pursued by states in the recent “innovative” way of assessments. cbt can be very useful because it is having speedier and cheaper test delivery for state and district-wide assessments. it is also seen by some as an avenue toward greater accessibility for students with disabilities. thurlow et al. (2010) explore the context of cbt, current state computer-based tests, and considerations for students with disabilities, in part as follow-up to a similar exploration that occurred in the early 2000s when just a few states were beginning to develop and implement cbt for their state assessments. nine considerations for states and districts are presented: (1) consider the various beliefs and assumptions of stakeholders toward cbt; (2) consider the whole system; (3) consider the students’ need; (4) consider for bringing the expert of computer; (5) consider for making the policies in utilizing cbt; (6) consider the tracking of using cbt accessibility features; (7) consider the cbt has been feasible to be used; (8) consider the students who have disabilities; (9) consider for training the students and teachers about cbt. cbt also gives many advantages for teachers and students. the teachers can take up less effort and time, can save all data in the computer, can monitor the students while doing the test, and can minimize human errors in scoring and grading. the students can get score and feedback directly, can do the test wherever if the test is internet-based, and can minimize their bad habit on cheating. pardo (2014) reported his study about analyzing the education of students’ acquisition in the secondary level of english grammar by using two different methods (computer-based instruction and paper-based instruction). this study aimed to explore and compare the effectiveness of these two methods and students’ opinions on using paper-based materials and online materials. the result of questionnaires showed that using online materials makes the students more motivated than paperbased materials. the results also opened new paths of research about the using of icts for academic purposes. the researchers investigate the use of computer-assisted english grammar test which is similar to those previous study. the researchers found that the use of media is effective in teaching and learning process and can improve students’ grammar achievement. the previous study is about implementing computer and internet based widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 306 ijolte in language learning in the school but the researchers of this research will try to find in the university level. the researchers believe that it will be more effective to use computer-assisted english grammar test software as a media in grammar test process because the students in the university level understand computer and technology. the grammar test software is made by the researchers and it is a new media for grammar test which can be implemented in the classroom. besides, the researchers try to find and show the students’ perception toward computer-based software for grammar test. 2. method this research used mixed method with descriptive analysis design. it was used individual interview technique and distributed questionnaire. for the interview, it was used qualitative data. for the questionnaire, it was used quantitative data. thus, the qualitative and quantitative data were supported each other. the formula for quantitative is as follows: p = 𝑋𝑖/𝑋 x 100% explanation: p = assessment percentage xi = score obtained x = maximum score the researchers used purposive sampling for conducting the research. participants of this research are 40 english department students of sultan ageng tirtayasa university. this research was conducted in the language laboratory of sultan ageng tirtayasa university. the questionnaire was distributed to all participants and the interview was conducted to the six english department students who have different ability (high, medium, and low). the interview was done to gain more information about students’ perception toward computer-based software for grammar test. in the beginning, the researchers introduced how to use cbt to the students and gave the instructions. then, the students were asked to do the grammar test on the computer software. after finished the test, the students were distributed the questionnaire to be filled to know their responses toward computer-based software for grammar test. at last, the researchers interviewed some students and distributed questionnaire to gain their perceptions toward the grammar test which used computer software. the researchers analyzed the data from questionnaire and interview, and then she concluded it. 3. findings and discussion widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 307 ijolte 3.1. findings the findings of this research show the students’ perception toward computerbased software for grammar test. the grammar test was made by the lecturer and the sources adopt from toefl book. the grammar test was also made based on the lesson plan of a semester (rps) from the lecturer. the grammar test was conducted to achieve the students’ learning objectives. the material s of the grammar test can be described below on the table: table 3.1.1 description of the lesson plan for a semester materials learning objectives noun phrase structure students can make sentences using noun phrase in simple present form. verb phrase structure students can make sentences using verb phrase structure. adjective phrase structure students can make sentences using adjective phrase structure. past continuous tense students can make past continuous sentences. adverb phrase structure students can make sentences using adverb phrase structure. prepositional phrase structure students can make sentences using prepositional phrase structure. past future tense students can make past future tense sentences. present perfect continuous tense students can make present perfect continuous sentences. passive voice students can make passive voice sentences. present perfect tense students can make present perfect sentences. declarative students can make sentence types sentences. exclamative or exclamation students can make sentences using exclamative. interrogative for questions students can make sentences using interrogative. from the description of the lesson plan for a semester, the students must able to make sentences using noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and prepositional phrases . the students must comprehend past continuous tense, past future tense, present perfect continuous tense, present perfect tense, and also passive voice. the students also must able to make declarative, exclamative, interrogative sentences. the examples of questions of each material are presented below: the students give positive response toward computer -based software for grammar test. the students feel more interesting to do the grammar test with computer-based software. cbt can help them in conducting the grammar test. the students can also operate the computer-based software for grammar test easily. it can be seen from the results of the questionnaire. table 3.1.2 students’ response toward computer-based software for grammar test widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 308 ijolte statement f % instruction of the test is clear. 39 97 quality of the questions is good. 39 97 questions of the test are suitable with the materials which have been learned. 40 100 questions of the test are suitable with learning objectives. 40 100 kind of font is good and can be read. 39 97 size of font is good and can be read. 39 97 software coloring background is good. 39 97 icon menu design is interesting. 40 100 account security is good. 40 100 account setting can be operated easily. 40 100 there is time countdown automatically when beginning the test. 40 100 there is music player when doing the test. 40 100 the software can save the test result automatically. 40 100 the software can show the feedback or note from the lecturer. 40 100 the software is useful for accessing the saving test result. 40 100 the software is useful for facilitating the students in conducting test. 40 100 the software is useful for showing the test score directly. 40 100 the software is useful for reviewing the test result, so the students can identify their weaknesses and difficulties in grammar. 40 100 the software is useful for printing the test result. 40 100 from the result of the questionnaire, it can be seen that all items regarding the computer-based software for grammar test got 97% 100%. it can be concluded that mostly students agree with the statements. there is only one student who stated “no” toward the statements in the questionnaire. a student who stated “no” toward the statements in the questionnaire did not fill the the statements: (1) the instruction of the test is clear. it may happen because he or she did not understand well about the instruction of the test. (2) quality of the questions is good. it may happen because he or she feels that the quality of the questions is not good enough. (3) kind of font is good and can be read. it may happen because he or she cannot read it well and he or she feels that the kind of font is not interesting. (4) size of font is good and can be read. it may happen because he or she feels that the size of font is small so he or she cannot read it well. (5) software coloring background is good. it may happen because he or she feels that the color of software background is not good so he or she is not comfortable to see the screen. from this result furthermore, it can be said that computer -based software for grammar test is interesting and very useful for the students. the students also can know their score and test result directly after they finished the test. they can listen to the music during the test, so they can feel more enjoyable. they can manage their time in doing the test because there is time countdown on th e software. they widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 309 ijolte can see their saving test result to know their grammar ability and get the feedback or note from the lecturer. so, if they have weakness in grammar ability, they can overcome it sooner. the questions of the test are also suitable with the students who have learned all materials on the test, so the students can achieve their learning objectives. moreover, the result of the questionnaire itself should be supported by the result of the interview to make the data stronger and easier to conclude the students’ response toward the computer-based software for grammar test. the detail of interview with six students who have different grammar ability (high, medium, and low) can be seen as follow: researcher : what do you think about the computer-based software for grammar test? student a : it is great and impressive miss. student b : the design is interesting and good-looking student c : i can see my score and test results directly. i become more understand where my weakness in grammar by reviewing and identifying my test result. student d : there is also right key answer directly if i answer the wrong question. student e : it is more interesting with the audio player in the software, so we can listen to the music while doing the test. it makes me more enjoyable during the test. student f : i can also get feedback or note from my lecturer for better improvement in grammar. the important thing is the computer-based software for grammar test is very interesting and very useful for us. researcher : thank you all for your positive response. then, are there any difficulties or weaknesses while doing the grammar test using the computer -based software? all students : no miss. student a : we can operate it easily and it facilitates us in doing grammar test. student d : we can get many advantages while doing grammar test which is used computer-based software, like the statements in the questionnaire. researcher : how about the questions of the test? student e : the questions are suitable for us because we have learned all materials regarding the questions. student f : it is good questions of the test because it tested us to think harder and read it carefully. researcher : ok good. is there any comment or suggestion? student c : no miss. it is great, interesting, and make us attracted to do the grammar test because it is using computer in this technological era. widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 310 ijolte from the interview, it can be seen that the students also give positive response toward computer-based software for grammar test. the students said the s imilar answer with the questionnaire. thus, it can be concluded from the questionnaire and interview data that almost all students give positive response toward computer-based grammar test software. the pictures below are the screenshot of grammar test com puter-based software: picture 3.1.1 main menu in the main menu, there are some menu which can be chosen by the students. the join available english test menu is used for joining the test that will be done by the students. the view result menu is used for seeing all students’ test result that have been done and they can also review it to know their grammar ability. the login option menu is used for change the old password becomes new password. the user profile option is used for change the students’ identity if there is something wrong. picture 3.1.2 students’ test sheet widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 311 ijolte in the students’ test sheet, there are students’ identity which involve student’s number, name, class, and program study. the questions and answer choice are placed in the middle. to choose the numbers of questions, there is at right side. there is also time countdown at the top right side. besides, the students can increase and reduce the font size. picture 3.1.3 students’ correct answer there will be checklist sign if the students choose the correct answer. picture 3.1.4 students’ wrong answer there will be cross sign if the students choose the wrong answer and there will be the right answer of the question that should be chosen by the students. widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 312 ijolte picture 3.1.5 students’ test result the score and test result will be showed directly after the test has finished. the students can see where is their weakness or mistake in grammar ability. the score in the picture is only the example and it is not the real students’ result. from the findings, it can be seen that almost all students respond positive toward computer-based for grammar test. grammar is important for students in comprehending english. learning grammar is a must when students are expected to acquire a language (saraswati, 2015). the students must know their achievement in grammar ability by doing the test. madsen (1983) said that grammar test is designed to measure students’ proficiency. the questions of the test must suitable with the materials which have been learned the students before and represent the learning objectives. the questions of the test and the instructions also must have good quality. lock (1995) stated that grammar is a set of rules which include the grammatical structures of language and they are two aspects which have to be considered; the internal structure of the word and the arrangement of words. heaton (1988) stated that there are some types of tests which are mostly used to test the students’ grammar achievement. the types of tests are multiple choice, error correction, completion items, transformation items, items involving the changing of words, ‘broken sentence item’, pairing and matching items, and combination and addition items. in this research, the type of the test is multiple choice. it is easy to measure the score of the test if the type of the test is multiple choice. this type of the test is easier to be input to the computer software than the other types of test. nowadays, schools are integrating all sorts of new technologies in their classes, such as computers, tablets, interactive whiteboards or even mobile phones (pardo, 2014). using the computer-based software for grammar test is the best way to be implemented in the classroom because the students and lecturer can connect each widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 313 ijolte other and they are not left behind in this technological era. moreover it can facilitate students in conducting the grammaar test. the students feel more interesting to do the grammar test with computer-based software because the software coloring background is good, the icon menu design is interesting, and size and kind of font can be read. the students’ account security is also good, so they can save their test result safely. moreover the software is easily to be operated. besides, the students get many benefits while doing the grammar test with computer-based software. they can know their test result and score directly, they can save their test result on the software, they can get feedbcak or note from the lecturer directly, they can print out their test result if they need it, and they can review the test result so the students can identify their weaknesses and difficulties in grammar. the learners who receive computer-based lessons outperform those who use paper-based materials (pardo, 2014). conclusion the conclusion which can be described of this research is the students’ perception toward the computer-based software for grammar test. almost all students give positive response toward the computer-based software for grammar test. the students feel more interesting to do the grammar test because it is using the computerbased software. it brings a new experience for students during the grammar test process because it may motivate the students to do the test and make them enthusiastic in following the test. the students also get some benefits by using the grammar test software. first, the students can do more practice about grammar because there are three questions in each number. second, the students can know their grammar ability by identifying their test results, so they can overcome their weaknesses later. third, the students can organize their time while doing the test because there is time countdown in the software. fourth, the students can turn on or off music player in the software, so they can feel enjoy during the test. fifth, the students can know their score directly. sixth, the students can know the feedback from the lecturer after the test. seventh, the students can save their test result and open it again if they need it. eighth, the students can print out their test results. thus, utilizing computer-based software for grammar test can get positive responses and perceptions from the students. references [1] heaton, j. b. (1988). writing english language test. new york: longman group. [2] lock, graham. (1995). functional english grammar: an introduction for second language teachers (cambridge language education). cambridge language education: cambridge university press. [3] luecht, r. m., & sireci, s. g. (2011). a review of models for computer-based testing. ca: college board. [4] madsen, h. s. (1983). techniques in testing. new york: oxford university press. widyani solihat, ngadiso, slamet supriyadi 314 ijolte [5] pardo, a. m. (2014). computer-based vs. textbook-based grammar instruction: effectiveness and students’ perceptions. thesis. máster universitario en formación del profesorado de educación secundaria (upna). [6] saraswati, dyah. (2015). the use of board game to improve students’ grammar mastery. thesis. iain salatiga. [7] thurlow, m., lazarus, s. s., albus, d., & hodgson, j. (2010). computer-based testing: practices and considerations (synthesis report 78). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota, national center on educational outcomes. contact ika meilinda ummul ma'rufa imeilinda90@gmail.com ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract extensive studies have been geared to exploring the implementation of blended learning in the education domain. however, there is a paucity of research that examines such implementation from teachers’ perspectives. to fill this gap, the present study investigates the lived experiences of efl teachers in enacting blended learning during the covid-19 pandemic. to capture the teachers’ stories, a narrative inquiry was employed. data were garnered through the narrative frame, narrative box, and interview guide. findings suggest that the teachers applied different online platforms to teach english in blended learning, then the school centralized to use google classroom as the main platform in the online class. furthermore, the lesson, scheduling, internet connection, and students’ self-regulated learning awareness complicated the implementation of blended learning during the covid19 pandemic. the paper suggests policymakers enact online pedagogy based on the actual teacher training and maximise schooling facilities as a learning support. article history received 15 april 2021 accepted 17 june 2021 published 04 july 2021 keywords: blended learning, covid19 pandemic, narrative inquiry, teacher professional development 1. introduction the world health organization (who) declared coronavirus disease (covid-19) as a pandemic that has presented a temporary threat to humanity worldwide. the general director of who in march 2020 announced covid-19 as a pandemic after assessing the rapid spread and seriousness of the deadly virus across the globe with the additional announcement of social distancing as a means for restraining the spread of the virus (who, 2020). in indonesia, the number of covid-19 cases has grown higher time by time. therefore, the indonesian government issued some regulations to prevent its spread, including in the education sector. the indonesian ministry of education and culture has published circular letter no. 15, 2020, regarding the guideline for teaching and learning from home during the pandemic. as a result, all educational institutions in indonesia are required to conduct distance learning, by which it changes traditional teaching system from face to face to be online learning and relies on the use of technology. consequently, online learning is completely dependent on technological devices and internet connections (adedoyin & soykan, 2020). empirically speaking, some challenges in implementing online learning in developing countries such as indonesia are the lack of preparation in terms of school readiness, teacher capability in information and communication technology (ict), the availability of internet access, and students’ selfregulated ability toward the online learning. the dependency of online learning on technological equipment and certain platforms is also another problem for education aspect. the application of online learning from home has presented various problems, including school infrastructure provision (bakalar, 2018). meanwhile, the teachers have restricted resources to take part in online learning, and many students do not have any access to internet connections and the necessary electronic devices (lie, 2020). international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i1.13772 mailto:imeilinda90@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i1.13772 2 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa recently, new normal era has been implemented in indonesia, and the ministry of education and culture allowed schools for green zones areas to conduct teaching and learning process with certain requirements such as to obey guidelines of the health protocol and to keep the social distancing (sipres, 2020). anchored by such situation, the appropriate method that is possible to be implemented is blended learning. moreover, the concept of blended learning is suitable with the 21st-century era, because it relates to technology development. garrison and kanuka (2004) define blended learning as “the thoughtful integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences” (p. 96). although the introduction of blended learning in most developing countries faced many challenges, this learning approach is widely considered the most effective one (kintu et al., 2017). such a claim is supported by dziuban et al. (2018), who contends that blended learning provides a successful and effective learning environment. thus, the combination of technological appliances and the availability of interaction both teachers` and students` demand for more effective and efficient teaching and learning processes. the existence of blended learning recently has enticed many researchers to investigate it. many empirical studies have been conducted to examine the quality of blended learning from various aspects. a recent study conducted by barkhuizen and mandieta (2019) examined how the program of blended learning was implemented in a colombian tertiary institution. another study was conducted by sriwichai (2020) which explored students’ readiness for learning english course through blended learning environment and investigate problems and challenges that the students faced in their learning. in addition, wright (2017) investigated malaysian undergraduate efl perception online compared with face to face. chan (2019) examined pre-service teacher perceptions and the interaction between traditional and constructivist conceptions. in indonesia, setyaningsih (2020) conducted a survey to explore students’ perspectives on implementing blended learning in the context of higher education. although extensive research has been carried out on the issue of blended learning, little exploration has been done in examining english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ professional experiences blended learning during covid -19 pandemic using a narrative inquiry perspective. this present research investigates lived experiences of efl teachers that have taught for more than 20 years. the efl teacher experience using blended learning during the pandemic was explored deeper through narrative inquiry. this methodology interprets experiences in humans as living organisms that tell the story in their lives. the narrative inquiry also allows researchers to give space to make teachers’ personal experiences a professional knowledge and intellectual knowledge for others (connelly & clandinin, 2006). based on the background of this study, a research question was designed: to what extent do the efl teachers enact their professional experiences during the implementation of blended learning? 2. literature review teacher professional development in indonesia, teachers' professionalism is based on the national policy, by which teachers’ ability to conduct their roles, function, and their behavior at school and society context is regulated by the government. as professional educators, the law of teachers and lectures no.14 year 2005 gives a mandate to the teachers by their primary task such as to educate, teach, guide, direct, train, access, and evaluate students from early childhood education, formal education, primary education, to secondary education. meanwhile, indonesian teachers often faced dilemma in carrying out their duties. on the one hand, the teachers have to serve students with appropriate support to learn in the formal education settings. they have to try hard themselves both in capacity as individuals and professionals (kiilo & kutsar, 2012). teacher professional experience is basically affected by functions, status, quality and teachers’ work (richards & schmidt, 2010). blended learning in education domain blended learning means integrating the web and face-to-face method to make the effectiveness experience both for teacher and the learner, so blended learning becomes a constructivist approathat features the potential to transfer better education in line with the development of technology. according to garrison and vaughan (2008), blended learning integrates thoughtfully selected and complementary face-to-face and online approaches and technologies. its implementation has been described to be more effective than the classical face-to-face or purely online learning international journal of language teaching and education 3 instruction (arifani, khaja, suryanti, & wardhono, 2019; kurucova et al., 2018). blended learning leads the students to be able have learning experiences between individuals and their environment in form of interaction and students can be active in classroom discussion. learning outcomes can be improved through blended learning and it is the most effective way to support teaching and learning activities (dziuban et al., 2018). the quality of learning management system content for learners can predict good performance in e-and blended learning environments and can lead to learner satisfaction. on the whole, poor quality technology yields no satisfaction by users and therefore the quality of technology significantly affects satisfaction (piccoli, ahmad, & ives, 2001). continued navigation through a learning management system increases use and is an indicator of success in blended learning (delone & mclean, 2003). the efficient use of learning management system and its tools improves learning outcomes in e-learning and blended learning environments. the utilization of technology in efl teaching and learning leads to an alteration in the roles of teachers and learners and initiates the innovative online teaching atmosphere and strategies such as e-learning, the flipped approach, and blended learning. current research has indicated that teachers and students learn successfully in online settings (gillian & lew, 2018; kocoglu et al., 2011). conversely, it has also been recognized that single-mode online learning courses cannot promote optimum attainment for successful learning (kocoglu et al. 2011). as a result, several researchers have attempted to combine traditional teaching model face-to-face courses with an online learning system to advocate active and flexible learning (garnham & kaleta, 2002). previous studies: existing gaps in the literature many studies documented that blended learning positively impacts teaching efl, but some studies also include some problems perceived by the teachers. a study conducted by nissen and tea (2012) found that most of the teachers found it difficult in understanding the course design of blended learning. furthermore, the teachers though that face-to-face class as the important one. therefore, they rarely implement blended learning in the classroom. similarly, yang (2012) found that some problems perceived by the teachers in implementing blended learning are the changing role of the teachers and students, small sense of community building, lack of training for blended learning and lack of knowledge about new system or technology. moreover, learners in blended learning system are changed from passive learners to be active ones. they become researchers, practitioners, and collaborators because a dynamic and adoptive process of blended learning makes them interact with other learning subsystems, including instructor, institution, learning support, content, and technology (wang et al., 2015). despite the many existing literatures of blended learning, very little attention has been geared to examining efl teachers’ professional experiences of blended learning implementation. previous studies discussed earlier mainly focused on the actual enactment of such approach. moreover, the use of narrative inquiry as a methodology in investigating the issue is rarely anchored. therefore, the present study was designed to uncover three indonesian efl teachers’ professional experiences of blended learning in schooling sectors to fill this gap. 3. method design the present study investigated lived experienced of efl teachers in blended learning implementation. since the nature of data were in the forms of storied experiences, narrative inquiry was employed. as a research design, narrative research focuses on studying single person and collecting data from an individual’s experiences and stories (creswell, 2012). the design also provides the possibility to understand how the personal and social aspects are intertwined in teachers’ lives and how these experiences are shaped by the larger social and institutional narratives in which they live (clandinin, 2006). in this study, the researchers engaged with the teachers’ lived experiences and understood those experiences within the process of meaning-making. the participating teachers storied their experiences, perceptions, and challenges during blended learning enactment and how these affect their professionalism. 4 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa participant recruitment after sharing, discussing and continuing to intensive personal communication, the researcher concludes that the three teachers who applied blended learning were purposefully or intentionally selected as the participants to understand the blended learning.the study involved three efl teachers in state senior high school 2 pamekasan who were given open-ended questionnaires and interviews to gain their views and practice about implementing blended learning. all of them are categorized as professional teacher like what stated in law of republic indonesia number 14 year 2005 regarding teachers and lectures and has been teaching efl more than 20 years. table 1. participants’ profiles no participant (pseudonym) gender educational background teaching experiences 1 t1 male master degree 32 years 2 t2 female bachelor degree 30 years 3 t3 female bachelor degree 21 years data collection and analysis procedures data in this study were generated through semi-structured interview with the teachers concerning their professional experiences in the blended learning enactment during covid-19 pandemic. to obtain access and data, at the first, the researcher came to school to have an interview related to the teachers’ identity of their professional careers and their previous experiences in teaching english during pandemic. the researcher also explained the purpose of conducting this study and distributed narrative frame and narrative box. the second, the researcher met the teachers for the second time by interviewing the teachers to look for deeper information about the personal teacher experiences. it is related to the design, challenges and the strategies in implementing blended learning. it was done by recording their story. at the last, the researcher asked further information through whatsapps when unclear information from the interview was found. to analyze the data, the researchers conducted multiple reading of the interview transcript in order to achieve global understanding from the participants’ stories. afterward, the researchers identified emerging themes relevant to the framework of the study and narrative inquiry space which includes past, present, and future aspirations. table 2 exemplifies the study’s theme and coding approach in the data analysis. table 2. coding procedure teachers’ experience code meaning t1 teacher 1 t2 teacher 2 t3 teacher 3 tep teaching english in pandemic tepol teaching english in pandemic (online learning) prol problem in online leaning dbl design of blended learning sr students’ response ush unforgettable stories (happy experience) uss unforgettable stories (sad experience) usf unforgettable stories (funny experience) cp current problem bio break it out ho hope international journal of language teaching and education 5 4. findings findings in this study are detailed into seven themes: 1) teaching english during covid-19 pandemic, 2) enacting blended learning in the class, 3) listening to students’ responses in blended learning, 4) salient stories, 5) hindrances in belnded learning enactment, and 6) future aspirations. teaching english duing covid-19 pandemic online learning that was applied during the pandemic gives new stories for teachers in terms of teaching and learning. there are many new experiences in implementing full online learning such as finding material, preparing a suitable media for students, and designing learning activities. it is also challanging for the teachers to create interesting learning activities using technology so that the learning objective can be reached. in term of technology for learning process t1 narrates that: excerpt 1 i am able to know some technology or platform and how to use it, especially in the learning process. before this pandemic occurred, we only used this technology to type some reports, chat, and communicate. but since the covid-19 pandemic, we can better know the several online platforms that can be used for learning processes such as edmodo, google classroom, zoom meeting, and even whatsapps can be used as an interactive learning media. a similar narration from t2 and t3 were explained related to technology used. even though the teachers felt confused about finding suitable platform for the students, the teachers try to various technology or platforms that can be applied in full online learning. excerpt 2 at the beginning, i applied media such as youtube, video presentation and powerpoint. excerpt 3 i start using such kind of online platform since online class. but i don’t really know which one is suitable for my student. therefore, at the beginning i use youtube video to explain the material. moreover, teaching english as a second language for developed country in this pandemic situation are challenging. the implementation of full online learning raise some problems. teachers found it hard in explaining the english skill. another problems also come from the students where they have different motivation to learn. in addition, full online learning in this pandemic cannot run well. excerpt 4 i cannot explain the detail concept because of time allocation. meanwhile. my students have limitation for the avaibility of internet balance. teaching and learning english is conducted through conventional way so far. students have less awarneess of independent learning. similarly, t2 and t3 recognized that the implementation of full online learning was hard to be implemented. excerpt 5 i found that my students present list is incomplete. excerpt 6 at the beginning of its implementation, online learning was not effective because my students do not understand my instruction when i use full english. my students was passive in online class and it was hard for me to control them. under these themes, teachers’ experience represented the situation that teaching english in pandemic situation using full online learning is challenging. it needs their professionalism to teach eventough in pandemic situation. it is clearly seen that the three teachers were pushed to teach english by implementing full online learning. at the beginning of pandemic, it was found that full online learning made the teachers use various online platforms suitable for the students' condition. in other hand, from the narratives, full online learning was seen difficult to be implemented because of some factors. 6 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa enacting blended learning in the class in july 2020, the government implemented the new normal concept, which means that there is a new life order in all aspects of life. in educational aspect, the government has begun to make regulations to allow the learning process to be carried out in schools for green zone. however, educational stakeholder must meet several requirements to be able to carry out learning at school. therefore, learning using blended learning seems appropriate to be applied in this new normal era. in terms of blended learning, all the three teachers t1, t2, and t3 have the same response, this method is not something new for them. teachers have attended training for 21st century teachers related to blended learning, but teachers have not really understood the real design because they rarely and even have never implemented it. excerpt 7 blended learning is combining conventional learning and online learning. it was not a new concept anymore; blended learning was expected that teachers are technology literate. i actually implemented it in 2012, if i couldn’t teach to the class, i gave assignments to students via whatsapp and e-mail. my students also have to submit assignments on whatsapp / e-mail within a certain time limit. eanwhile, t2 stated that blended learning is a mixed method, and t2 has been applying blended learning since the school began to implement face-to-face learning in new normal era during this pandemic. excerpt 8 blended is a mixture of online and face to face learning, i have just implemented these kinds of learning in this pandemic, this is in line with the school policy. t3 added that blended learning has been known for a long time, but the teaching and learning process in some school is more often applied using face-to-face excerpt 9 i had known the concept of blended learning before the pandemic. blended learning is applied for long –distance learning. blended learning has only been implemented in this school since july. this is in line with the government recommendations. for the application of bended learning and how to create a new learning system that is more suitable in the pandemic era, teachers are expected to continuously integrate conventional teaching and modern teaching. here, the three teachers tell how they apply and integrate the blended learning model (online and offline). t1 use his online classes by presenting/explaining the material then it can be continued by giving reinforcement for the material in his face-to-face meetings. in contrast, t1 explains the material in a face-to-face meeting then giving assignments in his online learning or online class. excerpt 10 i explained the material in online class, and enrichment for face to face class. for example, when news item text that is conducted through online, i explain the material, the examples of text and their generic structures. then at the next meeting in face-to-face class, i discuss the previous topic also i ask for responses or feedback from students. so, my students can understand more about the concept of the material that i convey. furthermore, t2 stated that some preparations were made before the online meeting or online class. the day before or in the evening before the class, t2 shared a grid of material through the whatsapp group and instructed students to learn. therefore, during online classes, students can understand the material and answer some questions from the teacher. if the students find difficulties, t2 can respond international journal of language teaching and education 7 or follow up in face-to-face meetings. it is also done by t3 where she shares the materials and reexplains the material in face-to-face class. excerpt 11 i share material before online meeting trough the whatsapp group, next, for the students’ difficulties or learning objectives which is not achieved yet can be discussed and resolved during face-to-face meetings. excerpt 12 i share videos/ppt/even text to students during online classes. then at the faceto-face meeting, i explained again the material given during the online class. this way i can see my students whether they understand or don’t understand. in terms of time allocation between online and face to face classes, all the three teachers answered the same thing. it is because in its implementation, the schedule had been determined by the school. there is a reduction in time at each meeting during this pandemic andclass divisions. this is because the schools have to keep social distancing as the government expects. therefore, the implementation of blended learning during this pandemic was carried out by reducing time allocation and dividing the number of students in each meeting. excerpt 13 online per level, meaning that if class 10 is scheduled, all 10 graders will carry out online classes and it is divided into 2 shifts. for example, shift 1 class 7-10 and shift 2 10-1 class have arranged the schedule. excerpt 14 for the schedule, i follow the schedule from school excerpt 15 schedule alternately. for example, today is grade 11, then the next day is grade 12. class distribution is scheduled in 2 shifts. the implementation of blended learning or collaboration between face to face and online learning which is implemented in high schools during the covid-19 pandemic received a good response from the three english teachers. blended learning is considered better than full online learning although there are still some challenges in its implementation. excerpt 16 i think blended learning is more effective than full online learning. full online learning cannot be applied to english learning. collaboration between online and face to face can help teaching and learning process. some questions and materials that require more explanation during online class can be developed and explained in a face-to-face class. to achieve the learning objective during pandemic, blended learning is the right method. excerpt 17 the combination between face-to-face and online learning is better. if the learning objectives are not achieved during online learning, i can continue through face-toface classes. in online learning, we can get to know several technologies that can help students in learning. excerpt 18 in online learning, most students were quiet and less active, but in face-to-face class, students are communicative and active. when i asked a question, they answer the question actively. for me, face-to-face classes can be used to provide 8 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa feedback, and i can monitor my students’ progress. i prefer blended learning for my class. furthermore, one of the factors that influence the success of the blended learning process is technology and learning platforms. the finding reveals that the three teachers have different learning management system (lms). at the beginning of its implementation, they use different online platform that can be implemented to the students. but then, blended learning was decentralized using google classrooms, which the school regulates management, and whatapps is for class groups. excerpt 19 at the beginning of online learning, i used edmodo and facebook for my students. but i think this platform is less effective for learning english. when i use meeting zoom, students complained about data packets running out so fast. finally i used goggle classroom. it is connected to the principal’s account to monitor the learning process both in offline and online learning. excerpt 20 i use google classroom; this school is centralized by the school for the use of google classroom. excerpt 21 i looked for the learning materials from youtube, video, i made ppt and sent them to students. i took a photo of the worksheets, and then i sent them to students. i often asked about the condition of my students through whatsapp group. now i use whatsapp and google classroom because this application is used in this school. in implementing blended learning, the students should have motivation to learn independently. besides, the teachers play an important role in implementing the learning process using blended learning. it was found that the three teachers attended training to improve their skills. excerpt 22 i attended webinar training to improve my ict skills and i learned how to seek information and concepts on how to implement the effective blended learning. fortunately, all teachers in this school get training in the application of blended learning. excerpt 23 apart from school, i participated in the english teacher training to increase the application of blended learning held by several universities in indonesiaseveral universities in indonesia. excerpt 24 initially, i didn’t understand the concept of blended learning, i used to call it daring and luring, but after i attended training from school and blended web mobile learning training organized by the educational department, i understood how to apply blended learning. from the teachers’ story, it was found that the school had trained and facilitated the teachers to conduct blended learning. after attending the training, they learned how to design lesson plans,s, assess, and create an effective teaching and learning process. furthermore, regarding to the effectiveness between full online and blended learning, the three teachers said that they prefer blended learning to full online learning for teaching and learning during the pandemic. international journal of language teaching and education 9 listening to students’ responses in the blended learning this part is a story from the teachers related to the students’ responses during blended learning in pandemic situation. the story reveals that the t1 realized that the students are heterogens, it means that they have their own character in terms of learning. t1 found that the students are vary in learning during this pandemic, it depends on their motivation and creativities. in other hand, the students should be responsible and independent in learning. meanwhile, t2 found that the students with low motivation in learning tend to be passive. the students’ responses are explained by the teachers as follows: excerpt 25 my students are heterogenic, my students who have high enthusiasm, motivation and learning creativity will look for additional references or materials to learn. in contrast, students with low learning enthusiasm will not try to find other learning sources and they are more passive in the teaching and learning process. excerpt 26 some students who have low motivation tend not to take a part in online class. they attended for a while only filling attendance list. they also didn’t want to take notes, they didn’t watch the videos and ppt. i sent to them. they argue that they don’t have any internet connection. they prefer to borrow books from friends to note materials rather than take part in the online learning process. in addition, t3 also tells her story related to the students response. it was found that the students are passive for online class even though all the students attend the online class. therefore, the teachers conduct such kind of reinforcement or follow up in face-to-face class. excerpt 27 in my online class, when i asked them to read a text, they will answer “yes” but when i asked some questions related to the text, they didn’t anwer. so i think my students do not read. my students are silents and passive in my online. they will be silent even though they have difficulties, they are attending the online class, it is proven by attendence list, but they are passive. salient stories the teacher is a role model for students in the teaching and learning process and in students’ success in real life. a teacher who has been teaching for many years has already many experiences. they meet different changes in the curriculum, the heterogeneous character of students, and professional demands. during this pandemic, the learning system changed from conventional to online learning or a combination of the two learning models (blended learning). teachers of course have many experiences both joyful and sorrowful experiences, which are very impressed for teachers especially during this pandemic. t1 describes his experience in teaching english during this pandemic. as a teacher who has been teaching for 32 years, t1 has many experiences in teaching and learning, especially during a pandemic where this situation has never been experienced before (new experience). excerpt 28 i use meeting zoom, students complained about data packets running out so fast, it’s around 1,5 gb. another complains was from parents where they are also lack of financial because of the pandemic. meanwhile, for happy experience, i realize that online learning in this pandemic is a blessing disguise. it is because my students and i can understand more about technology especially in educational context. the students’ score for their assignment are better because they can find another reference from online source. 10 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa another story from t2 and t3 reveals that the implementation of blended learning in this pandemic brings unforgettable story for them. t2 explained that the students did not attend the class because of waking up late. the students also use the balance or internet balance given by the school for playing online game. meanwhile, t3 told that her students are less active. only 1 of 40 students is active in her online class. she continues that sometime an active student cannot attend her online class because of internet connection. it was her sad experience in implementing blended learning during this pandemic. excerpt 29 one day, when i was teaching and it ended at 9. my students filled attendance list at 11. when i asked, my students answered that it is because of overslept. i also often spend 25 minutes in my meeting just to advise and motivate my students. when they were attending online class from home and i found my student was sleeping, i found the data package for internet connection provided by the school was used to play online games. excerpt 30 during the learning process, i once found only 1 student out of 40 students who try to answer my questions. in addition, some students are out of the online class after filling out the attendance list. students who are diligent and enthusiastic in learning sometimes cannot participate in learning process because of several factors such as no signal and running out of internet packages. i found my students have to go to other places just to attend english class virtually. when i give them assignment in online class, almost the students’ answer is the same; it may be taken from the same sources. hindrances during blended learning enactment based on the story, the teachers found some problems in implementing blended learning during pandemic. the problems mostly come up in online class; it relates to the facilities and students motivation. in addition, time allocation can be a problem for the students in implementing blended learning during pandemic. t1 told that the concept or the material cannot be explained in detail during online class because of time allocation, internet connection, students’ motivation, schedule, and internet balance. excerpt 31 i cannot explain the detail concept because of time allocation. meanwhile. my students look so confuse to cathec the english material. i found my students do not join the online class because they dont have any balance for the internet connection, besides students are heterogeneous in term of learning. they have different self-awareness to learn”. finally, not all the classes can be scheduled for online and face-to-face class because of the limitation of scheduling. meanwhile, t2 and t3 found that the problem also reveals in implementing blended learning during pandemic. it was in line with t1, it was hard to teach english as second language in pandemic. the english skill cannot be taught maximally. other same problems also related to the internet connection and internet balance in her online class. besides, students’ motivation and scheduling is also including as a problem in implementing blended learning during pandemic. excerpt 32 when i teach grammar in online class for grade x1, it was hard to teach direct and indirect because they have low capability in grammar. besides, students’ motivation is low my student rarely attend the online class because of internet connection or internet balance. international journal of language teaching and education 11 excerpt 33 my students loss of signal so that they can’t attend the class on time. when i send material to the students, for example i share the video about english conversation, i cannot control weather the students watch the video or not. i found my students are passive in online class, they will be silent if they have problem or they don’t understand yet. related to the previous theme about problems in implementing blended learning such as students’ balance availability, scheduling, how to integrate face-to-face and online learning, t1 explained that the government and school have given the solution by giving internet balance for the students. furthermore, the government also shortened the time duration in the teaching and learning process during this pandemic and decreased the competence standard by not reaching the curriculum target, but it was only for learning experience. excerpt 34 in this school each student was give internet balance. it was 20.000/month. the government also gave the internet balance for teacher and students 30gb/month fortunately, in this pandemic, teaching and learning duration was shortening and its process is only for learning experience rather than reaching the curriculum target. i believe that blended learning can reach the curriculum target. future aspirations in this theme, the teachers narrate their evaluation and hope to the existing blended learning during pandemic situation. teachers perceived that blended learning gave a new and different nuance to the efl teaching, especially during pandemic situation. based on the story, t1, t2 and t3 have been trying to better implement blended learning in pandemic situations. it means that the teachers try to find the best to teach english as a second language to the students using blended learning. t1 explains that blended learning is a suitable and effective method to be implemented in the school for pandemic situation. face-to-face class can be used to give some enforcement or deeper explanation to the students when they have any problem in online class. moreover, it can be used for feedback and real interaction to the students. for the future, t1 is interested in implementing blended learning even though the pandemic ends. the use of ict should be implemented in teaching and learning process. in addition, t1 will improve his self-evaluation to the blended learning implementation so that the future implementation will be better. designing a suitable material, finding a suitable online platform will be his concern. excerpt 36 blended learning is good, it is more efficient. the use of ict will be implemented even though the pandemic ends. ict should be implemented to support education 4.0. besides, the implementation of blended learning can be improved by designing an interesting material and the use of suitable platform to the students. for the next, it can reach the learning objective in the curriculum rather than learning experience like in this pandemic situation. in addition, t2 and t3 have the same opinion that the implementation of blended learning in this pandemic situation is more effective than full online learning. they prefer implementing blended learning. they hope that the implementation of blended learning can be implemented even though the pandemic ends. t2 told that the school will implement credit system (sks) in the next semester. the use of blended learning can support that learning system; therefore, the school should have internal policy related to implementing blended learning at the school. in addition, t2 hope that the students’ motivation will arise. the students’ motivation also supports the implementation of blended learning, so she will motivate the students about the importance of ict in learning. meanwhile, t3 realized that the implementation of blended learning has its own challenge for the student especially in online class but it doesn’t mean that blended learning cannot be implemented after the pandemic. t3 will be back to the face-to-face class but the use of ict will be implemented as well. 12 i. m. u. ma’rufa & m. mustofa excerpt 37 i will use blended learning. i realized the important of ict in learning. i will give such a kind of motivation to the students that learning is not enough conducted in a class, they can learn more outside trough technology. on next semester this school will implement credit system (sks). blended learning can support this system, and the school should have internal policy about its implementation. excerpt 38 my students are not ready yet for full online learning, so if the pandemic ends, i will be back to face-to-face and i will also use ict to help students to learn more. 5. discussion the present study looked into efl teachers’ professional experiences in the blended learning enactment during covid-19 pandemic. the findings showcase that the teaching and learning process at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic has been done from home through online learning platforms. in this case, teachers are required to be professional. theoretically, teacher professionalism relates to teacher knowledge, teacher responsibility, and teacher autonomy (jensvoll & lekang, 2018). therefore, teachers have to be able to conduct teaching and learning process, transfer the knowledge to the students, conduct an evaluation so that the learning objective can be achieved in unprecedented situations. the participating teachers in the present study experienced multi-layered professionalism. in terms of teaching facility, it was found that the three efl teachers tried to conduct an innovation in their teaching, such as using different online platforms (e.g., youtube, edmodo, google classroom, zoom meeting, and powerpoint. interestingly, all the three teachers voiced that the online teaching platforms were not effectively enacted due to poor internet connection. such a hindrance affects the teaching and learning process. in line with this finding, recent research by watson (2020) documented that teachers’ technological experiences is one of the challenges that determine the smoothness of instructional activities. the findings of this study also reveal that the teachers much favor blended learning. this learning approach is considered better than full online learning although there are still some challenges in its implementation. it can be an alternative and effective strategy in the pandemic situation. many language experts consider blended learning an ideal learning approach due to its accommodation of the strengths for face-to-face interaction and technology-based instruction (see garrison & vaughan, 2008; lalima & dangwal, 2017). previous empirical studies by arifani et al., 2019; and kurucova et al., 2018) also support the positive values depicted in blended learning implementation. after the fieldwork, they argue that blended learning is more effective than the classical face-to-face or full online learning instruction. another work by wang et al. (2015) confirms that learners in blended learning approach are changed from passive to be active. their findings shed light on the fact that the students worked collaboratively since a dynamic and adoptive process of blended learning facilitates them to interact with others through online learning systems. despite the salient and positive values depicted in blended learning enactment, the present study also captured multiple complexities encountered by the participating teachers. in our interview sessions, t1, t2 and t3 narrated that the problems mostly come up in online class including facilities, students self-regulated learning, and the schedule in implementing blended learning. in another study by yang (2012), some problems perceived by the teachers in implementing blended learning are the changing role of the teachers and students, small sense of community building, lack of training for blended learning, and lack of technology knowledge. these complexities were noticed by the schools where the participating teachers work, such as inviting teachers to attend teacher professional workshops and providing ample internet connection. in terms of future aspiration, all the three teachers narrated that they try to find better strategies to implement blended learning in pandemic situation. in other words, the teachers try to find the best methods to teach english in the blended learning enactment. t1 and t2 contended that blended learning is good to implement for the future; t1 is interested in implementing blended learning even though the pandemic ends. the use of ict should be implemented in teaching and learning process and give interesting learning experience for teacher and student, therefore, blended learning may improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning experiences meaningfully (garrison & vaughan, international journal of language teaching and education 13 2013: twigg, 2003). meanwhile, t2 narrated that the students’ motivation also supports blended learning, so she will give more motivation to the students about the importance of ict in learning. according to kintu and zhu (2017), factors to make successful blended learning are self-regulation, attitudes towards blended learning, family and social support, workload management, competences, gender and age. 6. conclusion this study attempted to document three efl teachers’ professional experiences in blended learning from narrative inquiry perspective. findings suggest that all the educational activities or teaching and learning was conducted from home virtually and it was less successful and ineffective. therefore, blended learning can be a catalyst for the learning activities in pandemic situation. teacher professionalism is needed in implementing this blended learning. therefore, teachers participated in several trainings on the application of blended learning, and even schools facilitated teachers in increasing their skills in ict through training held by schools. dealing with online platform, it was found that the teachers applied different online platforms to teach in online class such as zoom, edmodo, google classroom and whatsapps. the school centralized to use google classroom as the main platform in online class. furthermore, based on the teachers’ lived experiences, it was found that the success of the implementation of blended learning in this pandemic is affected by some factors such as students’ motivation, internet connection and scheduling at the school. in this study, internet connection is a hindrance for the students in online learning; the students did not attend the class because of poor internet connection. at last, the teachers are interested in continuing using blended learning for their efl class and trying to find suitable materials for blended learning. based on the present study's findings, it is recommended that the future researcher conduct a similar study in different levels of school and teachers. these differences will shed light on various perspectives, values, and beliefs depicted among the teachers in different levels of schooling. references adedoyin, o. b., & soykan, e. 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(2012). blended learning for college students with english reading difficulties. computer assisted language learning, 25(5), 393-410. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2011.597767 https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.23.34 https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.522.2020.61.23.34 https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i1.6859 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019. https://doi.org/10.46303/ressat.05.02.3 https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2011.597767 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5697 248 ijolte picture word inductive model: its effectiveness to teach writing viewed from students’ interest rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto master degree of english education department universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: amuhtia@student.uns.ac.id how to cite this paper: meliasari, r., ngadiso, n., & marmanto, s. (2018). the picture word inductive model: its effectiveness to teach writing viewed from students’ interest. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 248-258. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5697 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract picture word inductive model is an inquiry-oriented strategy for teaching writing that uses picture containing familiar objects to fully lead students into inquiring about words, adding words to their writing, and ultimately developing the title, sentences, and paragraphs about their picture. this experimental study aimed to find out the effectiveness of pwim to teach writing viewed from students’ interest in the eighth grade of mts. aswaja pontianak. sampling technique was through cluster random sampling resulting 2 classes which consist of 26 students of each class contributed to the study. technique of data collection encompassed writing test and questionnaire. the data were analyzed by using 2x2 multifactor analysis of variance (anova) and tukey’s hsd test. the result revealed that: (1) picture word inductive model (pwim) is more effective than controlled-writing strategy (cws) to teach writing; (2) students having high interest have better writing skill than those having low interest. (3) there is an interaction between teaching strategies and the level of interest on students’ writing skill. subjectareas writing skill keywords cws, pwim, students’ interest, writing skill. 1. introduction writing skill is postulated to be essential to proficient english learners. as the regulation implies that education is not only a matter of developing students’ knowledge but also advancing skills and values; therefore, the students are expected to be able to considerably master four skills in learning english: listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills. among those skills, they are naturally connected, and they share equal values with each other. however, partly because of the nature in the writing process, the teaching of writing skill demands extra attempts for teachers to reinforce students in writing activities. writing is regarded as the most difficult skill for efl students to master for it has complexities starting from brainstorming the ideas and organizing them into a readable text (richard and renandya, 2002, p. 303). very often, most of https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5697 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5697 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 249 ijolte the students put off doing until the last minute of writing. in indonesia, particularly in junior high school stage, the basic competency that should be achieved in the writing english subject is that the students could develop and produce written simple functional text. however, although the students are only required to compose simple text, the result is far from what is being expected. only a few students are happy to get involved in writing activities, but most of them are less keen. this unwillingness may derive from anxieties they have about the handwriting, their spelling, or their ability to construct sentences and paragraphs. if these insecurities are reinforced, then the students’ attitude toward writing is likely to become more and more negative. as a result, their scores of writing are considerably low. another noticeable problem is that students were very often asked to write about subjects and typical of novices in any subject areas that are unfamiliar to them. as the result, their understanding as they write tends to be incomplete. having the facts in mind, the teachers must be able to create a situation that provides opportunities and stimulates the students especially to be interested in writing. pwim is an inquiry-oriented strategy for teaching beginning reading and writing that uses pictures containing familiar objects. the word inductive here means that it involves the process in which the students seek patterns and use them to identify their broader meaning and significant. joyce & calhoun (2009) asserted that the picture word inductive model (pwim) is a teacher-facilitated process, in which teachers lead children to discover words from a picture, increase the number of words in their sight-reading and writing vocabularies, formulate phonetic and structural principles, and finally apply observation and logical thinking analysis to their writing. this strategy is used to guide the students to develop their idea during the initial process of writing. moreover, it also improves their vocabulary, grammatical, phonetic, mechanic, and spelling in writing text. in addition, picture word inductive model (pwim) is a is an effective strategy for teachers which can be used with whole class, small groups, pairs, or individually involving basic moves from identifying the pictures, look for new words, hear the new word pronounced correctly, and watch the teacher model how to use the vocabulary on a variety of levels (mcdonald, 2010; wood &tinajero, 2002; calhoun, 1999). even though teachers need to implement intriguing strategies to enhance students during the lesson, there is also a non-technical aspect that probably influences students’ ability in writing. students’ interest is supposed to be one of the important elements in determining the success of writing class. the connection that exists between students and their interest in learning itself is enormously interrelated. according to zhao (2014) interest is a kind of emotion arousal status and it tends to make people know things and love some activities. similarly, hurlock (1978) stating that interest is where the driving motivation comes from. this motivation drives students to do what they want to do when they are free to choose. a piece of evidence leads the researcher to be interested in investigating whether rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 250 ijolte pwim is more effective than cws to teach writing, revealing whether students having high interest have better writing skill than those having low interest, and revealing there is an interaction between teaching strategies and the level of interest on students’ writing skill. 2. literature review 2.1. teaching writing teaching is the process of facilitating learning, enabling students to learn, and setting the conditions for learning (brown, 2001). teaching is showing or helping learners to grow in their knowledge, giving instructions, guiding in the study to improve their understanding. by referring to this, it is obvious that teaching writing is a work of the teacher in using one or more approaches to teach writing. nevertheless, for many years the teaching of writing is only emphasized on the product of writing not the process (harmer, 2004). the students were directed to what rather than how they produce a text. in fact, research result shown by bayraktar (2012) pinpointed that a better understanding of writing processes leads to a successful writing. hence, the teachers should consider appropriate strategies in teaching writing to emphasize on its process. they are the way to get the students to plan, the way to encourage them to draft, reflect and revise and the way to respond to the students’ writing. 2.2. picture word inductive model basically, picture word inductive model (pwim) is a strategy which uses the advantage of the picture as the learning media in teaching and learning process. according to calhoun (1999, p. 21) pwim is an inquiry-oriented language arts strategy that uses pictures containing familiar objects and actions to elicit words from children’s listening and speaking vocabularies. this is based on the idea that model of teaching that uses picture and words can stimulate students’ thinking inductively, from specific thinking (see the pictures and words) into general thinking (make the words that available become paragraph). pwim is a strategy used with a whole class, small groups, pairs, or individually to lead students into inquiring about words and adding them vocabularies, discovering phonetic and structural principles, and engaging in other reading and writing activities (wood &tinajero, 2002). pwim is a process of teaching language involving basic moves from identifying the pictures, looking for new words, hearing the new word pronounced correctly, and watching the teacher model how to use the vocabulary on a variety of levels. thus, this is an effective strategy for all ages of learners for learning a second language because students have an opportunity to learn from authentic materials (mcdonald, 2010). in a more specific way, there are sorts of procedures in implementing picture word inductive model in the classroom. in the first step, the teacher selects the picture for the learners. secondly, asking the students to identify what they see in the picture. rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 251 ijolte the third step, teacher labels the picture by drawing a line from the identified object or area, say the word, write the word, ask students to spell the word aloud and then to pronounce it. soon after that, the students are asked to find as many words as possible to develop their ideas. the next step is leading the students into creating a title for the picture word chart. then, the students are asked to create sentences using the words they gain from the picture word chart. after it has been accomplished, teacher asks students to arrange the sentences into a good paragraph. ultimately, the teacher asks the students to read and review their paragraph to make it more complete and good. 2.3. controlled-writing strategy one of the conventional teaching strategies quite widely known and mostly used by the teacher for many years is controlled-writing strategy (cws). controlled writing is a practical strategy for helping students put words down on paper by reinforcing grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in context (silva, 1990; raimes, 1983). it means that when the students write the paragraph, they are using the conventions of written english, such as indentation, punctuation, and connecting words, and spelling. with this controlled composition, it is relatively easy for students to write and yet avoid errors, which make errors correction easily. another idea of controlled writing is stated by brown (2004: 225), that controlledwriting may also think as form-focused writing or grammar writing. a good deal writing in this level is display writing as opposed to real writing: students produce language to display their competence in grammar, vocabulary, or sentence formation, and not necessary to convey meaning for an authentic purpose. the instructional sequences of activity in cws remain traditional ways. taylor (1981) suggested that when implementing controlled writing strategy, the teacher should: (1) give modeling to students. at this stage, the teacher gives a sample text for the students; (2) ask student to read the text; (3) ask student to discuss or to brainstorm, at this stage, students are asked to make generalization and to see connections and relationships among their observation, thought, and facts; (4) ask the students work individually to write a paragraph about the topic; (5) ask the students discuss the paragraph that has been made. 2.4. the nature of students’ interest it is inevitable that students’ interest holds an enormous power in the success of learning. several researches have been carried out concerning with students’ interest in learning and there are some definitions about interest drawn from some experts. interest and goals are two pivotal factor that cannot be separated to promote students’ engagement and outcomes in learning (chen & ennis, 2004; chen &shen, 2004; chen, 2001; hidi&harackiewicz, 2000). elliot (2000, p. 349) asserted that interest is a typical character that is continually showed by a relationship between a person and an activity or object. it means that when the activity fits the rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 252 ijolte best with the students’ preference, they will manifest attention, extra effort and active involvement during the lesson; as a result, their academic performance is improved. another view is from zhao (2014) asserting that intere st is a kind of emotion arousal status and it tends to make people eager to know things and be passionate about some activities. it means interest makes the students capable of achieving the learning goal, especially when there is an interest in learning a bout something. when the students become interested in learning subject, they are eager to actively participate in, and are willing to explore as well as develop new abilities. 3. method of research the key assumption of quantitative studies is the researchers advance the relationship among variables and pose this in terms of questions or hypotheses (philips and burbules, 2000). regarding the focus of this study, the researcher employs experimental study. in this study, the researcher used 2 x 2 factorial design for the sake of efficiency, by technique of multifactor analysis of variance (anova). it is the simplest form of factorial design. gall, gall, & borg (2007) posited that the expression 2 x 2 means two variations of one factor (a1 and a2) and two variations of another factor (b1 and b2) are manipulated at the same time. cohen, manion, and marrison (2007) posited similar idea that a factorial design is useful for examining interaction effects. in the post-test only design, the two groups of the subjects are first assigned to the different treatments or control conditions. the experimental group will be taught by using picture word inductive model (pwim), while the control group will be taught by using controlled-writing strategy (cws). at the end of the treatments, both experimental and control groups will be given post-tests in the form of written test. the subject of this research was addressed by using cluster random sampling. there were two classes who were officially enrolled in this study, consisting of 26 students of each class. the data were obtained from writing test and questionnaire. the form of the test is essay. to test writing skill, there are five main components that need to be considered, they are content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. regarding the data from the questionnaire, it is categorized into four categories adapted from likert scale: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree to reveal students’ level of interest. by using questionnaire, the researcher will classify the students concerning only into two: high interest level and low interest level. about data analysis, it is done using descriptive and inferential analysis. first and foremost, the data were analyzed using descriptive analysis to know the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, histogram, and polygon of the students’ writing score. meanwhile, the use of inferential statistics was to test the research hypothesis. before doing further analysis of 2x2 anova, the writer employed a prerequisite test, in which normality and homogeneity tests were assigned previously. as the result of anova revealed that there is an interaction; therefore, the analysis was continued by rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 253 ijolte using tukey’s hsd test. 4. research finding and discussion 4.1. finding the distribution of data in this research is classified into eight groups: (1) the description of writing score of experimental class taught by using picture word inductive model (pwim) (a1); (2) the description of writing score of control class taught by using controlled-writing strategy (cws) (a2); (3) the description of writing score of students having high interest (b1); (4) the description of writing score of students having low interest (b2); (5) the description of writing score of students having high interest taught by using picture word inductive model (pwim) (a1b1); (6) the description of writing score of students having low interest taught by using picture word inductive model (pwim) (a1b2); (7) the description of writing score of students having high interest taught by using controlled-writing strategy (cws) (a2b1); (8) the description of writing score of students having low interest taught by using controlled-writing strategy (cws) (a2b2). admittedly, the overall values of lo (lobtain) is lower than lt (ltable), which means that the overall datasets were in normal distribution. the entire samples based on both teaching strategies and interest levels were in normal distribution. the following table depicts the summary of normality using lilliefors test: table 1. the summary of normality test data lo lt description the writing scores of the students taught by using pwim (a1) 0.1274 0.1738 normal the writing scores of the students taught by using cws (a2) 0.1017 0.1738 normal the writing scores of the students having high interest (b1) 0.1711 0.1738 normal the writing scores of the students having low interest (b2) 0.1060 0.1738 normal the writing scores of the students having high interest taught by using pwim (a1b1) 0.2349 0.2457 normal the writing scores of the students having low interest taught by using pwim (a1b2) 0.1632 0.2457 normal the writing scores of the students having high interest taught by using cws (a2b1) 0.1132 0.2457 normal the writing scores of the students having low interest taught by using cws (a2b2) 0.1475 0.2457 normal further analysis was homogeneity test. by referring to the computation result, the value of o2 is 0.8583. based on the chi-square distribution table, the value of t2(1-)(k1) or t2(0.95) (3) is 7.81. hence, it can be said that the data are homogenous because o2 <t2 (0.8583< 7.81). once normality and homogeneity test were accomplished, the next step was multifactor analysis of variance (anova) 2x2. an analysis of variance (anova) is administered to determine whether the differences between mean scores are statistically different. in this way, theoretically ho (null hypotheses) is accepted if rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 254 ijolte fo(fobtain) is lower than or the same as ft (ftable) or (fo ft). conversely, ho (null hypotheses) is rejected if fo(fobtain) is higher than ft (ftable) or (fo> ft) which means that there is a significance difference. the summary of anova 2 x 2 is described as follows: table 2. the mean score interest (b) teaching strategy (a) total pwim (a1) cws(a2) high interest (b1) 81.85 75.69 78.77 low interest (b2) 74.46 74.62 74.54 total 78.15 75.15 76.65 table 3. the summary of 2 x 2 multifactor analysis of variance (anova) source of variance ss df ms f0 ft(0,05) between columns 117.00 1 117.00 4.476 4.08 between rows 232.69 1 232.69 8.901 interaction 129.31 1 129.31 4.947 between group 479.00 3 159.67 within group 1254.77 48 26.14 total 1733.77 51 referring to the table, the interpretations are: a) following the result revealed on the above table, the value of fo (4.476) is compared to the ftable in which the value of ftable with dfnumerator (1) and dfdenominator (48) at the level of significance = 0.05 is 4.08. obviously, the table depicts that the value of fo (4.476) is higher than ft(.05) (4.08). hence, ho is rejected and the difference between columns is significant. turning to the table of mean score, it shows that the mean score of the students who were taught by using pwim (78.15) is higher than the mean scores of the students taught by using cws (75.15). it can be inferred that picture word inductive model is more effective than controlled-writing strategy to teach writing. b) based on the computing result, the value of fo (8.901) is statistically different from ftable 4.08. it means that ho is rejected and the difference between rows is significant. to put more simply, students who have high interest significantly different from those who have low interest. regarding the mean score, students having high interest achieved higher mean score (78.77) compared to those having low interest (74.54). all in all, students who have high interest have better writing skill than those who have low interest. c) by referring to the result of anova, the value of interaction fo columns by rows (4.947) is higher than ft at the level of significance = 0.05 (4.08). it can be inferred that ho is rejected and there is an interaction between teaching strategies and students’ level of interest to teach writing. thus, it can be concluded that the effectiveness of teaching strategies is influenced by students’ level of interest. having analyzed the variance, further analysis done by the researcher is tukey’s rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 255 ijolte hsd (honest significance difference) test. tukey test is a statistical procedure used to clary which groups among the sample in specific (between the cells) have significant differences. table 4. depicts the result of tukey’ hsd test. table 4. the summary of tukey’s hsd test data sample error variance qo qt(.05) status a1 and a2 26 1.003 2.99 2.89 significant b1 and b2 26 1.003 4.22 2.89 significant a1b1 and a2b1 13 1.418 4.34 3.06 significant a1b2 and a2b2 13 1.418 0.11 3.06 not significant referring to the table, the interpretations are: a) because qo>qt (.05) or qo (2.99) is higher than qt (.05) (2.89), using picture word inductive model differs significantly from controlled-writing strategy to teach writing. regarding the mean score, the mean of a1 (78.15) is higher than the mean of a2 (75.15). thus, the conclusion that can be drawn is that pwim is more effective than cws to teach writing. b) considering that qo>qt (.05) or qo (4.22) is higher than qt (.05) (2.89), it can be concluded that there is a significant difference on the students’ writing skill between those who have high interest and those who have low interest. turning back to the mean score table, the mean of b1 (78.77) is higher than b2 (74.54) which means that the students having high interest have better writing skill than those having low interest. c) due to the fact that qo>qt (.05) or qo (4.34) is higher than qt (.05) (3.06), it means that picture word inductive model is significantly different from controlled-writing strategy to teach writing to the students who have high interest. the mean score of a1b1 (81.85) is higher than the mean score of a2b1 (75.69). it can be synthesized that picture word inductive model is more effective than controlled-writing strategy to teach writing to students who have high interest. d) having the fact that qo<qt (.05) or qo (0.11) is lower than qt (.05) (3.06), it is undeniable that using picture word inductive model does not differ significantly from controlled-writing strategy to teach writing to the students who have low interest. to put more simply, pwim is as effective as cws to teach writing for students having low interest. discussion referring to the above analysis, the findings yield that pwim strategy is more effective than controlled-writing strategy (cws) to teach writing. this research result is in line with the research conclusion of besral& indah (2015) stating that after using picture word inductive model (pwim) strategy in experimental class in several rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 256 ijolte meetings, the students got much more improvements in writing ability than conventional strategy in the same meeting in control class. statistically calculated, this research result yields that the mean score of students taught by using pwim is higher than that of students taught by using cws. this provokes the conclusion that pwim remarkably improves the students’ writing skill. this supports the findings from novia (2015) revealing that there was a significant difference in writing achievement between students who were taught by using pwim and those who were not because by using pwim, the fact that students could develop their writing achievement because they used familiar picture to brainstorm the ideas and information is inevitably true. essentially, the findings also support and confirm the viewpoint from mcdonald (2010), arguing that pwim provides an opportunity to incorporate language, arts, grammar and writing lesson with non-fiction areas of study. furthermore, through this strategy, the teacher uses the generated vocabulary to lead students into inquiring about words, studying word properties (discovering structural principles), composing sentences and writing paragraphs. this is equivalent to the idea from swartzendruber (2007), arguing that this process essentially created a picture-word dictionary in which the students could employ to connect words with corresponding pictures. meanwhile, it is also known that the students who have high interest have better writing skill than those who have low interest. this is based on the idea that students who have a high interest will manifest strong willingness in learning; what is more, they tend to be more active during teaching and learning process. research on writing and interests indicates that students who have an interest are more likely to set effective goals, make use of helpful strategies, and seek feedback as they work with writing task (lipstein&renninger, 2015). primarily, interest is infectious in writing activity because the more passion the teacher brings with a topic or into the classroom, the more students want to hear about it. they begin to manifest their attention to it; as a result, their understanding in writing itself is much better. it is supported by the view from huang & lin (2016), asserting that students with a high interest in learning show deeper understanding in the classroom. conversely, students having low interest are less keen and not invested in learning, and not as likely to be engaged. turning back to the findings of the study, students with low interest obtained lower mean score than those who have high interest. students who did not show any interest in english will find it difficult in understanding the lesson and confronting the challenging activities; under this circumstance, they do not show any satisfying outcome. this confirms the idea from wimolmas (2013) who pinpoints about learning situation, students who are lack of interest tend to lose their attention, misbehave and cause discipline problems. additionally, they tend to have less active thinking and have no willingness to solve the barriers to learning. as a result, they will become demotivated and have no enthusiastic in accomplishing the rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 257 ijolte task. 5. conclusions after discussing the result of the study on how to determine the effectiveness of picture word inductive model to teach writing viewed from students’ interest, it can be summed up: (1) there is a significant difference of students’ writing skill between students who are taught by using picture word inductive model and those who are taught by using controlled-writing strategy. picture word inductive model is more effective than controlled-writing strategy to teach writing; (2) students having high interest have better writing skill than those who have low interest. (3) there is an interaction effect between the two variables, the strategies of teaching and the level of interest on students’ writing skill. considering the above conclusions, there are certain suggestions. first and foremost, teacher should implement pwim to teach english as a foreign language because it can make the classroom more dynamic, gaining students’ attention, and increasing their interest. furthermore, in choosing the picture for class, the richness of the picture in pwim should be taken into consideration because the more contents are available in picture, the more students can develop their thinking and ideas to create sentences. in addition to this, during the implementation of pwim, the students should manifest attention, extra effort and active involvement to be successful learners. moreover, students should increase interest in learning english as a foreign language. they must be more confident with themselves and abandon the thought of writing is difficult; what is more, they should ease their boredom during writing lesson. all in all, this research can be used as a reference for other researchers to conduct future research dealing with a similar area of study and different psychological aspects instead of interest. references [1] besral& indah, n. w. (2015). the use of picture word inductive model (pwim) in the teaching and learning process of writing. research in english language teaching journal, 1(1), 29-36. [2] bayraktar, aysegul. (2012). teaching writing through teacher-student writing conferences. social behavorial sciences, 51, 709-713. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.08.229 [3] brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment principles and classroom practice.white plains, ny: pearson education, inc. [4] calhoun, e. f. (1999). teaching beginning reading and writing with the picture word inductive model. alexandria, virginia usa: association for supervision and curriculum development. [5] cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education (6th ed.). new york: taylor & francis e-library. [6] elliot, s. n., kratochwill, t. r., cook, j. l., et al., (2000). educational psychology; effective teaching, effective learning. singapore: mcgraw-hill book co. [7] gall, meredith d., gall, joyce p. & borg, walter r. (2003). educational research. boston: pearson education, inc. rahayu meliasari, ngadiso, sri marmanto 258 ijolte [8] harmer, jeremy. (2004). how to teach writing. edinburg gate: pearson education. [9] huang, yu-chen., & lin, shu-hui. (2016). examining charisma in relation to students’ interest in learning. sage journal, 17(2), 139-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787416637481 [10] lipstein, rebecca l., &renninger, k. ann. (2015). interest for writing: how teachers can make a difference. the english journal, 96(4), 79-85. doi: 10.2307/30047170 [11] mcdonald, a. k. (2010). the picture word inductive model:an effective model for vocabulary instruction. the university of british columbia. [12] novia, fitri. (2015). promoting picture word inductive model (pwim) to develop students’ writing skill. premise journal, 4(1). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24127/pj.v4i1.283 [13] phillips, d. c., &burbules, n. c. (2000). postpositivism and educationalresearch. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. [14] raimes, a. (1983). techniques in teaching writing. new york & oxford: oxford university press. [15] richard, j. c, and renandya, w. a. (2002). methodology in language teaching. new york: cambridge university press. [16] silva, t. (1990). second language composition instruction: developments, issues, and directions in esl. in b. kroll (eds.), second language writing: insights for the classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. [17] swartzendruber, kara. (2007). the picture word inductive model and vocabulary acquisition. proceedings of the 3rd annual grasp symposium. wichita state university. [18] taylor, b. p. (1981). content and written form: a two-way street. tesol quarterly, 15(1), 5-13. [19] wood, k. d. &tinajero, j. (2002). research into practice: using pictures to teach content to second language learners. middle school journal, 33(5), 47-51. [20] wimolmas, r. (2013). a survey study of motivation in english language learning of first year undergraduate students at sirindhorn international institute of technology (siit), thammasat university. proceedings ofthe 3rd international conference on foreign language learning and teaching 2013 (fllt 2013), "research, renovation and reinforcement: enhancing quality in language education". bangkok, thailand. [21] zhao, yu. (2014). how to arouse the students’ learning interest in foreign language teaching: international conference on education, management and computing technology (icemct 2014). china: atlantis press. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1469787416637481 http://dx.doi.org/10.24127/pj.v4i1.283 paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6178 20 ijolte optimality theory in esl phonology: a practice of final consonant clusters from vietnamese l1 speakers vi-thong nguyen graduate institute of linguistics, national chung cheng university, taiwan email: vithong1985@gmail.com how to cite this paper: nguyen, t. v. (2019). optimality theory in esl phonology: a practice of final consonant clusters from vietnamese l1 speakers. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 20-27. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6178 accepted: march 14, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract the present study aims to adopt the optimality theory to investigate the strategies of pronouncing the final consonant clusters in english by a group of vietnamese l1 speakers. vietnamese is a language without the final consonant clusters; therefore, vietnamese esl learners tend to have different strategies to pronounce those. seven vietnamese graduate students were employed to record their word-list out-loud reading. each of the consonants occurring in their pronunciation production was considered as one token to be analyzed. the result shows that vietnamese esl learners employ five different strategies to generate the final consonant clusters. after that, by adopting the optimality theory, this study provides both faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints for each strategy with the attempt to generalize the cases of the final consonant pronunciation of vietnamese speakers. this study is significant for esl teachers to understand how the vietnamese language affects the esl learners’ final sound pronunciation. subject areas teaching speaking keywords constraints, final consonant cluster, optimality theory, strategies, vietnamese esl learners 1. introduction second language acquisition is a process affected by simultaneous interaction of various factors such as the linguistic nature of the first language (l1), the structures of the target language (l2), universals of language acquisition, and the degree of exposure to l2 (wiltshire, 2006). in vietnam, english learned as a second language, which has never become an official language in this country. it is the fact that the english learning process of vietnamese speakers can be strongly influenced by their l1, especially to novice learners (nguyen & brouha, 1998). this phenomenon can be found in studies of english final consonant clusters generated by vietnamese l1 speakers (osburne, 1996; nguyen & brouha, 1998). https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6178 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6178 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ h. hustarna, m. melati 21 ijolte nguyen and brouha (1998), it confirmed that vietnamese learners had difficulty in learning and maintaining the superficial voice contrast in word-final consonants in english. the discussed reason for this issue was that the english structure is more marked than the vietnamese structure regarding these sounds. moreover, 62% of substitutions were found in their data, which included devoicing, deletion, epenthesis, fricatization, africanization, and unreleased. meanwhile, osburne (1996) focused on final cluster reduction in english by examining the case of a vietnamese speaker. it was concluded in osburne’s study that the position of a reduced consonant can be widely predicted based on interaction with other rules, universal considerations, and l1 syllable structure. the present study is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of final consonant clusters in english produced by vietnamese esl learners with the application of optimality theory (ot), which has been recently instructed in gussenhoven & jacobs (2017). as introduced in boersma et al. (2000), ot was first developed by prince and smolensky in 1993, which was one of the prominent theories in the 1990s. it began a new constraint-based approach for various studies in phonology (e.g., moira, 1993; itô, 1995; auger, 2001; łubowicz, 2002; beckman, 2003; bermúdez-otero, 2006; cristia, 2018 ). as mentioned, this theory is a constraint-based approach, with which any surface form does not comply eliminated. it means that the form which the least violates the constraints is favored. it should be noted that ot is considered a development of generative grammar, which shares its focus on the examination of universal principles, linguistic typology, and language acquisition. the theory also proposes two crucial features, which make up the answer to the question of why phonology is different across languages. first, languages are different in terms of their constraints’ importance rankings. this ranking of the set of universal constraints is also known as the constraint hierarchy. second, it is indicated that these constraints can be contradictory and be violated. in this case, the constraint with a higher ranking has priority. therefore, by applying ot, this study is expected to indicate universal constraints and their rankings, which provides a new viewpoint to the issue of english final consonant clusters produced by vietnamese esl learners. 1.1. final consonant in vietnamese. vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, which means that each syllable is equivalent to a word. there are 11 vowels and 22 consonants in vietnamese; many of them are found in the english system. since this study only focuses on final consonant clusters, the distinction of the vowel systems and all of the consonantal systems between the two languages is not discussed. table 1, extracted from nguyen & brouha (1998), displays the differences between two final consonantal systems. table 1. vietnamese final consonants (as compared to english consonantal system) existing sounds non-existing sounds p t̪ k ɲ θ ʃ tʃ m n ŋ ð ʒ dʒ it can be seen from table 1 that the final consonants that exist in vietnamese are single sounds. it is h. hustarna, m. melati 22 ijolte different from english in the point that final english sounds can be clusters, which never exists in vietnamese. the non-existing sounds in table 1 are from english; they do not exist in vietnamese. however, this final consonant can be pronounced differently across dialects of vietnamese. there are three main vietnamese dialects: northern, central, and southern. for one final consonant, there might be different variations depending on the dialect. with these differences between vietnamese and english, it can be explained why vietnamese esl learners find it challenging to produce final consonant clusters. 2. methodology 2.1. participants to serve the purpose of the research, seven participants were recruited. they are all vietnamese l1 speakers, who are currently graduate students in a university in the central of taiwan. they come from different dialects of vietnamese. their toeic band scores range from 500 to 650. they made voluntary contributions to the data collection process of this research. to avoid the observer’s paradox (labov, 1972), the participants were asked to read the word-list without being informed of the focus of final clusters. even though the data were not entirely natural, they somehow minimized the situation in which the observation and information influenced participants' attention towards the final clusters. 2.2. instrument this study adopts the category for word-final clusters created by wiltshire (2006). table 2 shows the list of clusters used in the study and their tokens. table 2. word-final consonants word-final clusters types tokens (x7 participants) nasal-stop mp, nt, ndʒ, nd 56 lateral-stop lt, ld, lp 42 lateral-nasal lm 14 fricative stop st, sk, ʃt 42 stop-s ps, ts, bz, dz, gz 70 stop-stop pt, kt 28 cc-s lts, mps, nts, fts, sks, sts, kts 126 cc-stop lpt, kst 21 total 27 types 399 the participants were shown a list of words corresponding to types of clusters in table 2 — each cluster gave the word containing that cluster as its final. therefore, the list included 27 words. it should be noted that in order to calculate the exact number of tokens in data, each consonant in the cluster was counted as one token. there were seven participants; each participant read one word for h. hustarna, m. melati 23 ijolte one time. therefore, with each consonant in a cluster, there were seven tokens made up. for example, for the group of lateral-stop, there were three clusters, one of which contained two final consonants – two tokens. therefore, each participant produced six tokens for this group, and seven participants made up a total number of 42 for this group of clusters. participants were recorded reading the wordlist. in total, 399 tokens were being analyzed. the data were then coded, as shown in appendix a. 3. findings after coding and analyzing the data, the phenomenon of producing english final consonant clusters reveals five main strategies employed by the vietnamese esl learners to have an ease in their pronunciation: deletion, voicing, devoicing, ə-insertion, and featural change. table 3 provides the number of tokens for each strategy in each group of clusters. it should be noted here that the percentage provided next to the number of tokens is calculated within each group of the cluster, not the percentage over the total number of tokens. table 3. strategies employed by esl learners deletion voicing devoicing ə-insertion feature-changing n % n % n % n % n % nasal-stop (56) 2 3.6 2 3.6 3 5.4 1 1.8 2 3.6 lateral-stop (42) 19 45.2 1 2.4 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 2.4 lateral-nasal (14) 7 50.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 7.1 fricative stop (42) 4 9.5 5 11.9 0 0.0 3 7.1 7 16.7 stop-s (70) 13 18.6 3 4.3 14 20.0 0 0.0 5 7.1 stop-stop (28) 9 32.1 3 10.7 0 0.0 2 7.1 1 3.6 cc-s (126) 53 42.1 1 0.8 0 0.0 1 0.8 3 2.4 cc-stop (21) 10 47.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 4.8 399 117 29.3 15 3.8 17 4.2 7 1.7 21 5.2 as shown in table 3, the most favored strategy employed by vietnamese esl learners is the deletion of a consonant(s) in the final cluster. roughly 30% of tokens found a show this strategy. the table also shows that the group that has the most significant number of consonantal deletion is lateral-nasal with 50% of its tokens found with deletion. as can be seen in appendix a, nearly all of the lateral sounds /l/ in this group is deleted. another evidence for lateral deletion is the percentage shown in lateral-stop group. as appendix a shows, roughly all of the deletion in this group is from the lateral sound. other groups that show the high percentage of deletion are cc-stop with 47.6% and cc-s with 42.1%. as can be observed in appendix a, almost no three-consonant cluster is pronounced without at-least-one-consonant deletion. it can also be seen in table 3 that deletion rarely occurs in groups of nasal-stop (3.6%) and fricative-stop (9.5%). the second-largest strategy favored by vietnamese esl learners is featural changing even though it makes up 5.2% of the total tokens only. table 3 indicates that the group with the highest rate of featural change is fricative-stop (16.7%). as can be seen in appendix a, most of the cases of featural change derive from the alveolar /t/ and postalveolar /ʃ/. the alveolar /t/ tends to be h. hustarna, m. melati 24 ijolte changed into dental stop /t̪/ while post alveolar /ʃ/ is changed into alveolar /s/. as observed in appendix a, most of the cases of this strategy occurring in other groups of cthe luster also derive from these two sounds. devoicing is also a strategy that vietnamese esl learners choose to deal with the final consonant cluster (4.2%). it is noticeable that 14 out of 17 cases of this strategy comes from stop-s group. as appendix a shows, almost all of the cases of devoicing are from the voiced alveolar /z/, which is devoiced into voiceless alveolar /s/. voicing also occurs as one of the strategies. even though the number is small, it shows a consistent trend that only two voiceless sounds /t/ and /b/ are voiced into /d/ and /p/, respectively. ə-insertion is a process found in the data when the word ending with a stop as /t/, /t̪/, or /k/. even though the number of evidence for this strategy is small, it shows that the phenomenon does exist in reality. 3.1. rankings in ot this section aims to propose possible constraints under which the final consonant cluster producing process are controlled. first, an attempt to present a set of faithfulness constraints with their ranking is proposed for all the five strategies stated in section 4. then, markedness constraints with ranking are explicitly proposed for each type of strategy. faithfulness constraints to assure the identicalness in terms of underlying and lexical form between the input and output, these faithfulness constraints are proposed. faithfulness max-io: input must be maximally represented in the output (no deletion) dep-io: output must be “dependent” on the input (no insertion) ident(f): each feature in input and output is identical (no featural change) ident(v): each voice in input and output is identical (no voice change) these constraints are expected to provide a universal for the underlying form of the final consonant clusters. as found in section 3, a high number of cluster bear the deletion process; therefore, max-io is a constraint to prevent speakers from deletion. in the analysis, some cases with ə-insertion were found. dep-io is proposed to control this process. moreover, vietnamese esl learners tend to change the consonant’s feature and voice; therefore, ident(f) and ident(v) constraints are given to reflect the phenomenon. according to the results in section 3, it seems that the cluster pronunciation tends to be less unusual when there is consonantal deletion. meanwhile, featural and voice changes less frequently occur in the data. schwa-insertion is the least favored strategy by the speakers. therefore, this result may imply the ranking for the ot in terms of faithfulness constraints as follow. h. hustarna, m. melati 25 ijolte (1) dep-io >> {ident(v), ident(f)} >> max-io kɔments dep-io ident(v) ident(f) max-io kɔmentz *  kɔmens * kɔmentsə * kɔmentʃ * the example above shows how ot works in the data. the example is also from the data of this study. markedness constraints in terms of universal grammar, markedness is encoded based on the type of strategy. 3.2. consonantal deletion according to the result in section 3, the deletion is consistently from the lateral /l/, while the deletion in other groups is entirely arbitrary, mainly due to the complexity of the cluster, not the feature of the consonant. therefore, two markedness constraints are proposed for deletion. mincoda: the coda contains minimally one consonant codalat: the coda must not contain lateral approximant regarding ranking in ot, it can be seen that mincoda is more important than faithfulness since it may decide the optimality of the candidate. in other words, a candidate can be unnatural if it has no coda for a final cluster. meanwhile, codalat is not that important, so it should be ranked lower than faithfulness. (2) mincoda >> dep-io >> {ident(v), ident(f)} >> max-io >> codalat help mincoda dep-io ident(v) ident(f) max-io codalat hel * *  hep * helpə * * he * 3.3. featural and voice changing as observed in appendix a, it can be seen that the sound that is chosen to substitute the original one should remain the same manner of articulation. for example, /t/ and /t̪/ are both stop; /s/ and /ʃ/ are both fricative. this grammar also applies for voicing and devoicing changing process. therefore, the constraint for this strategy is proposed as follow. h. hustarna, m. melati 26 ijolte reartm: the consonant changed in terms of either voice or feature must remain its manner of articulation. when putting this constraint in the ranking, it can be seen that this is a critical constraint to determine the optimality of the candidate. therefore, it is located after dep-io in the set of constraints. (3) mincoda >> dep-io >> reartm >> {ident(v), ident(f)} >> max-io >> codalat dogz min coda dep-io reartm ident(v) ident(f) max-io codalat dogr * *  dogs * do * dogzo * 3.4. schwa insertion as analyzed in section 3, schwa is inserted only after some final stop consonants. therefore, it decides to change the faithfulness constraint dep-io into dep(-ə) with a markedness constraint finstop. dep-(-ə): output must be “dependent” on the input (no insertion except ə) finstop: the coda must end with a stop (excluding the vowel following). dep-(-ə) still remains its importance, so it still remains the position of high ranking. finstop is not that important since it is only to control the schwa insertion; therefore, it stands at the same ranking with codalat. (4) mincoda >> dep-(-ə)>> reartm >> {ident(v), ident(f)} >> max-io >> {codalat, finstop} best min coda dep-(ə) reartm ident(v) ident(f) max-io codal at fin stop be * * * *  best̪ə * besto * besr * * * * * 4. conclusion this study is an attempt to apply ot in second language phonology. by examining the phenomenon of producing english final consonant clusters by vietnamese esl learners, the study has indicated five strategies that the learners adopt to deal with the difference with their l1 in terms of final consonant clusters: deletion, voicing, devoicing, ə-insertion, and featural change. besides, the study has attempted to propose a universal set of constraints for this phonological phenomenon, which is expected to help judge phonological candidates. this study is a reference for esl teachers who are teaching english to vietnamese speakers to understand their phenomenon of producing the final sounds. it should be admitted that no more participants could be recruited for the project, which may affect the generalization of the claim. however, this study can be considered a pilot study for largerscaled research in future, which is expected to have more substantial pedagogical contributions to esl/efl in the vietnamese context. h. hustarna, m. melati 27 ijolte references [1] auger, j. (2001). phonological variation and optimality theory: evidence from word-initial vowel epenthesis in vimeu picard. language variation and change, 13(3), 253-303. [2] beckman, j. n. (2013). positional faithfulness: an optimality theoretic treatment of phonological asymmetries. routledge. [3] bermúdez-otero, r. (2006). phonological change in optimality theory. encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 9, 497-505. [4] boersma, p., dekkers, j., & weijer, j. v. d. (2000). introduction optimality theory: phonology, syntax, and acquisition. in j. dekkers, f. v. d. leeuw & j. v. d. weijer (eds.), optimality theory: phonology, syntax, and acquisition: oxford university press. [5] cristia, a. (2018). can infants learn phonology in the lab? a meta-analytic answer. cognition, 170, 312-327. [6] gussenhoven, c., & jacobs, h. (2017). understanding phonology (fourth edition). london and new york: routledge. [7] itô, j., mester, a., & padgett, j. (1995). licensing and underspecification in optimality theory. linguistic inquiry, 26(4), 571-613. [8] labov, w. (1972). sociolinguistic patterns (no. 4). university of pennsylvania press. [9] łubowicz, a. (2002). derived environment effects in optimality theory. lingua, 112(4), 243-280. [10] nguyen, a., & brouha, c. (1998). the production of word final consonants in english by l1 speakers of vietnamese. working papers in linguistics, 5, 73-94. [11] osburne, a. g. (1996). final cluster reduction in english l2 speech: a case study of a vietnamese speaker. applied linguistics, 17(2), 164-181. [12] prince, a., & smolensky, p. (1993/2008). optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. john wiley & sons. [13] moira, y. (1993). cantonese loanword phonology and optimality theory. journal of east asian linguistics, 2(3), 261-291. [14] wiltshire, c. r. (2006). word-final consonant and cluster acquisition in indian english(es). in 30th boston university conference on language development (pp. 1-10). paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 49 integrating ict in english language learning: students’ perceptions of a state university in jambi province dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi universitas sebelas maret, jawa tengah, indonesia oktaliadwi@yahoo.com; ngadisodok@yahoo.com; and pripus.lppmuns@yahoo.co.id how to cite this paper: oktalia, d., ngadiso, supriyadi, s. (2018). integrating ict in english language learning: students’ perceptions of a state university in jambi province. international journal of language teaching and education. 7(2), 49-59 accepted: 28 march: 2018 published: 31march: 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this research was done in order to know students‘ perception toward integrating ict in english language learning and also to find out problem that may faced by students during the ict integration. this research used quantitative method in order to describe students‘ perception toward the use of ict in ell. this research involved english students from a state university in jambi province as the respondents. the data were collected by using questionnaires adapted from chutopama (2004). the questionnaires consisted of items related to the use of ict for their learning, their reason(s) of using ict, as well as the problem(s) encountered through the use of ict for the learning. after that, the data were analyzed by using spss 16 that pointed at a point in which the students agreed that ict is beneficial for their learning process, especially in terms of accessing information for learning. nevertheless, employing ict in learning needs to be supported by sufficient equipment, and needs to educate the students to be an agile user for better, more effective, and more efficient process of learning. subject areas language teaching keywords ict in language learning, english language learning, students‘ perceptions introduction good quality of a university can bring positive effects to the quality of its students. a university is considered of having a better quality if it can pass some criteria such as having sufficient facilities for learning process, an efficient management, a democratic leadership, qualified learning process, sufficient library, and the utilization of ict . one of those criteria investigated in this research was the utilization of ict in learning process. ict is defined as a tool to distribute, process, store and exchange information in the set of application or service . ict refers to the use of technological tools for storing, creating, and sharing information. in other words, ict refers to a kind of devices that can help people in accessing information, storing it and sharing it with other people. the use of ict is considered as a potential factor to help students in improving their academic achievement in language learning process. the use of ict can help students in accessing information easier in many places which is a way to produce an active learning related to real life which also increases educational quality among universities . therefore, the open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 50 use of ict to support teaching and learning of english needs to be investigated. most of the students are more interested in learning when the teachers make use of ict as their media to create an interactive and innovative english learning. but there are still some colleges which do not fully used ict in learning process, they are lack of access to ict facilities, including using interactive software to support four skills of english. this condition provides boredom situation and make student becoming passive in learning process. besides, the traditional method still remain dominating in teaching and learning process while computers are seen to have potential to make significant contribution to teaching and learning of english. in english department of a state university in jambi, the use of ict in teaching and learning activity integrates the use of projector so far. projector helps students getting visual material which might help them understood the lesson better. however, the use of ict cannot go any further, there is no other ict facilities supporting this circumstances. the use of projectors alone seems no longer enough to accommodate the learning process. based on the explanation above, it is important to know the quality of the ict itself, since it is used in learning process and such information can be gauged from students’ perception toward the use of ict, therefore, the problems of ict utilization can be investigated. furthermore, this phenomenon makes the researcher interested in conducting a research to find out what are the students’ perceptions related to the utilization of ict in learning process in a state university in jambi. the research entitled the use of ict in language learning: students’ perceptions of a state university in jambi province. literature review definition of ict (information, communication, and technology) ict is defined as the use of technologies to store, to create, to accumulate, to edit and to share information in various forms (tinuoye and adogbeji, 2013). ict is considered as the innovation in technology which involves the use of computers, internet, and other devices exist in people’s daily life. in other word, it can be concluded that ict refers to technology tools which are used to help people in accessing or storing information bandele, (2006) in tinuoye and adogbeji (2013). ict and education ict is considered potentially effective in accelerating, enriching, and make skills deepen, even motivating and engaging students in order to support learners for having experience that will be useful for learners’ future job (davis and tearle, 1999; lemke and coughlin, 1998; yusuf, 2005; as cited in amin, 2013). using ict and integrating it in learning process may bring positive result for both teachers and learners because it can produce effective learning (abidin, et al., 2011). in order to make the integration of ict is effective, it is important for teachers to know the nature of learning itself (divaharan & wong, 2003; as cited in abidin et al., 2011). technologies improve teaching and learning process through active engagement based on the real life situations faced by both of participants (roschelle et al., 2000; as cited in abidin et al., 2011). furthermore, it is important for teachers to introduce ict to learners in order to make ict work more effective. in introducing ict in the classroom, there will be three kinds of conditions that should be considered by the teachers. first, teachers supposed to believe that technology is effective to be used in classroom, second, teachers supposed to believe that the technology implementation will not disturb the teaching and learning process, the last is teachers supposed to trust that teachers are the technology controller not the opposite, (zhao & cziko, 2001; as cited in amin, 2013). moreover, ict is able to expand access to education in following ways (tinio, 2002; as cited in tinuoye & adogbeji, 2013, pp. 23-24):  anytime and anywhere: ict is a possible solution for time and place problem for learning process. dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 51 ict can face the time lag problem and distance learning since ict makes students possible to access the material anytime and anywhere. the example of this point is online course which let learners to access the material 24 hours in a day. moreover, distance will be no longer problem since both teachers and learners would be benefit through easily access the material such as the use of educational program in radio broadcasting. additionally, certain types of ict, such as teleconferencing technologies, enable instruction to be received simultaneously by multiple, geographically dispersed learners.  access to remote learning resources: by integrating ict in teaching and learning process, both teachers and students will not be depended on the printed materials anymore. the help of the internet ease them to accessed the learning materials whenever and wherever they. moreover, ict devices help many schools in developing countries to overcome the limited sources of learning material that could not be obtained from their library. in addition, since ict makes the global conversation be possible, so it may ease the learners to communicate with other people researchers, professionals, mentor, or even expert in education in order to gain intended information.  improving the quality of education and training is a critical issue, particularly at a time of educational expansion: ict devices may improve the education quality, which is, ict may increase the learners’ motivation and engagement, ict also facilitates the acquisition of basic skills, and also improve training for teacher (haddad & jurich, 2002). additionally, ict devices are also transformational tools which, when used appropriately, can promote the shift to a learner-centred environment.  motivating to learn: the challenging and authentic materials which are from the videos, television, or even computer software that combine text, sound, and even moving images may engage the student during the learning process. moreover, the use of sound effect, song, dramatizations, and other features of interactive video may require learners to listening and involve in the given learning material. furthermore, other type of ict, networked computers with internet connectivity can increase learner motivation as it combines the media richness and interactivity of other ict devices with the opportunity to connect with real people and to participate in real world events.  enhancing teacher training: ict devices are also used for improving the access of teacher training quality such as in china. the large scale radio and television based teacher education has been conducted for many years by the china central radio and tv university, the shanghai radio and tv university and many other rtvus in the country (carnoy, et al, 2002). weakness and strength of ict in supporting education, ict must have the strength and weaknesses that can be used as consideration for integrating it in learning process. vyasulu (2012) already divided the strength and weaknesses of ict into some points, they are:  individualization of learning it means that people can learn individually and not as homogenous group. ict allows each person to access the knowledge individually.  interactivity interactivity is the way in which someone can relate to the content, go forward, backward in the content, start at any point depending upon prior knowledge, instead of just stuck at the same point. ict helps people to be more active in accessing the knowledge that can be taken from many sources.  low per unit cost dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 52 individually, ict can reduce the cost of education from very high to very low.  distance and climate insensitive it is easy for every people to access knowledge through ict although she or he are not in a same place or it can be said that place will not be a problem for ict or even the climate of the place.  can serve multiple teaching functions and diverse audience ict especially the computer and internet based can be useful in drill and practice, to help diagnose and solve problems, for accessing information and knowledge about various related themes.  high speed delivery, wide range at low cost ict let every people access the information quickly and the information or knowledge will be delivered quickly as well, for instance, in accessing information using internet, someone only need to type everything she or he tried to find and internet will work fast to get the information.  uniform quality if content is well produced and is of good quality, the same quality can be delivered to the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural equally and at the same low cost. while the weaknesses of ict will be mentioned in the following points:  high infrastructure and start up costs it cost money to build ict system and to maintain it.  tend toward centralized uniform content in economies of scale the larger the numbers, the lower the cost. it means that sometimes people try to reach large numbers so they make content common without considering individual differences.  are not ideally location and problem sensitive address problems in a general way, without special effort it can not solve local and culturally sensitive problems.  problems of reach, access, remain not everyone has equal access and not everyone benefits equally from the use of ict.  end to create new class of knowledge rich or knowledge poor those who have access and knowledge through the media become richer and those who do not become poorer, widening the “knowledge or digital gap” between rich and poor. it can occur because as the previous point said that ict will cost the user, for those who have money they can buy supported tools for support the ict itself.  essentially delivery systems a medium is different from the content and sometimes it is forgotten that ict can deliver everything without any filter because ict devices are essentially meant only to deliver content, not to change attitudes or bring about behavior change.  hard to assess impact learning from ict delivered content is difficult to assess since such learning is of a multidimensional and long term kind. so sometimes ict still used in the wrong way. problems in ict utilization there must be some problems that will occur when applying ict in one institution and the problem that will occur generally divided into some points as stated below:  insufficient ict facilities and unsophisticated accessories problems of quality and lack of resources are compounded by the new realities faced by higher education institutions battle to cope with every increasing student’s numbers (nwosu and ugbomo, 2012; as cited in tinuoye and adogbeji, 2013). ict will not bring advantages if the supported facilities are not fully provided and it will not work properly if there is not balance between number of students and number of dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 53 facilities or ict tools.  insufficient people who master ict although some institutions already provided ict for learning process, but it is also important to consider about human resources who will use it. instructor or teacher even lecturer must posses ict skill so a training is needed in order to help them in mastering ict as a result they can help their students. there are many teachers or lecturers who only have a little or no training in information and technology and its integration into the curriculum (u.s. congres, 1988 ; munday, windham & stamper, 1991; as cited chutopama, 2004). they can not follow the development of ict then they just teach as they teach before using white board or chalk board as a result most of their students have less motivation to enjoy the learning session or even just follow the class.  low quality machine internet as one of ict part must need a good connection in order to help students surfing in online networking easily. fast internet connection will help learners in accessing information. it will not take a long time to find out what they need, but sometimes connection of the internet depends on the machine itself. insufficient number, low quality, and readiness of the computer machine can disturb students in accessing information because of slow connection (jaunchainat, 1998; as cited in chutopama, 2004). based on the result of the study, it was recommended for university to maximize the internet usage by improving the efficiencies of the system, training, teaching process, and providing students with printed internet book.  inappropriate usage since ict especially internet is very easy to be gained, teachers or lecturers will face difficulty in controlling students. choosing material in teaching will be easy for teacher but students will find it difficult because they can not measure how far they get the information (jetton, 2003; as cited in chutopama, 2004). some critics also come as respond toward the use of ict, it is viewed as inappropriate for children to use internet that cause some people think that ict does not being impact to language learning. ict and english language learning nowadays, as technology developed, ict occurs as one potential learning aid. one of ict devices is computer. computers can make interactive human communication being possible. the computer based activity can connect people to others who come from different place that is local or global network by the help of internet (kern and warschaeur, 2001; as cited in cahyono and widiati, 2011). by having access to internet, students can see the potentials of almost any website for learning english (cahyono and widiati, 2011). there must be many sites designed especially for students of english as a foreign language in which they can exchange email or information, do exercise and find out the answer, browse many learning materials. the real advantage of ict in english language learning for both teachers and students is they can get access to the authentic english (harmer, 2001:149; as cited in cahyono and widiati, 2011). they can browse and visit the site whenever they want and wherever they are. besides, it is also possible for them to communicate with a native speaker or other language learners who come from all over the world thus exposing themselves to the target language and they can access it 24 hours a day. furthermore, there are others learning process which involve computer without access to internet. first, the use of interactive text during the listening class. the existence of a text can increase students’ motivation during the listening class (jakodobstirr and hooper, 1995; as cited in yusof, 2012). text here is not a usual text, this text is provided in the computer which appear dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 54 while the audio is played. it can help students to improve their listening ability. second, the use of three different media which are audio, video tape, and cd-rom in listening activity that make students give better performance on task and get effective comprehension and recall while using it in listening test (brett, 1997; as cited in yusof, 2012). third, the use of ict in designing activities for teaching done by the teacher such as some result of expert study showed that ict is used in designing and doing activities in teaching pronunciation (lee, 2008; as cited in yusof 2012), grammar (al-jarf, 2005; as cited in yusof 2012), vocabulary (tsou, wang, & li, 2002; as cited in yusof 2012), listening and speaking (hochart, 1998; as cited in yusof 2012), communication skills (lee, 2002; as cited in yusof 2012), reading (akyel & ercetin, 2009; as cited in yusof 2012), and writing (chikamatsu, 2003; as cited in yusof 2012). method this research used the quantitative method which involved 76 students as respondents from english department in a state university of jambi province. as stated in the purpose of this research above, the use of ict in teaching and learning in some classes of english department was investigated. through this research, problems encountered by the students were discovered by inventing the students’ perceptions. 76 respondents were those who have experienced the use of ict during the teaching and learning activities in the classroom. then, the data were obtained through questionnaires given to the respondents in order to find out their perceptions towards the use of ict and the problem that they encountered in the use of ict during the learning process. finally, the data were analyzed by using spss 16. the result was taken into consideration to draw conclusion regarding to the students’ perceptions towards the use of ict in a state university of jambi province. results and discussion students’ perception toward the use of ict in english language learning a1 : it equipment and services are available at the university. a2 : it equipments are available in classroom. a3 : lecturers at the university use ict equipment in teaching. a4 : lecturers at the university assigned students to use ict equipment. a5 : students of unja use ict for doing project. figure 1. use of ict equipment in terms of “often” statement based on the chart, it could be seen that ict devices were available at classrooms in the university. the chart also shows that lecturers and students are already familiar with ict devices. lecturers tended to use ict in teaching to deliver material or just assigned students to do assignment, while students tend to use ict to do the assignment given by the lecturer. these findings indicate that the lecturers and the students consider that ict is, a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 15.80% 11.80% 36.80% 39.50% 35.50% dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 55 somehow, useful in teaching and learning activities. ict makes the learning activities easier in some ways. besides that, over past two decades, ict already introduced and used during the learning process, than it indicated that the educational stakeholders have realized the potential use of it as a learning tool and have determined that students need to be able in using it (jenes, 2000; chutopama, 2004). b1 = it equipment like cd-rom and internet are very useful to teaching – learning activities. b2 = the information searched from it is updated. b3 = the information searched from it is reliable. b4 = it makes learning and studying easy. b5 = it makes learning it easy and convenient to search information. b6 = it saves money. b7 = it saves time. b8 = it makes global communication easy. b9 = it helps make new discoveries and technology. b10 = it help people make decision and solve problem. figure 2. usefulness of ict in term “always” statement based on the findings, it can be concluded that the students agree that ict is useful to be used in english language learning, because it benefits them in some ways. an easier global communication due to the existence of ict ranked as the highest percentage of the ict utilization done by the respondents, then followed by the tools of ict such as cd-rom and internet which are very useful to teaching-learning activities as well, and also it makes learning and studying easy since when students would like to search information. there are many communication services that can be accessed through one of ict devices that is internet. by accessing the internet, students can check many potentials websites to communicate with others in learning english (bambang cahyono and utami widiati, 2011). there are sites which are designed for english students in order to exchange emails, journals, or other learning materials. in addition, as cited in cahyono and widiati (2011), the real advantage of ict in english language learning for both teachers and students is they can get access to the authentic english (harmer, 2001:149). they can browse and visit the sites whenever they want and wherever they are. besides, it is also possible for them to communicate with a native speaker or other english language learners who come from all over the world. therefore, they experienced a lot more exposures to the target language and also accesses during 24 hours a day which are very supportive for 42.10% 32.90% 11.80% 40.80% 40.80% 23.70% 26.30% 57.90% 39.50% 15.80% b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 b8 b9 b10 dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 56 their english learning process. furthermore, there is also another learning process which involves a set of computer without accessing the internet, such as the utilization of cd-rom that could help the students during the learning process as what they have agreed through the questionnaires. cd-rom was frequently used in “listening”. according to brett (1997) as cited in yusof (2012), cd-rom utilization in listening activity helped the students to perform better on task and learn effectively. ict is not only useful for students but also for lecturers. some experts have also provided evidences of ict utilization in designing various activities for english teaching and learning done by the teachers such as pronunciation (lee, 2008), grammar (al-jarf, 2005), vocabulary (tsou, wang, and li, 2002), listening and speaking (hochart, 1998), communication skills (lee, 2002), reading (akyel and ercetin, 2009), and writing (chikamatsu, 2003) as cited in . ict is considered potentially effective to accelerate, enrich, and deepen skills, as well as to motivate and engage students, to help relate school experience to work practices, create economic viability for tomorrow's workers, as well as strengthening teaching and helping schools change (davis and tearle, 1999; lemke and coughlin, 1998; cited by yusuf, 2005) in amin (2013). utilization and integration of ict in learning process may bring positive results for both teachers and learners, because it can produce effective learning . problems during the use of ict in english language learning c1 = the computers serving it are low in quality c2 = there are very few staff using it in their classes. c3 = most subject content is not suitable for it use. c4 = limited time to use it. c5 = the information search from it do not meet the needs c6 = don’t know how to operate the computer, cd-rom, or internet. c7 = the information search from it always change. c8 = lack of knowledge in writing references from it. c9 = lack of knowledge and skills in using english to search information from it. c10 = the university does not realize the importance of it in classroom activities. c11 = the lecturer do not realize the importance of it in the classroom activities and assignment of the learner. figure 3. percentage of problems encountered by students 0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 c7 c8 c9 c10 c11 30.30% 36.80% 26.30% 34.20% 17.10% 14.50% 36.80% 25.00% 23.70% 23.70% 23.70% international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 57 the chart shows percentage of problems encountered by students during the use of ict that based on “agree” statement. the highest percentage gained by problem “there are very few lecturers using it in their classes” and “the information search from it always change” that is about 36.80 percent, then followed by “limited time to use it (c4) and the computer serving it are low in quality (c1). based on this data, it shows that students agree the number one problem comes from the availability of ict tools and the content of information they need. the highest percentage gained by c2 and c7. it indicates that although ict tools have already been provided by university, some of the lecturers did not fully utilize ict tools during the learning process or the other reasons were, first, only some lecturers who could master the ict usage and second, it could be related to the limitation of time to use it which made some lecturers felt reluctant in some ways integrating ict in learning process. although the institution has already provided ict for learning process, it was also important to consider about human resources who would use it. instructors or teachers even lecturers must have ict skill, so a training is needed in order to help them in mastering ict in order to be able to help their students. there are many teachers or lecturers who only have a little or no training in information and technology and its integration into the curriculum (u.s. congress, 1988; munday, windham and stamper, 1991; as cited in chutopama (2004). they cannot catch up with the development of ict, as the result, they just teach as they teach before using white board or chalk board which, circumstantially, affected the motivation of the student that some of the students might experience demotivation due to the monotonous activities in learning in the classroom. moreover, the lesser the teachers or lecturers integrate ict in learning process, the lesser exposures to english experienced by the students which means that the students might not get optimal sources to practice their english in comparing to a condition where the lecturers integrated ict in learning process. in a previous study done by kulik (1994) cited by mikre (2011) shows that students who used tutorial software in reading scored significantly higher on reading scores. very young students could write their own stories by the help of computer then could gain higher scores in writing. moreoever, students who use computer for writing scored higher on measures writing skills. the use of ict facilities mostly show higher gains than those who don’t use . the next problem was low quality of ict devices. it indicated that the machine that was used to support ict utilization needed to be investigated to find out if the machine was still functional or not, then whether it was also needed to be updated or not, in order to make the machine go with the growing ict devices and programs today. besides, it was also about the connection to the internet itself. for instance, though the students owned supportive ict devices, when the connection broke down or was bad, it became useless for them. and, when learners become frustrated in learning because of the lack of equipment, it can bring negative effect among the learners as this similar problem appeared in the previous study done by chutopama (2004). students can be less motivated and lose their spirit in learning, if these problems are not solved. fast internet connection will help learners in accessing information easily. it will not take a long time to find out what they need, but sometimes connection of the internet depends on the machine itself. insufficient number, low quality, and readiness of the computer machine can disturb students in accessing information because of slow connection (jaunchainat, 1998; as cited in chutopama, 2004). based on the result of the study, it was recommended for university to maximize the internet usage by improving the efficiencies of the system, training, teaching process, dwi oktalia, ngadiso, and slamet supriyadi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 58 and providing students with printed internet book. the lowest percentage was gained by c6 and followed by c5 that is “don’t know how to operate computer, cd-rom, or internet” and “the information search from it do not meet the needs”. based on this result, it indicates that majority of the of the students of this university are able to use computer and the other ict devices and the information that they search through ict devices meet their needs so it helps them during the learning process. conclusion based on the findings, it can be concluded that students agreed that ict is useful to be used in english language learning since it can bring advantages for them. several advantages that gain high percentage are it makes global communication easy, it equipments like cd-rom and internet are very useful to teaching-learning activities, and it makes learning and studying easier, since students only need to type some words into the browsing engines to search information from the internet and thousands, even millions of source will come up. another perception of students was also taken from the use of ict itself which more focused on the utilization. majority of students stated that it equipments were already provided in the university and they already used it in learning process. students tended to use ict services for searching information given by lecturer, while lecturer tended to use it for presenting material or as media in delivering task. while the problems that faced by students during the utilization of ict were, more or less, the same with the problem that faced by the respondents of siranee chutopama research in 2004, but the highest number gained by the statement was few lecturers using it in their classes and the information always changed that make students being confused to determine which information reliable for their need (36.80%). references bambang yudi cahyono and utami widiati. (2011). the teaching of english as a foreign language in indonesia. malang: state university of malang press. chutopama, s. (2004). the utilization of information technology in the teaching learning process : the case of rajabhat institute buriram, thailand. thailand: central luzon state university. gloria oyovwetinuoye and benson oghenevwogaga adogbeji. (2013). information communication technologies (ict) as an enhancing tool in quality education for transformation of individual and the nation. hr mars exploring intelectual capital , 3, 21-32. mehrak rahimi & samaneh yadollahi. (2011). ict use in efl classes: a focus on efl teachers’ characteristics. world journal of english language , 17-29. mikre, f. (2011). the roles of information communication technologies in education review article with emphasis to the computer and internet. the role of information communication , 4-16. mohamad jafre zainol abidin, ibrahim bileed abuhelaiga and majid pour-mohammadi. (2011). the use of information and communication technology in teaching english as a foreign language in libya : a survey. elt voices india , 19-25. noor-ul-amin, s. (2013). an effective use of ict for education and learning by drawing on worldwide knowledge, research, and experience: ict as a change agent for education. department of education, university of kashmir , 1-13. reddi, u. v. (2012). role of icts in education and development : potential, pitfalls, and challenges. 173-186. tinio, v. l. (2002). ict for development. ict in education , 3-28. retrieved from http:www.eprmers.org on december 2009) wijaya, a. a. (2013). study kebijakan uns menuju world class university. semarang: universitas sebelas maret . yusof, n. (2012). effective uses of computer-based software in teaching the listening skill in esl. malaysian journal of educational technology , 43-53 international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 1 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 60 the implementation of ctl approach in teaching speaking at college students akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi rahmah universitas jambi, jambi, indonesia rahmahkelasb@gmail.com how to cite this paper: rahmah, (2018). the implementation of ctl approach in teaching speaking at college students akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi. international journal of language teaching and education, 8(2), 60-70 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract the study aimed at describing the use of contextual teaching and learning on students’ speaking skills. apart from analyzing the students’ problems, it also looked at improvement in the students’ speaking skills through the use of contextual teaching and learning. the research involved of the third semester students at keluargabunda jambi midwifery academy academic year 2015/2016. the students were 50 students consists of 25 as experimental group and 25 students as control group. this was an experimental research, conducted in experimental group and control group. each group consists of five meeting. the material for the first meeting was about examination of pregnancy. the second meeting was about examination of leopold. the third meeting was about baby’s care. the fourth meeting was about breast self-exam. and the last meeting was about infuse. in collecting the data, the researcher used observation and recording. the findings show that there was a significant effect between students who taught using ctl and who taught by using conventional teaching. the test result of experimental group after being analyzed was 0.023 < 0.05. the analysis was conducted the mean score of each category both pretest and posttestin experimental group was higher than control group. therefore, it can be concluded that contextual teaching and learning can help teacher to teach the students easier and students are easier to understand the material. subject areas language teaching keywords ctl, speaking skills introduction richards and renandya (2002) stated that a large percentage of the world’s language learners study english in order to develop proficiency in speaking. brown and yule (1999) stated that speaking is depending on the complexity of the information to be communicated however; the speaker sometimes finds it difficult to clarify what they want to say. in the context of foreign language learning, however, there is a problem which teachers have come across open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 61 for a long time. it is the problem of the students who probably understand english when other people speak have some ideas but they cannot speak and do not know what must be uttered and students who are structurally competent but who cannot communicate appropriately. there are some of reasons why those problems arise. first, inhibition, it means that the students are difficult to say anything in english because they are shy and afraid of making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts. there are some students who prefer to speak only if they are sure that what they are going to say is correct, and some others keep silent showing no interest or participation at all along the course. second, nothing to say, even they do not think anything to say. generally, when students are asked to speak about a given topic, they claim that they have no idea about that point. some uninterested students remain silent which is not good for them, but the worst is their effect on the others. sometimes, their lack of interest or boredom leads to disruption and bad behavior (harmer, 2001). third, low or uneven participation, only some of students are interested in learning english. it means that, only some of students are active in learning english. however, there are others who tend to be dominant and take almost the whole students time talk. harmer (2001) suggests that weak participators need to be streamed in groups in order to let them work together. in this case they will not hide behind strong participators and the teacher can achieve a high level of participation. this problem is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all. fourth, mother-tongue use, it is a problem that occurs most of the time without the teachers’ encouragement and it is also widely spread among foreign language students of the same mother tongue. furthermore, harmer (2001) lists some reasons language students use their mother language in classes, language is required by the activity which in itself should be adequate to the students’ level. when students are asked to do something that is higher than their capacities, they tend to prefer to use their first language to express their ideas. in classes where all or a number of the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it because it is easier, because it feels unnatural to speak one another in a foreign language, and they feel less expose if they speak their mother tongue. to overcome this problem, the process involved in a fluent conversational interaction need to be dealt with. for this reason, the researcher would like to help students develop their speaking skill by applying contextual teaching and learning method. contextual teaching and learning (ctl) emphasizes on the students’ involvement in the whole process of teaching and learning. it helps the teachers to relate the subject matter content to the real world situations and motivate students to make connections to their lives as family members, citizens, and workers and engage in the hard work that learning requires. literature review contextual teaching and learning (ctl) contextual teaching and learning (ctl) is a holistic learning process and aims to help students to understand the meaning of teaching materials to the context of day to day (the context of personal, social and cultural), so that students have the knowledge or skills that are dynamic and flexible to actively constructing their own understanding ( bandono, 2008). berns and erickson (2001) define the concept of ctl as an innovative instructional process that helps students to connect the content they are learning to the life contexts in which that content could be used. in the same line, in indonesian context ctl is the concept of learning that help teacher’s content associate between the lesson and the real world situation with the rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 62 students and encourage students to make the relationship between knowledge held by the implementations in their lives as members of the community (depdiknas, 2001). in addition, sears (2003) argues that ctl approach is an educational process that aims to help students see meaning in the academic material they are studying by connecting academic subject with the context of their daily lives, that is, with the context of their personal, social and cultural circumstance. ctl is concept that helps teachers relate subject matter to real world situations. in addition, (johnson, 2002, p.16) argues that ctl is a system that stimulates the brain to weave patterns that express meaning. ctl is a brain compatible system of instruction that generates meaning by linking academic content with the context of a student’s daily life. overall, ctl is an approach that focuses on the students’ center. components of ctl the implementation of each contextual teaching and learning components will be explained bellow constructivism constructivism is building on knowledge known by the student. education is student-centered; students have to explain via themselves. explanation can use metacognition explain via metaphor. semiotics, or meaning of words, is important to keep in mind. constructivism is a theory, a tool, a lens for examining educational practices. the characteristic of constructivism learning is active students, they involve in learning process depend on their ability, knowledge and style of learning. they are guided by teacher as facilitator, teacher will help them if they get learning difficulty. inquiry inquiry means the teachers have to design an activity refer to any material to reach expected competence in all subjects. learning based on inquiry, students are supported to used scientist strategy. they are supposed observing an objection t matter, giving question, looking for information that needs to analyze data and taking conclusion. the characteristics of inquiry learning are students demanded to responsible with their own learning. teacher are able to know how far student concept or theory does. inquiry learning gives, actives and concentrate experience to students, they will learn how to solve, make decision, study to observe and give them an opportunity to study forever (michael & richard, 2007). questioning there is international concern about the extent to which students are excluded from school. between and within countries there is significant variation in the numbers of students whose behavior is regarded as problematic, challenging and inappropriate (daniels, 2001). questioning is the main strategy of contextual teaching and learning, because knowledge starts from questioning. in learning process, it considered by teacher’s activity to support, guide and evaluate student’s ability. the application of questioning strategy can be applied almost in every activity, between student and student, teacher and student, student and teacher, student and other people who invited in the class. questioning activity also can be found when student discussed, study in group, find difficulty, observation. these activities will support the student giving questioning. learning community learning community advocates a holistic approach to language learning since “true” human learning is both cognitive and effective. this is termed whole-person learning. such learning takes place in a communicate situation where teachers and students are involved in “ an interaction…in which both experience a sense of their own wholeness” (curran, 1977). concept of learning community suggests the rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 63 students to cooperate with other people, make communication, help each other and completion between students and another should be avoided. on of example of learning community in english subject is making team work. they try to understand english text, share and make conclusion. cooperate skill is one of learning community purpose. learning community has multidimensional meaning, in cooperative learning should be learning community, sharing ideas, discussion, service learning, study club, contextual teaching and learning sources, problem based learning, learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, learning how to live together, task based learning, school based management and collaborative learning. modeling modeling is one of components in ctl method, in learning skill or specific knowledge. modeling is offering behavior for imitation. modeling assists by giving the students information and a remembered image that can serve as a performance standard. model can be imitated by student such as how to pronounce or spell some words, operate and do something. the teacher is not only a model but students, native speaker, doctor, police etc. reflection reflection is one of important parts of contextual approach, it is the way of thinking of everything that has been learned in the past. reflection evaluates effective program which has been done. the teacher help the students in connecting the previous and new knowledge. authentic assessment authentic assessment show (among other things) that learning has occurred; are blended in to the teaching or learning process; and provide students with opportunities and direction for improvement. authentic assessment is used to monitor student progress and inform teaching practices. assessment is collecting data that describes learning student development. it is important to know the result as long as the teaching and learning process not only the test (middle and final test) but all of the student process. materials for teaching speaking instructional design is refers to the systematic and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction into plans for instructional material, activities, information resources and evaluation (smith & ragan, 2005). in order to ensure that materials are devised, selected and adapted in reliable and valid ways, we need to ensure that materials evaluation establishes procedures which are thorough, rigorous, systematic and principled (tomlinson, 2003). oktarina (2002) underlines that speaking skill is the ability of arranging sentences since communication happens through the series of the sentences constructing in performing the various behavior from various society. one way to understand the notion of speaking skills, as suggested by (bygate, 1987, p.5-6), is by viewing them in two basic aspects: motor-receptive skills and interaction skills. the former involve a mastering of sounds and structure not necessarily in any particular context. the later involves making decisions about and how to say things in specific communicative situations to convey the right intentions or maintain relationship. this perception can be further understood by observing that these two sets of skills must not represent clear cut distinctions. nunan (2003) defines the meaning of “ teaching speaking” as teaching esl learners to (1) produce the english speech sounds and sound patterns; (2) use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language; (3) select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter; (4) organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence: (5) use language as a means of expressing values and judgments; rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 64 (6) use the language quickly and confidently in view unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency. components of speaking as proverb says ‘practice makes perfect’. therefore, students must practice to speak english as often as possible so that they are able to speak english fluently and accurately. a part of that, to speak english, we have to know some important component. the component is what aspect influencing how well people speak english. here is the component of speaking skill according to (syakur, 1987, p.5), speaking is a complex skill because at least it is concerned with components of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. transferring it is needed for students to arrange a correct sentence in conversation. it is in line with explanation suggested by (heaton, 1978, p.5) that student’s ability to manipulate structure and to distinguish appropriate grammatical form in appropriate one. the utility of grammar is also to learn the correct way to gain expertise in a language in oral and written form. vocabulary vocabulary means the appropriate diction which is used in communication. without having a sufficient vocabulary, one cannot communicate effectively or express their ideas in both oral and written form. having limited vocabulary is also a barrier that precludes learners from learning a language. language teachers, therefore should process considerable knowledge on how to manage an interesting classroom so that the learners can gain a great success in their vocabulary learning. without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. pronunciation pronunciation is the way for students’ to produce clearer language when they speak. it deals with the phonological process that refers to the components of a grammar made up of the elements and principles that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language. there are two features of pronunciation; phonemes and supra segmental features. a speaker who constantly mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand (gerard, 2000). fluency fluency can be defined as the ability to speak fluently and accurately. fluency in speaking is the aim of many language learners. signs of fluency include a reasonably fast speed of speaking and only a small number of pauses and “ums” or “ers”. these signs indicate that the speaker does not have to spend a lot of time searching for the language items needed to express the message (brown, 1997) teaching speaking skills through ctl according to rusman (2008), there are some steps to develop each components of ctl: first, developing students’ thinking to make learning more meaningful. second, doing inquiry activities for all topics taught, developing students' curiosity through questions, creating a learning community, such as through group discussion and presenting model as an example of learning. third, doing reflection of learning activity that has been performed and doing authentic assessment to measure students’ ability. from the statements above, it can be concluded that teaching speaking through ctl is the way of the teacher teaches the students how to communicate by using simulated situation and environment through the elements of ctl itself. when teaching the students, the teacher connects the material given to the students daily life by dealing the students with it through constructivism, and then the teacher let the students to do the learning community in order to make them easy in mastering material. authentic assessment is not only done at the end of period but also integrated together rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 65 with teaching learning activities. method this study was quantitative research. in quantitative research, researcher used an experimental research method. experimental research is the types of research that directly attempts to influence a particular variable, and when properly applied, it is the best type for testing hypotheses about cause and effect relationships (fraenkel&wallen, 2007). in this research, the researcher used a quasi experiment design. quasi experimental design is an experimental research design that does not provide full control of potential confounding variables (johnson & christensen, 2008, p.328). there was one experimental group and one control group. the experimental group consist of students who were taught by using ctl method and control group consist of the students who were taught by using teacher-centered learning. in control group, researcher used teacher-centered learning method. in teacher-centered method, students put all of their focus on the teacher. the teacher talks, while the students exclusively listen. during activities , students work alone and collaboration is discourage, when teaching and learning process in the classroom, students are quite and the teacher retains full control of the classroom and its activities. the material was about examination of pregnancy, examination of leopold, baby’s care, breast self-exam and infuse during five meeting. in experimental group, the researcher did the treatment by using contextual teaching and learning method. researcher asked the students to explain the materials: pregnancy examination, leopold examination, baby’s care, breast self-exam, and infuse. there were 25 students in each class; hence the total number in the sample was 50 students. the design can be drawn as follow: group: pre-test treatment post-test experiment group o1 x o2 control group: o1 x o2 (gay, 1990, p.281) where: e : experimental group c : control group o1 : pretest for experimental and control group x : treatment o2 : posttest for experimental and control group activities and procedures in experimental group and control group rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 66 no experimental group group control 1 the teacher gave pre-test to the students, in order to measure their ability in speaking skills. the material was about injury care. the teacher gave pre-test to the students. 2 the teacher gave treatment for this group that was speaking activity by using ctl method. the steps of ctl method itself were: a. teacher greets the students, b. teacher checks the attendant list. c. teacher asked students to thinking everything about the topic has been learned in the past. d. teacher design an activity refer to any material before teach the students e. studentswere divided into five of groups, each group consist of 5 students. f. teacher asked each of group to discuss about the material in the first meeting, how the ways to exam a pregnant woman directly five minutes. g. the teacher watched out students’ discussion and answered the questions if there any questions. h. the teacher tell the students that make sure that every member of group know the word and the ways how to exam a pregnant woman. i. the teacher called the group one by one to exam a pregnant woman directly in front of classroom. j. one of member group explains about the examination of pregnancy and the others make a note about the result of examination. h. teacher close the meeting.. the teacher gave treatment for this group that was speaking activity by using tcl method. the steps of tcl method itself were: a. the teacher gave a material about the examination of pregnancy. b. the teacher asked the students whether there were any questions about the material if they still not understand yet about the way of pregnancy examination. c. the teacher answered the questions if there were any questions. 3 a post-test was to the students after five treatments. a post-test was to the students after five meetings. 4 the teacher evaluated students’ work the teacher evaluated students’ work. population is the larger group to which one hopes to apply the results fraenkle&wallen (2007). in another definition, population is a data which become a researcher’s attention in a scope and determined time (zuriah, 2007). (salkind, 1994) stated that population is a group of potential participant to whom researcher want to generalize the result of study. the population in this research was all the students of akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi in academic year 2015/2016. the total number of the third semester students are 102 students. international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 1 the population of the study no class numbers of students 1 iia 50 2 iib 52 total 102 sample is representative of only part of a population, but it used to generalize back to the population (salkind, 1994). sample is part of population that researched (arikunto, 2010). in another definition, sample is part of amount and characteristics that have by population (sugiyono, 2009). because the total population of 102 students was large enough to be taken as sample, the researcher took only some of students by using cluster sampling. cluster sampling is a form of sampling in which cluster (a collective type of unit that includes multiple elements, such as schools, churches, classrooms, universities, households, and city blocks) rather than single unit elements (such as individual students, teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents) are randomly selected. because the member of the students each of class too large and it will be effect to the students learning, and its need long time to do speaking test, the researcher limited sample only 25 students from class a and 25 students from class b. in this research, the researcher took the sample from third semester students of akademikebidanankeluargabunda jambi were class iia as experimental and class iib control group. the sample taught once a week during five meeting. the sample of the study no class numbers of students 1 iia 25 2 iib 25 total 50 findings and discussion according test scores are reported and displayed in this chapter. in accordance with the explanatory, analysis and findings are divided into some sections. the first section is demographic background, the second section is inferential statistics findings which are further segmented into three sub-sections. the difference between experimental group and control group in pre-test score and post-test score. the difference between pre-test and post-test score in experimental group, and the difference between pre-test and post-test score in control group. mean scores of each categories from pre-test and post-test in experimental group. rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 68 comprenhension vocabulary fluency pronunciation grammar pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test 0.99 1.13 0.62 0.7 0.58 0.64 0.44 0.5 0.41 0.45 in experimental group, there were 25 students’ scores taken for the pre and post test data. the pre-test result showed that the mean score of data was 3.03. the score of comprehension was 0.99, vocabulary was 0.62, fluency was 0.58, pronunciation was 0.44, and grammar was 0.41. from the pretest result, it could be seen the lowest score was 0.41 in grammar and the highest score was 0.99 in comprehension. contextual teaching and learning was given as treatment in this group. after the treatment was conducted, the post test was given. the post-test result in this group showed that the mean score of post test result is 3.42. the score of comprehension was 1.13, vocabulary was 0.7, fluency was 0.66, pronunciation was 0.5, and grammar was 0.48. the lowest score was 0.48 in grammar and the highest score was 1.13 in comprehension. the result of pre-test and post-test can be interpreted based on the score interpretation for the students’ achievement. the scores of students for each category were summed and the average calculated for both the pre-test and post-test scores of experimental group. mean scores of each categories from pre-test and post-test in control group comprenhension vocabulary fluency pronunciation grammar pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test pre-test post-test 0.11 0.81 0.63 0.57 0.6 0.56 0.45 0.41 0.39 0.37 in control group, there were 25 students’ scores taken for the pre and post test data. the pre-test result showed that the mean score of data was 2.78. the score of comprehension was 0.11, vocabulary was 0.63, fluency was 0.6, pronunciation was 0.45, and grammar was 0.39. from the pre test result, it could be seen the lowest score was 0.11 in comprehension and the highest score was 0.63 in vocabulary. in this group, the post-test was given. the post-test result in this group showed that the mean score of post test result is 2.98. the score of comprehension was 0.81, vocabulary was 0.57, fluency was 0.56, pronunciation was 0.41, and grammar was 0.37. the lowest score was 0.37 in grammar and the highest score was 0.57 in vocabulary. the result of pre-test and post-test interpreted based on the score interpretation for the students’ achievement. the scores of students for each category summed and the average calculated for both the pre-test and post-test scores of control group. the difference between experimental group and control group pre-test score and post test t-test analysis results in table shows that there was a significant difference between experimental group and control group in t-test score. the mean score of pre-test was 3.03 for experimental group and 2.78 for control group. the different values yielded are t= 2.021, and p=0.187. p=0.187>0.05, it means that there was no significant difference between experimental group and control group in pre-test. the mean score of post-test was 3.42 for experimental group and 2.98 for control group. the different values yielded t = 2.345, and rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 68 p=0.037. p=0.037<0.05, it means that there was significant difference between experimental group and control group in post-test. the findings imply that the experimental group obtains higher score than control group in the post-test score. t-test conducted to experimental and control group on pre test and post-test. dependent variable group mean t sig. pre-test experimental 3.03 2.021 0.187 control 2.78 post-test experimental 3.42 2.345 0.037 control 2.98 #significant level at 0.05 looking at more each analysis done, it was found that experimental group obtains higher post-test score than control group. it means that the treatment gave effect on students’ speaking skills. the difference between pre-test and post-test in experimental group and control group table shows the findings of paired sample t-test to experimental group toward pre-test and post-test. the mean score yielded at pre-test was 3.03 and at post-test was 3.42. the statistical values yielded t= 2.344, and p=0.023. the finding means that there is a significant difference between experimental group pre-test score and post-test score. the findings imply that experimental group’s scores increased in the post-test. the mean score yielded are 2.78 for pre-test and 2.98 for post-test. the different values yielded a t= -4.243, and p=.000. the findings show also that there is no significant difference between control group’s pre-test and post-test score paired sample t-test conducted to experimental group and control group toward pre test and post test. dependent variable group mean t sig. experimental pre-test 3.03 2.34 0.023 post-test 3.42 control pre-test 2.78 -4.24 0.000 post-test 2.98 #significant level at 0.05 pre-test and post-test conducted to experimental group where the speaking was taught by contextual teaching and learning. the finding shows that the treatment carried out in this class give significant effect on students’ speaking skills. pre-test and post-test conducted to control group where is the speaking was taught by teacher-centered. the finding shows that the method carried out in this class not give significant effect on students’ speaking skills. the differences between experimental group and control group in each category the findings of paired sample t-test experimental rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 70 group and control group for word categories in pre-test and post-test. the categories are comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation, and grammar. table shows the findings of paired sample t-test word categories in pre-test and post-test. the findings showed that there is a significant difference between pre-test and post-test in each category. the mean score in each of category tended to increase. the findings imply that the contextual teaching and learning which were used in teaching and learning speaking gave effect on students’ speaking skills. on the other hand, the findings showed that there is no significant difference between pre-test and post-test in each category. the mean score in each of category tended to decrease. the findings imply that the teacher-centered technique that used in teaching and learning did not benefit to improve students’ speaking skills. conclusion the results of the research indicate that the speaking skills of the students in experimental group improved more than those in control group. this means that the implementation of ctl significantly improved the abilities of the students studying speaking english. next, comprehensibility was found to the sub-skill after the application of ctl. based on the analysis from the previous chapter, there is a positive effect of teaching by using contextual teaching and learning on students speaking skills at third semester students of akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi. the data analysis post-test from rater 1 and rater 2 showed that the students who were taught by using contextual teaching and learning technique got a higher score than the students who are not taught by using this technique. the treatment of this research was successful. therefore, the research concluded that contextual teaching and learning is applicable to implement on students speaking skills at akademi kebidanan keluarga bunda jambi. references arikunto, s. (2010). prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik. pt. rineka cipta: jakarta. brown, gillian & yule, g. (1997). teaching the spoken language. cambridge university press daniels, h. (2003). vygotsky and pedagogy. taylor francis e-library fraenkel, j.r., & wallen, n.e. (2007). how to design and evaluate research in education. sixth edition. new york.: mcgrow-hill book co gardner. (1990). conceptualizing motivation in foreign language learning language. cambridge university press harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english: an introduction to the practice of english language teaching. new york: longman harmer, j. (2002). the practice of english language teaching. london: longman johnson, b., christensen, l. (2008). educational research: quantitative, qualitative & mixed approach. (3rd ed) united states of america. johnson, e. b. (1997). contextual teaching and learning. what it is and why it’s here to stay. corwin press inc. thousand oak california michael, p., & richard, p. (2007). the many faces of inductive teaching and learning nunan, d. (2004). task based language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press nunan, d., & bailey. m. k. (2009). exploring second language classroom research: a comprehensive guide. cengage canada by nelson education, ltd. oktarina, (2009). teaching esl/efl listening and speaking. new york & london. penny. (2000). a course in language teaching. cambridge university press richards, j, & rodgers, t. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. (2nd ed) cambridge: cambridge university press salkind, j. n. (1994). exploring research. university of kansas: new york rahmah international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 71 sanjaya, (2009). strategi pembelajaran berorientasi standar proses pendidikan. jakarta kencana sanjaya, (2009). the motivated student: unlocking the enthusiasm for learning. alexandria virginia usa. sears, susan. (2008). introduction to contextual teaching and learning. utah state university-logan, ut siti, mudrikah. (2010). the effect of ctl approach toward students’ learning english achievement. www.citejournal.org/vol9/currentpractice/article . smith & ragan, (2005). spoken english, tesol, and applied linguistics: challenges for theory and practice. great britain: cpi antony rowe sudjiono, anas. (2005). pengantar statistik pendidikan. jakarta: rja grafindo persada. tomlinson, b. (2003). developing materials for language teaching. london united states departement of education, offiece of vocational and adult education. (2005). contextual teaching and learning. retrieved from http://www.usda.gov international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 16 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus novarita novaritazkia@yahoo.com baturaja university abstract the problem of this study was concerned to the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus. the objective of this study were to find out the students’ ability ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus and to find out the factors influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus. in this investigation, the writer used descriptive method. the population of the research was the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus. the were 73 students, which was consisted of four classes. in this research, the researcher used all the population, the total population was 73 students as the sample. the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus was good or relatively able. based on the result of questionnaire, the dominant factors that influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus were outcomes and engagement. keywords : ability, pronouncing, centering diphthong introduction as stated by hughes (2002, p.8-9) as a living language is acquired by a second language learner, a large number of other things also need to be adjusted for successful communication to take place, to learn to communicate expertly in another language a speaker must change and expand identity as he or she learns the cultural, social, and even political factors, which go into language choices, needed to speak appropriately with a new voice. the objective of learning english in indonesia is to enable the students to use the language in communication, because by knowing english they can get much information about science for national developement and also communication in internal relationship. however, learning english as foreign language is not the same as learning a mother tongue where the students have much time to use it in their dialy activity. according to ramelan (2006, p.5-7), as a non-native speaker, indonesian’s students often got difficulties in pronunciation. the first reason is the different elements between target language and native language. the problem in pronouncing english words may be caused by the similar sounds between native language (l1) and target mailto:novaritazkia@yahoo.com international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 17 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 language (l2) with slightly different quality. the other reason is the same sounds between native language and target language but allophonic in target language. in indonesia, the students only find english in their school. they study and practice thier english in their classroom with their teacher. it is quite difficult for them to master english as foreign language. in teaching and learning process most of students find difficulties because english has so many differences in grammar, spelling and vocabulary. so the four language skills of language namely listening, speaking, reading, writing should be thaught in the right way. according to senel (2006, p. 3) it should be noted here that language learners always come across some difficulties and problems while learning a foreign language. one of the most remarkable difficulties seen in this process happens to be in the pronunciation of the foreign language vocabulary. harmer (2001, p. 12) states that the students must be trained adequately in all the four basic skills to make them easily practice and use the language. although the learners have mastered the rules, they have not learned the correct distribution of rules yet. in fact, some students in indonesia get some difficulties in learning english. they find many differences in grammar, sound system and culture concepts found in english but not in indonesia. these differences can cause learning problems. in addition according to jones (2006, p. 22) “diphthong is a sound made by gliding from one vowel position to another”. it means that diphthongs are represented phonetically by sequences of two vowels, the first showing the starting point and the second indicating the direction of movement. diphthongs are divided into three parts; vertical diphthongs, centering diphthongs and diagonal diphthongs. vertical diphthongs consist of two sounds; [eɪ], and [oʊ]. centering diphthongs consist of three sounds; [ɪә], [eә], and [ʊә]. diagonal diphthongs also consist of three sounds; [aʊ], [oɪ], and [aɪ]. for some students the difficult sounds are diphthongs because their mother tongue keep interfering their pronunciation pronunciation is the way in which the language or a particular word or sound is pronounced.‟ the second meaning is the way in which a particular person pronounces the words of a language.‟ pronunciation is one of the most important aspects in learning the language, especially in speaking skill. slight different in pronunciation may have different meaning. that is why, pronunciation is very important in order to do spoken communication. basedon, dalton, and seidlhofer (1994, p.3), pronunciation is defined in general term as the production of significant sound in two senses. for the first reason, it is used as part of code of a particular language. in this reason, pronunciation is as the production and the reception of sounds of speech. the second reason, it is used to achieve meaning in contexts of use. in this reason, pronunciation is in with reference to act of speaking. according to kenworthy, joanne, et.al (2002, p.97) says that the english spelling system is rich in both regularities and irregularities which present problems to nonnative learners (and to english– speaking children learning to write their language)”. according to seidlhofer (2004, p.1) the stability of their quality vowels are divided into monophthongs and diphthongs. in pronouncing a monophthong its quality remains more or less stable. in pronouncing a diphthong its quality is changed: the end of the international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 18 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 diphthong differs from its beginning. a diphthongis a close combination of two vowel elements pronounced as one vowel with gliding articulation. a diphthong forms one syllable. according to samuel (2008, p.1) english diphthongs are divided into three groups they are centering diphthongs: beer [bıc], bear [bec], boor [bυc], boar [b]c], b) diphthongs to [ı]: buy [baı], boy [b]ı], bay [beı], and diphthongs to [υ]: bow, beau [bcυ], bow, bough [baυ]. according to dobrovolsky (2001, p.1) diphthongs are vowels that exhibit a change in quality within a single syllable. english diphthongs show changes in quality that are due to tongue movement away from the initial vowel articulation towards another vowel position. this change in vowel quality is clearly perceptible in words such as say, buy, cow, ice, lout, go and boy. the first part of a diphthong is much longer and perceptually more salient than the second. in standard british english, there are nine diphthongs and they fall into two classes: centering diphthongs and closing diphthongs. in a centering diphthong, during the final phase of the vowel articulation, the highest point of the tongue moves quickly towards the centre of the mouth – the typical position it assumes for the articulation of schwa ([d]), the vowel at the beginning of the word aloud. there are four centering diphthongs, namely [çd], as in dear, cheer and clear; [ed] as in rare, wear and air; [ωd] as boor, sure and dour; and [cd] as in oar, shore and roar. nowadays, [ωd] and [cd] are disappearing from rp and many other varieties of british english. they are being replaced by [c:]. as a result, words like paw, pore and poor rhyme with each other. they all come out as [pc:]. in closing diphthongs, the tongue starts in a relatively low position and ends up in a high position either in the palatal area at the front of the mouth in the region where the glide [j] is articulated, or at the back of the mouth in the velar area where the glide [w] is produced. there are three closing diphthongs that end in [ç]. they are [eç] which is found in way, weight and tail; [aç] which is found in tie, buy and my; and [cç] which is found in oil, boy and coin. there are only two diphthongs rising to [ω], namely [du] as in no, go and slow and [aω] which occurs in proud, town and round. observe also that in all cases, the diphthongs are somewhat longer than the short simple vowels. the english centering diphthong consists of [ɪә], [ɛә], [ʊә]. diphthong [ɪə] dobrovolsky (2001, p.1) diphthong [ɪә] is a high-front-centering diphthong. the tongue starts from the vowel [ɪ], as found in the word „bill‟ or the second from the word „sikil‟ (javanese), and not from the closer [i] vowel sound; then it glides away in the direction of the central vowel [ә]. the two lips are in neutral position during the vowel glide. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 19 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 diphthong [ɛə] dobrovolsky (2001, p.1) diphthong [ɛә] is a low front-centering diphthong. the tongue starts from an open vowel position, slightly higher than the position for the english [æ] vowel sound as found in the word „man‟; then it glides away in the direction of the central vowel [ә]. the lips are either spread or neutral during the glide. the lower jaw is clearly felt to be slightly moving upward. diphthong [ʊə] dobrovolsky (2001, p.1) diphthong [ʊә] is a high back centering diphthong. the tongue starts from the english vowel [ʊ] position such as found in the word „good‟, and not from the closer [u:]; then, it glides away in the direction of the central vowel [ә]. the lips are rounded for the first element, and are then drawn back to neutral position during the glide. concept of students successful in teaching learning process according to walls as citied in gokarn (2015, p. 2) there were some factors that influence students learning. they are outcomes, clarity, engagement, enthusiasm. the first is concerns the utilization of an outcomes based instructional orientation. outcomes enable students to focus their attention on clear learning goals. these outcomes inform students of where they are going and how they will get there. outcomes also provide the teacher with a framework for designing and delivering the course content. furthermore, outcomes enable teachers to assess student learning as a measure of their own instructional effectiveness. the second is involves the clarity of instruction. more effective teachers typically provide students with highly explicit directions and explanations concerning the course organization and content. when delivering instruction, nothing should be left to chance. if students are not meeting your expectations, your methods of delivery may lack the required degree of clarity. when a teacher tells, shows, and makes the message available from alternate perspectives to alternate senses, that teacher is engaged in effective instructional practice. additionally, the course should be structured in a way that affords students the opportunity to make connections between the new material that is being presented and the concepts that they have already learned. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 20 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the third is engagement. this principle suggests that students learn by doing. the formal lecture represents an archaic model defined by instructor as deliverer and student as receiver. this model exemplifies one-way communication and perpetuates an incomplete model of education. accordingly, teachers must create a dynamic, educational environment that affords students the opportunity to practice every concept that they are learning. the fourth is enthusiasm. as straightforward as it may seem, "if you hate to teach it, your students will hate to learn it.” conversely, if you love to teach it, your students may very well love to learn it. enthusiasm is contagious. more effective teachers display a high level of enthusiasm that reflects their professional competence and confidence. these characteristics are derived from the individual teacher’s subject matter knowledge and instructional experience. teachers can begin to establish a positive learning environment by showing their passion for the subject matter, using student names, reinforcing student participation during class, and being active in moving among the students. methodology research design, population and sample this research was conducted by using the descriptive method. this method was selected by the writer because it was the most appropriate method in describing the facts and data obtained from the research as what gay (1992, p.9) states descriptive method is a research that based on the collection and analysis of numerical data such observation, interveiws and other more discursive source of information. by using this method, it means collecting the data, arranging and classifying of the data, analyzing, and interpreting about the students’ ability in understanding phoneme and allophones to the english genius course simpang okus. the population of this research was all of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus in academic year 2016/2017. there were six classes: beginner 1, beginner 2, beginner 3, beginner 4. each class consisted less than 25 students, so the total number of population are 73 students. arikunto (2006, p. 130) population is all of the research of subject. the population in this research was all students of the beginner level of english genius course simpang okus, which was consisted of 73 students. most of students were the students of elementary school of grade 5 and 6. the sample of this study was presented on the following table: table 1 sample of the research no level male female total 1 beginner 1 8 17 18 2 beginner 2 3 10 19 3 beginner 3 4 9 18 4 beginner 4 5 11 18 total 73 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 21 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 (source : english genius course simpang okus) technique for collecting the data test in collecting the data of this research, the writer used a test. arikunto (2010, p.150) states test is a list of questions or exercises or other tool that used to measure skill, intelligent, ability or talent that has individual or group. brown (2006, p. 209) states test is a method of measuring a person’s ability or knowledge in a given area. in this study the test is exam or trial or something to find out its quality, value, and composition. the writer divided a test on the pronouncing the centering diphthong. the test had contribution in finding out and describe what was the ability of the english genius course simpang okus in pronouncing centering diphthong. the data were the english diphthongs pronunciation those are pronounced by the sample students. the test consisted of thirty items, the students’ were asked to spell the word and the writer recorded their spelling. the writer re listened the students record and wrote the students’ spelling on the correction sheet. questionnaires according to cohen, et.al., (2005, p. 245) the questionnaire is a widely used and useful instrument for collecting survey information, providing structured, often numerical data, being able to be administered without the presence of the researcher, and often being comparatively straight forward to be analyzed. for analyzing what was the factors that influence by the tenth grade students able or not in comprehending expression making and cancelling an appointment of english genius course simpang okus, the writer used questionnaires from walls (1999). the form of questionnaire was the students answer yes or no about a question. the questionnaire was consisted of twenty items. the table specification of the questionnaire was devised as shown in following table 3: table 2 questionnaire specification no material indicator item test 1 outcomes the students focus their attention on clear learning goals. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 2 clarity the teacher give student task, exercise, homework, and feedback 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 3 engagement teacher gives students opportunity to engange the material, ask some difficulties, have discussion 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 4 enthusiasm the taecher shows to the students that the teacher teaches them seriously and professionally, so the students 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 22 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 are becoming more active . total 20 validity and reliability validity in this research, the writer used content validity. according to cohen et. al (2005, p.105) stated that validity is an important key to effective research. if a piece of research is invalid, then it will be worthless. in order to know if the contents of the test items given were appropriate or not, the writer used the content validity. in order to make the test has a great content validity constructed the test of specification, the writer constructed the test specification items as follows: table 3 specification of test item objective indicator material of the item test number of item to find out students’ difficulties in pronouncing centering diphthong the students are able to pronounce centering diphthong. 1. [iә] 2. [eә] 3. [uә] 12 12 12 total 36 the researcher found there were 6 items were in valid they were item 4, item 9, item 12, item 16, item 20, and item 23, and there were 30 items were valid. so, the researcher used 30 items for the research instrument. reliability of the test it is important to investigate the reliability of test instrument. cohen, et.al (2005, p. 117) stated that “reliability is consistency and replicability over time, over instrument and over group of respondent.” on the other words, reliability test was how consistent test score or other evaluation results were from one measurement to another. to estimate the instrument is reliable or not, the researcher will find the reliability through cronbach alpha test by using spss 20 program. reliability statistics cronbach's alpha n of items .959 36 the table above showed that the cronbach’s alpha point was 0.959, it was more than 0,70. so, it meant that the items of the instruments were reliable and could be used as the instrument of the research. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 23 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 result and discussion result of test in collecting the data of the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthong the writer took individual score from the test. the writer gave thirty test items to the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus in academic year 2016/2017. based on the result of the test, the researcher described the frequency of students’ score criteria were at the following table: table 4 the frequency of students’ score criteria no score range score criteria frequency percentage (%) 1 80 100 very good 0 0 2 66 79 good 17 23.29 3 56 65 fair 26 35.62 4 41 55 poor 30 41.10 5 00 -40 fail 0 0 total 73 100 the table above showed that there were no students (0%) who gained score 80100 in level very good, 17 students (23.29%) who gained score 66-79 in level good, 26 students (35.62%) who gained score 56-65 in level fair, 30 students (41.10%) students gained score 41 55 in level poor and no students (0%) students got score 00-40 in level fail. the frequency of students score criteria presented on the chart 1 below: chart 1 students’ percentage distribution so, the average score range of the students score obtained in pronouncing centering diphthong was 58.13, it meant that the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus in academic year 2016/2017 was able in pronouncing centering diphthong. result of questionnaire international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 24 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 24% 24%28% 24% outcomes clarity engagement enthusiasm in collecting the data to know the factors that influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthong, the writer took individual answer from the questionnaire. based on the analysis, it found that various answer were given by the students. the various answer result in different scores after the scores were tabulated. table below showed the results of questionnaire were done by the students. the distribution of students’ percentage of questionnaire was presented on the following table: table 5 the distribution of students’ percentage of questionnaire factors frequency percentage yes no yes no outcomes 217 148 35.75 24.38 clarity 220 145 36.24 23.89 engagement 197 168 32.45 27.68 enthusiasm 219 146 36.08 24.05 total 853 607 100.00 100.00 based on the finding the writer found that the dominant factors that influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus were outcomes, and engagement. the result of students’ percentage score could be seen on the following chart: chart 2 students’ percentage distribution of the questionnaire discussion international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 25 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 in finding, there was some students got very good score, good score, fair score and no one got poor and fail score. most of students could answer the test in pronouncing centering diphthong well. the writer interpreted that the level of the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthong of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus was good or relatively able. based on the finding the writer found that the dominant factors that influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus were outcomes, and engagement. conclusion on the finding the writer could concluded that the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthong of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus was good or relatively able. based on the result of questionnaire, the dominant factors that influence the students’ ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs of the beginner level students of english genius course simpang okus were outcomes, and engagement. references arikunto, s. (2010). prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik. edisi revisi vi. jakarta: rinekacipta. brown, h. d. (2006). principle of language learning and teaching. san fransisco: longman cohen, l., et.al. (2005). research method in education. london and new york: routledge, falmer. dobrovolsky, f. k (2001)phonetics the sounds of language. retrieved from http//englishpronounciation.com. dalton, c and seidlhife, b. (1994). pronunciation. oxford: oxford university press. jones (2006). dipthong.retrieved from http//dipthong.com. gay, l.r., & airasia. (1992). eduacational research. ohio : prentice hall. harmer, j. (2001). how to teach writing. england: pearson longman. hughes, r. (2002). teaching and researching speaking. harlow: longman ken.w, j.( 2002 ) teaching english pronunciation. new york longman group nurquist, r. (2003).diphthongs. retrieved from http://dipthong.pdf. ramelan. (2007). english phonetics. semarang: cv. ikip semarang press seidlhofer (2004) english diphthongs. retrieved from http://englishdipthong.pdf senel (2006). teaching pronunciation. retrieved from http//theachingpronounciation.com. http://www.edu.go.com/ http://www.edu.go.com/ http://dipthong.pdf/ http://englishdipthong.pdf/ http://www.edu.go.com/ international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 27 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 increasing speaking achievement by using pow-tega teachnique sri wahyuni sriwahyunipga86@gmail.com stkip muhammadiyah pagar alam abstract the aim of this study was to find out whether or not pow-tega technique could increase the students’ speaking achievement. the population of the study covered all of the tenth graders of sma negeri 1 pagaralam in academic year 2015/2016. the sample was selected purposively from the population, they were sixty students. quasi – experimental design was used in this study. to find whether the pow-tega technique could improve students’ speaking achievement, the instruction tests were used to collect the data. the data were analyzed by using paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. the result of paired sample t-test showed that t-obtained was 3.971, t-value 2.045 (p < 0.05). moreover, based on the result of independent sample t-test, tobtained was 3.082, t-value was 2.002 (p < 0.05). the result showed that the students who were taught by using pow-tega technique had a better improvement in their speaking achievement. in other words, pow-tega technique is a good way to be used by the teachers as a teaching technique especially in increasing students’ speaking achievement. key words : pow-tega technique, speaking achievement background as a social creature, we will interact or communicate with another person as long as we live. communication is an esential need for human being. according to wood (2004, p.3), “communication is a systematic process in which individuals interact with and through symbols to create and interpret meanings.” in communicating with others we need a language as a tool or media for communication. hornby (1986) states that language is human and non instinctive method of communicating ideas, feelings, and desires by means of a system of sounds and sound symbols. that is why, language, communication and life can not be separated. one of the ways in communication is through speaking. “speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non verbal symbols in a variety of contexts” (chaney,1998, p.13). as we have known that speaking is one of the basic skills that should be had by the students in the learning process. but, to master in speaking we need a learning process and make a lot of drills or practice and forming a good habit in speaking. as we know that today’s world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students’ communicative skills not just as a repitition of drills or memorization of dialogues as we have done for many years. and it will be the responsibility for the teachers to help the students in mastering speaking. speaking is very important skill. by having a good active english, it will give us a lot of advantages especially in this modern era. there are some reasons why we should teach speaking to our students. first, as motivation. many students equate being able to speak a language as learning process result. as nunan (1991) stated that success in mailto:sriwahyunipga86@gmail.com international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 28 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 learning a second or foreign language is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language. therefore, if the students do not learn or do not get an opportunity to speak in the classroom, they may get de-motivated and lose interest in learning. if the activites are taught in the right way, speaking in the classroom may be a fun activity and give more motivation to the students. second, speaking is fundamental to human communication. as venditti and mclean (2012) said that communication is a key to our success. it can be defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning. we share meaning in what we say and how we say it both in oral (through speaking) and written forms. if the goal of our language learning is truly to enable our students to communicate in english, then speaking skill should be taught and practised in the language classroom. however, it is difficult to master speaking. based on the research that had been done by wandika (2014), there were some problems that caused students feel reluctant to speak. the first factor was psychological factor. psychological factor that caused of students’ reluctance to speak in english classroom interaction came from students themselves such as they prefer to be silent and felt speechless in classroom interaction. they felt anxiety and shy. they did not prepare the material. thus, they did not know what they want to say. it made them unconfidence to speak. the second factor is linguistic factor, the students did not know how to pronounce a certain word well. they have incorrect of pronounciation and get worried about their pronounciation when they speak in the class. besides that, they also felt difficult to express their ideas through speaking because they don’t have enough vocabulary, felt nervous and got difficult to construct any sentences. the last factor was socio-cultural factor. most of students who reluctant to speak in english class felt that the classroom environment did not support them to participate in classroom interaction. they felt that speaking class is an embrassing situation and made them afraid of making mistakes because sometimes the teachers gave them an over correction during speaking time. those problems were also found in sma negeri 1 pagaralam based on the interview from one of the english teacher there. most of the students still felt reluctant to speak, they felt anxiety and difficult to express their ideas in a conversation. they thought about the pronunciation, felt doubt and afraid of making mistakes. therefore, it reminds the researcher about our responsibilty to be a good fasilitator to help the students to solve their problem. some speaking problems can be overcome by using the suitable technique based on the students’ condition. using the suitable technique which is fun will be very useful for the students. that is why we have to create a fun and interesting situation so that the students can speak freely in the classroom. as stated by dunlosky, marsh, nathan & willingham (2013), one of part of situation to help students to get a better regulation in their learning is through the use of effective learning techniques. it is hoped that the effective technique will be able to help the students to achieve their learning goals. one of technique that can be applied in the speaking class is pow-tega technique. it is a technique that combines power teaching technique and games technique. by using this technique, it creates a good atmosphere for speaking class. power teaching is a technique which is used to engage students to speak actively and become more creative in the classroom activity. in the other hand, the game technique makes students feel fun and easier to follow the teacher’s instruction. so that, they can international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 29 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 speak freely as their daily life. pow-tega technique is a technique which had been used by bunyamin (2011) in following an inovative scientific paper competition in central java. he got the first champion and showed that the pow-tega technique is effective to engage students’ speaking achievement. because by using this technique the teacher creates a classroom environment that supports all the students to participate in classroom interaction enjoyably. the use of pow-tega technique as stated by bunyamin (2011), pow-tega technique is the combination of power teaching technique and games techniques. power teaching technique is whole brain teaching method that is used by many countries to teach speaking. according to biffle (2013, p. 2), “whole brain teaching, produces classrooms that are full of orderly fun. students folow the rules because it makes the rules fun to follow.” while game technique is a game designed to teach human about a specific subject and to teach them a skill. as educators, governments, and parents realize the psychological need and benefits of gaming have on learning, this educational tool has become mainstream. games are interactive play that teaches us goals, rules, adaptation, problem solving, interaction, all represented as a story. they give us the fundamental needs of learning by providing enjoyment, passionate involvement, structure, motivation, ego gratification, adrenaline, creativity, social interaction and emotion. "play has a deep biological, evolutionarily important, function, which has to do specifically with learning." (prensky, 2001, p. 6). power teaching technique power teaching technique is also called as a whole brain teaching. according to buzan (1976) as cited in palasigue (2009, p. 5), “whole brain teaching is an instructional approach derived from neurolinguistic descriptions of the functions of the brain’s left and right hemispheres.” whole brain teaching is an interesting method that can be adopted by any teachers to create a good atmosphere in the speaking class. by using this method, it means that we learn in the way the brain is designed. in addition, biffle (2013) said that the longer we talk, the more students we lose. but by using the principles of whole brain teaching, we will give more opportunity to the students to enhance their ability in speaking. as cited in biffle (2013), the principles are : 1. class-yes principle is used by the teacher to get students’ full attention before or during teaching process. in this principle the teacher opens the class by saying “class” and the students should reply it by saying “yes” with the same intonation and gestures with the teacher. the teacher can use “class-yes” principle to keep students focus on the teaching and learning process. therefore, if the teacher says, “classy, class, class, class!” the class must respond it with “yessy, yes, yes, yes!” 2. five classroom rules. there are five rules in whole brain teaching. it is used to ensure that the students understand the rules, but it will also help the teacher if the students do not follow the rules. the rules and gestures are as follow:  follow directions quickly!  raise your hand for permission to speak!  raise your hand to leave your seat! http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20game-based%20learning-ch5.pdf international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 30 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017  make a smart choices!  keep your dear teacher happy! 3. teach-okayit is the most powerful of whole brain teaching’s learning activities. after the teacher gives the explanation for about one minute. the students will work in pair to share their knowledge. then when the teacher says “teach”, the students will respond it with “okay”, and find their partner directly to teach each other and it can be done for many times in order to get a good result in the end of learning process. 4. the scoreboard. scoreboard is used to motivate the students after doing “teach-ok”. in this principle, the teacher will give a good emotican if they do a good working. in the other hand, if they do a bad working they will also get a bad emoticon. 5. hands and eyes. it focuses all mental activity on seeing and hearing the teacher’s lesson. 6. mirror. in this principle, the teacher will incorporate their own gestures, songs or chants in this portion of the lesson and the students are expected to “mirror” the teacher after the teacher says “teach” and he class responds “okay” 7. switch. all the students have to involve themselves in teaching learning proces. in this part, they will not teach with the same student in a time. therefore, in order to get every student involved in the lesson, the teacher will direct the students to “switch!” the students will answer “switch!” and the teacher of the group will rotate. game technique we considered games as the best motivation to help students speak in an appropriate atmosphere. the games also provided them with opportunities for free expression. according to mora & lopera (2001) as cited in william urritia leon and esperanza vega celly (2009, p. 16) states “games and fun activities have always been one of everybody’s favorite things to do in a class, both for teachers and students”. in addition, a game can be defined as an enjoyable activity with a set of rules or terms against each other (webster’s new dictionary, 1994). in this research, the researcher will use three kinds of game, namely scrabble, talking chips and make a match. teaching speaking by using pow-tega technique in applying pow-tega technique as stated by bunyamin (2011) in the speaking class, there are some important activities. it integrates power teaching technique and game where the game can be modified by the teacher based on the condition and necessity of speaking activity in the classroom. the first activity is scrabble game for bkof (building knowledge of the field). it is an activity where the teacher asks the students to build the vocabularies which will be need for modelling activity. in this activity, the teacher will prepare some jumbled letters. then, the students are asked to guest or answer the jumbled letters become the right word to fill the jumbled sentence. the students who know the answer should raise their hand and mention the right word aloud. then the teacher gives appreciation to the students that has answered correctly and facilitate the students to pronounce the words correctly. the second activity starts when the teacher applies 6 steps in power teaching technique to give a model of speaking of describing picture based on the theme which has been decided. the first step is class-yes. in this activity the teacher gain the international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 31 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 stdents’ attention by saying “clas” with different intonation. then, the students answer by saying “yes” with the same intonation with the teacher. the second step is “microlecture”. in this step, the teacher gives the material for about 1 minute. the students should keep attention to the teacher. after that, the third step is “teach-okay”. after the teacher did the micro-lecture, the teacher says “teach”, if it is possible the teacher can use a hand-clapping or other interesting gesture, while the students answer “okay” while imitate the teacher’s gesture and voice. after saying “okay”, the students repeat the teacher’s explanation in pair. it can be done for many times to get a good result. then, the fourth step is “score-board”. in this step, the teacher gives an evaluation to the students by making two labels/coloumns in the board. the first coloumn uses the “smile/happy” icon, and the second coloumn uses the “sad” icon. the “smile/happy” icon will be given to the students if their work is good but the “sad” icon will be given if their work is not good enough. after the teacher gives the evaluation, the students will respond their score. if they get “sad” icon, they will pretend crying. but if they get “smile/happy” icon, they will say “oh yeah or bingo!” the next step is “hands and eyes”. this step is a technique to keep the students’ attention to the teacher’s explantion. they sit quietly and their hands are on the table. it is the step before doing comprehension check. and the last step is “comprehension check”. the students are asked to repeat the explanation orally. while the student repeats the explanation, the teacher goes around the classroom to do checking for the students’ activity. the third activity of speaking by using pow-tega technique is talking chips game. in this activity, the students are divided into some groups. the students practice to express or tell the topic by using their own words. after the teacher divide the students into some groups, she starts to apply talking chips game tecnique. the students will get some cards. it is going to be their ticket to speak or start describing the picture which is given by the teacher. and it will not end until all the students use all the cards of theirs. then, the last activity is make a match game. this activity is designed to make the students really comprehend the topic during the learning process. beside that, in this activity the students are also asked to read aloud with the right intonation and pronunciation. this activity starts when the teacher gives some make a match cards. the students get an opportunity to find their partner. and the students that had found their partner can explain the cards. then, the teacher will give an appreciation to the students who find their partner earlier. method of the research in this study, the researcher used the quasi-experimental research design. according to fraenkel and wallen (2009), quasi-experimental do not include the use of random assignment. one of the most commonly used quasi-experimental designs in educational research. in doing this study, the researcher taught at sma negeri 1 pagaralam. before doing the experiment the researcher gave a pre-test to the sample students. the sample students were divided into two groups, as the experimental group and control group. both of experimental and control group had different teaching procedure. where in the experimental group, they got a treatment of the implementation of pow-tega technique in their speaking activity, while for the control group the treatment of pow-tega technique was not given. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 32 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 technique for collecting the data in this study, the researcher used test for collecting the data. according to brown (2000, p. 384), “ a test is a method of measuring a persons’ ability or knowledge in given domain.” the kind of test which was used in this research was an oral test. according to richards and smith (2002), oral is a term used to stress that a spoken form of a language is used as opposed to a written form, as in an oral test or oral examination. there were two types of test that was used, they were pre-test (before treatment) and post-test (after treatment). in the oral test, the students should present the material about describing pictures in the descriptive text based on the theme which had been decided by the researcher for about three minutes. in the pre-test the researcher gave the test to the students in form of instruction in describing pictures based on the topic given by the researcher. meanwhile, in post-test, the students were asked to present the same presentation as the pre-test but with different object, the post-test was used to measure the effect of certain treatments, in this case improving students’ speaking achievement by using pow-tega technique. in the pre-test and post-test, the researcher used public figure as the topic. the students’ speaking achievement in the pre-test and post-test would be analyzed by using brown’s scoring system for speaking test. data analyses the data in this study were analyzed by using paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. paired sample t-test was used to find out whether or not there was significant difference in speaking achievement of descriptive text of the students in the experimental and control groups before and after treatment. in the other side, independent sample t-test was used to know whether or not there was significant difference in speaking achievement of descriptive text between students’ post-test in the experimental and control group. the data of this study were analyzed by using spss 23. result of descriptive statistics the result of the students’ speaking achievement showed that there was significant difference in students’ speaking achievement in the experimental group and control group. in the experimental group, there were 19 students ( 64 % ) who were in the poor level with the mean 48.53, there were 7 students ( 23% ) who were in the enough level with the mean 59.00, and also there were 4 students ( 13% ) in the good level with the mean 71.50. based on the result above, it showed that the students’ speaking achievement were better after got the treatment. the percentage of level of achievement in the experimental group was higher than the control group. on the other hand, for the control group, the result of the speaking achievement showed that there were 26 students ( 87 % ) who were in the poor level with the mean 43.54, there were 3 students ( 10 %) who were in the enough level with the mean 59.33, and there was 1 student ( 3 %) who was in the good level with the mean 70.00. based on the level presented in the table 6, it showed that most of students were in the poor level. international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 33 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 it can be concluded that the score of experimental group and control group in the speaking achievement were different. the experimental group who were taught by using pow-tega technique had a better improvement than the control group who were not taught by using pow-tega technique. table 6 frequency and mean score of students’ speaking achievement variable level of achievem ent experimental group control group mean sd freq mean sd freq speaking achieve ment very good good 71.50 1.73 2 4 (13%) 70.00 1 (3%) enough 59.00 1.91 5 7 (23%) 59.33 1.155 3 (10%) poor 48.53 4.56 3 19 (64%) 43.54 3.101 26 (87%) failed total 179.0 3 8.21 30 (100%) 172.87 4.256 30 (100%) from the table above, it showed that there was significant difference in students’ speaking achievement in the experimental group and control group. in the experimental group, there were 19 students ( 64 % ) who were in the poor level with the mean 48.53, there were 7 students ( 23% ) who were in the enough level with the mean 59.00, and also there were 4 students ( 13% ) in the good level with the mean 71.50. based on the international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 34 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 result above, it showed that the students’ speaking achievement were better after got the treatment. the percentage of level of achievement in the experimental group was higher than the control group. on the other hand, for the control group, the result of the speaking achievement showed that there were 26 students ( 87 % ) who were in the poor level with the mean 43.54, there were 3 students ( 10 %) who were in the enough level with the mean 59.33, and there was 1 student ( 3 %) who was in the good level with the mean 70.00. based on the level presented in the table 6, it showed that most of students were in the poor level. it can be concluded that the score of experimental group and control group in the speaking achievement were different. the experimental group who were taught by using pow-tega technique had a better improvement than the control group who were not taught by using pow-tega technique. chart 1 : the result of students’ speaking achievement the result of paired sample t-test for speaking aspect in experimental group and control group variable experimental group control group mean pretest mean posttest mean diff tobtained & sig. (2tailed) mean pretest mean posttest mean diff tobtained & sig. (2tailed) speaking achievement (total) 51.33 54.20 2.87 3.971 .000 45.33 46.23 0.9 1.125 .000 fluency 1.93 2.93 1 (39%) 6.361 .000 1.23 1.80 0.57 (63%) 6.158 .000 vocabulary 2.58 3.30 0.72 (25%) 6.143 .000 1.43 1.53 0.1 (11%) 1.795 0.83 grammar 2.87 3.35 0.48 4.160 1.90 2.00 0.5 0.722 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 35 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 the result of the independent sample t-test of speaking achievement in order to find out whether there was significant difference in the students’ speaking achievement between two groups, the result of the speaking post-test in both groups were compared by the researcher by using independent sample t-test. it was found that the value of t-obtained was 3.802 at the significant level of 0.000. the significant level 0.000 was less than 0.005 with degree of freedom (df) 58, and the value of t-obtained was higher than critical values of t-table, in which 3.802 > 2.002, it confirms that the students in experimental group made a better achievement in speaking if compared with students in the control group. it was also strengthened by the difference of the mean scores. the mean scores of the post-test of the experimental group was 54.20 while the mean scores of the control group was 46.23. the post-test score of experimental group was better than the control group. interpretations the result of this study showed that there were significant difference for students’ speaking achievement after got a treatment from pow-tega technique. it means that this technique gave the students more motivation to be involved in the clasroom interaction. it can be showed from their achievement in the speaking performance. after got a treatment from pow-tega technique the students in the experimental group made a better improvement for their speaking achievement. it can be showed from the mean score, the mean score of pre-test was 51.33 while for the post test the mean score was 54.20. in addition, based on the level of achievement, there were 19 students ( 64 % ) who were in the poor level with the mean 48.53, there were 7 students ( 23% ) who were in the enough level with the mean 59.00 and there were 4 students ( 13% ) in the good level with the mean 71.50. before did the treatment there was no student who were in the good level. it was also supported by bunyamin (2011), his action research showed that pow-tega technique was effective enough to improve students’ speaking achievement. because by using this technique, the teacher will give more opportunity to the students to perform their speaking performance. furthermore, the treatment which was given by the teacher could increase the students’ achievement. it can be concluded that new technique enhance students’ interest to be more active in their learning activity. in the other hand, the students also need more time to practice before they were ready for the test. and it is also supported by biffle (2013), he said that the longer we talk as a teacher, the more students we lose. from that statement, it can be concluded that as a teacher we should give our students enough time to practice their speaking permormance in order to help them feel enjoy in the speaking activity. moreover, the students’ speaking achievement also improved from all aspects of speaking in which fluency (39%), vocabulary (25%), grammar (16%), and pronunciation (16%) .000 (12%) 0.475 pronunciation 2.52 3.12 0.6 (20%) 4.966 .000 1.27 1.40 0.13 (14%) 1.439 0.161 international journal of english language and teaching https://online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/ijolte 36 volume 1 issue 1, september 2017 (20%). it means that all aspects of speaking were significantly difference after got the treatment of pow-tega technique. the improvement of fluency (39%) may indicate that students more focus to their speaking than their pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. it can be caused by their pretension to enhance their confidence during speaking time in front of the classroom with the expression or gesture so they did not think too much of their error in grammatical. as stated by gawi (2015), the process of speaking involved not only verbal communication but also paralinguistic elements such as gestures, body language, facial expressions, etc to convey a message directly without any accompanying speech. in the other words, the students focused to their spontaneity in speaking to speak fluently in order to be understood by others. conclusions based on the findings and interpretation, it was found that the students in the experimental group who got the treatment of pow-tega technique could improve their speaking achievement. beside that they also got a better achievement than the control group from all aspects of speaking. in the other words, pow-tega technique could significantly improve students’ speaking achievement. in addition, from the result of this study, it was found that there was possible reason that influenced the students’ speaking achievement. it could be concluded that by using pow-tega technique, students felt more interested in classroom interaction. they could follow the learning process of speaking easily so their speaking achievement could improve. references arikunto, s. 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(2009). conducting educational research. cichago : rutgers university. venditti, p., & scott, m. (2012). an introduction to group communication. washington. creative commons. wandika, f. a. (2014). students’ reluctance to speak in english classroom interaction. a study at sma pertiwi 2 padang (unpublished thesis). stkip pgri sumatera barat. wang. (2010). using communicative language games in teaching and learning english in taiwanese primary school. kainan university. journal of engineering technology and education, 7 (1). wood, j. (2004). communication in our lives. boston : wadsworth cengage learning. http://itesli.org/techniques/kayi-teachingspeaking.html http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed507407.pdf international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.10197 ijolte utilizing facebook groups in teaching english as foreign language: indonesian efl teachers’ voices puput arfiandhani english language education department, faculty of language education, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta yogyakarta, indonesia email author: puput.arfiandhani@fpb.umy.ac.id how to cite this paper: arfiandhani, p. (2020). utilizing facebook groups in teaching english as foreign language: indonesian efl teachers’ voices. international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 53-60. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.10197 received: april 14, 2020 accepted: june 19, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/ abstract in the era of 4.0, social media has become an integral part of everyday life, including for the purpose of teacher learning. one of the means of social media that has been used for enhancing teachers’ independent professionalism is facebook groups related with their teaching professions. the present qualitative study aims at (i) exploring english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ experiences in utilizing facebook groups for their teacher learning and (ii) finding out the benefits of teachers’ involvement in teaching-related facebook groups. in collecting the data for the present case study, in-depth interviews were done with two teachers, one novice teacher and one experienced teacher. the findings and discussions indicated that teachers use facebook groups to enhance their professionalism, despite they tend to start refraining from utilizing the groups due to uncomfortable atmosphere that facebook now offers. additionally there are three benefits found of joining facebook groups, namely their enriched information on content knowledge, knowledge of curriculum and knowledge of educational contexts. in the current time where teachers need to shift into distance learning in the timely fashion, whereas many subjects need to be comprehended quickly. subject areas language teaching keywords teacher-learning, social media, facebook groups, knowledge base of language teaching 1. introduction along with the advance of technology and the invention of internet, the world is getting more borderless. people from one side of the world are able to find out what happened in other parts of the world in an instance. this affordance of internet has provided a virtual knowledge sharing space (blanchard, 2008), https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.10197 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.10197 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ puput arfiandhani ~ 54 ~ which include spaces for online teacher professional development (chen, fan & tsai, 2014). within the context of english language teaching (elt) in indonesia, this virtual space might also benefit its teachers. as a home for approximately 270 million people (world bank, 2020) spread over 130 million islands (nababan, 1991), travelling in this archipelago country can be costly and time consuming for many, including for teachers, for their face-to-face professional development purposes (patahuddin & logan, 2018). therefore, virtual learning spaces in such social media may provide accessible platforms for teachers to increase their quality. to improve teachers’ quality, teachers need to continuously learn to adapt and to absorb the streamline of information regarding to their teaching profession. their learning needs to be continuous as the socio-cultural contexts that surround the teaching including the environment and the students evolve. teacher knowledge needs to keep up with this changing. as the experience and contexts of one teacher may be different from the other, teachers need to tailor their own teacher learning, according to leung (2009) by updating and modifying their knowledge based on their developing views. while teacher learning could be an individual process in the way that teachers may customize their own learning pathway, it is also a sociocultural process. it is an individual process in the way that as rogers (2002 in johnson 2009) stated, requires teachers to reflect on their teaching practices. this reflective practices provides teachers a space to identify what lacks in their teaching practices is a teacher learning process that helps building their practitioner knowledge. on the other hand, teacher learning is a sociocultural process in the way that many factors including the contexts, the students, and the policy that surround it may affect the process. according to mcloughlin (2011), socio-cultural factors should be acknowledged and considered within the teacher learning process. it is important that teachers exchange ideas, knowledge and experiences with other fellow teachers to learn from each other’s practices. as johnson (2009) put it, teacher learning is a socialization process that occurs both within their classrooms, and the wider professional environment where they work. according to johnson and golombek (2011), the quality of social interactions in which teachers are involved in is critical for the development of their teaching expertise. to be able to have a quality teacher-learning process, teachers need to engage in interaction that exposes them to independent professionalism. the same idea is also resonated in johnson (2009), that teachers' informal social and professional networks including their own classrooms, can be a strong source for teacher learning. according to cobb (1994, in borko 2004), learning can be considered as both individual process as well as a process of enculturation into the practices of wider society. in short, teacher learning can happen when teachers can connect their reflective practices over their teaching practices and share it to a wider learning community, which then enable professional discussion with other teachers. social interaction among teachers is important to enable teacher learning. this learning could happen within community of practices (burns and richards, 2009). according to edge (1992 in johnson 2009), by cooperating with others, teachers can come to understand their own experiences and opinions better. within community of practices, teachers could learn different perspectives about similar issues from other teachers’ thought, knowledge and experiences. therefore, seeing the same issues from multiperspectives could give them comparison for their own practices. this comparison may help them understand the reasons for their choices and different approach to teachers’ unique classroom contexts. in indonesia, social media platforms could potentially facilitate social interaction that enables teacher learning. one of the social media platforms that have gained wide popularity among teachers is facebook (sari & tedjasaputra, 2013). previous studies have investigated facebook use with various topics such as educational facebook group use forprofessional development among math teachers (patahuddin, rokhmah & lowrie, 2020), stakeholders’ engagement in teachers professional development programs using facebook (sari & tedjasaputra, 2013), and facebook use in higher education context (susilo, 2008) setyowati, sukmawan, el-sulukiyyah & stevanie ~ 55 ~ among others. nonotheless, while the utilization of facebook groups among english teachers in indonesia remains extensively unexplored, the present study aims at adding up the discussion. particularly, the aims of the study include exploring (1) how do teachers utilize teaching-related facebook groups for their teacher learning? and (2) what benefits do they gain from joining teaching-related facebook groups? 2. method 2.1. research design to explore how english teachers in indonesia utilize facebook groups as an environment to enhance their professionalism, qualitative research approach was applied. as mentioned by toma (2011, p. 266), “qualitative research is interpretive, focusing on gaining meaning and understanding and building concepts and theories.” particularly, within qualitative approach, case study design was employed. according to creswell and creswell (2018, p.14), within the case study, “researcher develops an in-depth analysis a case, often a program, event, activity, process, or one or more individuals.” a case study design may help providing insights on english language teacher-learning experiences in facebook groups, which currently remains scarce. 2.2. participants to collect the data for the present study, two participants, including one experienced teacher and one novice teacher were purposively selected and interviewed in this study. both participants were selected for several reasons, besides one should be an experienced teachers and another one should be a less experienced (novice) teacher. firstly, they are actively involved in professional development programs. they also are active users of facebook groups. thirdly, they need to be such articulate in ensuring that the data needed can be gained. two participants who joined various teaching-related facebook groups and have fulfilled the aforementioned criteria were invited to become participants of the study. the first participant, ms. martha, is an efl teacher with more than 20 year of teaching in junior high school level in semarang, central java. she is a government employee and has been participated in various trainings conducted by the government. the second participant, ms. rahma, teaches english at a private vocational high school in blora, central java. despite having been a schoolteacher for only around five years, she has been involved in many professional development programs, both as participants as well as teacher-trainers. the experiences of both participants may present enlightenment on the topics being researched. 2.3. data collection to collect the data for the present study, phone calls with each participant were done due to geographical barrier. an interview guide was designed prior to data collection to ensure that necessary information was obtained. the interview was recorded using a mobile application, which allows phone call recording. additionally, notes were taken to record and highlight repeated facts and researchers’ thoughts during the interview. the interview, which lasted 75 – 90 minutes each, includes questions that explore teachers’ experiences when engaging in teaching-related facebook groups. for instances, participants were asked, “what do you like about the teaching related facebook groups?”, “what don’t you like about the teaching-related facebook groups?” and “what activities did you do puput arfiandhani ~ 56 ~ 2.4. trustworthiness to maintain the trustworthiness of the data, member checking was done. the member checking was carried out by sending the interview transcriptions to both participants and requesting their clarification and confirmation over the transcription. a follow-up interview was done with participant two, ms. rahma over the call. however, due to unmatched schedule, only a follow up interview by chat was able to carry out with participant one, ms. martha. 2.5. data analysis all data was then imported to nvivo9 application to be analyzed. nvivo9 is used because it provides three features necessary for data analysis including: research journals, annotations and nodes. the transcribed interview was analyzed based on the research questions. two main findings emerged on the data. 3. finding and discussion 3.1. teachers’ utilization of facebook group the two participants of this study, ms. martha and ms. rahma, commented that they found facebook as a useful tool to enhance their professionalism. one of the reasons for this was because the groups that they joined provided them with a virtual space where they could get in contact with people with the same concern, english as a foreign language (efl) in indonesian schools. well, [i joined teaching-related facebook groups] because there is information that i need. […] this fellow colleague and i were thinking that it was a great idea to create facebook groups where we can share things related with curriculum. (ms. martha) gray (2004) proposed that where meeting face-to-face were unlikely to happen, online platform can be an alternative space to facilitate discussions. the variety of group members that ranged from lecturers, senior teachers and colleagues may offer vast and flexible opportunities to get access to vast information on the field of efl in indonesia. ginanto’s (2018) study found that teacher learning could also happen outside schools where fellow teachers meet. as stated by blattner and fiori (2009 in kabilan, ahmad & abidin, 2010), joining groups which members have similar concerns can be utilized in a constructive manner for pedagogical use. this resonates johnston’s (2009) idea that such collaboration, i.e. facebook groups, in teacher development can give teachers control over the collaborative process as well as autonomy on their participation. in line with this, patahuddin and logan’s (2018) study on facebook potential as an informal teacher learning platform among teachers in indonesia indicate that facebook’s collaborative nature may encourage teachers’ collaboration for their learning. however, both participants surprisingly mentioned that they started withdrawing themselves from facebook. ms. rahma mentioned that her reason was due to the fact that facebook has become ‘heated’ due to many people in her friend lists who shared sharp and heated opinions on politics. now, facebook is so uncool. people keep sharing about politics. and then, the discussions started to be heated and people just keep arguing on the comments. i do not really enjoy facebook like it used to be. (ms. rahma) this made facebook no longer a comfortable space for her to seek for useful information in her leisure time and let alone share information. while ms. rahma’s reason was more general on her facebook wall atmosphere, ms. martha’s was more specific on the facebook groups. ms. martha commented that setyowati, sukmawan, el-sulukiyyah & stevanie ~ 57 ~ the lack of ‘appreciation’ as indicated with lack of the number of likes and comments on what she shared discouraged her to share even more things on facebook. i once shared a lesson plan that i made to the groups. […] however, no one responded or commented my post. this is despite the fact that 24 people have viewed it. […] then, after all, only one person gave comments. well, perhaps it’s been downloaded. but, there’s no notification, so i was kind of discouraged. (ms. martha) sari’s (2012) study on teachers’ online learning community of practice indicated that in her research on the use of facebook as an online learning community platform, how teachers’ commented on each others’ activity showed appreciation and indeed what maintained its members’ involvement in the community. as the alternative for facebook groups, interestingly, the only social media that both participants picked were whatsapp messenger. the rationale for this selection is due to its feature as a messenger, which enables real-time conversations to happen. despite also mentioning its downsides such as what both participants reported to be easily got out of the track, they agreed that the application made it easy to get a fast answer for their questions regarding to efl in general. besides, like facebook groups, the alternative media also enables them to get in touch with their colleagues, both that they have met or that they have not. ab rashid, yahaya, rahman and yunus (2016) mentioned that colleagues and other members’ engagement in social media platform encouraged members’ participation as well as retaining their membership. 3.2. benefits of joining facebook groups as reported by both participants, there were several benefits that they gained by joining facebook groups. these benefits were the outcome of their collaboration of either with peers, researchers or other people whose interaction enables them to better understand their own knowledge (burton, 2009). these benefits include gaining content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. additionally, one of the participants, ms. rahma, specifically highlighted that the groups can be a space for her to clarify or get information on government policies regarding to efl in indonesian schools. pedagogical and content knowledge in his fundamental state-of-the-art article, shulman (1987) defined content knowledge as teachers’ knowledge on subject matter that they taught. in the findings of this study, this content knowledge apparently was considered to be an important point of discussion in their online community of practice on facebook. two participants of this study mentioned that the posts shared that they favored include links on teaching materials. ms. martha specifically reported that she took advantage of e-book or book recommendation on grammar and texts. these book recommendations that contain information on the subject matter could help her develop the materials need to be learned by her students. rather different from posts that ms. martha favored, ms. rahma stated that she gained much benefit from posts on fun media and ice-breaking games. further, she added that fun media, such as funny or moving short videos and ice-breaking games could come in handy for her since many of her students were mostly teenage male students who needed fun things to grab their attention. it’s awesome that there are many people share teaching strategies, you know, especially the ice-breaking ones. it’s practical and some of them really make the class fun. (ms. rahma) sari (2009) maintained that real and authentic problems in the classrooms were often become the topics to be discussed in online discussion forum. these fun contents, which were in line with the materials puput arfiandhani ~ 58 ~ they would learn on that day, could get the students interested on the materials. in line with this, murtiningsih’s (2019) study indicated that teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is one of the desired elements of effective teachers according to both students and teachers. knowledge of teaching documents one of the main things that both participants highlight was that they both gained knowledge on how to make lesson plan, teaching materials and other teaching documents. in addition, they also shared their experiences on making lesson plans and teaching materials as well as voluntarily shared the lesson plans they made when requested. i share videos that i used for my class, like you know, songs, and explanation video on texts types, such as descriptive texts etc. (ms. rahma) additionally, ms. martha mentioned, one of the things that i shared is lesson plan. rather than sharing it through email, in which only my colleague who can benefit from it, i prefer to share it on the [facebook] groups. besides, some of my colleagues requested it. so, i think sharing it on the group means that i do not have to send it personally to many people. however, this can be problematic, especially when some of their colleagues tended to use the lesson plans they used without doing any modification and adjustment for their classes. ms. martha noted that sometimes, some colleagues were only excited about the lesson plan in order that they fulfill the administrative requirements. however, when she asked them some information or their lesson plans, the same colleagues who requested for her lesson plans tended to be unable to fulfill her request. resonating similar experiences, ms. rahma tended to get annoyed when her colleagues, mostly her seniors copied her lesson plans and teaching materials without making any adjustment for their classes. furthermore, they tended not to give any credits or acknowledgment that the lesson plans and teaching materials are from her. this lack of appreciation sometimes made her refrain from sharing her lesson plans, and sometimes sharing any other useful information if not urgent. she did so to avoid getting attention, which further could make other people to feel comfortable on asking similar requests. according to sari (2009), colleagues may try to respond to real ideas and authentic problems by posing supporting and contrasting viewpoints. consequently, these contrasting viewpoints may potentially lead to disagreement. knowledge of educational policy another benefit that both ms. martha and ms. rahma mentioned were about information on government policies regarding to efl in indonesian schools. both participants commented that they could get more detailed information on the latest news of policies that the government set. since there were many experts on the field, they could also confirm whether the news was accurate. additionally, one participant, ms. rahma, noted that as she has a role as a national instructor, which means that she sometimes knew more information, she could also clarify inaccurate information that deal with her role. due to the rapid change of curriculums, some members of the group share news from blogs or news channel. some of them shared it on the group then asked me whether the news is accurate and the policy is to be implemented soon. […] so, i can clarify the news [on educational policy]. (ms. rahma) this finding resonated ab rashid, yahaya, rahman and yunus’(2016) study on the use of facebook group by teachers in malaysia, that one of the topics that teachers sought for was information on setyowati, sukmawan, el-sulukiyyah & stevanie ~ 59 ~ educational policy. this information ranged from groupings, classrooms, educational authorities, national policies and culture. additionally, patahuddin, rokhmah & lowrie’s (2020) study on mathematics teachers’ involvement on educational facebook groups revealed that educational policy information is one of the topics being looked for in the groups. in conclusion, facebook groups can be an alternative for information dissemination channel of educational policies where fellow teachers can help building up each others’ knowledge on government educational decisions.. 4. conclusion based on the results of the study, three implications could be drawn. the research findings suggested that teaching-related facebook groups have offered a virtual space that could archive information related to teachers’ teaching profession as well as a forum in which they can seek help from fellow colleagues when finding difficulties in understanding government educational policy as well as hurdles in their english language classrooms. as a result, teachers can find best practices that may suit their teaching situations. additionally, such discussions may help facilitating discussions among teachers that could help building collaborations and improved teaching practices. therefore, the first implication of this study was that the use of teaching-related facebook groups could be encouraged to be formally employed by the government to disseminate new educational policy, both within or outside english language subject. another important finding of the research was that fellow group members’ lack of response and discussions outside of teaching related topics might discourage teachers from initiating discussions and seeking help from the groups. consequently, teachers have become more reluctant about actively utilizing facebook groups do to the fear of being not responded and rejected. the second implication of the study was that the utilization of facebook groups might benefit from setting up rules that can ensure members’ comfort and ease. additionally, the findings have highlighted that teaching-related facebook groups could help adding teachers’ content knowledge, knowledge of curriculum and knowledge of educational contexts. the content knowledge included the media, materials, grammar and ice-breaking games that efl teachers could use in their english language classrooms. the knowledge of curriculum included information on the structure of lesson plan, school accreditation and teachers’ role. the knowledge of educational contexts included information on government policies regarding to efl in indonesian school contexts. the discussions as well as information shared on various topics related with teaching, such as lesson planning, teaching strategies, and useful vocabulary have led into teachers’ knowledge improvement. therefore, the third implication of the study was that facebook groups can be implemented not only within the contexts of english subjects but also for other subjects. the present study, however, offered low generalizability as it was done in a small-scale context. future studies may include larger participants in a bigger context, which could lead to higher generalizability of the findings. additionally, other studies can focus on other social media platforms, such as instagram and whatsapp groups in order to inform larger audiences on teacher learning utilizing other means of social media. references ab rashid, r., yahaya, m. f., rahman, m. f. a., & yunus, k. 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(2020, july). population, total indonesia. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl?locations=id https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl?locations=id paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5593 334 ijolte enhancing self-esteem in classroom language learning: the potential of implementing a strength-based positive psychology intervention at higher education mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori how to cite this paper: haddad narafshan, m., & noori, s. (2018). enhancing selfesteem in classroom language learning: the potential of implementing a strengthbased positive psychology intervention at higher education. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 334-345. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5593 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract since positive psychology (pp) is a nascent area of research, there are very few empirical studies assessing the impact of positive psychology interventions. accordingly, this article reports on a quantitative study concerning the use of a positive psychology intervention to develop learners’ self-esteem in the context of higher education in the english as a foreign language (efl) sector in iran. data was collected during the academic year 2016– 2017 from a university in iran using cooper smith (1967, 1981) self esteem inventory adult form (csei-a) , a self-report questionnaire, as the instrument and administering it before and after a tefl master course. thirty six university students participated in a five-month long quasi-experimental study. the current study’s primary aim was to investigate in detail the potential of pp intervention for supporting the self-esteem progress in the context in question. the study showed a statistically significant improvement in the self-esteem of the participants in the experimental group after completing the course suggesting positive paths from positive psychology to understanding the strengths and managing the weaknesses effectively. the encouraging results from this program suggest new avenues for approaching the change of self-esteem. subject areas classroom language learning keywords character-strength, positive psychology, self-esteem 1. introduction positive psychology, a branch of research within the field of psychology, studies the conditions and experiences involved in human flourishing (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). despite its brief existence, since 1998, this field department of foreign languages, kerman branch, islamic azad university, kerman, iran. email: mnarafshan@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5593 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5593 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 335 ijolte has recently gained attention and shown considerable growth in the realms of research, practice, and change. in educational settings, this popularity has generated the domain of “positive education”— a recently growing trend in educational research that aims to merge positive psychology principles with educational practices to increase learners' well-being (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009). granted that education, especially higher education, is an influential and humanizing process by which learners' body, mind and character are strengthened, the goals of positive psychology mirror the goals of education. there is no doubt that education can be a means for expanding accumulated knowledge, values and skills to make learners capable, competent and wise in the face of the challenges of life. higher education is an important and specialized form of human capital, which can cause public growth (diener & patterson, 2011). in a word, both positive psychology and positive education seek to promote general well-being, life satisfaction and meaning across a broad spectrum from individuals to institutions’ global life. the main consequence of the application of pp to education is to create a fresh learning climate in class where individual learners can use the shared information according to their own talents and views (hayes, 2006; hurlock, 1925; muscott, mann and lebrun, 2008).; the second principle, which is at least as crucial as the first, is to promote a climate at educational settings that will foster intellectual, emotional and physical “wellbeing” in students; so as to prevent the potential academic and general problems before they occur or reoccur (gilman, huebner, & furlong, 2009; martin, seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich & linkins, 2009; murray,2003). at present, higher education especially language learning is an anxietyprovoking experience for many students (muchnick & wolfe 1982; horwitz et al. 1986; macintyre & gardner 1991; rubio 2004). poor self-esteem at higher education can result in a cascade of diminishing self-appreciation and creating self-defeating attitudes, psychiatric vulnerability, and social problems. furthermore, lack of appropriate level of self-esteem can create unpredictable problems among learners of master’s degrees and may lead to present failure and future disappointment (poorsoti & asadi, 2016). in effect, to make a difference in students’ academic and general life, positive psychology can be an efficient solution since it places an emphasis on learners’ individual strengths and personal motivation, helping them change negative styles of thinking and increase well-being and self-esteem. according to langley (2016), the strengths approach at the heart of positive psychology changes the focus from fixing weakness to recognizing and emphasizing what people do well and fostering their potential to develop. it assumes strengths are part of human nature; everyone has them and deserves respect for them. it also asserts we can only address our weaknesses when we make the most mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 336 ijolte of our strengths. however, to the authors’ ́ best knowledge, no publications are available in the literature addressing the application of positive psychology, a strength-based therapy, at higher education in an efl context. for these reasons, the present study aims to heighten students' self-esteem and develop their wellbeing in a master course of tefl. in addition, it aimed to help learners outgrow the shell of their negative thoughts and understand their strengths. in detail it investigated the following research question: what effects can positive psychology have on efl learners’ self-esteem?. 2. literature review humanistic psychology developed around the middle of the twentieth century in part to highlight the fact that the previous ways of thinking in psychoanalysis and behaviorism had not been concerned with the full range of functioning. arising from this, positive psychology is concerned with theories proposing how to make a good life. undoubtedly, this trend in psychology is interested in the sort of learning that leads to personal growth and change and believes that the highest levels of education include personal involvement at both affective and cognitive levels. in addition, the focus on what is good about humans and their lives has long been a matter of human research. the notion of wellbeing has been frequently used to indicate a complex concept consisting of the relative presence of positive emotions, the absence of negative emotions, and satisfaction with life (myers & diener, 1995). one approach to fostering wellbeing may be to assist the development of character strengths. character strengths are defined by brdar and kashdan (2010) as ‘pre-existing qualities that arise naturally, feel authentic and are intrinsically motivating to use’ (p. 151).on the other hand, peterson (2006) argues that ‘we should develop and use as many strengths of character as possible’ (p. 157) and he also claims that educational settings are ideal settings to teach character. character strength seeks to ensure that a student’s academic abilities are developed in unison with his/her character (berkowitz & bier, 2004; lickona, 1993) which is in line with the positive education movement (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009). benninga, berkowitz, kuehn, and smith (2006) in a study to find the relationship between character education and academic achievement found that the experiences that students have in schools or universities can build their character. character strengths can act as protective factors which help to decrease negative feelings and enable flourishing (park & peterson, 2008). this includes positive introductions, where the student is asked to identify, feel gratitude for, and put strengths in action plan. mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 337 ijolte tudor (1996) mentions that self-concept, identity and self-esteem are among the key elements of mental health. additionally, porky (1970) and west, fish, and stevens (1980) cite a correlation between general self-esteem and academic and personal success. thus, positive psychology calls attention to the positive feelings that a good educational climate can build. in such happy environment students obtain instructions they can process easily and retain what is learned more permanently (cohn & fredrickson, 2009). in like manner, scherer (2005) holds that positive emotions can make and guide motivational behaviours from students, enabling them to engage and solve learning tasks more effectively. as a result, good or bad emotional experiences language learners are exposed to and the sort of motivational energy they exhibit during learning activities go hand in hand (mendez lopez, 2011). the more language learners experience positive emotions, the more motivation they will exhibit during language learning process. indeed, most studies show that positive emotions can stimulate learners’ pleasurable engagement and involvement with their environment as well as motivate social relationships (cacioppo, priester, & berntson, 1993; carver & scheier 1990; clore 1994; davidson 1993; frijda 1994). moreover, some scholars acknowledge that foreign language learning is primarily an emotionally driven task (maclntyre, 2002; dörnyei, 2005; garret & young, 2009; bown & white, 2010; imai, 2010). macintyre (2002) claims that the difference between engaged and unengaged learners can be explained by the emotions they experience during the process of language learning and that these have a strong connection with their level of self-esteem. self-esteem refers to an individual’s perception of his or her own self-worth and varies between individuals (waterman, 1992). this self-assessment is a crucial construct and is related to a variety of positive psychological outcomes, including overall psychological adjustment, positive emotion, social confidence, and life satisfaction (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985; leary & macdonald, 2003. a review of the literature emphasises the fact that self-esteem is an important psychological factor contributing to health and quality of academic life and life in general (evans, 1997). recently, several studies have shown that subjective well-being significantly correlates with high self-esteem, and that self-esteem accounts for significant variance in both mental well-being and happiness (zimmerman, 2000). indeed, while low self-esteem leads to maladjustment, positive self-esteem, internal standards and aspirations seem to contribute actively to ‘wellbeing’ (garmezy, 1984; glick and zigler, 1992). also, the relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement has been well documented in the literature. a variety of studies have reached the conclusion that academic achievement and self-esteem are positively correlated (bankston & zhou, 2002; lockett & harrell, mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 338 ijolte 2003; schmidt & padilla, 2003; marsh and yeung, 1997; filozof et al., 1998; hay et al., 1998). to sum up, the literature review demonstrates that there is a connection between positive psychology and self-esteem. however, more empirical evidence is needed as to how positive psychology affects self-esteem. to the authors’ best knowledge referring to the review of literature, there are no studies investigating positive psychology and self-esteem in an efl context. this research is designed to address the gaps in this area. its general aim is to provide empirical evidence on what works in a strength-based positive psychology intervention designed to develop students’ self-esteem at tertiary level. 3. methodology 3.1 participants this study adopted a quasi-experimental design. the participants of the study were 36 upper-intermediate ma students of tefl between the ages of 22 and 35 enrolled in a practical teaching course in a university in kerman, iran. they were divided into two groups of 18 students (12 girls and 6 boys in each group). all participants had roughly the same english language learning experience with respect to the number of years they had received efl instruction. to control for the differences attributable to nationality and first language, all participants in this study were l1 speakers of persian from kerman, iran. after receiving information about the scope of the research, the data to be collected and their right to withdraw from the study at any time, all the participants confirmed their willingness to take part in the study by signing a consent form. 3.2. instrument to assess the participants’ level of self-esteem, the self esteem inventory adult form (sei-a) developed by cooper smith (1967, 1981) was used (appendix). the twenty-five items of the questionnaire on the measure were rated on the 2-point scale of “like me” and “unlike me”. the cronbach alpha reliability of the measure with the present sample was calculated to be .98. hence, the questionnaire was deemed to be a reliable instrument for eliciting the intended data 3.3. procedure in this study, the independent variable (the application of positive psychology in the classroom) is considered to have a direct effect on the dependent variable (self esteem).as the first step, the participants were assigned to two groups, a control group and an experimental group with 18 participants each, mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 339 ijolte after the groups were provided with equal opportunities in terms of class time (an hour and a half for each session), and the number of sessions (2 sessions per week). the self esteem inventory adult form (sei-a) questionnaire was used to measure the primary level of the learners’ self-esteem. during this period, the learners in the control group were given the same tasks as the experimental group except they were not exposed to thirty-eight sbppc (strength based positive psychology clips) while the participants in the experimental group engaged in a 30-mint task of sbppc exposure which included the stages of observation and discussion. during the observation stage, the teacher asked the learners just to watch the clips. and after watching the clips, the students started to discuss and reflect on the clips. the students discussed how the clips helped them understand to deal with negative feelings if they were experiencing distress in relations to their academic tasks for example. bringing unhelpful thoughts such as ‘i can’t stand all the pressure’; ‘i am not professional enough;’ or ‘i am going to quit.’ into the student’s awareness, the pp clips encouraged the student to think about a time when they completed academic tasks successfully, encouraging them to explore what they were thinking at that time and what strengths they used to help themselves.. examples of adaptive thoughts that might surface from these positive examples include: ‘this is really tough, but if i manage the time, i can cope with this task’ and ‘in the past i experienced the same challenges, but i did it. so, i can do my best this time, too.’ in this way, the pp clips helped the students to challenge their own negative thoughts, connecting them with their own positive and adaptive thinking. finally, after five months of sbppc exposure, progress was evaluated by comparing the self-esteem of the control and experimental group. 4. findings and discussion as stated above, the present study was conducted with the main goal of exploring the effect of positive psychology on efl learners’ self-esteem. consequently, a basic quantitative research design was adopted to elicit and analyse the data in the present study. to identify whether a significant change occurred in the self-esteem of each group during the study, we conducted paired samples t-test and independent t-test. the result of the paired sample t-test analysis did not show a significant difference in the mean scores for the pretest (m1=36.61, sd1=3.22) and the post-test of control group (m2=37, sd2=2.83), t=0.53, df=17, p>0.05. the effect size was es=3.94 and r= 0.892. however, the results strongly confirmed a significant difference in the mean scores for experimental group on the pretest (m1=38.56, sd1= 2.83), and posttest (m2= 66.56, sd2=11.39), t= -10.03, df=17. p<0.01, with an effect size of es=3.94 and r= 0.892, rejecting the null hypothesis and confirming mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 340 ijolte the research hypothesis. the result of the independent t-test analysis did not show a significant difference in the mean scores for control (m1=36.61, sd1= 3.22) and experimental group on pretest (m2= 38.56, sd2= 2.83), t= -1.92, df=34. p < 0.01. but the results strongly confirmed a significant difference in the mean scores for control and experimental group on posttest (m1=37, sd1=2.83), (m2=66.56, sd2=11.39), t= -10.68, df=34, p<0.01, and the effect size was es=4.16 and r=0.901. table 1. paired t-test of self-esteem time n mean std. deviation ttest df pvalue cg pre-test 18 36.61 3.22 0.53 17 0.6 post-test 18 37 2.83 table 2. independent t test of self-esteem time n mean std.deviation t-test df pvalue pre-test control 18 36.61 3.22 -1.92 34 0.06 experimental 18 38.56 2.83 time n mean std.deviation t-test df pvalue eg pre-test 18 38.56 2.83 -10.03 17 0.0000 post-test 18 66.56 11.39 mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 341 ijolte the present study investigated the effectiveness of implementing a strengthbased positive psychology intervention at higher education in efl classes. by administering a questionnaire, quantitative data were gathered. regarding the research question – what effects can positive psychology have on efl learners’ self-esteem – the results of this study presented in tables 1 & 2 demonstrate that the positive psychology intervention used helped efl learners understand and build on their strengths and manage (rather than focus on) their weaknesses in a way that increased their self-esteem. these results show that the intervention used can be recommended as a practical means to create high self-esteem classrooms for english learning. other studies show self-esteem is a significant construct relevant to overall psychological adjustment, positive emotions, social confidence, and life satisfaction (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985; leary & macdonald, 2003). as mentioned earlier, positive psychology is associated with higher levels of self-esteem (brown & ryan, 2003; rasmussen & pidgeon, 2011; thompson & waltz, 2008). positive psychology encourages a non-judgemental, open, and receptive accessible stance to one’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences (baer et al., 2006), and this may allow individuals to be less depleted by hardship or critical, and judgmental thoughts about the self. following ryan, brown, and creswell’s (2007) interesting discussion of the principles of positive psychology, the present study demonstrated that a positive psychology intervention can increase self-esteem. the pp intervention, time n mean std.deviation t-test df pvalue post test control 18 37 2.83 010.68 34 0.000 experimental 18 66.56 11.39 mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 342 ijolte working on character strength, helped the participants of the present study make positive images of themselves since pp made them able to step back from any negative thoughts arising about the self. the commonly endorsed assumption in positive psychology studies is that people need to feel good about themselves and try to enhance and maintain their positive self-image. it seems that the conditions boosting optimal human functioning should be emphasized at schools which in turn can help increase the learners ‘self-esteem. the concept of positive psychology in education seeks not only higher academic achievement but character strengths, self-awareness and emotional control. by taking advantage of the best of positive psychology, strengthsbased education could positively transform of colleges and universities. 5. conclusions the current study investigated the effect of a positive psychology intervention on efl learners’ self-esteem suggesting that applying positive psychology principles can increase efl learners’ self-esteem. the findings are widely important in efl and provide a useful intervention that educational professionals can use with students in their classrooms. the results suggest that positive psychology principles lead to significantly greater rates of improvement in efl learners’ self-esteem. following these findings, it can be said that for inspiring and improving efl learners' self esteem, positive psychology helps learners feel good about themselves and try to enhance and maintain their positive self-image, helping them change negative styles of thinking and increase well-being and self-esteem. the goals of positive psychology mirror the goals of education. most professionals enter the field of teaching to make a difference in the general and academic lives of students. what stimulates teachers to continue is the joy of seeing positive change and growth at optimal levels in students. positive psychology similarly promotes general well-being and life satisfaction and does so across the broad spectrum from individuals to institutions. further, as learners work on themselves by learning the principles of this new branch of psychology they can identify and employ their real talents in learning area by eliminating mental barriers to success. this approach helps learners change negative styles of thinking and in this way change how they feel. they develop the ability to pull attention away from the chronic inner chatter of negative thoughts and redirect it to their strengths, enhancing well-being. while this study expands upon the findings of previous self-esteem studies, it also has some limitations. in the current study, the participants were a group of university efl learners, and so any generalization of the findings to other contexts such as private language institutes and high schools should be done with caution. the data collection was limited to a self-report questionnaire. to obtain a more precise estimate of the variables, future research should utilize qualitative methods such as interview and observation, too. it is also recommended that this study be replicated in different efl contexts among learners with diverse cultural, educational and socioeconomic mehry haddad narafshan, samieh noori 343 ijolte backgrounds. becker and maracek (2008) emphasized the significance of considering the individual within his/her social and cultural context and defining happiness, strengths, and virtue in whatever way is most relevant to that special context. the use of strengths models and measures must always be considered within the cultural contexts of the individuals with whom one is working. furthermore, the study did not also include an evaluation of the program effects on the teacher who underwent positive psychology training. as the teacher was the one who shaped the emotional quality of the program content, it is possible that the teachers' emotional connection to the program content had a decisive effect that could not be reproduced by merely adhering to the guidelines with fidelity. the final limitation was the lack of time for conducting the research. moreover, the intervention sessions were relatively 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(2000) self-esteem, personal control, optimism, extraversion and the subjective well-being of midwestern university faculty. dissertation abstracts international b: sciences and engineering, 60(7-b), 3608. contact urip widodo urwido@gmail.com stabn raden wijaya, indonesia ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract this research aims to know whether the jigsaw learning strategy is better than the audio-lingual method to teach speaking. this experimental research was carried out in the vocational school. the population was four classes (140 students) of eleventh grade a, b, c, d, and e. the samples were the eleventh grade a as the experimental group and b as the control group. each group consists of 30 students. the experimental group was taught using the jigsaw learning strategy, while the control group used the audio-lingual method. the data collection technique was through the speaking test, and the data analysis technique was through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. the data analysis shows that the mean score of the students who were taught by using the jigsaw learning strategy is 81,23, while the mean score of the students who were taught by using the audio-lingual method is 76,03. moreover, the fo (8,77) is higher than ft (4,00) at the significance level of significance α= 0,05, which means the null hypotheses are rejected, and the alternative hypotheses are accepted. in conclusion, the jigsaw learning strategy is more effective than the audio-lingual method to teach speaking. article history received november 24, 2021 accepted december 17, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: alm, experiment, jigsaw, speaking. 1. introduction in this age of globalization, english has increasingly become the medium in every communication domain, both in local and global contexts (fajrina, 2015). english is widely used in indonesia as a language of international communication. in this sense, spoken english has its patterns that give meaning to daily communication (fata, 2014). it is extensively taught from the primary up to the tertiary level of education. it is the act of anticipation that this country will face more competition with the trend of globalization than before. for instance, indonesia must be ready to face the asean economic society. asean economic society will bring lots of demands to asean society, including indonesia. one of the demands is mastering the english language, and one of the english skills that have to be mastered is speaking skill. it is very important because by mastering speaking skills, people will communicate with others. there are four skills in english, namely speaking, listening, writing, and reading. as one of english skills, speaking has to be mastered by everyone, especially the students. speaking skill is the skill that will help students to interact or to communicate with others. on the next level, speaking skill is very useful for the students when they have an interview on applying the occupation. as a skill, speaking is the most used skill by people rather than the three other skills. speaking will give more benefits for learners, especially for vocational school students. it can be known from the fact that most companies or offices look for very competent and knowledgeable people in their field. to deliver everything they know, people should use their capability to speak online job interviews. for the students of a vocational school who want to get a job, a job interview is a golden opportunity to be reached if they can speak fluently and clearly. in the job interview, they can inform what they know international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15849 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.15849 63 u. widodo & m. mugiyo about the job description, present what they learned in vocational school, and persuade the interviewer. those make the applicant can be accepted easily to work in the company. moreover, mastering english, especially speaking skills, will be very useful after they are accepted into the company. although usually, foreign language (fl) learners aim for communicativeness and fluency, many try to reach the highest levels in all aspects, native-like pronunciation being one of them (baran-lucartz, 2020). the english language can be used as a daily conversation in the company; besides, it will also be used to communicate with the leaders. it shows that the demands of mastering english speaking skills for the students, especially vocational school students, are as the requirements, it is not just a skill that has to be mastered when they study in the school but also a need for the students must have. consequently, lacking communicative competence, the opportunity to interact in the target language, the motivation to learn, and the appropriate learning environment represent major challenges that face efl classes (alsyouf, 2021). the teaching method that the teacher uses is often assumed as the factor that causes the student's speaking problem. the current standard of english speaking proficiency among students does not reflect sufficient teaching and learning of speaking components (tuspekova et al., 2020). there are lots of methods to encourage students' speaking ability communicatively. this research proposes a jigsaw learning strategy compared to the audio-lingual method to encourage students' speaking ability. jigsaw learning strategy is a kind of learning strategy that focuses on students' activity (students-center learning). jigsaw learning strategi possibilities students to be more active in the class. students have to work in small groups. it pushes them to speak a lot. with this method, all students can independently search for knowledge and share knowledge with classmates (fitriyah & fauzi, 2020). researchers have conducted several previous studies about jigsaw learning strategies. jigsaw learning strategy affords to improve scholars' english speaking ability and scholars' skill in arabic translation (fitriyah & fauzi, 2020; ubaedillah, 2019). moreover, jigsaw learning strategy also improves scholars' critical thinking skills and scholars' ability to design lesson plans (saguni, 2013; saputra et al., 2019). however, all of those studies focus on the scholars' subject. a certain study is needed about how jigsaw learning strategy will affect students' skills because surely it is different among scholars and students. this is the gap that is completed through this study. this study examines whether a jigsaw learning strategy is more effective than alm to teach speaking for vocational school students. based on the preliminary study at the vocational school, it is assumed that the teacher uses the audio lingual method. it could be seen from several teaching techniques implemented in classroom teaching. the teacher often implements drill techniques in teaching speaking material before practicing the dialogue; he also asks the students to memorize the dialogue and then perform it in front of the class. the teacher almost always uses the target language or english language during the lesson. even the teacher asks the students to always use the english language in the class, and the students will get a little punishment if they use indonesian or javanese language. even though teachers need to correct students' errors during their speaking practices, it is essential that they also consider the students' needs (fitriani et al., 2019). besides, sometimes the teacher asks the students to read the passage or dialog loudly; after that, the teacher will give some corrections if the students make mistakes. the teacher also often says to neglect the grammar or structure. as an evaluation, usually, the teacher does a conversation practice with the students; surely, the conversation is totally in english or the target language. the teacher seems to be the role of the teaching-learning process, and the students just receive what the teacher taught. as a result, the students are inactive in the class. they can not convey their interpretation of the material. the students also can not enjoy the class it is because they just follow what the teacher said or taught. moreover, most of the students had many difficulties following the teaching and learning process. it is because they lack interest and motivation and lack skill either in the vocabulary or in the speaking skill. most of the students look bored in following the teaching and learning process, and they become passive in the class. surely it much influences their speaking ability. the students can not speak well if they have already been bored and even angry with the class teacher. maybe the teacher expects that implementing audio lingual method and pushing them to use the english language totally in the class will help the students speak well, but the reality is different because the condition of each student is different. that is why this research proposes a method that will be used to teach speaking, which hopefully can be useful, and the method is a jigsaw learning strategy. international journal of language teaching and education 64 2. literature review according to (florez & howartz, 2001), speaking is a two-way process involving a true communication of ideas, information, or feelings. speaking is obviously important as a means of communication because generally,, people communicate by using oral language. moreover, speaking is an interactive process constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving, and processing information (louma, 2004). speaking is considered a successful and effective means of communication when one can perform everything that must be involved in speaking, such as ideas, what to say, language, how to use vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. in teaching, the whole language and meaningful context must be emphasized rather than details (brown, 2001). the explanation needs a learning strategy to teach speaking that focuses on communication and collaboration. in this case, two teaching methods were examined, namely jigsaw learning strategy, a kind of collaborative learning, and alm, a kind of communicative learning. most people say that testing speaking is the most complex to assess with precision. many teachers often feel uncomfortable when handling speaking tests since it is often difficult to be objective and consistent when testing a large number of students. but it does not mean that the speaking test can not be measured correctly. in this paper, the writer quoted the one harris uses as it is the most applicable to the speaking class rating system. harris, as quoted by (wijarwadi 2008), explains that five components are generally recognized in analyses of speech process that are pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency (the ease and speed of the flow of the speech), and comprehension. according to (isgiarno et al., 2020) the jigsaw is an activity that creates interaction by providing students with an opportunity to help each other build comprehension actively. by using the jigsaw, students are encouraged to communicate and accomplish the idea of the task given by the teacher, together with their group members actively. students meet with members from the other groups who are assigned the same aspect, and after mastering the material, return to the homegroup to teach the material to their group members. moreover, the jigsaw technique is one of the cooperative learning techniques that have been used in language teaching and learning. this strategy is efficient teaching material that also encourages speaking, engagement, interaction, teaching, and cooperation by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity (hadisantosa, 2017). first of all, the organization in the jigsaw activities should work in the expert groups. in these groups, students work in the same group of four to six members, and each member in a team becomes an expert on a topic. after mastering the material and sharing the information, the students present and teach the new group. then, each student tells the other group member about the topic. after information-sharing and discussion, the groups have an opportunity to review the material before taking a quiz (kessler, 2015). meanwhile, alm is the classical and operant conditioning model providing the perfect foundation for mimicry drills and pattern practices (brown, 2004). meanwhile, (freeman 2000) stated that alm is a method that drills students in grammatical sentence patterns. the alm considered language simply as a form of behavior to be learned through the information of correct speech habits (s thornburry, 2000). the procedure that teachers should adopt in implementing alm, as stated by (richards & rodgers, 2001), is that the lesson begins with the modeling of the speaking material by the teacher, and the students follow what the teacher said. then, the students repeat each line of the dialogue, individually and in chorus. next, the students produce dialogue, and the teacher pays attention to pronunciation, intonation, and fluency. if there is any mistake, the teacher needs to immediately correct the mistakes. then, the students memorize the dialogue gradually and line by line. after they have memorized it, the dialogue is read aloud in chorus, one half saying one speaker and the other half responding. the students are really not allowed to open their book or read the dialogue throughout this phase. after that, to make the learning process more interesting and effective, the dialogue is adapted to the students' interests or situations by changing certain keywords or phrases. students act out this phase. the teacher may select certain key structures or sentences from the dialogue and use as the basis for pattern drills of different kinds. the selection is based on the current speaking material learned in class. then, these are practiced in chorus and individually. after all this process, the students should memorize certain key sentences or structures from the dialogue. then, the last process of speaking activity is that the teacher divides the student into a group of two and asks them to practice all the dialogue from the textbook in front of the class. 65 u. widodo & m. mugiyo principally, this research examined two teaching approaches: collaborative and communicative. collaborative teaching methods such as ctl and pbl have improved students' speaking skills (haerani & jatiraga, 2019; rahmah, 2018; widodo, 2020). meanwhile, communicative teaching methods such as the pow-tega technique, show and tell, and think aloud have been used to improve students' speaking and reading skills (bangun, 2018; wahyuni, 2018; yusuf et al. 2018). however, no specific study tries to examine these two teaching methods, namely jigsaw, and alm, to teach speaking. jigsaw teaching method, which is categorized into collaborative teaching method is claimed an effective way to teach speaking; on the other hand,, alm represents communicative teaching method is claimed as well as an appropriate method to teach speaking. based on those explanations, this study examined which one is better to teach speaking, jigsaw or alm, as both are claimed to be effective teaching methods to teach speaking. 3. method this research was carried out from march to may 2021. the research was a post-test-only experimental research design. in a post-only experimental research design, the test is conducted just once after the treatment (sugiyono, 2016). it is to know the effect of the teaching methods both in experimental class and in control class implemented. the research design is as follows: table 1. research design group intervention post test experimental class taught by using jigsaw o1 control class taught by using alm o2 the researcher examines the influence of jigsaw learning strategy on students' speaking skills are two groups in this experiment, namely the experimental and control groups. the experimental group is the class that was taught by using the jigsaw learning strategy, and the control group is the class that was taught by using the audio-lingual method. they were given different treatments. after the treatment, the groups were given a post-test. the population is 140 students. the population is presented as follows: table 2. number of population class number of students control class experimental class total a 30 √ sampel: 60 students b 30 √ c 27 d 28 e 25 total 140 meanwhile, the samples of the research were the eleventh grade a students as the experimental class and the eleventh grade b students as the control class. each class consists of 30 students. the type of sampling which was used is cluster random sampling. the sampling and decision of experiment and control classes were made by lottery. speaking test is a technique to be used in collecting the data. it uses two examiners, namely the researcher and an english teacher, to avoid bias. the data are analyzed through statistical descriptive and inferential. normality and homogeneity tests were used before testing the hypothesis. moreover, the statistical device that is appropriate is the analysis of variance (anova). the researcher uses one dependent variable and one independent variable; dealing with this research, the dependent variable is students' speaking skills, and the independent variable is teaching methods. hypothesis null (ho) is rejected if fo>ft at the level of significance α= 0,05, and vice versa. it is known that the ft is 4.00. international journal of language teaching and education 66 4. result and discussion the data of speaking test students taught by jigsaw learning strategy the data are obtained through a speaking test. the test is conducted once with two examiners. the data of speaking test students taught by using jigsaw are: 69, 69, 71, 72, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 77, 78, 79, 79, 79, 83, 83, 83, 83, 83, 85, 85, 85, 86, 88, 88, 88, 88, 93, 95, 95. the data description can be seen as follows: table 3. the frequency distribution of data class limit class boundaries frequency (fi) midpoint (xi) x2 fixi fixi2 66-70 65,5-70,5 2 68 4624 136 9248 71-75 70,5-75,5 5 73 5329 365 26645 76-80 75,5-80,5 7 78 6084 546 42588 81-85 80,5-85,5 8 83 6889 664 55112 86-90 85,5-90,5 5 88 7744 440 38720 91-95 90,5-95,5 3 93 8649 279 25947 ∑ 30 39319 2440 198260 mean= 81,23, median= 83, sd= 7,31, mode= 83 the table of the distribution of data shows that the mean of the students' speaking score is 81,23, the mode is 83, the standard deviation is 7,31, and the median is 83. moreover, the frequency distribution of students' speaking skills is described in the histogram and polygon below: figure 1. histogram and polygon of data taught by using jigsaw the data of students’ speaking test taught by using audio-lingual method the students’ score are: 63, 67, 67, 67, 68, 68, 71, 71, 73, 73, 73, 73, 78, 78, 78, 78, 78, 78, 79, 79, 79, 79, 79, 80, 80, 83, 83, 85, 85, 88. the data description can be seen as follows: 67 u. widodo & m. mugiyo table 5. the frequency distribution of data class limit class boundaries frequency (fi) midpoint (xi) x2 fixi fixi2 61-65 60,5-65,5 1 63 3969 63 3969 66-70 65,5-70,5 5 68 4624 340 23120 71-75 70,5-75,5 6 73 5329 438 31974 76-80 75,5-80,5 13 78 6084 1014 79092 81-85 80,5-85,5 4 83 6889 332 27556 86-90 85,5-90,5 1 88 7744 88 7744 ∑ 30 34639 2275 173455 mean= 76,03, median= 78, sd= 6,24, mode= 78 the table of the distribution of data shows that the mean of the students' speaking score is 76,03, the mode is 78, the standard deviation is 6,24, and the median is 78. moreover, the frequency distribution of students' speaking skills is described in the histogram and polygon below: figure 2. histogram and polygon data students taught by using alm normality test normality test of the scores of students speaking test taught by using the jigsaw. normality test is a pre-requisite test before conducting the anova test. normality test in this research is by using test. the data are categorized in normal distribution if lo is lower than lt (lo<lt). the steps of analysis is presented as follows: table 6. normality test students' speaking score taught using jigsaw x f z fz sz fz-sz lo = 0,086 69 2 -1,67258 0,047205 0,066667 0,019462 71 1 -1,39913 0,080887 0,1 0,019113 72 2 -1,26241 0,103401 0,166667 0,063266 73 1 -1,12569 0,130149 0,2 0,069851 75 1 -0,85224 0,19704 0,233333 0,036293 76 1 -0,71552 0,237145 0,266667 0,029522 77 2 -0,57879 0,281364 0,333333 0,051969 78 1 -0,44207 0,329219 0,366667 0,037448 international journal of language teaching and education 68 79 3 -0,30535 0,38005 0,466667 0,086616 83 5 0,241544 0,595433 0,633333 0,0379 85 3 0,51499 0,69672 0,733333 0,036613 86 1 0,651713 0,742707 0,766667 0,02396 88 4 0,925159 0,822558 0,9 0,077442 93 1 1,608775 0,946167 0,933333 0,012834 95 2 1,882221 0,970097 1 0,029903 based on the computation of the students' score taught by using the jigsaw, the highest score of lo (l obtained) is 0.086. from the table of the critical value of lilies test with the students' number (n) = 30 at the significance level α = 0.05, the score of lt is 0.161. as lo is lower than lt (0.086) < (0.161), it can be concluded that the data are in the normal distribution. based on the result of the students' speaking test. a normality test is needed to know whether the data are in the normal distribution or not. the analysis of normality is presented as follows: tabel 7. normality test of the students speaking test taught by using alm x f z fz sz fz-sz lo= 0,100 63 1 -2,08703 0,018443 0,033333 0,014891 67 3 -1,44651 0,074017 0,133333 0,059317 68 2 -1,28638 0,099155 0,2 0,100845 71 2 -0,80599 0,210124 0,266667 0,056542 73 4 -0,48573 0,31358 0,4 0,08642 78 6 0,314923 0,62359 0,6 0,02359 79 5 0,475054 0,682626 0,766667 0,084041 80 2 0,635184 0,737346 0,833333 0,095987 83 2 1,115576 0,867698 0,9 0,032302 85 2 1,435837 0,924476 0,966667 0,042191 88 1 1,916228 0,972332 1 0,027668 based on the computation of students' speaking scores taught using alm, lo's highest score (l obtained) is 0.100. from the table of the critical value of liliefors test with the students' number (n) = 30 at the significance level α = 0.05, the score of lt is 0.161. as lo is lower than lt(0.100) < (0.161), it can be concluded that the data are in the normal distribution. homogeneity test besides the normality test, the homogeneity test as the pre-requisite test is also needed before conducting the anova test. a homogeneity test is conducted to know whether the data are homogeneous or not. the data are homogeneous if χo2 is lower than χt2. the chi-square table for degree of freedom (df) = 1 at the level of significance α = 0.05 is 1,86. based on the data analysis, the result is as follow: 69 u. widodo & m. mugiyo f-test two-sample for variances jigsaw alm mean 81,23333333 76,03333333 variance 53,4954023 38,99885057 observations 30 30 df 29 29 f 1,37171741 p(f<=f) one-tail 0,199895987 f critical one-tail 1,860811435 based on the data analysis above, it can be seen that the χo2 score is 1,33 lower than χt2 (1,86), so it can be concluded that the data are homogeneous. anova after the requirements of data testing are done, the data are then analyzed by using single-factor anova. the result of the single factor anova test is as follow: anova source of variation ss df ms f p-value f crit between groups 405,6 1 405,6 8,770275 0,004431 4,006873 within groups 2682,333 58 46,24713 total 3087,933 59 based on the analysis above, the fo is 8,77 while the ft is 4,00. moreover, the p-value is 0,004 lower than the significance level of 0,05, so it can be concluded that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypotheses are accepted, which means the jigsaw learning strategy is more effective to teach speaking than the audio-lingual method. discussion the jigsaw learning strategy is basically wished to afford to improve students' learning achievement. students' learning achievements are expected to increase when they are learning using cooperative learning, especially the jigsaw strategy (effendi-hasibuan et al., 2020). jigsaw learning strategy demands students to speak, starting from speaking in small groups to the whole class or in front of the class. this activity makes students become more active in the class. this learning model emphasizes students' activity during the teaching and learning process, and students are expected to be more active in getting knowledge (edriati et al., 2015). the students should push themselves to speak and to talk. besides, by using a jigsaw learning strategy, the students can create their own idea related to the topic of the material. students have to discuss the topic with their classmates, and they have to deliver their idea by speaking. the advantages of the jigsaw learning strategy are exercising students to speak, discuss, and understand the material concept (sukarta & gunamantha, 2012). meanwhile, in alm, teachers have more roles than the students. the teacher controls the class. it is in line with what is said by widodo (2020) that alm is a kind of traditional teaching method in which the teacher has great power, which means that the class is controlled by the teacher or teacher center class. the students just received what the teacher instructed. the learning activities in this method make students lack opportunities to improve their speaking skills. moreover, mart (2013) states that alm aims to develop students' communicative competence by using dialogues and drills. in this case, the teacher will read the dialogue, and the international journal of language teaching and education 70 students will repeat it. the students' role is just repeating and revising the incorrect utterance. students have to follow teachers' instructions. it cages students' ideas and creativity. besides, students that are taught using alm will not be able to speak in real communication outside the classroom. therefore, it ignores the communicative competence in teaching practice (liu & shi, 2007). jigsaw learning strategy is better to teach speaking compared to alm. in the jigsaw learning strategy, the students have more time to explore their ability to speak; meanwhile, in alm, the students have to obey the teachers' instructions. by using alm, students just practice what the teacher said. the word practice means that something is always repeated, but in any case, between the first learning situation and the real learning situation, it will try to practice students' skills (aprianto et al., 2020). the jigsaw learning strategy needs discussion activity either in small or large groups. this activity makes the teaching and learning process more attractive. using a jigsaw cooperative learning in teaching and learning activities makes the students' attention is more focused, and they can express the ideas they had in mind. for shy students, using the jigsaw cooperative learning will automatically respond to all assigned tasks, so they will issue their opinions more actively, and they can also listen to the opinion of their friends and respond to it immediately (marhamah & mulyadi, 2013). students have an important role in the class, while teachers just function as facilitators to observe and evaluate the successful discussion stage. in alm, teachers conduct all activities. teachers read, and the students just repeat, teachers revise, and the students just follow. basically, alm is designed for students who have good listening skills. the theory is that a good listener will ultimately make a better speaker because learners must focus their attention on actually hearing what is said. only then will they be able to internalize such linguistic features as pronunciation and intonation; thus, making them more effective speakers (rahman & melhim, 2009). students are passive while teachers more active in directing the class. 5. conclusion jigsaw learning strategy is more effective than alm in teaching vocational students speaking. therefore, the teacher should implement a collaborative teaching method to teach speaking because students tend to speak much when they have to associate and work with their friends. however, students' psychological aspects such as students' anxiety, students' confidence, or students' learning interest are not evaluated in this study. it will be better if further study researches the effect of students' psychological aspects on students' speaking skills. it needs further study to compare jigsaw learning strategy with another collaborative learning strategy in teaching another skill of english such as reading, writing, or listening. references alsyouf, a., & al kayed, m. 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(2018). increasing speaking achievement by using pow-tega teachnique. international journal of language teaching and education, 1(1), 27–37. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4594 widodo, u. (2020). contextual teaching and learning : an alternative method to teach speaking. sell journal: scope of english language teaching, linguistics, and literature, 5(2), 115–130. http://www.publikasi.stkippgri-bkl.ac.id/index.php/sl/article/download/424/343 wijarwadi, w. (2008). the effectiveness of contextual teaching and learning to teach speaking. yusuf, s. b., nasir, c., & rohiman, c. l. n. (2018). using think-aloud method in teaching reading skill. studies in english language and education, 5(1), 148–159. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v5i1.9898 https://doi.org/10.33603/rill.v2i3.2127 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4594 http://www.publikasi.stkippgri-bkl.ac.id/index.php/sl/article/download/424/343 https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v5i1.9898 ©2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract the research aims to develop multi-literacy skills by creating a literary graphic story as a creative and innovative way for english department students in learning literature. by creating an adaptation from text to picture, students are expected to improve their ability to understand literary works and express their creative and innovative skills. this is a qualitative study implementing the project-based learning (pbl) approach in literature class, which aims to produce graphic stories as the output of studying literature. students do not only understand the literary theories but also make something out of their understanding. the scaffolding instruction method was employed to examine practices of improving multiliteracy skills. a detailed action research plan, including preliminary observation in the classroom, action plan, intervention, and guiding, is applied. the investigation related to the barriers in doing the project is going to be conducted as well. reader response criticism is introduced to students in the reading and analyzing stage as a useful method to develop their critical thinking in evaluating the literary works they read. we argue that the students improve their reading skills, writing skills and producing graphic story stories based on their own interpretation of the literary text, which is proven by the summary and conversation texts they produce in the graphic stories. they also develop their creativity by producing images and pictures as the result of the literary adaptation process. there are two significant outcomes of the project: developing literary text understanding as well as producing the original graphic story. article history received 15 april 2020 accepted 17 june 2020 published 31 december 2020 keywords: multi-literacy skills, graphic story, literature class, and project-based 1. introduction educators and teachers' concern wherever around the world is how to make their learning and teaching process better and better than before. to reach the goal, we can see that there is a lot of research and projects are done to get new methods and approaches in teaching literature so that they can be applied in the classroom. one of the current issues is how to develop multi literacy skills for students so that they have valuable skills to endorse their academic knowledge and support their success in their career in the future. studies on developing students’ multi-literacy skills are mushrooming, and yet the use of graphic novels as literary adaptation is left unexplored. empowering university students' literacy skills is crucial since the lack of reading and writing becomes a common phenomenon in indonesia, especially for students at all levels. it needs continuing attempts to improve literacy ability by doing some researches and implementation to reach the goal. literacy is a significant issue in education (blue, 2010). literacy itself, he argues, is the combining of two international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.9073 mailto:fajarsusanto@unipasby.ac.id https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.9073 84 r.hidayat and f. susanto skills, reading and writing. multiliteracy skills are also blended by elaborating reading and writing multimodal mediums such as text and images (kyle et al., 2004). literacy skills have also become the current issue due to the massive development of information and technology and the appearance of revolution 5.0 around the world. teachers everywhere face the same problem related to the literacy matters (bitz & emiajulu, 2016). they argue that engaging students to read and write as the basic literacy skills is unfinished work for educators. the massive development resulted in new challenges for educators to minimize the negative impacts of the development, which is called distraction. the distraction refers to the huge consumption of the internet and social media among people worldwide. it breaks the focus on the nowadays students, the so-called millennial generation. in the future, the literacy skills move to multi-literacy skills. these are the skills that combine multi modes skills as media to improve students' literacy skills, such as the use of text and images media in which in this research is the graphic story. griffith (2010) states that in the 21st century and the age of developing multimedia in life. that is why educators need to prepare the students to face the age by leading them to have multiliteracy skills. writing a graphic novel is a promising method to encourage multimodal skills literacy for students in the 21st century (hughes et al., 2011). some educators believe that guiding students to read and write a graphic novel has some advantages. first, since the graphic novel provides both text and picture, it can be a joyful source. second, creating a graphic novel done by students contributes good multimodal skills for the students' success in the upcoming era. it is because creative and innovative skills will be extremely needed to develop information and technology now and in the future. they also emphasize that graphic novels can motivate students to have multiliteracy skills. therefore, this research is intended to answer the challenge by developing literary comic strip as the literary adaption from text to visual image in the literary comic strip. this is an effort to improve students' understanding of literary works and encourage the students to be creative and innovative students by creating a literary comic strip. this research also offers the humanistic approach in analyzing literary works (harper, 1988). he argues that teaching literature at the undergraduate level should be delivered in a humanistic approach, which means that it encourages students to express their ideas when they interpret literary works. in line with harper’s insight, this research elaborates the humanistic approach by allowing them to explore their interpretation in analyzing four short stories as the literature class project. by adopting from text to graphic story, the students interpret the story based on their understanding of the content and the authors' theme. the result of the interpretation is a graphic story version. through the creating of the literary comic strip as new media as the product of literary adaptation, the students follow the steps which lead them to practice their literacy skills begins from reading literary works, analyzing and examining the text, evaluate the text and then reproduce the text by creating new media in the form of images. unlike hughes’ project, which focuses on creating by graphic novel as original work, this research project focuses more on the adaptation from literary text to the literary graphic. for some reason, this graphic novel is the trigger for students to be creative and innovative. they do not have the basic knowledge to analyze and understand literary works in deep since their major is teaching and education, not literature. the facility is also different in which hughes and friends have good sources to help them their project comes true, such as internet connection and a good library. hence, literary adaptation is a reasonable reason to get students creative and innovative and have good multiliteracy skills. this research is also designed to produce literary comic strips as the adaptation product from the students' short stories. thus, it is hoped that the result of the research can be used as the model to develop multiliteracy skills for students of english as a second language classroom. the use of graphic story in classroom creating and using graphic novels to develop students' literacy skills is not new, especially in learning english as a second language (isa, 2017). it is proved that graphic novel offers some advantages since it provides text and picture as joyful materials to attract students to learn and study about literary works. fascinatingly, the graphic stories are used broadly in the classroom as means to improve literacy skills in some areas of studying the language (barter-storm & wik, 2020; carano & clabough, 2016). in their class in toronto, canada, janette michelle hughes et al. (2011) did a project by creating a graphic novel in their classroom with their students. they reassure students by using comics. life software as a tool to create international journal of language teaching and education 85 the graphic narrative. they confessed that the project was challenging since the students are not too familiar with making their own stories and images. however, it can be solved by triggering the students to tell their own life experiences so that they make a graphic story based on their past life experiences. the next research was conducted by bitz and emiajulu (2016) in nigeria believe that comic books are really useful tools that teachers can use to explore the students’ creativity. the comic also proved that it is a good source to motivate students to read and write. they even did some stages to implement the comic books as literacy building start from writing, designing, and publishing their original comic story. while in malaysia, yusof et al. (2017) tried to see teachers' perspectives about the use of graphic novels as materials in teaching english as a second language (esl). they investigated the role of the teacher in doing graphic novels in the classroom by observing 57 participants. based on their research, they found that along with the it era, the use of graphic novels should be applied in esl classrooms due to the benefits of the media. however, they recommended that the teachers who apply the graphic novels should be trained first so they can practice it in class well. the researchers also proposed that the government support the teachers to have good knowledge of graphic novels as the teaching instrument. the more practical in using graphic novels as learning media was done by paula e griffith (2010) in the united states of america. she explored how to use graphic novels in the classroom and proposed good graphic novels such as the color, the content of the story, and the connectivity between texts and the images represented in graphic novels. she recommended using various genres such as humor, social, and adventure to enrich students' reading materials. in germany, bridges (2009) promoted the use of graphic novels in the classroom. through her article, she shared her experience when applied the materials. she contended that graphic novel motivates students to increase their multiliteracy skills. from the literature review above, it can be concluded that there are a lot of researches about multiliteracies, which are applied to graphic novels in the classroom. we can also see that the research was conducted in many countries worldwide to improve students' literacy skills and ability from primary schools to higher schools. this shows the relevance of graphic novels as a means of learning and teaching, especially in english as a second language classrooms. however, the creation of graphic novels as the product of literary adaptation is still limited and very few. therefore, this research will enrich the previous studies concerning graphic novels and promote the new approach of improving multi-literacies for students and innovative learning in terms of studying literature and english as a second language. for this reason, the discussion is conducted to answer some questions. first, how is the literary adaption implemented in a literature class? and the second is how do the students create the graphic story to improve their multiliteracy skills? from text to picture: a literary adaptation as mentioned before, the research is conducted to encourage the students to explore their ideas in analyzing literary work creatively and innovatively by resulting in new media, namely graphic novel. the activity is called a literary adaptation, in which the students transfer from the short story they read to the graphic novel. the process of literary adaptation is very common in literary studies. linda hutcheon (2006) notes that the adaptation in literary studies has a long history. it can be traced since the victorian era when some literary forms such as poems, drama, and novels were adapted into another medium, such as the poem adapted into opera. in addition, hutcheon explains that adaptation is the process of transformation from one medium into another medium. the common phenomenon of the literary adaptation is filming novel or drama. to mention them are romeo and juliet, hamlet, harry potter, the lord of the ring, twilight, love at the time of cholera, and still many more. it can also be seen in indonesia through films adapted from fiction, such as laskar pelangi, tenggelamnya kapal vanderwijk, ayat-ayat cinta, and so forth. however, the trend of literary adaptation in the current. in a further development, graphic novels' publication as the literary adaptation product becomes more attractive nowadays. there are at least four reasons why graphic novels are produced massively; easy to follow, easy to understand, fun, and shorter (brooks, 2016). that is why there is a rising trend in adapting classic novels into graphic story version. to mention them are jane eyre, great gatsby, and the odyssey. kyle meikle (2013) argues that adaptation in literary studies is a transformation process from one material to another. the adapter uses the work which is going to be adapted as the source and raw 86 r.hidayat and f. susanto material. by quoting george bluestone, meikle explores that adaptation is conducted to get new forms like film and vice versa due to the adaptation process. she also sees that the result becomes unique work since it provides a creative new form. 2. method research design this is a qualitative study implementing project-based learning (pbl) approach in literature class, english education department university of pgri adi buana surabaya. pbl was chosen because students’ production is designed as the outcome of the learning process to develop the students’ multimode skills (veselov et al., 2019). furthermore, pbl is a way to lead students to gain a deeper understanding of materials, which is called a constructivist finding (krajcik, phyllis & morais, 2018). it encourages students to do a learning process by elaborating at least three phases: understanding the subject, doing collaborative learning in a group, and then creating a product as the final learning process. in implementing pbl, the scaffolding method was employed in class. scaffolding instruction refers to teachers' guidance to the students in doing tasks successfully (hammond & gibbons, 2001). from an early stage, the teachers give the students instruction to develop understanding and skills (jumaat & tasir, 2014). the scaffolding instruction also helps the students learn independently. the literature class has 14 meetings in total. the scaffolding method in implementing pbl was incorporated into the class meeting schedule and structured in five phases as follows: in the first phase, which was given in the first and second meetings of the class, the students were given a basic understanding of literature. the stage discussed the definition of the elements of literature. the students were given reference books that they read and studied about the intrinsic and the extrinsic of literary works such as character and characterization, theme, setting, plot, point of view, and conflict. then the students read the extrinsic elements of the story; social and cultural background of the story. the phase encouraged the students to understand the elements of the story so that they have the basic knowledge to analyze literary works. in the second phase, which took place in the third and fourth meetings, the students read the short story to create the graphic story, an adaptation from literary text to the graphic story. after reading the stories, students were introduced to reader-response criticism. reader response criticism focuses on the reader who can interpret literary works based on his/her own knowledge (tyson, 2009). it means that everyone can freely analyze literary works, and there is no wrong or right related to the interpretation. furthermore, readers' role in literary studies is to produce meaning so that it gives a lot of opportunities for readers to explore /her interpretation of literary work (davis & womack, 2002). therefore, the approach offers students to express their ideas and opinion in analyzing literary works they read. as the reader, the students have the freedom to interpret literary works based on their knowledge. the example of analyzing literary work also triggered the students to interpret the content of the story they have read. phase three occurred in the fifth and sixth meetings, which was applying the reader-response criticism. in groups, the students discussed the short story. first, they explored the theme, and the issue revealed in the short story. secondly, the students delivered comments orally to expose their understanding of the story. the question and answer section was delivered at the end of the session. lastly, they summarize the character, setting, plot, and conflict by deciding the main character and its characterization. his/her role in the story was investigated to see the relationship with the story's content. one of the important elements in the graphic story is making the story's sequence so the students can use the summary to create the story in order from beginning to end. maggie chase et al. (2014) call the summary as retelling the story, and it gives the students to write the story they write in their own version in a logical sequence. through the summary written by the students in the group, it can be seen that the students understand and follow the content of the story. this is an essential material for the students to arrange the sequence of the graphic story they are going to make. then, identifying the characters is needed to create the image of the characters in the picture. for example, the character of ‘me’ in the story of the walls will talk is depicted as diligent and hard work so that the students draw a strong image in their creation. since the article elaborates the literary adaptation from text to picture, the analysis focuses on how the students interpret the four short stories and then adopt the interpretation by creating a graphic story. international journal of language teaching and education 87 it means that the accuracy between the summary and the sequence of the graphic story that the students made is the article's emphasis. therefore, the discussion is not trying to scrutinize the students' grammatical errors in writing the summary. in the next two meetings, which served as the fourth phase, the students were given literary adaptation materials. this phase is essential since the students do not have basic comprehension related to the literary adaptation. literary adaptation transforms from one genre into another genre, such as from a novel into a film and from text to pictures like a comic or graphic novel. they need to understand the elements of adaptation by considering the elements of the story. the last phase is creating a graphic story, which lasted for the next six meetings. before starting, the students were instructed to imagine the situation or the story's setting. the theme of the story gives them an insight into the situation of the story. for example, the stories entitled mariana and the first day of school reveal the issue of education. the students explore the issue by drawing the situation in school. in the legacy story, the students interpret the environment that demonstrates the practice of illegal logging. this inspires the students to draw the people's activity in the forest to do the illegal logging. the last story is the walls will talk, which tells about the social problem as a single parent. the students explore the image of a woman who live without a husband. the image of characters created by the students in the graphic story is also interesting to represent the story. data collection the study's data are graphic works collected from the sophomore students of english education department university of pgri adi buana surabaya who took ‘introduction to literature’ subject in semester 1, 2020. sixteen students were divided into four groups in which each group discussed one story. the story was read by the students and then used as the material to create the graphic story. the short story was chosen as the project of creating a graphic novel because of some reasons. first, the story's length is quite short compared to novel so it is easier for the students to read and understand. second, the plot of the short story is not as complicated as novel. the following reason is considering the students' ability to transform the story from text to picture verse which means that the text is much shorter than novel so it is easier for the students to transform the story into graphic story. there are four short stories selected, namely legacies by kevin sandefur, mariana by erni aladjai, these walls will talk by teguh affandi, and the first day of school by jeffery deaver. the stories were taken from various resources widely available, such as newspapers and websites on fictions. the four stories were chosen because they were written in accessible english and that they discuss social issues familiar to the students, such as education, social and environmental problems. it is expected that the students can follow the stories since the issues become common issue in the society. there were four graphic stories produced in the class, based on the four stories assigned to each group. three graphic stories were drawn manually, and one story was produced using a drawing computer software. these graphic works were then analyzed qualitatively to explore the students’ creativities in adapting texts into pictures. 3. finding and discussion it needs creativity to lead the students to enjoy studying literary works. one of the interesting strategies which can be implemented in the class is project-based learning. this enables the students to be not only literary work consumer or reader but also to encourage them as creators as shown in this project, namely graphic story as the literary adaptation from text to picture. the students also explore their ability in expressing the understanding of literary works. they showcase their ability when they make the graphic story as the result of their reading. here, the role of an educator to motivate students is crucial since they may have little knowledge in literary studies, especially literary works written in english. the four graphic stories produced by the students as the outcome of literature class also show that studying literature offers lot of opportunities to interpret based on the students’ own knowledge. through several meetings, the students can follow the process of understanding literary works by reading, analyzing, writing a summary and then creating graphic story. in short, the four activities which are done by the students contribute significantly to the result of the graphic story. 88 r.hidayat and f. susanto therefore, it is important to get the students familiar to the story they read because this can be a foundation to move in the next step. through the summary they wrote as the comment to the content of the story, each group expressed the interest to the narration in the story. the word inspiring is chosen by the students who discussed the story entitled ‘the first day of school”. then, the word ‘deep meaning’ is written by the students who investigated the story entitled ‘mariana’. the word ‘fascinating’ is expressed by the students who analyzed the story entitled ‘legacies’. in the meantime, there is no clear expression written by the students in the story of ‘the walls will talk.’ through the summary, the students can identify the intrinsic elements of the stories such as the characters and the characterization, the conflict and the sequence of the event. interestingly, the students also explore the moral message which is revealed in each story. in the story ‘the first day of school,’ the students stated that it is good for students and teachers to get the values because the story tells about education. in the summary of ‘mariana,’ the students explicitly note that the story teaches about how to care and understand other people. in the ‘legacies’ story, the students narrated clearly about the illegal logging which affects the environment. the students who discussed ‘the walls will talk’ did not explore the moral value. they only re-wrote the story based on their understanding. the summary, which contains about the literary elements above, gives basic foundation for the students to create graphic story as the peak activity in this project. it is a guide for the students to illustrate it in the form of images which is supported by the texts inside. the analysis of the graphic created by the students story 1: the first day of school (written by jeffery deaver) students’ summary [sic]: we have read "the first day of school" which is very inspiring story, especially for students and teachers. this story narrates the struggle of jim martin in school, but he could improve himself with the power of his teachers' beautiful words. at first, jim martin was just a victim of bullying. luckily, his teacher helped and gave him good words that changed his view of life. not only that, jim was also bad at math. but, again and again, his teacher motivated him and changed him. and we really love when his english teacher praised him, because jim tried to be different in creative way. at the end, adult jim became a teacher in his own school. this wouldn't happen without beautiful words from his teachers. we wonder what will happen to jim, if his teachers didn't motivate him. from this story we realized that a small word could affect someone's life. it is interesting to see the graphic story made the students in this group (to find the picture please the attachment). as a whole, the graphic story follows the summary they have written in term of the content of the story. written by recount type, the story tells about the successful of a student whose name is jim martin. the role of the teacher contributed to the successful of martin who got bullying at the first day of his school and to have struggle on math subject as well. in the graphic story, the students draw creatively by illustrating the sequence of the event so that the reader can follow the story. the students also demonstrate the content clearly such as the event of bullying, the situation of class and the words of the teacher who motivates martin as the main character are clear enough as the interpretation from the text. uniquely, this group draws the students who attend in class and one of the students is wearing hijab or veil. since the setting of the story is in america, wearing hijab is not common. this shows an original interpretation which is done by the group. story 2: mariana (written by erni aladjai) students’ summary [sic]: we have read short story entitled mariana by erni aladjai on jakarta post. that story have very deep means. the story tells us about what care, attention, and understanding other people is. the main character of this story is mariana. mariana is a patient and kind girl. she never pay back the bad thing that her mates do to her. she have good manner and thought, moreover she is still young. she is in fifth grade on kalipokan island at that time. her father has bad temper, but it is not what he want. he was fell down from coconut tree and his head hit against rock when he was 15 years old. international journal of language teaching and education 89 after that he is can’t handle his anger. his anger very easily to come out. one day, he beat his second daughter with large bamboo pole in the school yard and a lot of students and some teachers saw that thing. mariana never hates her father but she hates what her father did to her sister. this group created the graphic story manually by drawing in paper (to find the picture please the attachment). the image looks messy but it is fascinating since the students illustrate the characters vividly. the students are creative when they illustrate the face with angry emotion and the sequence of event is supported by the exploring the scene. story 3: the walls will talk (written by teguh affandi) students’ summary [sic]: in an apartment on the 18th floor, there lived a woman who was ill and could not breastfeed her child. her child named jena, she cried so hard that there was a neighbor named seruni who helped the woman give breastfeed to jena. after jena feels better, seruni leaves them by giving a phone number if the woman needs it. the next day, the woman visited seruni's apartment and thanked. then, seruni suggested to the woman to send jena to the school located on the ground floor of the apartment and be willing to take care of jena if she had not returned from the office. their relationship was very close, until one day seruni dared to ask about jena's father who made her feel hurt because she opened her old wounds. the woman forbade jena to meet seruni because she felt uncomfortable about the question earlier. later, jena asked about her father and made her mother more hurt. seruni reassures jena that her father is in heaven, but jena's mother forbids jena from being close to seruni so that it does not become a part of seruni's gossip. this group starts their graphic by illustrating the characters (to find the picture please the attachment). there is one difference between the summary and the graphic story they have made. in summary, they explore the narrator called a woman while in the graphic they use ‘me’. the sequence of the story looks simple to express the story but it has nice images. story 4: legacies (written by kevin sandevur) students’ summary [sic]: the short story we read is called kevin sandeveur's legacies. this is a really fascinating story. it has the most recent environmental problems, especially illegal logging. this story includes three key characters; murdock, spalding and the foreman. murdock and spalding are engaged as friends; they are illegal loggers. everything went smoothly until they were forced to abandon their work one day because their masticator crashed into a prehistoric stone. spalding saw the stone and told his foreman not to cut down the tree because it had historical significance, but his boss was stubborn and he ordered the stone to be demolished. that sparks a secret conflict before spalding eventually decides to stop it. spalding discreetly breaks logging equipment at night. murdock, who woke up that night, came across spalding and then spalding told him about the stone, what he saw in his dream. spalding struck his mate, murdock's head before he fainted at the end of the story. the plot ends when some loggers and his foreman wake murdock up. he talked of spalding, of what he did last night. yeah, they think that what spalding did actually hamper their work. we assume that spalding is still concerned about the ecosystem, or at least ancient artifacts, and that he is trying to prevent someone who wants to destroy it, even if it is a little rough. 
 this group used application to create their graphic story through the website https://www.storyboardthat.com/. the use of the application enriches the creation which is made by the students since the other groups make it manually (o find the picture please the attachment). thus, it provides us a various creation of the graphic stories which are done by the students. by defining the issue of illegal logging in their summary, the students in this group are creative to make an illustration. they draw a forest as the background with the people who do the illegal logging. interestingly, the students also explore their resourcefulness by depicting situation of the practice of illegal https://www.storyboardthat.com/ 90 r.hidayat and f. susanto logging with the people who wear helmet and tractor. the caption in every episode also strengthen the plot. in short, the graphic story is easy to follow and understand and it really represents the original which they adapted. 4. conclusion there are a lot of ways to encourage the students to improve their multi literacy skills. studying literature can be one of the efforts to fulfill the skills which is crucial for the students as the millennial generation in the current era which is called as revolution industry 5.0. it is because literature offers rich sources in term of text such as novel, novella, drama texts and short story. as the reflection of human life, the students can learn a lot about social, culture, language, education issues and environmental problems revealed through the literary works. thus, the use of literary works meets the need to support the multi literacy skills for the students especially in literature class. the students improve their ability in reading skills, writing skills and producing graphic story based on their own interpretation of the literary text, which are proven by the summary and conversation texts they produce in the graphic stories. they also develop their creativities by producing images and pictures as the result of literary adaptation process. there are two significant outcomes of the project: developing literary text understanding as well as producing original graphic story. however, the students still lack in developing their critical thinking in their graphic story and summary since they do not elaborate the issue of education, social and environmental problem which are revealed in the short stories. it is hoped that they are not only retell the story but how they voice the issues through the graphic stories. the project also promotes the new way in literary studies in which it leads the students to create the graphic story as the output of the literary interpretation. through the graphic story which is made by the students, studying literature becomes a joyful activity as well as a medium to lead the students to have multi literacy skills. in sum, the project proves the students show their ability in multi literacy skills. since this activity includes students experience in literary adaptation, it is a big potential for future research to address students’ reflectivity in the process as well to incorporate their experiences which cannot be expressed in the graphic works they produce. this could be an additional session class in which the students could talk about their feelings and thoughts while drawing and the negotiation process made with their peers in creating the graphic story. references affandi, t. (2017, february 6). the walls will talk. the jakarta post. https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2017/02/06/short-story-these-walls-will-talk.html aladjai, e. (2019, january 28) mariana. the jakarta post. https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/01/28/short-story-mariana.html barter-storm, b, & wik. t. (2020). using social justice graphic novels in the ell classroom. tesol journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.551 basal, ahmat, aytan, t., & demir, i. (2016). teaching vocabulary with graphic novels. english language teaching; vol. 9, no. 9. canadian center of science and education. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n9p95 bauer, e.b., & arazi, j. (2011). promoting literacy development for beginning english learners. the reading teacher, 64(5), 383–386 https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.45 bitz, m., & emiajulu, o. 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(2012). picture/text relationships: an investigation of literary elements in picture books. literary research and instruction, 51, 323–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2012.695856 meikle, k. (2013). rematerializing adaptation theory. literature/film quarterly, 41(3), 174-183. salisbury university. meyer, c.k., & jimenez, l.m. (2017). using every word and image: framing graphic novel instruction in the expanded four resources model. journal of adolescent and adult literacy, 61(2), 153-161. https://doi:10.1002/jaal.666 morais, d. g. (2018). doing history in the undergraduate classroom: project-based learning and student benefits. the history teacher, 52(1), 49-76. sandefur, k. legacies. https://www.aftermathmag.org/short-story-not-tears.html tyson, l. (2006). critical theory today (second edition). taylor & francis group. new york. veselov, g.e. et al (2019). project-based learning as an effective method in education. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334906382_projectbased_learning_as_an_effective_method_in_education yusof, s.m. et al. (2017). teacher trainee’s perspectives of teaching graphic novels to esl primary schoolers. the southeast asian journal of english language studies, 23(3), 81-96. https://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/article/view/18122 https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2015.1094723 https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1242 https://www.jefferydeaver.com/short-fiction/firstday/ https://doi.org/10.2307/327752 https://doi:10.1598/jaal.54.8.5 https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2017.1355822 https://doi.org/10.1109/latice.2014.22 http://hdl.handle.net/10453/13467 https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2012.695856 https://www.aftermathmag.org/short-story-not-tears.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334906382_project-based_learning_as_an_effective_method_in_education https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334906382_project-based_learning_as_an_effective_method_in_education 92 r.hidayat and f. susanto attachment the graphic stories produced by the students graphic story 1 international journal of language teaching and education 93 graphic story 2 94 r.hidayat and f. susanto graphic story 3 international journal of language teaching and education 95 graphic story 4 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5908 184 ijolte attitude of hausa esl secondary school students towards spelling and writing in english muhammad mukhtar aliyu1, gambo a. danladi2 1department of english and literary studies, bauchi state university, gadau-nigeria 2department of foundation, aminu saleh college of education, azare nigeria email: aliyumuhammadmukhtar39@gmail.com how to cite this paper: aliyu, m., & danladi, g. (2018). attitude of hausa esl secondary school students towards spelling and writing in english. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 184-194. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5908 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract writing skill is described as an essential language tool for students. studies have shown that hausa esl secondary school students commit various errors in their writing in english. various factors have been identified as responsible for the problems. however, the students’ attitude towards spelling and writing has not been investigated. it is believed that students’ attitude plays an important role in motivating and influencing their secondlanguage learning. therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the attitude and perception of hausa esl secondary school students towards english spelling and writing. the study adopts a survey research design where an intact class of 75 students from a secondary school in north-eastern nigeria was selected. to collect the data for the study, a questionnaire was employed. the questionnaire comprises two sections: (i) attitudes toward english spelling and (ii) attitudes toward writing in english which include four writing purposes: (a) school use, (b) social use, (c) official use, and (d) creativity. findings of the study revealed that the participants have a moderate positive attitude and perception towards english spelling and writing. the findings also indicated that the students’ attitude toward the school use of english is the highest, whereas their creativity in writing has the lowest means among the four purposes. in addition, the study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between the participants’ attitude towards spelling and writing. to enhance students’ creative writing and thinking skills, the study suggests that literature in english should be made compulsory to all secondary school students. story-reading and creative writing should be incorporated into the curriculum. other extracurricular activities such as spelling completion should be organized to help the students. subject areas writing keywords attitude, esl, hausa, spelling, writing https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5908 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5908 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 185 ijolte 1. introduction among in academic institutions, developing a good command of students’ written english is one of the desires of teachers most especially in countries where english is adopted as a second (esl) or foreign language (efl). for instance, in nigeria, a good writing skill in english is important to both academic and non-academic lives of individuals. in academic institutions, english is used as the medium of instruction, thus, writing in english is largely considered as a multifunctional tool used by students to take class notes, write assignment, tests, and examinations. according to some researchers, one’s success in school is measured mainly through writing as it is used by the instructors to evaluate the quality of students’ learning and thinking (murray & hughes, 2008). in addition, proficiency in writing english remains one of the most important skills required for admission into higher institutions and the labor market as english is the official language of the country (dabalen et al., 2000; tikolo, 2012). closely related to writing is spelling. it is considered one of the essential literacy skills and writing components that enable readers to understand the written message clearly. learning to spell words accurately is very important to language learners because incorrect spelling can result to misunderstanding and unsuccessful communication between the writer and the reader. accurate spelling shows a writer’s mastery of a language and creates a good impression of his/her academic position. it also contributes to the learner’s selfconcept which enables the learners to communicate adequately in writing (peters, 2013). acquiring spelling skills is a gradual process and it needs effort not only mere memorization (gentry, 2000). also, to learn to spell accurately, students need to understand the sound as well as the internal structure of words such as suffixes and prefixes. they should also acquire some semantic knowledge for words that look or sound the same homophones and homographs. finally, they should possess good visual memory to compare the shape of the new word with a similar word learnt previously (mpiti, 2012). despite the importance of writing in english, numerous researchers have shown that many nigerian secondary school students cannot produce good writing in english (adepoju & oluchukwu, 2011). this has been evident from the waec results of some secondary schools in nigeria where students (larger percentage) have continually failed the english language (odochi silver & ephraim, 2012). various factors have identified as responsible for the students’ poor performance in writing in english. these include mother tongue influences, learning environment, poor methods of teaching, lack of good teaching, poor language, and the nature of teacher/student interaction. in addition, spelling english words has also been a challenging task for many hausa esl secondary school students. one of the reasons is that hausa is a muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 186 ijolte phonetic-based language where words are written as they are pronounced while english is the other way around. in english, there is no inconsistency between the sounds and the letters. some letters are pronounced differently while others are silent (not pronounced) such as know, hour, listen, psychiatric and empty. this causes confusion for many hausa learners of english and made them spell some english words incorrectly. one of the factors many scholars neglect, in their attempts to investigate the students’ writing problems, is learners’ attitudes towards writing and spelling in english. studies have shown that students’ positive attitudes enhance second language learning (hashemian & heidari, 2013). attitude is described as an evaluative reaction inferred based on the individual’s positive or negative feelings, beliefs or opinions about any topic (gardner, 1985). brown (2007) describes attitude as a set of beliefs that a learner holds toward the target language whether it is important, interesting, boring, and so forth. other scholars such as gardner and lambert (1972) assert that attitude is a crucial motivational ingredient, which actively contributes to learning another language. however, there is a lack of studies that investigate the hausa esl students’ attitudes towards english writing and spelling especially in secondary schools in nigeria. therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of hausa esl secondary school students towards english spelling and writing. it also wants to evaluate the relationship between the students’ attitudes towards spelling and writing in english. 2. methodology this study adopted a cross-sectional survey design. under this design, the researcher collected data from the participants at one point in time. quantitative data were collected from the participants. the data were analyzed and used to answer the research questions. the subjects of the study are an intact class of senior secondary student two (ss 2) in north-eastern nigeria. the total number of the subjects is 75, 30 males and 45 females, with their ages ranging from 16-19 years old. all the subjects attended and completed junior secondary school (jss1-3) and senior secondary student one (ss 1). a set of a questionnaire designed in a likert-scale form was employed to elicit data on the subjects’ attitude towards spelling and writing in english. the questionnaire is adopted from al-sobhi rashid and abdullah (2018). it comprises two sections: (a) attitudes toward english spelling which contains 18 items. the items include different areas related to english spelling such as the importance of spelling, the student’s perceptions and confidence about themselves as spellers and the challenges that the students encounter while muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 187 ijolte spelling out english words such as silent letters. the items also include other topics like the students’ performance on spelling tests, the use of english dictionaries, and spell-check programs. section (b) attitude toward writing in english which is further subdivided into four subsections purposes for writing: (a) school use with 10 items; (b) social use, (c) official use, and (d) creativity with eight items each. to ensure the validity of the instrument, the questionnaire was tested and validated by a panel of expert which certified its content validity. to ensure its reliability, cronbach’s alpha was calculated and found .94 which indicates the high reliability of the questionnaire. in addition, to facilitate the subjects’ comprehension of the items, the researchers explained every unclear item to them. before collecting the data, the researchers obtained permission from the school principal. they also solicited for the consent of the subjects. having obtained their consent, the researchers explained the purpose of the study and assured them of confidentiality. thereafter, the questionnaire was administered to the subjects and they were asked to fill in. while they were filling in the questionnaire, the researchers went around the class to help them and answer any question or make clarifications on some unclear items. after, filling out the questionnaire, the researchers retrieved all the questionnaire. 3. finding and discussions to address the first and second research questions on the students’ attitudes towards spelling and writing in english, the data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis, where mean and frequency were calculated. in addition, to answer the third research question which is to examine the relationship between the secondary school students’ attitude towards spelling and writing in english, the pearson correlation coefficient was computed. the results are presented in the following sections followed by discussions. 3.1. respondents’ attitude towards english spelling this section addresses research question 1 of the study. it presents the respondents’ attitudes towards english spelling. the results of the descriptive statistical analysis are presented in table 1 below. muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 188 ijolte table 1. attitudes toward english spelling the results of this study showed that the hausa esl respondents’ overall attitude toward english spelling is positive. from the table, it could be seen that the three-uppermost means of their attitude toward spelling are in items 10, 1 and 8. the highest means among all the other spelling attitude items is item 10 “the more i write, the more my spelling improves” (m = 4.69 and sd = 0.59). the results show that majority of the respondents (76%) strongly agreed that the more they write, the more their spelling improves. the second highest means is item 1 “spelling is important” (m = 4.57 and sd = 0.90) which shows that 72% of the respondents strongly agreed. finally, item 8 “spelling is my favorite subject” is third highest among all the spelling items (m = 4.56 and sd = .91) where 73.3% of the respondents strongly agreed with. items 1 2 3 4 5 mean sd 1 spelling is important. 4.0 0 2.7 21.3 72 4.57 .887 2 i am a good speller. 0 0 21.3 40.0 38.7 4.17 .760 3 i am a weak speller because i don’t like writing. 25.3 22.7 17.3 22.7 12.0 2.73 1.37 4 i don’t like other people to see what i have written because of my spelling errors. 25.3 30.7 6.7 21.3 16.0 2.72 1.45 5 getting 100% on a spelling test is luck, not ability. 16.0 6.7 5.3 37.3 34.7 3.68 1.42 6 i have always struggled with spelling. 9.3 29.3 21.3 16.0 24.0 3.16 1.33 7 words that have silent letters are difficult to spell. 10.7 4.0 16.0 37.3 32.0 3.76 1.25 8 spelling is my favorite subject. 4.0 0 5.3 17.3 73.3 4.56 .918 9 knowing the spelling rules helps me to spell many words. 0 12.0 8.0 21.3 58.7 4.26 1.04 10 the more i write, the more my spelling improves. 0 0 6.7 17.3 76.0 4.69 .592 11 i always do well on spelling tests. 10.7 5.3 29.3 40.0 14.7 3.42 1.14 12 there is no need to learn how to spell because there are computer programs which correct my spelling. 53.3 30.7 12.0 0 4.0 1.70 .969 13 to me, english spelling is more difficult than hausa spelling. 24.0 20.0 6.7 13.3 36.0 3.17 1.65 14 i always use a spell checker on my computer to check my spelling. 9.3 26.7 20.0 8.0 36.0 3.34 1.43 15 when i write, i can tell if a word does not look right. 6.7 4.0 9.3 28.0 52.0 4.14 1.17 16 when i write, i always choose words i know i can spell. 8.0 10.7 2.7 25.3 53.3 4.05 1.31 17 i always use a dictionary to check the spelling of unfamiliar words. 2.7 0 4.0 42.7 50.7 4.38 .803 18 after writing a sentence, i always check my spelling errors. 5.3 6.7 4.0 17.3 66.7 4.33 1.16 muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 189 ijolte 3.2. respondents’ attitude towards english writing this section addresses this section presents the findings of the second research question, which explored the respondents’ attitudes towards english writing. the statistical results of the quantitative data are presented. as stated earlier, the students’ attitude toward writing in english was measured by 34 items distributed among four subscales, with 10 items for (a) school use and eight items for each of the other subscales, (b) social use, (c) official use, and (d) creativity. a descriptive statistical analysis was run on the questionnaire. the results are presented in tables 2-5 respectively. table 2 presents the respondents’ attitudes towards official used of english writing. table 2. attitudes toward writing in english (school use) items 1 2 3 4 5 mean sd 1 i like english writing classes. 2.7 4.0 00 26.7 66.7 4.50 .906 2 i write summaries of what i learn in my classes. 13.3 18.7 26.7 32.0 9.3 3.05 1.19 3 i enjoy taking part in writing activities and competitions. 9.3 20.0 17.3 33.3 20.0 3.34 1.26 4 i volunteer writing answers on the board if the teacher asks. 00 2.7 22.7 38.7 36.0 4.08 .834 5 i enjoy doing my written assignments and reports. 00 10.7 4.0 20.0 65.3 4.40 .986 6 i discuss what i write with my classmates. 10.7 10.7 10.7 18.7 49.3 3.85 1.41 7 i feel confident when i sit for a writing exam. 4.0 2.7 2.7 16.0 74.7 4.54 .976 8 i believe i can get a high score in my writing exams. 6.7 2.7 13.3 24.0 53.3 4.14 1.17 9 i read writings from various authors to improve my writing. 6.7 6.7 20.0 49.3 17.3 3.76 1.27 10 my knowledge of english grammar and vocabulary does not help me to write well. 38.7 9.3 12.0 16.0 24.0 2.77 1.65 the results show that most of the respondents have positive attitudes towards writing in english. for instance, the three items with the highest mean scores. the first item is “i feel confident when i sit for a writing exam” (m= 4.55 sd= .976) with 74.7 % of the respondents strongly agreed that they feel confident when they sit for a writing exam. the second item with the highest means is “i like english writing classes” (m= 4.51 sd= .91) where 66.7% of the students strongly agreed that they like the english classes. the last item with the highest means is “i enjoy doing my written assignments and reports” (m= 4.40 sd=.987) in which 65.3% of the students strongly agreed that they enjoy doing their written assignments and reports. muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 190 ijolte table 3. attitudes towards social purposes of writing in english table 3 above displays the results of the respondents’ attitudes towards english writing for social purposes. though the overall result is positive, it is not as that of school use where the respondents have the highest positive attitudes. for example, item 5 (m= 4.11 sd=1.060) reveals that 41.3% of the respondents strongly agreed that they feel comfortable sharing what they write with their family and friends. in addition, item 3 (m= 3.92 sd = .941) shows that 32% of the respondents strongly agreed that they enjoy texting my family members and friends. finally, item 1 (m= 3.91 sd=1.15) also shows that 37.3 % of the respondents strongly agreed that they enjoy writing letters to their family members and friends. table 4. attitudes official purposes of writing in english items 1 2 3 4 5 mean sd 1 i can write an official letter to (the school principal, teachers, etc.). 17.3 10.7 22.7 32.0 17.3 3.21 1.33 2 i can write a letter or an e-mail to express my opinion about a topic. 8.0 6.7 10.7 52.0 22.7 3.74 1.12 3 i can write a report about what i have heard or read. 2.7 8.0 16.0 48.0 25.3 3.85 .982 4 i feel confident when i write to my teacher. 4.0 8.0 9.3 25.3 53.3 4.16 1.13 5 i wish i would write a weekly article for a newspaper or magazine. 6.7 14.7 22.7 32.0 24.0 3.52 1.20 6 i do not feel comfortable when i write an official letter, e-mail, or report. 32.0 6.7 17.3 28.0 16.0 2.89 1.51 7 reading official texts helps me write a good application letter for the university. 2.7 4.0 2.7 29.3 61.3 4.42 .932 8 because of everyday informal english, i find writing using formal english difficult. 4.0 16.0 32.0 28.0 20.0 3.44 1.11 as for the for the respondents’ attitudes towards writing in english for official purposes, the results also display their positive attitudes. this could be seen in the three items with the highest mean scores. item 7 has the highest means (m=4.42 sd=.932) which shows that majority of the respondents (61.3%) strongly agree that reading official texts helps them to write better. item 4 items 1 2 3 4 5 mean sd 1 i enjoy writing letters to my family members and friends. 4.0 12.0 10.7 36.0 37.3 3.90 1.15 2 i send written cards to invite my friends to social events. 12.0 16.0 20.0 22.7 29.3 3.41 1.37 3 i enjoy texting my family members and friends. 00 8.0 24.0 36.0 32.0 3.92 .940 4 i keep in touch with others through texting and writing notes/letters. 4.0 00 26.7 42.7 26.7 3.88 .943 5 i feel comfortable sharing what i write with my family and friends. 6.7 00 10.7 41.3 41.3 4.10 1.06 6 i communicate through e-mail often with my friends. 18.7 10.7 14.7 21.3 34.7 3.42 1.51 7 i enjoy sending thank-you letters to my family members and friends. 6.7 10.7 14.7 32.0 36.0 3.80 1.23 8 i write my opinion about things via social networking sites. 5.3 30.7 28.0 20.0 16.0 3.10 1.16 muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 191 ijolte (m= 4.16 sd= 1.139) also shows that 53.3% of the students strongly agreed that they feel confident when they write to their teachers. finally, item 3 (m= 3.85 sd= .982) reveals that 48% of the respondents agree that they can write a report about what they have heard or read table 5. attitudes towards creative writing in english items 1 2 3 4 5 mean sd 1 i am a creative writer. 13.3 10.7 13.3 37.3 25.3 3.50 1.33 2 i can make up short stories or a poem. 2.7 9.3 26.7 28.0 33.3 3.80 1.09 3 when i write i can support my topic with a lot of ideas. 6.7 2.7 14.7 36.0 40.0 4.00 1.12 4 creativity is not necessary for writing an essay. 18.7 2.7 30.7 36.0 12.0 3.20 1.26 5 when i write, i use similes, descriptive phrases, and idioms. 10.7 6.7 32.0 34.7 16.0 3.38 1.16 6 i read stories, poems, and plays to develop my writing ability. 2.7 4.0 21.3 33.3 38.7 4.01 1.00 7 i can express my thoughts and feelings in an imaginative way. 6.7 9.3 20.0 40.0 24.0 3.65 1.14 8 i can attract the readers (my friends and family members) to my writings. 13.3 10.7 13.3 37.3 25.3 3.50 1.33 the result for the last sub-classification of writing, creative writing, also reveals the students’ positive attitudes towards writing. this could also be seen in item 3 (m= 4.00 sd= 1.127) where 40% of the respondents strongly agreed that they can support their topics with a lot of ideas when they write. item 6 (m= 4.01 sd= 1.006) also show that 38.7% of the respondents strongly agree that they read stories, poems, and plays to develop their writing ability. generally, the findings of the study revealed that the hausa esl respondents’ attitude toward the writing subscales was positive but with contrasting values of mean as could be seen in figure 1 below. from the figure, it shows that the respondents’ attitude toward the school use of english is the highest followed by the social and the lowest is creativity. muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 192 ijolte figure 1. attitude towards writing 3.3. relationship between the respondents’ attitude towards spelling and writing the findings of the third research question which investigated the relationship between the respondents’ attitude toward spelling and writing in english is presented. to determine the relationship between the students’ attitudes toward english spelling and writing, the pearson correlation coefficient analysis was run. the result is presented in table 6 below. table 6. spelling and writing attitude relationship **correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed). the table demonstrates that the pearson correlation coefficient between the students’ attitude toward spelling and writing in the english language was r = .573. this indicates that there is a significant positive correlation between the respondents’ attitude toward the two skills. the overall results of the study show that most of the respondents have positive attitudes towards english spelling and writing in english. this reveals that most of the respondents are aware of the importance of english spelling and writing. they also believe that a constant practice of writing could improve their spelling performance. they strongly agree that spelling is an essential literacy skill to learn and learning spelling rules enhance their spelling accuracy. this finding agrees with that of al-sobhi et al. (2018) which reveals arabs esl secondary school students’ positive attitudes towards english spellings. however, in al-sobhi et al. social use is the highest while in this study school use is the highest in rank in terms of the respondents’ positive attitudes. the respondents’ preference for writing for school purposes corroborate the findings of other studies which shows that some nigerian students write in english only for an academic purpose such as assignment and examination (aliyu, yong, mardziah h. abdullah & tan 2016). the respondents’ positive attitudes to writing for creativity is the lowest in the rank. this finding is not surprising because many secondary schools in that part of the country do not have enough teachers of literature in english who should help to stimulate the students’ interests in creative writing. this result of the study further revealed that there is a positive relationship between the respondents’ attitudes towards spelling and writing in english. this means that students who have a positive attitude toward english spelling also have a positive attitude toward writing. this also concurs with earlier findings. graham et al. (2007) pearson correlation .573** significance (2-tailed) .000 n 75 muhammad mukhtar aliyu, gambo a. danladi 193 ijolte pointed out that there is a reciprocal relationship between the students’ writing attitude and their achievement. 4. conclusion the main objectives of this study are to examine the hausa esl secondary school students’ attitude toward spelling and writing and to identify the relationship between attitude toward spelling and writing among the hausa esl students. the findings of the study revealed that the students had a positive attitude toward english spelling and writing skills, which reflects the students’ awareness of the importance of spelling and writing. based on the findings of the study, the following conclusion could be made. the problems displayed by the students in their writing in english are not due to negative attitudes towards spelling and writing in english. it could be due to other factors. secondly, creative writing should be taught and encouraged in secondary school. extracurricular activities could be organized to help the students to develop their creative writing skills. 5. recommendations the following are some recommendations for further research. first, future studies should consider a larger sample. this may give a different finding. there is a need to investigate the students’ actual writing to ensure their english spelling. further studies need to investigate other factors that may lead to the students’ problems with writing in english. other variables such as gender, age and educational background should be considered in future studies. in addition, the study recommends that other studies focus on hausa students’ spelling error analysis to investigate their types as well as causes. error analysis studies may be beneficial, for they can provide researchers with information about the nature of the language learning process. moreover, identifying learners’ errors can help teachers and curriculum designers in the preparation of esl curriculum, and other teaching materials. references [1] auster, c, j. 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(2005). academic writing: from paragraph to essay. oxford: mcmillan. paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5205 131 ijolte an analysis of grammatical errors in writing recount text at the eighth grade of smp negeri 20 kota jambi selvia lisa asni, susi susanti stkip al-azhardiniyyah, jambi, indonesia. email: selvialisaasni@gmail.com how to cite this paper: asni, s., & susanti, s. (2018). an analysis of grammatical errors in writing recount text at the eighth grade of smp negeri 20 kota jambi. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 131-144. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.520 5 received: may 16,2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31,2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract this study aims to analyze and classify the types or mistakes of students using simple past tense in writing recount text. in addition, this study also aims to identify the cause of errors made by the students using simple past tense in writing recount text. this research used qualitative method with case study approach. furthermore, the researchers chose the 8th grade students and observed 26 students. the researchers used a written test and interviews to gain the data from student participants and an english teacher partcipant. based on this research, it is found that students do all kinds of errors (omission, addition, selection and misordering). the type of error most often done by the students was omission error with 166 errors or 38.97%. the second position was a selection error with 162 errors or 38.03%. the third position was the addition error with 67 errors or 15.73%. then the last last error was misordering error with 31 errors or 7.28%. in addition, the errors were caused by the complexity of the english system itself and not because of the influence of the indonesian system (intralingual transfer). moreover, students lacked of understanding of the grammar that became the cause of the error. in this study, most students did not understand verb forms (present and past form of the verbs) as well as the proper use of “be” in a sentence. this suggested that students had difficulty with the use of grammar in writing subject areas writing keywords error analysis, types of error, sources of error 1. introduction english is the primary language that dominates all aspects of international communication. this is supported by kachru 1986 (in fahrawaty, p. 3) likens english as aladdin's lamp, which means that when someone has mastered then one can easily get in business, technology, and knowledge. in addition, english is also a foreign language in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 132 ijolte indonesia. this is in accordance with the decree of the minister of education and culture no. 096 (1967) which states that english is as the first foreign language taught formally. in learning the language, students must have language skills. language skills has four components. they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. each of these skills relates one to another. in the process of learning english in school, writing skills are the most dominant skills taught. writing is a language skill that is used to communicate indirectly. in writing, a person must be skilled at developing new ideas and in every paragraph well and skillfully exploiting and using the grammar and vocabulary. therefore, aspects of grammar in writing can not be eliminated. the principle of writing in english or indonesian is not much different. however, the rules of grammar structures used in the english language are different to the rules of grammar structures in indonesian. examples of these differences are that the english language has tenses (time) to indicate the time while indonesian has no specific grammatical forms to express time. in august 2017, the reseracherser, conducted a short interview with a teacher of english at smp negeri 20 kota jambi. from this interview, the writer got an information that errors are often made by the students. this is supported by nawaz, umer, tabasum, zaman, batool, & aslam (2015, p. 2) statement saying that grammar is one of the biggest problems found by the students. grammar is a form of words from the language itself and their combinations in phrases, clauses and sentences. it can be said that the grammar gives rules about how to combine words into sentences. in the process, students are not separated from language errors. grammatical errors is influenced by several factors, such as lack of understanding in learning english and the mother tongue influence. error is part of learning english (khansir, 2012). mistake is error of performance. while error is error of competence. the cause of mistake is not related to language skills or knowledge of the language system. mistake that occurs can be recognized and corrected by the speakers themselves. while errors are errors that occur systematically and not easily repaired properly by the students themselves because of a lack of language knowledge or competence. therefore, the process to correct errors in order to improve language skills is needed. there is an effective strategy to analyze grammatical errors. in this study, the researchers use a strategy taxonomy. strategy taxonomy is the strategy proposed by dulay, burt and krashen in 1982. this strategy is used to find errors made by the students. dulay et al., 1982 (in sompong, 2014, p. 116) taxonomy divides into four sections. they are error of omission, error of addition, errors of selection, and error of missordering. based on the explanation above, grammar has a very important role in writing. in this study, the reserachers focused on analysing grammatical error of the recount text. problems often found in the writing of the text recount are structures. in recount text grammar students should use the past tense when writing sentences. the use of the past tense is considered more difficult than the present tense. from the description above, the researchers analyzed the error using the strategy taxonomy. they consist of error of omission, error of addition, error of selection and error of missordering. in this study, the writer will want to know the form of grammatical errors made by the students. then, the writer will want to know the cause of the error in writing the text recount. the object to be studied is the eighth grade students of smp negeri 20 kota jambi. based on the above statements, the writer is interested in doing a study entitled “an analysis of grammatical errors in writing recount text at the eighth grade of smp negeri 20 kota jambi”. selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 133 ijolte 2. literature review from writing skills is one of the language skills learned by students in the school. writing skills are useful to support the teaching and learning process. through writing skills, students are required to be creative and active in thinking and activities as much as possible to pour their ideas into written language. writing can strengthen grammatical forms(homstad & thorson, 1994, p. 29). that is because when someone is writing then he will process many words to create meaningful posts. according to hartley 2008 (in fitzmaurice & o’farrell, p. 7) that writing is an interactive process. it mean that in writing there are a lot of activities to do. when someone writes, there is an activity of thinking, designing posts, editing posts, and reviewing them again. writing is a capability that is supported by creativity in thinking to produce an article of thoughts. writing is something creative to express an idea, thoughts, and feelings in the form of a post. the meaning of being creative is to be able to connect among the ideas and language. according to nurgiantoro 1988 (in wijayanti, 2015, p. 32), writing is a productive skill. being productive is an activity that can produce something positive. productive writing is a writing activity that can produce a work that is created from humans. humans who process words and combine them in writing to produce a reading such as novels, articles, short stories, scientific papers and other types of reading. the ability to write is not a capability that is obtained automatically. the ability to write is not inborn, but it is obtained from a continuous learning. writing is not an instant ability of a person. the ability to write is owned by someone because of a continuous learning which is finally resulted in an article. writing is the result of good combination among the training process of writing, thinking, and word processing. in addition, the activity of writing also has many purposes. writes aims to tell a story, to provide guidance or direction, to clarify something, to persuade someone, to summarize. according to syarif, zulkarnaini, & sumarmo (2009, p. 6) the purpose of writing is to provide information, to persuade, to educate, and to entertain. there are many people who write in this world. that is because writing also has a lot of benefits for a person. komaidi 2007 (in rofi'ah, 2011, p. 24) mentions some benefits of writing activities: 1. creating curiosity, 2. encouraging to find references (such as books, magazines, newspapers, journals and the like) to improve the knowledge of what will be written, 3. training to join minds and arguments in a systematic and logical thought, 4. reducing the level of tension and stress, 5. getting inner satisfaction and helping economically 6. making the writer popular and well-known. recount text is written to inform about events in the past. recount is a kind of genre that has social function to retell event for informing or entertaining(azhar, 2015, p. 15). the purpose of this text is to retell the events with the aim of informing or entertaining the readers. derewianka 1990 (kurnia, 2015, p. 26) explains that the recount text consists of three types. they are personal text recount which consists of information or a story that is a personal experience of the author of the text. for example, the diary of a person, or a biography, etc. then, factual recount text that contains a report about real events that really had happened. for example, a police report, a science experiments report, record historical events report and cultural report. the last, imaginative recount which contains a story of imagination which recounts the results of the author’s imagination. for example, a fiction in short stories, novels etc. selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 134 ijolte recount text has a linguistic feature. boardman 2008 (in saragih, silalahi, & pardede, 2014, p. 57) the language features that are usually found on recount text, are as follows: 1. the use of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals or things involved. 2. the use of the verbs to describe the events the past. 3. the use of past events related to the speaker or researcher`s time. 4. the use of conjunctions and connecting times of event sequence. 5. the use of adverbs and adverbial phrases to describe the place and time. 6. the use of adjectives to describe nouns. the writer concludes that the linguistic features found in the recount text are as follows: focus on individual participants, use of past tense, focus on sequence of events which explains the sequence of events in the recount text, and it uses material/action clauses which means all words, sentences, clauses describe an action of the story in the recount text. in the process of language, language cannot be separated from grammar. that is because grammar has a very important meaning. grammar explains the sentence structure. grammar can identify smaller units of sentences (hewings & hewings). grammar gives a clear rule of how a sentence is formed and meaningful.according to yule (2010, p. 83)grammar is the process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences, all the elements of grammar in a language, and the set of language order. it is a system that contains the rules of language. these rules are used to produce good and correct sentence. grammar makes a person easily understand a word or writing. grammar determines how to compose words. in speaking errors will be found. they are mistakes and errors. the mistake is a deviation that is not intentionally spoken or written by a speaker, and can easily be repaired by the speaker him/herself. all people, native and non-native speakers, can make mistakes. by ccontrast, the error is a deviation from grammatically correct because someone does not understand the rules of grammar. therefore, these speakers usually cannot immediately correct the error. errors usually occur systematically and are often repeated. speakers will know if the errors are notified by other speakers or teachers. this is supported by james 1998 (in brown, 2007, p.258) that says that the difference between an error and a mistake is that an error can not be corrected itself while mistake can be corrected by someone. the error could improve the achievement of teachers in the teaching process. because the teacher can evaluate the errors and correct them. so, the errors will not be repeated in the future. before entering into the strategy analysis, the writer will explain about the understanding of the error analysis. cholipah (2014, p. 6) states that, “error analysis provides a broader range of possible explanations than contrastive analysis for researchers/teachers to use to account for errors”. so the error analysis can clearly describe the fault location. in addition, error analysis can be useful for someone (such as a teacher or a researcher) to find a solution to the error so that it will not be repeated. one way to get an explanation of the error analysis is by using a surface strategy taxonomy. dulay et al. (1982, p. 150) explains that “a surface strategy taxonomy highlights the ways surface structures which are altered: learners may omit necessary items or add unnecesary ones, they may misform items or misorder them.” it can be concluded that the surface strategy taxonomy can give an explanation of grammatical errors made by someone. someone eliminates or adds elements that are are not important and not in accordance with the grammar. through the surface strategy taxonomy, it would be easy to know how far a student's ability to understand grammatical language. additionally, the presence of errors in the description can be obtained from the surface strategy taxonomy then the teacher will selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 135 ijolte know the solution to a mistake made by the student. the solution is by giving the additional training that is focused on mastering comprehension. therefore, surface strategy taxonomy is needed by english teachers to know them students. based on the location of the fault, surface strategy taxonomy consists of four elements. they are errors omission, addition, selection, and misordering. 2.1. error of omission dulay et al. (1982, p. 154) says that “omission errors are characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance”. error of omission is an error that does not present an item that should exist in a sentence. for example: i a teacher (incorrect sentence) from the explanation and example above, there is a missing item. the word "i" here is noun. after the noun must be followed by "to be" in the simple present tense. to be from the word “i” is “am”. so, the correct sentence is : i am a teacher. 2.2. error of addition error of addition is an error to add an item that should not exist in a sentence. dulay et al. (1982, p. 156) explains that “addition errord are the opposite of omissions. they are characterized by the presence of an item which must not appear in a well-formes utterance.” for example: they were didn’t go to bali (incorrect sentence) from the example above, the addition of items that are not necessarily is there. this sentence uses the negative word “were” did not followed by an infinitive verb. it should be in a simple past tense sentence. before the word “did not” it should not be pheceded by tobe “were”. so, the correct sentence is: they didn’t go to bali 2.3. error of selection dulay et al. (1981, p. 158) describes selection that is “misformation/selection errors that are those characterized by the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure.” this error usually occurs because the student is wrong in choosing the right words. for example : you care about i (incorrect sentence) from the above example, the error lies in the word i. the word i means the subject. but in the above sentence the object “i” should use the object “me”. so, the correct sentence is : you care about me. 2.4. error of misordering dulay et al. (1982, p. 162) explains that “misordering errors are characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance.” misordering is an error in the preparation of the writing. for example: you don’t know who is he(incorrect sentence) should be:you don’t know who he is. from the statement, the writer concludes that the error analysis is a way to look at the error made by the students. this is because in the learning process students will make errors. these errors can affect the meaning of a sentence. grammatical errors can also make a person difficult to understand a reading context. so, the students should be able to understand the rules of english grammar and how to apply it, especially in writing. 2.5. the sources of error in addition to analyzing the grammatical error using a strategy taxonomy, it will also be discussed about the source of the errors. how did the error happen? by trying to identify selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 136 ijolte the source of the errors, then the teacher will be able to take steps to solve the problem of grammatical errors in students. according to brown (2007), there are four sources of errors; interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, context of learning, and communication strategies. 2.6. interlingual transfer interlingual transfer is an error caused by the student's first language. it is caused by the change of the first language elements into a second language. brown (2007), says that “the beginning stages of learning a second language are especially vulnerable to interlingual transfer from the native language, or interference”. this is because the mother tongue is the only language used by the students before the second language. for example: i study and then i cooke yesterday. to know the interlingual error, the writer finds it by translating the grammatical form of the student's first language. from the example above, it can be seen that students are still using grammatical the first language. the students do not change “sudy” to “studied” and “cook” to “cooked”. it is because the students do not use grammatical second language. so the correct sentence is : i studied and then i cooked yesterday. 2.7. intralingual transfer interlingual transfer contributes a large error compared to interlingual errors in a second language (brown, 2007). the intralingual error is the student's error in learning a second language caused by the complexity of the second language system. for example: she buyed vegetables from the example above, the students do intralingual transfers. students know the rules in simple past tense. the students know that simple past tense use past form, by adding "ed". the students make errors. not all verbs in simple past tense should be added by "ed". that is because in english there are two types of verbs. they are regular verbs and irregular verbs. for regular verbs, it is correct if added by "ed". for irregular verbs, it will be wrong if added by "ed". in the above example the word buy should be bought. so the correct sentence is: she bought vegetables. 2.8. context of learning the context of learning is the source of error from the situation in the classroom, teacher, and the material or textbook of the second language. brown (227), mentions that context refers, for example, to the classroom with its teacher andits material in the case of school learning or the social situation inthe case of untutored second language learning. students make error because of incorrect explanations from teachers, incorrect material delivery structures in textbooks, and less supportive class situations. 2.9. communication strategies according to brown 1980 (in bayinah, 2013) communication strategy is a verbal or nonverbal mechanism for communicating the idea of using the right language. any learning, must have a strategy. similarly, in learning this second language. students must have a strategy to improve their skills in learning a second language. but sometimes this strategy can be a source of errors. in other words, there are some sources that can cause errors in learning a second language. the source can come from the first language disturbance to the second language, the second language competence, and the student learning strategy. the sources of this error include interlingual and intralingual transfer processes, as well as the context of learning when the students try to send messages to the listeners or readers by brown 1987 (in suroso, 2015) selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 137 ijolte 3. method the researchers employed a qualitative method. in the qualitative method, the research process begins with an observation or symptoms. so the writer presents data collected with words instead of numbers. by using qualitative method, the researcher looks for all required data. qualitative research has characteristics. qualitative research seeks to provide an understanding of the problems associated with popolation (mack, woodsong, macqueen, guest, & namey, 2011, p. 1). based on the nature of the problem, this study can be categorized as a case study. according to (castellan, 2010, p. 5) case study is a detailed study of an event. this statement explains that the case study is a study that examines a case or event in detail and depth. this study was conducted at smp negeri 20 kota jambi. the located school is at jl. abdul muis, talang sari, talang bakung, jambi city. subjects in this studyis one class which consist of twenty-six students at the eighth grade of smp negeri 20 kota jambi. the participants in the study are twenty-six eight grade students from one class. students are ranging from 13 to 14 years old. all participants is female. this study used two types of instruments, test and interview. the first, the researchers entered the class and introduced themselves. the researchers let the participants know the writer's purpose to come to the class. the researchers distributed worksheets to each student in the class. the researchers explained what the students should do in the written test. after that, the researchers gave time to students to do the written test about the recount text. after the students finish working, the researchers took and collected all the written test. the second step, the researchers conducted the interview. interview is a supporting instrument. interviewees were interviewed on the same day after they finish their class. interviews were done to only 3 students and 1 teacher. the researchers recorded the interview process. the result of the recording was printed in tapescripts. the researchers used qualitative research in which the method is conveyed in descriptive analysis way to describe and to interpret the result of qualitative data. to get qualitative results, the data will be calculated by the formula of allan 2004 (in noviyanti, 2013, p. 30), as follows: p = 𝐹 n 𝑋 100% p= percentage f= frequency of error occurred n= number of cases (total frequent / total individual) the researchers analyzed the data from written test and interview. first, the researchers corrected the errors of each student. the researchers classified the errors based on their location. after the errors were classified, the researchers calculated each total error (f / frequency of the error occurred). how many errors of omission, errors of addition, errors of selection and errors of missordering. then, the researchers calculated all errors occuring (n / number of cases / total frequent). so after that, the researchers looked for a percentage error using the formula of allan. the researchers find the percentage of each error. in addition, this written test was used to answer the cause of errors or sources of problems in writing. the researchers classified the source of the errors based on brown's theory. then, the researchers calculated the percentage of the source of the error with the formula from allan. the second step was to analyze the results of the interviews. the collected interview data were also analyzed to support the data. selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 138 ijolte across time periods and genres. 4. finding and discussion the researchers did interviews on 25 august 2017 to 3 students and an english teacher. the researchers concluded that most of the students did not really understand about past tense materials in recount text. it was due to their confusion to distinguish between verb 1, 2, and 3. in addition, the students also found it difficult to distinguish between the regular verbs and irregular verbs. therefore, the students needed an assistance of dictionary to be able to distinguish them. the major difficulty for the students was to distinguish verb 1, 2, and 3 in the irregular verbs. they had a textbook but in fact they did not directly understand the materials by only reading the textbook. they needed a help of teacher to understand it more. due to those problems the students then happpened a difficulty in dealing with writing recount text. the writer also found information that the students sometimes got wrong in memorizing the formula of past tense. one of the students who was interviewed said that the simple past used verb 3. in addition, the results of interview with the english teacher showed that the teacher had taught the materials using “example sentences” method. the method was to give examples to the students and later to discuss them with the students in order the students to be able to understand the pattern of the sentences. the teacher also stated that the textbook was not really able to explain the materials in details. the students still needed an explanation from the teacher. even the teacher also had to have other guidebooks like a specific grammar book. similarly, the teacher encountered many difficulties from the students in writing recount text. the difficulties were similar to the one said by the students in previous interviews session. in addition, the teacher also said that the students often mixed indonesian language into english. the students also often translated english through word by word. they adopted the similar pattern from indonesian language. of course it was wrong. one of the errors was that they sometimes forgot when to use tobe “was/were”. they were also wrong to pick up a suitable word of verb 1, 2, and 3. to anticipate this, in the begining of the class the teacher shouldremind the students of previous materials. then, the teacher also should always make a conclusion related to the lesson taught at the end of the class. this was done because the teacher knew that the students could easily remember but could easliy forget the lesson. the researchers found many errors made by the students in writing the recount text. any errors found were marked and corrected. after that the researchers classified each type of error and each source of error made by the students. then the researchers calculated the number of each error by using the percentage. in this section, the researchers identified the student's error in writing the recount text. below was the result of problem identification: selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 139 ijolte table 4.1. the recapitulation of the student’s error from table 4.1 the percentage of each type of error was: 1. the error of omission = 166 426 x100% = 38.97% 2. the error of addition = 67 426 x100% = 15.73% 3. the error of selection = 162 426 x100% = 38.03% 4. the error of misordering = 31 426 x100% = 7.28% table 4.2. the recapitulation of error types, frequency and its percentage no types of error frequency percentage 1. the error of omission 166 38.97% 2. the error of addition 67 15.73% 3. the error of selection 162 38.03% 4. the error of misordering 31 7.28% total 426 100% no. students number types of error error of omission error of addition error of selection error of misordering 1 student 1 2 5 13 2 student 2 8 1 1 3 student 3 11 5 6 4 student 4 3 3 8 2 5 student 5 9 3 2 6 student 6 4 2 7 2 7 student 7 3 3 8 student 8 4 2 5 3 9 student 9 4 2 10 student 10 3 1 11 student 11 7 3 9 7 12 student 12 6 4 1 13 student 13 5 3 14 student 14 3 4 4 6 15 student 15 10 3 5 1 16 student 16 19 4 15 3 17 student 17 7 2 5 18 student 18 10 3 13 19 student 19 6 1 20 student 20 1 2 6 21 student 21 2 2 1 22 student 22 2 3 2 23 student 23 4 1 7 24 student 24 4 1 3 25 student 25 2 1 7 5 26 student 26 27 5 40 2 total of each error 166 67 162 31 total of all errors 426 selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 140 ijolte table 4.3 the recapitulation of source of student’s errors no. students number source of error interlingual transfer intralingua transfer 1 student 1 2 18 2 student 2 8 2 3 student 3 11 11 4 student 4 5 11 5 student 5 9 5 6 student 6 6 9 7 student 7 3 3 8 student 8 7 7 9 student 9 4 2 10 student 10 3 1 11 student 11 14 12 12 student 12 6 5 13 student 13 5 3 14 student 14 9 8 15 student 15 11 8 16 student 16 22 19 17 student 17 7 7 18 student 18 10 16 19 student 19 6 1 20 student 20 1 8 21 student 21 2 3 22 student 22 2 5 23 student 23 4 8 24 student 24 4 4 25 student 25 7 8 26 student 26 29 45 total of each error 197 229 total all errors 426 based on table 4.3 it showed that the percentage of error sources was: 1. interlingua transfer = 197 426 x100% = 46.24% 2. intralingua transfer = 229 426 x100% = 53.76% table 4.4. the recapitulation of source of error, frequency, and its percentage no. source of error frequency percentage 1. interlingua transfer 197 46.24% selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 141 ijolte 2. intralingua transfer 229 53.76% total 426 100% the analyze of the errors was started with describing errors, next explaining errors, then evaluating errors. this procedure would be described clearly as follows: the description of error after identifying the data, the author analyzed the errors and classified them based on the surface taxonomy categories to know the error of omission, error of addition, error of selection, and error of misordering. the error of omission there were 166 or 38.97% total errors of omission. the error occurred because the students omitted an element that should exist in a sentence. the omission of an element might affect the meaning of the sentence itself. example: i stayed in grandmother house for three days. the correct sentence: i stayed in grandmother's house for three days. from this example it was clear that students eliminated the morpheme -s as possessive markers. the cause of the students making this error is because in the grammatical structure of the indonesian language there is no specific morpheme to declare possessive. the error of addition there were 67 or 15.73% total errors of addition. example: day yesterday, i and my family went to tebo city to visit my grandmother the correct sentence: yesterday, i and my family went to tebo city to visit grandmother this error occurred because the student added an item that should not exist in a sentence. the students had learned the grammatical rules of english, but they often misunderstood them. so, they then made that error. the error of selection there were 162 or 38.03% total errors of selection. this error occurred because the student was wrong in choosing the right words. example: when we returned home we were tired but we were happy because we can see some animals. the correct sentence: when we returned home we were tired but we were happy because we could see some animals. in the example above, the student made an error in choosing the correct auxiliary verb. when we tell about events in the past, the auxiliary verb "can" should be "could" the error of misordering there were 31 or 7.28% total errors of misordering. this error occurred because the students made errors in morpheme arrangements in sentences. example: we saw birds very beautiful the correct sentence: we saw very beautiful birds in the example above, the students were confused in the preparation of morphemes in the sentence. so, if there is an error in composing a sentence, it will affect the understanding of people who read or who listen to it. the explanation of error the writer classified errors based on the source of the error. in this case, the writer analyzed the error whether it came from the indonesian language (interlingua) or came from english (intralingua). so that the writer would not use the sources of error based on context learning and communication strategies. interlingua transfer example: three day ago, i and my father went to paris selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 142 ijolte the correct sentence: three days ago, i and my father went to paris in the example above, the students removed the item that should be there. the student had not understood if after a plural countable noun then the following word must be placed with phoneme -s which serves as a plural marker. this error occurred because the student was still influenced by the indonesian language. there are striking differences between indonesian and english such as from the time statement, mentioning plural and plural nouns. although teachers have basically taught the grammatical english to the students, but in fact they still do not understand it. so, the source of the error came from the interlingua transfer. intralingua transfer example: i and my friend going to my teacher's house the correct sentence: i and my friend went to my teacher's house in this sentence the student did not know that the verb in the past tense had to be changed into a past form. where the second verb form of "going" is "went" the source of this error is the intralingua transfer. the evaluation of error the interpretation of the data figure 4.5. percentage of students’ errors based on the calculation above, it could be concluded that the total error of omission was 166 errors or 38.97%, error of addition was 67 errors or 15.73%, error of selection was 162 errors or 38.03%, while error of misordering was 31 errors or 7.28%. from the calculation of the data, error of omission was the most frequent errors done by the students of smp negeri 20 kota jambi with the percentage of 38.97%. it was followed by the error of selection in the second position with the percentage of 38.03%. error of addition was in the third position with 15.73%. furthermore, the error of misordering was in the last position with 7.28%. 38,97% 15,73% 38,03% 7,28% percentage of students' errors the error of omission the error of addition 46,24%53,76% percentage of students' source of errors interlingual transfer intralingual transfer selvia lisa asni, susi susanti and urip sulistiyo 143 ijolte figure 4.6. percentage of students' source of errors the calculation of the data, the major source of errors made by students was intralingual with 229 errors or 53.76%. meanwhile there were 197 interlingua errors or 46.24%. however, if seen specifically, there were 11 students (student 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 1) who made interlingual errors. in addition, there were 10 students (student 1, 4, 6, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26) who made intralingual errors and there were only 5 students (student 3, 7, 8, 17, 24) who made both interlingual and intralingual errors with the same frequency. this is supported by brown in chapter 2 which said that interlingual transfer contributes a large error compared to interlingual errors in a second language. 5. conclusion based on this research, the type of error most often done by the students on simple past tense in writing recount text was omission error with 166 errors or 38.97%. the second position was a selection error with 162 errors or 38.03. the third position was the addition error with 67 errors or 15.73%. then the last position was disordering error with 31 errors or 7.28%. there was a very small difference between omission error and error selection with only 4 errors or 0.94%. the data showed that intralingua transfer was the main source of error. after doing the analysis, the author found that the errors of the students were caused by the complexity of the english system itself and not because of the influence of the indonesian system. the fact that the students lacked understanding of the grammar in english became the cause of the error. in this study, most students did not understand verb1, 2, 3, as well as the proper use of "tobe" in a sentence. this suggested that students had difficulty with the use of grammar in writing. references [1] azhar, s. 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(2010). the study of language fourth edition. new york: cambridge university press. paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7144 11 ijolte the teaching-learning process of public speaking from an ethnographical perspective estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi master degree of english education department universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email: estianatrikarmala@gmail.com how to cite this paper: karmala, e. t., kristina, d., & supriyadi, s. (2019). the teaching learning process of public speaking from an ethnographical perspective. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 11-19. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.71 44 accepted: july 24, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract this research aims to explore how the application of public speaking at an english course in pare, kediri, east java. this research is a qualitative research in the form of ethnography study on english course in pare, kediri, east java. the participants of this research are the teacher and students from public speaking class of english course in pare, kediri, east java. the data are obtained through interviews, observation, and document analysis. the findings of the research indicate that public speaking class of english course in pare uses four techniques for teaching in class. there are three speech techniques consisting of impromptu speech in the placement test to select students, introduction speech to describe their name or background and storytelling speech with different themes to express their ideas and knowledge. further, in the beginning, class, the teacher gives motivational words called ‘the power word’. moreover, the teacher applies a discussion forum in the class called dialog in forum. lastly, the teacher gives feedback of strengths and weakness from students’ performance. subject areas public speaking keywords public speaking; ethnography study; english course 1. introduction one of the mastering skill is speaking. it is crucial because many people can start the conversation with others, such as giving an idea and sharing the information. speaking is applied in formal school from elementary school up to universities including (yulia, h., & aprilita, n. 2018). the problem of speaking skill can be solved by the right technique on the students' needs. the students will like the suitable technique and fun; the teachers should create a fun and exciting technique which the students can freely speak in the classroom for the teaching-learning process (wahyuni, 2018). there are some problems for speaking skill such as inhibition, lack of topical knowledge, low participation, and mother-tongue (tuan, n. h., & mai, t. n. 2015). public speaking is an effective solution https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7144 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7144 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 12 ijolte communication. public speaking is a way of making one’s idea public of by sharing them with the others and influencing other people (lucas, 2009). it means that public speaking is the key for communication technique used to motivate and persuade other people. public speaking has not only an important impact on society, but also has influences in terms of education field. therefore, the suitable and creative technique would be favored by the students and consequently the teachers should create an entertaining and interesting technique which allows the students to speak freely during teaching and learning process in the classroom (wahyuni, 2018). in indonesia, there are many public speaking programs in non-formal education. the non-formal education has identical mission as the formal institution which is to provide the best services for the community (hikmah, n., & siregar, s. h, 2017). as a non-formal education, english course has increased their fame among students. number of services offered by several institutions are varied based on students’ grades and needs. many parents are willing to pay these expensive courses for their children to be able to learn and speak english fluently. these english courses implicate teaching preparation and mastering english subject materials (karmala. 2018). one of these courses is at pare village located in kediri, east java. pare village is a phenomenal place for providing various techniques in learning english’s public speaking and are considered to have more effective and efficient methods compared with the other places. public speaking is essential for business, career, teaching, and job. a large variety of professions needs essential asset like public speaking (wörtwein et al., 2015). considering that the high-interest of students to learn in english courses, the researcher carry out investigation in an english course in pare, kediri, east java to describe the teaching-learning process of public speaking. therefore, the researcher can explore the methods of culture such as classroom activities, teaching procedure, objective teaching learning, and teaching media. 1.1. non-formal education non-formal education is different from formal education in term of its flexible curriculum and methodology. learning process in non-formal education is designed depend on students’ needs, therefore curriculum and methodology are settled by the interest of students, in term of its purpose and arrangement (grajcevci, a., & shala, a, 2016). the examples of training programs in non-formal learning is social community institutions namely libraries, music schools, foreign language schools, community centers which arrange their courses for various skills such as musical instrumental, dance, theatre, sports, painting, etc (tudor, 2012). according to indonesian law of national education system in article 26 constitutes : (1) non-formal education is given to society who need educational services that function as alternatives, enhancement, and/or complementary of formal education in order to support permanent education. (2) the function of non-formal education is to evolve the capability of students with an affirmation on learning functional knowledge and skills and establishing professional attitudes and personalities. (3) non-formal education encompasses life skills education, pre-school education, youth education, education for women empowerment, literacy education, skills education and job training, equality education, and other education, which are aimed at developing students' abilities. (4) non-formal education units compose of course institutions, training institutions, learning groups, learning activities community, and resemblance educational units. one of non-formal education is english course where the teaching process is prepared by mastering english materials (yuniastuti, 2015) estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 13 ijolte 1.2. public speaking the most important type of communication skills is english speaking skill which is needed to be learned by the students (tamimi, 2016). in fact, many students could pass exams with ease, but they faced difficulties to express and communicate in english (jay-ar et al., 2018). public speaking is an effective solution to communicate science, to enhance youths’ skills and to increase the connection between people in any types of context and situation. most of the people think that public speaking is identical with a big stage, a microphone, the clapping before entering, large amount of audience listening to what we say; but, they did not consider that talking with our teacher, our husband/wife, our best friend, and doing job interview are all, in fact, form of public speaking (liotto, 2018). public speaking is a way of making one’s idea public of by sharing them with the others and influencing other people (lucas, 2009). it means that public speaking is the key to communication technique used to motivate and persuade other people. according to lucas (2009), there are three major differences between conversation and public speaking : first, public speaking is more highly structured. the speakers deliver their purpose in the speech itself, so public speaking requires preparation and detail planning. secondly public speaking requires more formal language, and thus speakers have to avoid slang, jargon, and grammatical mistakes to anticipate a negative reaction from the audience. lastly, public speaking requires a different method of delivery. a public speaker avoids distracting mannerisms and verbal. not only the teacher or lecture must develop and arrange components of public speaking to be preferable, but also students have to be prepared to practice public speaking in any kind of language (nawi., 2015) not only public speaking has an essential impact on society, but also public speaking influences in terms of education. a public speaking class contributes to develop students’ character and behaviour because it gives an inspiring, thrilling and motivational experience to students (liotto, 2018). there are some previous researches about public speaking. one of them was conducted by laili (2015). the purpose of her study was to investigate how oral presentation technique can improve students’ public speaking skill at man trenggalek. her research resulted that the students’ participation during teaching and learning process were improved and oral presentation skill as a teaching and learning technique can improve students’ public speaking skill effectively. the second one entitled improving students’ speaking achievement through public speaking tasks was conducted by sari (2012) from negeri medan university. this study was conducted by using classroom action research and its result showed that the students’ learning improvement can be seen from the percentage of the students’ speaking achievement in the test. 2. method this research was conducted at an english course in pare, kediri, east java. this research was qualitative research and the researcher applied ethnographic study. in education field, ethnographic research is used to describe teacher’s and students’ behavior; needs, interactions, language use, etc. the ethnographic method was conducted by doing participant-observation in order to describe or estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 14 ijolte explain people’s activities in a community (mcgranahan, 2018). ethnography involves conceptualization and meaning made within the theory–data interaction from the researcher’s fieldwork experience. it implies that the researcher employed a continuous process of revision and adaptation of techniques and strategies deliberately as data emerge (ayala, r. a., & koch, t. f., 2019). spradley (1980) said that ethnography is a culture-studying culture. it consists of a body of knowledge that includes research techniques, ethnography theory, and hundreds of cultural descriptions. the achievement of ethnographer or researcher is to provide a description or explanation of how people behave in a community (figure 1). the source of data used in this research was taken from some techniques namely events, informants, and documents. the events referred to the activities in public speaking class of english course in pare, kediri, east java. the informants were the teacher and twenty students from public speaking class. the documents were the textbook from an english course, the recording’s transcription, pictures, and interview transcription. the collecting data techniques in this research were observation, interview, and document analysis. the observation was conducted at an english course in pare, kediri, east java to assess students’ activities, learning progress, and performance. the researcher also used camera to collect documentation during teaching and learning process. the interview towards the teacher was conducted to explain the application of public speaking, teacher’s personal information, working experiences, and components of teaching process and factors which influence teaching process. the researcher also interviewed students to find out their responses and to comprehend students’ experiences of learning public speaking. figure 1. the ethnographic research cycle adapted from spradley estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 15 ijolte according to merriam (1998: 91), the three major types of documents that could be analyzed are public records, personal documents, and physical material. the public records were taken from the records of the learning process of public speaking class and the recorded transcription. the personal documents were in form of pictures and videos. the physical material was the textbook from the public speaking class. creswell (2007) suggested that there are eight commonly used strategies which can be employed in qualitative research to verify the trustworthiness of the research. those eight strategies are: (1) prolonged engagement and persistent observation in the field, (2) triangulation, (3) peer review or debriefing, (4) negative case analysis, (5) classification of researcher’s bias (reflexion), (6) member checking; (7) rich and thick description; (8) external audits. he also added that qualitative researchers should engage in at least two of those strategies in any given study. the researcher used triangulation to confirm findings by utilizing several methods namely observation, interview, document analysis, and member checking. these triangulation were conducted by sending back the transcription of the interview result to the subject matter of the research in order to check and confirm the data validity. 3. finding and discussion 3.1. finding the purpose of this research was to describe the teaching-learning process of public speaking from an english course in pare, kediri, east java. the teaching-learning process conducted for two weeks. the finding of this research showed which the teacher used three methods of speech for the teaching-learning process of public speaking. there were impromptu speech, introduction speech, and storytelling speech. for the first technique, the teacher used impromptu speech in the placement test to select students. the students were given different spontaneous questions, and they had one minute to explain, describe, explore their answer. the students were eliminated based on their confidence level, the english fluency, and the way they expressed their answer. then, the teacher started to deliver the materials and give public speaking example using some techniques. after that, the teacher asked the students to practice public speaking using introduction speech to describe their name or identity in two minutes for each student, so that the teacher could indicate the students’ weaknesses and strengths in term of idea, knowledge, and public speaking style. the students also used storytelling speech to tell either a fable story, their biography, or their experiences. while doing these speech, the students were using the textbook as a guidance. moreover, they could also consult with the teacher about their problems in public speaking. for the second technique, before starting the class, the teacher not only greeted the students, but she also gave motivational words called ‘the power word’, for example “l feel good, l feel gratitude” and students were asked to repeat the power words. this ‘power word’ had successfully raised students’ motivation in the class. students felt relax and interested to learn the materials delivered by the teacher. for the third one, the teacher stimulated the students’ speaking skill by arranged the students in a discussion forum in the class called a dialog forum where the student could ask his/her friends in building a dialog between students. lastly, before ended the class, the teacher always reminded the students to read or study the new material used for the following day. the teacher also gave feedback to the students to evaluate their performance. there are two kinds of evaluation namely the daily evaluation of the students’ performance and the final test evaluation. the daily evaluation was done the teacher by tellestiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 16 ijolte ing the students about their strengths and weaknesses in presenting their speech, giving the solution for students’ problem and giving some suggestions on how to improve their performance. these evaluations made students felt contented with the teacher’s feedback, and built the positive atmosphere in the class. the data from the research used public records, personal documents, and physical material. the public records were taken from the records of the learning process of public speaking class and the recording transcription from the observation. the personal documents were pictures and video from the observation of public speaking class at an english course. the solid material was the textbook, which was made by the teacher from the public speaking class. the materials were adopted and taken from the textbook as teaching media which is made based on the teachers’ experiences from toastmaster international club and mr. kalend’s doctrine (the first founder english course in pare village).the researcher used two strategies which were triangulation to confirm several methods of the research findings, and member checking where the researcher sent back the transcription result of the interview to students of the research an english course to check and confirm that the data were plausible. 3.2. discussion one of non-formal education in the form of english course where the teaching process is prepared by mastering english materials (yuniastuti, 2015). the teacher class prepared public speaking systematically in the classroom such the material, the time of explanation, and ice-breaking before she explains the material. lucas (2009) stated, there are three significant differences between conversation and public speaking : (a) public speaking is more highly structured. the speakers deliver their purpose in the speech itself, so public speaking needs preparation and detail planning. (b) public speaking requires a more formal language. speakers avoid slang, jargon, and bad grammar to ignore an adverse reaction. (c) public speaking requires a different method of delivery. the practicing of speech in public speaking from an english course in pare, kediri, east java applied more highly structured in speech, more formal language in the classroom, and using a different method of delivery. based on reality, many students could pass exams, but they are difficult to express and communicate in the english language (jay-ar et al., 2018). the students were challenged to express and communicate when they did practicing or performance in front of the class. nawi (2015) said that a public speaker avoids distracting mannerisms and verbal. not only the teacher or lecture must develop and make components of public speaking to be excellent ways of learning, but also students are prepared to practice public speaking in any kinds of language. in an english course pare kediri, students were prepared for being an excellent communicator in public, so they practiced many kinds of speech such as impromptu speech, introduction speech, and storytelling speech. the technique of impromptu speech with using the inevitable question can be used students to prepare in their career, university, or in the public place. the quality instruction, input, interaction, and opportunities are needed students to make progress and to maintain motivation for english language learning (alajab et al., 2015). the teacher of public speaking class imparted the evaluation of strengthens and weakness from their speech, so students felt contented with the teacher’s analysis. liotto (2018) stated that not only public speaking has an essential impact on society, but also public speaking influences in terms of estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 17 ijolte business. a public speaking class contributes to developing the character, the behavior, and the attitude of students because it helps giving an inspiring, thrilling, and motivational experience for students. it showed from the beginning of the class; the teacher always gave the words which were called the power words to motivate students such as ( l feel good, l feel gratitude ) and students repeated the power words. this method was a success to raise students’ motivation in inside and outside of the class. previous research about public speaking was done by laili (2015). in her study about how oral presentation technique can improve students’ public speaking skill at man trenggalek. the research method used classroom action research (car), the subject of the research was all students of matematika dan ilmu alam (mia-5), the research instruments are observation sheet or checklist, and test, the data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. the result of this study shows that the students’ participation during teaching and learning process improved in speaking skill and oral presentation skill as the technique in teaching and learning is sufficient to improve students’ public speaking skill. through this technique, the students also trained to be more active and confidence in speaking in front of the public. the second by sari (2012) from negeri medan university, the title is improving students’ speaking achievement through public speaking tasks. this study conducted by using classroom action research. the subject of the research was class xi ap2 smk bm taman siswa lubuk pakam consisted of 32 students. the research conducted in two cycles and every cycle consisted of four meetings. the instruments for collecting data were an oral test for quantitative data and diary notes and interview for qualitative data. the students’ improvement can be seen from the percentage of the students’ speaking achievement in the test. it means there is an improvement in the students‟ speaking achievement by using public speaking tasks related from the previous study. the research had a similar result that public speaking gave the excellent effect for improving the pronunciation, vocabulary, motivation, fluency, and confident to learners in speaking skill to speaking in front of the public. 4. conclusion the result of teaching-learning process of public speaking from an english course in pare, kediri, east java used four techniques. firstly, three techniques of speech. they are: impromptu speech which is only used in the placement test using spontaneous question, (2) introduction speech which is done to check the students’ weaknesses and strengthens in public speaking skill, and (3) storytelling speech which is used to express students’ idea by exploring their background, experiences, and telling fable. secondly, the teacher gave motivation words called ‘the power words’ to motivate students. thirdly, the teacher used a discussion dialog in the class called ‘dialog in forum’ to increase students’ speaking skill, and active participant. students directly practiced one by one in front of the class after the teacher explain the material from the textbook, so the teacher applied theory and practice equally. lastly, the teacher gave the evaluation on students’ strengths and weaknesses and their progress in public speaking in daily performances. public speaking class of english course pare, kediri could help the students to improve their public speaking skill. from the placement test, the researcher could acknowledge that english course in pare, kediri, east java has an established system. public speaking class contributes in improving students’ pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency, confidence, and motivation to learn english. students got the motivation to estiana tri karmala, diah kristina, slamet supriyadi 18 ijolte achieve their goals in the future through public speaking class of english course in pare kediri. after the researcher concludes the teaching-learning process at public speaking at an english course, pare, kediri, east java. the researcher would like to give some recommendations for the future study. this study was expected to give contribution to theories related with the teaching and learning process of english public speaking. the teacher should provide the stage room for the students to practice because they only practiced in the class, especially during the final test process. the teacher should create an innovative technique for teaching-learning process in dialog forum at public speaking class. it is also recommended for the future researchers to conduct a study in comparing the teaching-learning process of public speaking in formal and non-formal education. references [1] academic performance of grade 7 students. in asia pacific journal of multidisciplinary research (vol. 6, pp. 5-16). 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(2015, november). multimodal public speaking performance assessment. in proceedings of the 2015 acm on international conference on multimodal interaction (pp. 43-50). acm. [20] yulia, h., & aprilita, n. (2018). the implementation of british parliamentary debate style training to improve second semester student’s speaking ability at english education study program of baturaja university. international journal of language teaching and education, 1(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4585 [21] yuniastuti, v. (2015). students’ learning motivation and its contribution upon their willingness to speak english (a case study at basic english course, pare, kediri) (doctoral dissertation, uns (sebelas maret university)). acknowledgment i want to thank mrs. dwi indah wahyuni, a.md, the founder and english teacher of alfalfa camp who helps me in holding this research; i would like to thank my parents and tim ehrensperger for your prayers and support me. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4594 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4585 contact aditya rikfanto adityarikfanto@uny.ac.id universitas negeri yogyakarta ©2021 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). abstract curriculum changes directly impact learning objectives, content selection, and the use of coursebooks as learning resources. in reality, teachers tend to choose coursebooks that are different from the curriculum direction. this study aims to determine how teachers view the selection of german coursebooks and what criteria they used to decide coursebooks for teaching in secondary school. respondents were 20 teachers in yogyakarta and central java. we use a qualitative descriptive approach to analyze interview-based data and records through reduction techniques, categorization, verification, and conclusion. the results indicated that most of the participants wanted to be autonomous in choosing books to use, while the national curriculum guidelines were not considered an obligation. this study proposed thirteen criteria for book selection based on the data analysis obtained from respondents. teachers can make priority choices from these criteria and apply selected coursebooks to lessons. article history received august 12, 2021 accepted november 24, 2021 published december 31, 2021 keywords: criteria for selecting, german coursebooks, critical appraisal 1. introduction there is no doubt that coursebooks determine the quality of teaching and provide language training for students (van batenburg et al., 2020). indeed, in the future, most of the information will be transmitted digitally, while only a small portion will be conveyed through print media. however, books will always have a place all over the country, mainly textbooks related to the development of language skills (gomez, 2008). masoomi et al. (2016) argued that coursebooks that determine class activity could affect the teacher's teaching methods and the role of students. german language teaching has been running for decades in high schools in indonesia. the curriculum in indonesia recommends using a coursebook called deutsch ist einfach, written by kasim et al. (2013). this book is produced domestically and designed appropriately to achieve national curriculum objectives. however, curriculum-based coursebooks are considered less suitable for learning needs and situations. in this case, the teacher tries to pay attention to learning in general and adjust it to the reality of conditions in school. some teachers choose locally published coursebooks. others use globally published coursebooks based on the common european framework of reference (cefr) this difference in tendency indicates that teachers have references and criteria in selecting coursebooks for german teaching. diverse coursebooks encourage teachers to create advanced german language learning based on the learning plans. this situation is a distinctive advantage in teaching german in central java and yogyakarta. however, the criteria for selecting the coursebook have never been explored in-depth and put together in a formulation. besides, studies related to this issue still tend to be rare. this study is critical because it provides practical guidance for curriculum developers and shows good textbook criteria based on the views of language teaching practitioners (mukundan & nimehchisalem, 2012). based on this background, we seek international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.14392 mailto:adityarikfanto@uny.ac.id https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v5i2.14392 international journal of language teaching and education 74 to investigate the teacher's view of selecting german course books and what criteria teachers use in choosing the appropriate coursebook. 2. literature review teaching success refers to several factors, including using the coursebook and its teaching methods. tomlinson (2015) defined a coursebook as a book directed to the learners of a language consisting of information, advice, texts, and activities designed to help them learn their target language. it is usually specific to a particular language level. it typically focuses on learning grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation and developing listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. it is clear that understanding the coursebook's complex aspects and its tasks is essential in learning a second language (préfontaine & kormos, 2015). zohrabi (2011) stated that teachers are inseparable from their role in evaluating and developing coursebooks to follow the needs of learners. thus, teachers are accustomed to developing the theory of learning and knowing its application in the classroom. in this way, teachers can discover their potentials, limitations, and abilities to convey knowledge and gain trust in their skills. tomlinson (2018) stated that language coursebook types include several substances based on communication skills development. he mentioned that some typical examples of practice in language learning include closed questions, open questions, proper word selection, controlled dialogue, matching sentences, completing sentences, rearranging sentences, correcting sentences, listening, and answering questions. however, it should be noted that inappropriate content and the vast scope of lessons cause students to experience difficulty in mastering language skills. to solve this problem, teachers must choose suitable learning materials and resources. liu (2010) argued that the ideal learning resource components should include valuable learning content, reliability, and ease of access to materials. on the other hand, i̇nal (2006) argued that teachers need to consider several aspects of choosing a coursebook. first, subject and assignment content must be relevant to the learning purpose. by understanding the group of learners and knowing the purpose of learning well, a teacher can choose the textbook appropriately. in addition, the teacher should adjust the content scope to the actual situation. secondly, the content should arouse curiosity. it is essential to consider the needs and interests of the students. they should be motivated to express and discuss their interests while communicating the language. assignments should get structured in a way that makes lessons engaging. third, cultural aspects must be taken into account to avoid misunderstanding and culture shock. it is crucial to avoid topics that could inhibit or damage their self-confidence. text, illustrations, and images should be culturally appropriate. fourth, the tasks should represent the original characteristics of the community in which the target language exists. in this way, these exercises and tasks would prepare students for real-life situations. lastly, the language used needs to be appropriate to the student's level of proficiency, and the grammar should be consistent. sheldon (1988) completed the statement and mentioned some essential considerations in choosing a coursebook. coursebooks need to state the objectives for each unit of the study clearly. learning purpose assists teachers in delivering content and becomes an indicator to identify learning achievement. moreover, they should also provide information about their publishers, allowing consumers to contact detailed information and provide feedback. furthermore, specific information about the target group, age group, culture, background, possible learning preferences, and learning expectations is essential. the visual design should also be appealing, and its typography is appropriate. units and exercises should be related to topics and grammatical development of lexical improvement. in cases where the textbook is insufficiently complete to stand on its own, then it should provide a separate exercise book that can enrich the learning unit. learning materials in the coursebook should also allow for modifications or adaptations to suit local situations. in this way, teachers can avoid formatting that is too rigid. besides, course books face the challenge of being low-cost and easy to order. commercial exclusivity is undoubtedly a constraint on the learning process itself. various aspects of this consideration become essential in exploring the reality of course book selection. hutchinson & torres (1994) stated that good adequately used coursebooks could provide an excellent and effective change. besides, the coursebooks can provide the level of learning necessary for teachers and learners to understand and change entirely. however, the above 75 a. rifkanto & r. e. s. mulyati considerations are not inherently adequate to meet the teachers' needs in designating a specific german coursebook. additionally, discussions on determining a coursebook are often not based on objective and didactic considerations but on educational and national policy issues. therefore, investigate teachers' critical perspectives in perceiving an ideal coursebook. in this study, we focus on the essential criteria for teachers in determining coursebooks and who should be the ones to determine the use of coursebooks in german language classes. 3. method this study used a qualitative descriptive method, where the analysis focused on records about the teachers' statements. the scope of research was secondary schools in yogyakarta and central java. data were collected through interviews with open questions, where teachers as respondents provided information related to the topic. we have interviewed 20 corresponding teachers (t1-t20) in this study. furthermore, we analyzed teachers' opinions objectively to find out their views on the procedure of choosing a coursebook. besides, they mentioned the ideal coursebook selection criteria. we analyzed the data with reduction techniques to obtain different important information and found distinctive features in the answers (jung et al., 2006). furthermore, the data is processed by categorizing, verifying, and determining conclusions to produce research data that can be accounted for (silalahi, 2018). if there is a discrepancy in information, a follow-up interview is conducted to explore the facts. 4. findings and discussions teacher's view in determining a coursebook we divided our interview data into four groups according to their specific answers to decide the coursebook. as shown in table 1, the teachers have opposing views about who should be the authorized party to designate the coursebook. figure 1. authority in determining a coursebook according to the teacher's opinion the data analysis results showed that most teachers wanted to independently select the coursebook, considering the students' conditions and situation. meanwhile, 15% of respondents said that the coursebook should be determined by a commission appointed by the governmentrecognized teacher association (mgmp), where it assesses learners' needs and considers curriculum directions comprehensively. 5% of respondents stated that the government should determine the coursebook. 5% of respondents stated that the coursebook should be determined by the teacher concerned with the lesson and by the local school through scientific discussion. this statement is in line with wette (2009). she argued that teachers could build concepts, plan lessons globally, diagnose student developmental priorities during the teaching process, and assemble coherent lessons from various components according to learners' needs. this situation allowed teachers to apply coursebooks in teaching based on their choice. 15 3 1 1 subject teacher mgmp (assembly of subject teachers) national curriculum teachers and internal school commissions international journal of language teaching and education 76 furthermore, we investigated teachers' opinions on the reference for coursebook selection and formulated their answers into applicable criteria. this data shows that teachers can design and plan their lessons independently. they are in a position to review and determine course books responsibly. their decisions become an essential part of the series of knowledge transfer and building of language skills. the selection of course books should not be determined absolutely by the national curriculum. the curriculum cannot be interpreted as a binding rule book. however, it is just a learning framework that provides descriptions and suggestions about language skills that need to be achieved (ende et al., 2013). criteria for selecting a coursebook to select and evaluate the coursebook, teachers must first prepare the reference criteria (müggenburg, 2019). although these criteria do not have to be met all, the teacher has a general reference in different situations. based on the reduced data, we propose thirteen criteria listed in the table below: figure 2. proposed criteria for selecting coursebook according to teachers the above table shows that the spectrum of teacher analyses is quite broad regarding depicting the conceptualized german coursebook. let us now bring each of these points into a comprehensive discussion. conformity with the national curriculum and clarity of learning objectives teachers see it as essential that textbooks should refer to the national curriculum. curriculum policy has always been debated, but the curriculum has officially represented a series of decisions, policies, orientations on specific values and objectives (brennan, 2011). the content accuracy, learning methodology, content conformity with curriculum become the most critical sub-criteria (ho & hsu, 2011). in the interview, respondent t3 explained that it is essential to review a coursebook before using it. the teaching material should be precise, the learning steps should be sequential, and the material limitation in learning units following the national curriculum guidelines. another respondent (t5) also added that the suitability of the curriculum may not always be in one book, but teachers can use other sources of course books to fill the gaps. ivers (2007) argued that teachers should consider the coursebook's suitability with the purpose of education in the school and the specific purpose of the lesson. the lesson's purpose becomes the target, explaining the various essential competencies expected. however, flexibility in achieving goals 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 77 a. rifkanto & r. e. s. mulyati needs to be considered and discussed with learners. in this context, teachers need to implement appropriate metacognitive strategies to explore critical thinking and recognize their strengths. goal setting, strategy implementation, self-assessment, and self-evaluation that support learning plans should be appropriately determined (murphy, 2008). the teacher can apply adaptation techniques to conform to the curriculum or syllabus (cunningsworth, 1995). indeed, this technique for some teachers is challenging and can provide more concrete results in teaching their students. however, adaptation requires more resources and timeconsuming trials for some teachers, so they tend to focus on the original learning format. relation to daily life and multicultural issues coursebooks are supposed to serve as a bridge of knowledge and language skills between individuals and real life. the interrelationship between the coursebook and everyday life topics is essential, where the topic of conversation also indicates social sensitivity and is not offensive (poole, 1974). therefore, cultural interrelationship should be present in the teaching process because teaching language without reference to the target culture is undoubtedly complex (kovács, 2017). chan et al. (2020) stated that intercultural competence development had become a necessary goal of foreign language learning. if we relate it to respondent t4, this idea is similar to expectations for the quality of course books. he said that the coursebook became a critical medium to introduce the culture of the destination language, in this case, german. in addition, reading materials or learning instructions should not be too difficult. topics about daily life should not be limited to the prevailing culture in the target language and the local culture. indeed, this role also needs to be done by teachers. ghanem (2015) stated that non-native german speakers tend to discuss their identity and original culture in explaining topics presented in the coursebook. thus, inter-cultural understanding and daily life become impressive knowledge for learners. mckay (2003) argues that modern foreign languages should allow students to communicate their local culture to others. coursebooks can be a significant source in introducing culture and producing cultural adaptations in this context. this finding shows that coursebooks that link cultural aspects are essential for foreign language learning (hatoss, 2004). availability of a material outline coursebooks should provide concepts, meaningful exercises, easy-to-understand summaries, and evaluation instruments to measure student progress. the material outlines serve to introduce the intended learning points in each book chapter. it becomes a quick way for teachers to prepare their teaching steps and strategies well. thompson (1971) stated that the outline provides descriptive and prescriptive guidance for teachers in determining the direction of language skill development. thus, teachers can consider developing content based on the students' level of ability. respondent t6 revealed in the interview that the coursebook needs to map the content of each chapter. therefore, it is precious if each unit describes a flow of thought, a learning map or a brief introduction. conformity of exercise to the topic the coursebook should present exercises that are significantly related to the topic of discussion. in other words, the coursebook should use an appropriately applied task-supported language teaching (tslt) model, where tasks and exercises serve as methodological tools for practicing certain aspects of language (ellis, 2019). variations in the types of exercises, both closed exercises with one correct answer and free exercises, which have many possible answers, can be used in coursebooks to improve their language competencies (jacobs & ball, 1996). respondent t15 explained that studio d, by funk et al. (2013), tends to be appropriate for his class because it has complete material coverage, varied exercises, and relevant assignments. for example, in this coursebook, adjectives relate to house topics. students can practice making variations of words appropriately to express sentences correctly. for example, "das zimmer von ulli ist groß" (ulli's room is large) and otherwise "das zimmer von rolf ist klein" (rolf's room is small). international journal of language teaching and education 78 availability of learning summary the availability of learning summaries is an integral part of the coursebook. young & riegeluth (1988) stated that a quick way to assess course books' sequence is to check the contents, chapter introductions, end of chapter summaries, indexes, and glossaries. we focused on the summary that describes learning parts or grammatical aspects learned, both at the end of each chapter and the end of the book in general. respondent t6 conveyed his experience that he felt the need to provide a summary of learning, for example, or grammar that appeared in the lesson unit. he can do that with the help of summaries from the coursebook. a coursebook that provides a good set of grammar can help foreign language learners effectively, and it also helps teachers in the teaching process (tammenga-helmantel & maijala, 2019). moreover, other linguistic components that have been taught need attention in the summary section. in addition to grammatical concepts, the coursebook also needs to summarize the new vocabulary. papajani (2015) stated that including the vocabulary exercises or summaries in each lesson is beneficial so that learners can integrate the new words into their mental lexicon. use of media integrated with coursebook everyone concerned in language learning and teaching process, whether students, teachers, administrators, book writers, or publishers, should be well aware of the benefits of information and communication technology to provide 'scaffolding' for language development. integrating ict tools and applications to all aspects of the language learning process like teaching, learning, curriculum, management, and materials, especially coursebooks as a central medium, is critical to teaching language (hismanoğlu, 2011). coursebooks, which are printed media, are part of instructional technology that complements computer media, audio-visual, and other electronic equipment (kumi-yeboah, 2014). therefore, integrating course books and digital media is an essential consideration in language delivery. examples of exercises are presented orally in audio files and, most importantly, listening comprehension exercises (wichmann, 2016). respondent t2 said that books with the most up-to-date language learning methods use supporting media, such as dvds and digital data. another respondent (t4) also explained that coursebooks become more interesting if they include additional features such as videos or games with related themes. however, it should also be noted that teachers should also actively explain the content of lessons in audio-visual media to students. some learners tend to understand the teacher's explanations easily, rather than seeing the media's views. sato & burden (2020) stated that computer-enhanced learning media or internet-based media for foreign language learning does not always produce better learning effects than simple tools. adequate development of four basic language skills the concept of four basic language skills has been well-established in teaching foreign languages for the last three decades, namely listening, reading, writing, and speaking (goh & wu, 2017). aydoğan & akbarov (2014) stated that these four language aptitudes are, in some cases, called the "macro-skills." these communication skills contrast to the "micro-skills" like grammar, vocabulary, articulation,p, and spelling. the four essential skills are related by two parameters: oral or written communication and the course of communication: accepting or creating the message. respondent t8 said that it would be great if the coursebook assists learners in developing exercise-based speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills. students have the opportunity to try various exercises and activities. therefore, he said that the coursebook he used tended to live up to his expectations because the book featured these matters. hinkel (2006) explained that all four aspects of language should be presented integrally in context, not separately in a particular section. therefore, textbooks that practice all four verbal skills become a priority choice. sa'aleek (2018) argued that a good book could provide relevant educational activities and allow students to practice the language. 79 a. rifkanto & r. e. s. mulyati systematic and orderly composition of learning content jafarigohar & ghaderi (2013) stated that important criteria in selecting course books should be considered, whether the book uses logical order, proper language, and gradually increasing the structure's complexity. t4 said that the coursebook should show the language learning mindset in sequence. in addition, the exercises should support the development of language skills and do not overlap with each other. this sequence plays an essential role in building the concept of understanding a foreign language as a whole. the order of teaching content concerning linguistic aspects should be in line with the principles of linguistic rules that have become part of linguistic competence in acquiring a second language (zyzik, 2011). low-performing students will have difficulty completing the exercise if the discussion arrangement is not sequential (hobri et al., 2020). visual appearance and attractive format coursebooks are supposed to present visual illustrations, diagrams, or corresponding tables (williams, 1983). thus this visual display strengthens the imagination and encourages creativity in producing languages. respondent t9 believes that coursebooks meet curriculum needs and provide a colorful visual display. he believes that students can enjoy the picture and understand the context. t 10 also added that a successful coursebook is a unique book. some of the uniqueness is an attractive appearance and actual material. the images embedded in the book help learners to understand and remember the text, which is a significant component in language learning (glenberg & langston, 1992). even embedded images can reflect the course book's impression, in which era it was produced, and whether it was new or outdated. affordable prices and availability in the market while it may seem unethical to talk about it in an academic context, teachers' and students' financial ability to obtain course books is ignorable. ease in obtaining textbooks and affordable prices becomes a necessary aspect (chatman & goetz, 1985). nimehchisalem & mukundan (2015) also argued that cost-effective coursebooks are critical. in some cases, free course books or appropriately priced books could be provided. respondent t11 said that the purchase price is considered in determining the coursebook. likewise, another respondent (t 14) also said that the affordable price allows students from various economic circles to buy it. students think about getting learning materials from various sources for free in this internet era. if learning resources are too expensive, course books will receive less priority, even if they are attractive. although not directly related to the achievement of learning objectives, price is the primary consideration for teachers and learners to choose the relevant textbooks. availability of handbooks for teachers coursebooks cannot stand independently without informational support for proper use. lake (1997) stated that the teacher's book provides an introduction and a general curriculum design strategy to assist students in developing more effective learning strategies. respondent (t6) usually reads essential instructions in the teacher's handbook before teaching. he feels confident and can avoid misunderstanding the exercise instructions and assignments in the textbook. from the information, we can hint that the teacher's handbook is essential in introducing the learning field. at least the instruction manual for the coursebook is available in the coursebook. the above statement argued that teacher's handbooks could help teachers find the right picture of learning and suggestions for achieving goals. nevertheless, teachers must still have a plan in conducting lessons. zohrabi et al. (2012) argued that experienced teachers should have plans for their classes, organize, and make changes to benefit learners. thus, they can react with interest to effective classroom teaching. availability of learning evaluation furthermore, the coursebook should also provide an evaluation to measure learning success. usually, a newly published coursebook has a separate set of tests or exercises, but the test book is an integral complement. respondent t6 said that exercise and evaluation were necessary. they support measuring student achievement. more than that, teachers also need to appreciate the learning process and motivate students. it is very relevant to the preparation of students for the international journal of language teaching and education 80 final school exam well. another respondent (t3) explained that the german language's lattice of the national exam material often took sources from course books. mol & tin (2008) argues that language learning activities should be integrated with meaningfocused activities. activities that encourage self-evaluation using various evaluation models should be included. therefore, the coursebook must present the interrelationship between evaluation and learning activities related to real-life topics. reliable publisher reputation: global vs. local there are some discussions about learning resources, should schools use internationally published books or local publications? this debate may never be over, as both have potential advantages. taki (2008) argued that the learning steps introduced in international course books are presented clearly and logically. these books usually focus on contextual aspects of language and explain critical everyday situations. on the other hand, gray (2010) argued that coursebooks distributed in the global market have a narrow view since they are set to be "one tool suitable for all," regardless of the context of social, geographic, and educational use. this difference in perspective has been a long discussion over the past decade. however, the process of collaboration and adaptation of the concept of global learning is possible for various educational institutions around the world (nguyen & hamid, 2020). t2 stated that a locally published book is enough because she can contact the publisher quickly to order a book, for example, or ask for appropriate learning suggestions. hughes (2019) stated that some global textbooks are adapted for a region. publishers work with teachers and institutions to produce region-specific textbooks, generally based on local ministries' requirements. regardless of these discussions, we consider that choosing a coursebook looks at publishers' reputation and reliability. 5. conclusions and suggestions we concluded that the implementation of the curriculum has a direct impact on the selection of course books in german language learning. this circumstance encouraged teachers to select and determine course books that fit the curriculum objectives. the criteria for selection of textbooks include thirteen aspects, such as clarity of learning objectives, conformity with the national curriculum, compatibility with the needs of achievement of essential competencies, association with culture and daily life, availability of learning outlines, exercises related to topics, a summary of learning, integration of media use with course books, development of basic language skills, structuring of sequenced and systematic materials, visual display and attractive images, affordable prices, ease in obtaining the book, availability of teacher handbooks, availability of learning evaluations and reliability of publishers. these findings became the formula for selecting course books, as the guide could explain the selection criteria so that teachers could focus on improving the quality of learning (dole et al., 1987). therefore, it is recommended that teachers apply these criteria consistently to select course books. teachers should choose books independently and make priorities according to these criteria. we could not reach all schools in indonesia during our research, so we only completed our research on 20 schools in the provinces of yogyakarta and central java. a more comprehensive research radius may provide richer data. in addition, the issue of the european system-based language learning framework (cefr) has not been identified, whether it affects teachers in setting learning standards and implementing the curriculum in indonesia. therefore, we suggest that this topic receive attention for further research. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank yogyakarta state university for the material and moral support provided during the writing of this paper. 81 a. rifkanto & r. e. s. mulyati references aydoğan, h., & akbarov, a. a. 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(2011). second language idiom learning: the effects of lexical knowledge and pedagogical sequencing. language teaching research, 15(4), 413–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168811412025 paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7434 61 ijolte investigation of passive voice occurrence in scientific writing urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati universitas jambi, jambi, indonesia email corresponding author: subagiourip21@gmail.com how to cite this paper: subagio, u., prayogo, j. a., & iragiliati, e. (2019). investigation of passive voice occurrence in scientific writing. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 6166. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7434 accepted: july 25, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract this study investigated passive voice use in theses of graduate efl students, universitas negeri malang. the occurrences of passive voice in research method chapter in two periods, 1985 2000 and 2002 – 2015 were compared. passive voice occurrence in the chapter of the research method was also investigated, then it was compared with the active. passive voice occurrence in theses before 2002 investigated which was 1458 and 1171 in theses published after 2000 indicated the fact that today passive voice use in scientific writing indeed less frequent compared to the past. also, unlike the findings of some previous studies that claimed passive voice occurrence is still more dominant than the action in the method section of scientific writing, this study found that, even in the chapter of research method, active voice today occurs more frequently. it was 1883 occurrences of active voice, and 1171 of passive voice were found. subject areas scientific writing keywords passive voice, passive voice occurrence, scientific writing 1. introduction one among the essential issues to discuss language use in scientific writing is about passive voice. it can be seen from some existing writing guides proposed contexts when to use the passive voice and when to avoid it in scientific writing and numbers of studies investigated its occurrence. about the occurrence of passive voice in writing, some studies had been conducted. riley (1991) investigated the occurrence of passive and active voice in scientific writings. twelve experimental reports of the journal of speech and hearing disorders were investigated. she stated that the stable percentage of passive voice’s higher frequency compared to the activities occur in the method section. however, looking at his table of the ratio between the use of passive voice and active, in overall sections of the articles, the active voice was found occurred more frequently. other study conducted by ahmad (2012). he investigated passive voice, nominalization, and interrogative gambit in scientific research papers drawn from medical and natural science. about passive voice, he pointed https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7434 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati 62 ijolte out that in method and result sections, passive voice is more dominant. while, even though it is only a slight number, active voice in the abstract, introduction and discussion sections are higher. still, in overall sections, active voice occurrence is more abundant in number. widiati et al. (2014) investigated the occurrence of active and passive construction in undergraduate theses written by undergraduate students of english department universitas negeri malang, major in english pedagogy, english linguistics, and english literature. this study found that overall, the occurrence of active voice constructions is higher than passive. the difference is significant, 64.8 % active construction and 35.2 % passive. once again, this study revealed that the active voice is more dominating than passive. however, the finding is similar to ahmad’s (2012) in term of higher occurrence of passive voice in method and result section. from those three studies, it can be inferred that active voice occurrence is higher than passive in most of the sections in scientific writing. however, it was inevitable that passive voice is not less prominent than active in terms of how contributory it is to be employed in the method section, as it was considered better to tell procedures of how the writer conduct their research or report. in response to the findings of the three studies, three things become fruitful to explore. the first thing is the passive voice occurrence in scientific writing in method section during periods. by doing it, the tendency about passive voice use in the method section of scientific writing, whether it increases or decreases could be figured out. the second thing is the passive voice use in the method section of scientific writing compared to active during periods. by exploring it, the consistent tendency to use more passive than active in this section can be examined. 2. method this is a descriptive qualitative study used to describe the condition that exists, the opinions that are held, processes that are going on, or the trends that are developing (best, j.w., kahn, j.v in latief, m.a (2015). therefore, this study is descriptive as it was intended to investigate passive voice occurrence in theses then describe the finding of the opinion that is held about problems of language use in scientific writing that may be caused by the use of passive voice. also, this study was qualitative as the analysis fulfilled two among the six characteristics of qualitative research suggested by creswell (2012:16). he stated that ‘the characteristics are (1) a problem is explored and a detailed understanding of a central phenomenon is developed (2) data for description and themes are analyzed by using text analysis and the deeper meaning of the investigation result was interpreted. based on two characteristics mentioned, this study can be said to be categorized as qualitative in the way that from some writing guides, this study had explored the problem in language use in scientific writing that may be caused by the use of passive voice. then, findings from some previous studies, which explain the phenomenon of passive voice use in term of its occurrence were discussed to develop a deeper understanding of passive voice use phenomena. finally, passive voice occurrence in text, research method chapter of theses, was analyzed, and interpretation of this occurrence was made. urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati 63 ijolte the data of this study were from research method chapters of theses written by graduate students in the english language teaching program of universitas negeri malang published from 1975 to 2016. in other words, theses published from that period will be the population of this study. this data source was taken from the list of theses and dissertations titles provided by the library of pascasarjana um. not all theses written by graduate students in elt published from 1975 to 2016 will be investigated. there were 31 theses represent 31 years of their publication. one year of publication will be represented by one thesis. those 31 years of publication are 1975, 1982, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016. considering this, purposive random sampling was then applied. according to guarte and barios (2006), “purposive sampling is described as a random selection of sampling units within the segment of the population with the most information on the characteristic of interest.” in this study, the population is defined as all theses published in 31 years of publication. then, in relation to purposive sampling definition above, the segment of this population are years of publication (1975, 1982, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) and research designs (classroom action research, descriptive qualitative, r & d, experimental, case study, correlation, ex post facto, descriptive quantitative, content analysis, survey, mix method, corpus-based study, classroom research, and ethnography). moreover, these segments fulfill the information on the characteristic of interest, which are theses which had been written by um graduate students in elt. as not all theses planned to be investigated were found, then those taken as sampling were theses published in 20th century 1985, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, then it they were called as group 1 and those published in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, called group 2. 3. results and discussions 3.1. comparison of passive voice occurrence between group 1 and group 2 from the data, it was found that the occurrences of passive voice between the two periods are different. in group 1 theses, it was found 1458 occurrences, while it was 1171 occurrences in group 2. it means that there were 287 different occurrences. based on the types, the distribution of occurrence in group 1 was 932 occurrences (63.92 %) for basic passive, 304 (20.85 %) for bare, 113 (7.75 %) for modal, 51 (3.50 %) for perfective, 32 (2.19 %) for to-infinitive, 24 (1.65 %) for non finite ing, and 2 (0.14 %) for progressive. while for group 2, the distribution was 720 occurrences (61.49 %) for basic passive, 262 (22.37 %) for bare, 106 (9.05 %) for modal, 43 (3.67 %) for perfective, 28 (2.39%) for to-infinitive, 8 (0.68 %) for non finite ing, and 4 (0.34 %) for progressive. in both groups, modal perfective passives were not found. the following is the distribution: urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati 64 ijolte table 1. passive voice types and their percentages number types gr 1 % gr 2 % 1 bsc 932 63.92 720 61.49 2 bre 304 20.85 262 22.37 3 mdl 113 7.75 106 9.05 4 perf 51 3.50 43 3.67 5 ti 32 2.19 28 2.39 6 nf ing 24 1.65 8 0.68 7 progressive 2 0.14 4 0.34 total 1458 1171 even though the difference between passive voice occurrence in group 1 and group 2, it was not easy to state whether the less passive voice occurrence in group 2 compared to group 1could explains that there was a decline on passive voice use in scientific writing seen from the period of 20th century to today. however, the same number of theses investigated, which was 12 for each group could explain that the occurrence of passive voice in the two periods had been compared relatively, and further, this comparison could be the guidance for the interpretation to show that the decline exists. this decline then implies that the trend of passive voice use in theses of graduate efl students universitas negeri malang investigated was found the same as a global trend. it can be seen from the total number of passive voice occurrence in the 20th century, which was higher than those occurring today (from 2001 to 2015). this local trend is considered the same as the global. as stated by ding in alvin, l.p (2014:1) that passive voice became something preferred for the reason of objectivity in scientific discourse in the 20th century, which then implied that it frequently occurred in scientific writing in this time period but the situation change, as today, many writing guides promote the use of active voice for the reason of clarity and conciseness (alvin, 2014:1), which then implied it occurred less frequently in this time period compared to the previous. there are possible factors that can make the trends appeared the same. students’ awareness of today’s issue of the decreased occurrence of passive voice in scientific writing can be the first factor. they may be more careful when deciding to use it in scientific writing. shifting their passive voice immediately into action, when it becomes something risky in term of resulting hard reading for the readers, may then become their consideration to express their ideas clearly. the second factor might be, as efl learners, theses’ authors are encouraged to be able to use english in the same way as the native speaker of english. they may feel that having such an ability is satisfaction and reflection of how successful they are in learning english. this ability is not only about being able to communicate using english but also being able to apply the same style in language as the native speakers. about passive voice use in scientific writing, the theses’ authors may follow the style of native speaker writers who today apply less passive in their scientific writing. urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati 65 ijolte 3.2. comparison of active and passive voice occurrence between group 1 and group 2 the data showed that total, in group 1 theses the occurrence of passive voice was higher than the active, it was 1458 occurrences and 1065 respectively. on the other hand, in group 2, the active voice was higher, 1883 while, the passive was 1171. the following table showed the occurrence of active and passive voice per year of publication. table 2. distribution of active and passive voice per each year of publication n y gr 1 y gr 2 act pasv act pasv 1 1985 132 197 2002 97 85 2 1990 92 227 2003 108 115 3 1991 40 91 2005 193 111 4 1992 315 130 2007 199 90 5 1993 136 178 2008 121 60 6 1994 34 53 2009 230 123 7 1995 30 55 2010 250 167 8 1996 29 36 2011 107 82 9 1997 127 232 2012 38 84 10 1998 59 106 2013 222 109 11 1999 50 112 2014 205 89 12 2000 21 41 2015 113 56 total 1065 1458 total 1883 1171 pasv: passive voice act: active voice out of the declined occurrence on passive voice use by the theses authors, the subsequent thing which was interestingly found was about the comparison between passive and active voice. on this issue, this study found that that unlike the previous studies which found that passive voice occurrence in the method section of scientific writing was higher than the active, in theses investigated, it was found that this tradition occurred only in theses in group 1. while, in group 2, active voice occurrences were found to occur more frequently than the passive. about tendency on using active voice in scientific writing, study by hinkel (2004) which investigated essays written by advance non native speakers students of english (chinese, japanese, korean, indonesian, vietnamese and arabic), she pointed out that there is a tendency that non native speaker writers don’t really prefer applying complex verb forms in writing. she added that passive voice was one of them and was indeed found to occur less frequently. this tendency may make that the theses’ authors are today applying less passive verb and at the same time prefer to apply the active which is more straightforward and considered to be more apparent in delivering ideas in their writings. 4. conclusions the passive voice occurrences in scientific writing in theses of graduate efl students, universitas negeri malang which was found to decline today shows that this finding is in line with the findings of previous studies (seoane, 2013:91 and ding, d in alvin, l.p (2014:1), which suggest that globally, urip subagio, johannes a. prayogo, emalia iragiliati 66 ijolte today, passive voice use in scientific writing tends to go down. writing guides which explain when to use and when to avoid passive voice in scientific writing and studies which found the tendency of declined use of it may be the factors influence the writers to pay attention when deciding to use the passive voice in their writing. today, even in the method section of scientific writing, passive voice occurrence is no longer dominant than the active. the data of this study show different finding from the previous ones on passive voice occurrence in the method section. it was found that active voice occurrence was higher than the active. if the previous studies (riley, 1991, ahmad 2012, and widiati et al. 2014) found that the decline of passive voice didn’t impact its higher occurrence compared to the action in method section, this study found that active voice occurrence in today’s theses investigated (published in 2002 to 2015) was higher than the passive. it means that the decline occurrence of passive voice in the global impact the inclined occurrence of active voice, even, in the writing section in which passive voices were often found to occur more frequently than the active. to sum up, three suggestions were offered in this study. they are for writing lecturers, ppki developers, and scientific writers. for writing lecturers, they should tell the students about the trend on passive voice which decline today. however, to be critical about passive voice use, they can facilitate exercise which trains students to identify the passive voice in writing. the exercise is not only about locating passive voices occurrence but also judging whether they are used appropriately or not. for ppki developers, in language use chapter, they should give a brief explanation about context or situation both in which passive or active voice is better to use. it should be done to make students aware that both of them are contributory in term of language use in writing and to make them not too worry about using passive voice, even though it is now suggested to be avoided, as long as they are used in context in which passive voice is appropriate. references [1] aronoff, ahmad, j. 2012. stylistic features of scientific english. a study of scientific research article, english language and literature studies, (online), (2) (1): 47-55, (www.ccsenet.org//ells), accessed on april 2, 2017 [2] creswell, j. w., 2012. educational research: planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. from netlibrary, (online), (id.bookzz.org, accessed on october 7, 2016) [3] guarte, j.m & barrios, e.b., 2006. estimation under purposive sampling. communication and statistics – simulation and computation, (online), 35 (2): 277-284, (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/lssp20), accessed on november 12, 2016. [4] hinkel, e. 2004 tense, aspect and the passive voice in l1 and l2 academic text, language teaching research, (online), 8 (1):5-29, (ltr.sagepub.com), accessed on september 9, 2016. [5] latief, m.a. (2015). research methods on language learning an introduction. malang: universitas negeri malang. [6] leong, p.a.(2014). the passive voice in scientific writing. the current norm in science journals, jcom, (online), 13(01):1-16 (http://jcom.sissa.it/), accessed on may 27, 2016. [7] riley, k., 1991. passive voice and rhetorical role in scientific writing.journal of technical writing and communication, 21(3), 239-257, (online). (jtwsagepub.com, accessed on september 17, 2016) [8] widiati et al. 2014active and passive voice construction by indonesian students writers, theory and practice in language studies, (online), 4 (7): 1400-1408, accessed on april 7, 2017 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5747 286 ijolte vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning on speaking and writing development budi waluyo walailak university, thailand email: budi.business.waluyo@gmail.com how to cite this paper: waluyo, b. (2018). vocabulary acquisition through selfregulated learning on speaking and writing development. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 286-302. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5747 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract despite the crucial role of vocabulary in foreign language acquisition, little is known about its influence on speaking and writing development from self-regulated learning concept. thus, by employing a path analysis, this study examines the influence of vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning on beginner (n = 215) and intermediate (n = 195) students’ speaking and writing development at walailak university, thailand. the findings suggest significant paths from vocabulary acquisition to students’ speaking and writing development, but noting the influence of proficiency level. these findings contribute to the development of research in vocabulary acquisition and self-regulated learning with regards to speaking and writing development. subject areas vocabulary acquisition and self-regulated learning keywords self-regulated learning, speaking, vocabulary acquisition, writing 1. introduction vocabulary acquisition is undeniably vital for the development of learner’s ability in performing the four language skills, encompassing reading, listening, writing, and speaking (milton, 2013) and the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to learner’s language proficiency has been found significant (karakoç & köse, 2017). however, the result of a review of current studies on vocabulary acquisition only shows marginal vocabulary growth across vocabulary teaching and learning in various efl situations, implying the existence of inefficient vocabulary learning (chanturia & webb, 2016). thus, the present study intends to offer some insights by exploring vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning and the effects on learner’s improvement in speaking and writing skills. the vocabulary acquisition in this study involves explicit instruction in vocabulary learning that has been found effective in https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5747 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5747 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ budi waluyo 287 ijolte improving student’s performance in vocabulary tests (mizumoto & takeuchi, 2009) and recommended to be applied in foreign language classroom (de la fuente, 2006; sökmen, 1997). there has been a growing body of literature around self-regulated learning due to its importance in supporting student’s knowledge development both in formal schooling and in the periods where students must continue upgrading their capacity on their own (boekaerts, 1997). nonetheless, there is still a limited number of research exploring vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning. meanwhile, given current technological developments, vocabulary learning taking place outside classrooms and in unsupervised environments can be inevitable and crucial for the success of student’s vocabulary acquisition (bjork, dunlosky, & kornell, 2013). to put it simply, there are a lot of words that students must learn to be able to function the target language; a review of current studies on vocabulary learning discloses that, at least, learners need to have 8000-9000-word families for reading and about 5000-7000 families for oral discourse (schmitt, 2008). yet, teachers simply cannot teach all the words in classrooms due to time-constraints and other tolerable circumstances related to their teaching job. therefore, embracing self-regulated learning in vocabulary acquisition is unavoidable for students to be proficient in the target language, and the findings of this study will examine the path to the development of speaking and writing skills. 2. literature review 2.1. vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning self-regulated learning is viewed as a complex interactive process, involving not only cognition, but also motivation, in which learners take responsibility for their own learning process in a proactive way to achieve desired learning outcomes (boekaerts, 1997; zimmerman, 1990 & 2002). in other words, learners self-initiate and self-manage learning that often goes beyond regular classroom schedules and takes advantage of available learning resources (bjork, dunlosky, & kornell, 2013). early studies found the positive relationship between self-regulated learning and academic achievement (lindner & harris, 1992; zimmerman, 2008) and such relationship stays consistent as confirmed by recent studies (e.g. dörrenbächer & perels, 2016; duckworth, akerman, macgregor, salter, & vorhaus, 2009). in foreign language learning, most of the studies about self-regulated learning happen around motivation and language learning strategies (e.g. choi, zhang, lin, & zhang, 2018; dörnyei, 1990; tseng, dörnyei, & schmitt, 2006; zhang, lin, zhang, & choi, 2017). in the field of vocabulary acquisition, one of the focused explorations is enhancing self-efficacy through self-regulated learning process, which budi waluyo 288 ijolte potentially leads to the development of learner’s vocabulary acquisition. albeit self-regulated learning is more student-centered learning, some of the studies were surprisingly conducted in asian countries that are widely known for the heavy teacher-centered learning approach. mizumoto (2013a), for instance, integrated self-regulated learning approach into efl learners’ vocabulary learning at a university in japan. using experimental research design, a steady growth in self-efficacy and vocabulary knowledge was observed among students in the treatment groups. in another study, mizumoto (2013b) examined self-regulated learning process on self-efficacy of efl students from two universities in japan, and supporting evidence was found that the process of self-regulated learning potentially boosts self-efficacy and increase vocabulary knowledge. positive relationships between self-efficacy and selfregulation in vocabulary acquisition were also indicated among chinese efl learners (ping, baranovich, manueli, & siraj, 2015) and iranian efl learners (hamedani, 2013). vocabulary learning is a long-term task that requires students to maintain their motivation and adjust their learning strategies over time; thus, a proactive way of learning where students take control of their vocabulary learning is highly essential (tseng & schmitt, 2008). the findings of the latest study from choi, zhang, lin, and zhang (2018) in korea confirm that motivations were positively related to vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary knowledge. students who possessed stronger depth of vocabulary knowledge applied certain strategies more frequently than those with weaker depth of vocabulary knowledge (nassaji, 2006). self-regulated learning bridges between motivation and learning strategies in vocabulary learning (mizumoto & takeuchi, 2011). nevertheless, to build up self-regulation in vocabulary acquisition, students need practical self-regulatory process; providing a set of instructions or strategies would not help much (tseng, dörnyei, & schmitt, 2006). however, the influence of motivational factors and self-regulatory strategies was not significantly different across learner groups (kormos & csizer, 2014). although good and poor language learners employed many effective strategies for vocabulary learning (zhang, 2011), the differences were also noticeable in the aspects of metacognitive monitoring, self-efficacy, learning optimisim, and self-regulated language learning behavior (difrancesca, nietfeld, & cao, 2016; khodarahmi & zarrinabadi, 2016). besides, motivation could only affect student’s proficiency through learning strategies (fukuda, 2018). 2.2. vocabulary acquisition and speaking development it is unquestionable that, to be a proficient foreign language speaker, one needs to acquire wider and deeper vocabulary knowledge, which, in the process, budi waluyo 289 ijolte improves clarity and fluency of spoken and written language (von sydow, 2015). vocabulary acquisition is a vital element to successfully developing communication and literacy skills (belisle, 1997). within all language skills and knowledge (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), vocabulary knowledge serves as an internal link, in which the development appears to be in parallel with the improvement of every other aspect of language (jordan, 1997; milton, 2013). on speaking development, for instance, iwashita (2005) investigated lexical competence of learners preparing for tertiary study in english-speaking countries. the results of the study confirm that learners with higher level of language proficiency produced more academic vocabulary than those of lower proficiency. the parallel development of learner’s vocabulary acquisition with other skills, such as listening, reading, and writing, has also been identified by recent empirical studies (e.g. farvardin & teng, 2016; harkio & pietilä, 2016). koizumi (2005) studied the relationship between vocabulary and speaking ability of japanese learners of english at beginner level. a speaking test designed to assess school-based english proficiency and productive vocabulary knowledge test (vkt) were utilized to collect the data, which were, then, analyzed by using path analysis. the findings of the study revealed the presence of substantial effects of vocabulary knowledge and learners’ speaking ability, which, further, suggests the enhancement of speaking ability by increasing vocabulary knowledge. nevertheless, the attention should also be paid to the ability of putting vocabulary knowledge into use. in another study involving novice to intermediate levels, koizumi & in'nami, (2013) found that l2 speaking proficiency was predicted by l2 vocabulary knowledge, size, depth, and speed. the finding supports the view that more proficient learners exhibit higher vocabulary knowledge, thereby displaying higher speaking proficiency. from teachers and students’ perspectives, lack of vocabulary is often the reason in students’ inability to speaking english (khan, radzuan, shahbaz, ibrahim, & mustafa, 2018; seffar, 2011). this implicitly confirms the positive relationship between vocabulary acquisition and speaking development. given the encouraging results of previous studies, the present study, hence, tries to examine if a positive relationship also exists between vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning and student’s improvement in speaking skill. 2.3. vocabulary acquisition and writing skill like speaking, writing is also a productive skill in which the quality can depend on vocabulary knowledge level. learners who have acquired more vocabulary would produce a better quality of written texts than those who have acquired less. vocabulary knowledge simply allows learners to have a range of options in language production; in other words, the wider and deeper one’s vocabulary knowledge, the further range of options one will have. a recent budi waluyo 290 ijolte study from viera (2017), for instance, explored the influence of vocabulary knowledge on written production. the results of the study confirm that a group of learners who received a pedagogic intervention with vocabulary activities performed better in written production that those who did not receive such intervention. the study, further, suggests the emphasis on advancing the vocabulary knowledge of the target language in use. without having appropriate and sufficient vocabulary knowledge, learners would not be able to understand others or express their intentions. the idea that inadequate knowledge of vocabulary in the target language may lead to inferior writing quality is supported by previous studies. for example, shi and qian (2012) examined the dimensions of vocabulary knowledge and the effects on efl learners’ writing quality. their examination revealed that writing quality was strongly correlated with active vocabulary knowledge. the differences on learners’ writing ability were found to be in parallel with learners’ ability in vocabulary usage (zhai, 2016), but differed by genre (olinghouse & wilson, 2013). meanwhile, leaners’ use of academic words is more likely to be different by reading proficiency levels (kim & ryoo, 2009). nonetheless, dobbs and kearns (2016), who investigated the use of new vocabulary in writing, found that learners studying vocabulary for exams were more probable to attempt to use newly taught vocabulary in their writings than those learning english. therefore, at this point, explicit instruction in vocabulary learning is necessary as it can help teach learners about how to use their store of recognition vocabulary as well as new vocabulary in a production task, such as writing (lee, 2003). 3. methodology the this study employed a quantitative research design encompassing descriptive and inferential statistics. instruments and materials for vocabulary, speaking, and writing were prepared for data collection. students’ scores in these skills were used as the primary data for the examination of the research question. the primary data were, then, examined by using path analysis to reveal the correlations and predicted paths among the constructed variables, which included vocabulary, speaking, and writing. the examination was conducted separately to each group level of students, which consisted of beginner and intermediate level students. thus, the results of the examination could also be analyzed from comparative perspective on both levels of students. this study involved beginner and intermediate level students, as explained below. beginner level students students in this level are those whose scores were in the range of 40 – 55 in the university placement test in 2017. in this paper, these students are budi waluyo 291 ijolte also referred as basic users of english at a1 level, based on the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr). in total, there were 361 students in this level, but this study only used the data of 10 classes of english in cultural diversity or 215 beginner level students. the students majored in electrical engineering, chinese language, tourism and hotel, management, accounting, and health. since gender was not the variable of interest, it was not specified. intermediate level students these students obtained scores in the range of 56 – 69 in the university placement test in 2017, equivalent to b1/b2 level in cefr. seven classes of intermediate level students were chosen as the sample for this study, which involved 195 students. they majored in electrical engineering, medical technology, and nursing. gender was also intentionally not specified. following the purpose of the study explained earlier, the instruments and materials used for data collection involve vocabulary, speaking, and writing. to set up vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning, ten vocabulary sets were created and attached to the course book. one vocabulary set contained 50 words along with the information of part of speech, definition, and example in sentence. in the implementation, students had to learn one vocabulary set outside classroom schedule for each week. then, a vocabulary test was given to the students in class. for instance, students learned vocabulary set 1 after class in week 1, then they would be tested in class in week 2. the vocabulary learning, and assessment were done in such process until week 11 where students would have the last vocabulary test, i.e. vocabulary test 10. in this system, students had to self-regulate their own learning to acquire the 50 words in the assigned vocabulary set for each week. they were free to use any available learning resources and teachers were reachable through facebook. following the vocabulary sets, ten vocabulary tests were created to measure students’ vocabulary acquisition for each vocabulary set or each week. the vocabulary tests consisted of 15 questions encompassing synonym, antonym, sentence completion, and definition. the questions were about the words listed in the assigned vocabulary sets, so students should have known the words if the studied the vocabulary set prior to the vocabulary tests. in addition, some pictures were added to some questions in each vocabulary test. after that, the vocabulary tests were delivered by using socrative.com, a website or mobile app that allows a real-time quiz by using smartphones. the tests were given in the first 15 minutes of each class and teacher could access the result report after class. the average of students’ scores from these ten vocabulary tests were used as the primary data in this study. it was considered budi waluyo 292 ijolte as the vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning variable. table 1. one of the vocabulary sets no. word part of speech definition example 1. air hostess noun an air hostess is a woman who serves passengers on an aircraft. her salary as an air hostess was enough to send all her children to college. 2. airline noun the airline or carrier you fly with is the name of the company that owns the airplane e.g. singapore airlines, british airways. nok air and thai lion are the only airlines that serve the bangkok-nakhon si thammarat route. 3. arrivals noun when your plane arrives at the airport, your family and friends will meet you at arrivals. we’ll be waiting for you at the arrivals. …… ………… ………… …………………………. ........ ………………………… …….. 50. board verb to board (a plane) means to go onto it. we will be boarding in half an hour. table 2. example of the questions in the vocabulary tests no. questions 1. "mardi gras is a carnival held on shrove tuesday." what is the part of speech of the word "carnival"in the sentence? a. noun b. verb c. adverb d. adjective 2. what time does the concert ...? a. custom b. begin c. attend d. crowd 3. in 1836, the director began to ...... a grand conservatory 300 ft. a. play b. erect c. watch d. cry as the variable for students’ development in speaking, students’ scores on two speaking tests were utilized in this study, which consisted of theme-based role play and individual interview exams, as elaborated below. theme-based role play in the course design, students were required to perform four theme-based role-plays in a group of 4 – 5 in class. the themes of the role play reflected the topics of four units in the course textbook, which involved airport, restaurant, studying abroad, and festivals, arts, and crafts. the instruction of the budi waluyo 293 ijolte role play was attached to the course textbook. students’ role-play performances were assessed by using a rubric that included five criteria: vocabulary use, fluency, accuracy, interaction, and creativity, preparedness, and prompts. the scores ranged from 2.5 to 10. individual interview exams at the end of the term, each student was given an individual interview exam. after experiencing vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning and speaking practices in the four theme-based role-plays, students’ speaking development was expected to be noticeable in this interview exam. the exam was designed to reveal students’ abilities in explaining personal information, pronouncing word, phrases, and sentences, and communicating and expressing ideas relating to the course materials. an assessment rubric was also prepared for this exam, which involved five criteria: content, vocal expression, presentation, fluency and accuracy, and listening skill. the scores also ranged from 2.5 to 10. the detailed implementation of these two speaking tests can be seen in the class schedule below. table 3. class schedule week material 2 unit 1: airport 3 role-play performance and writing practice 4 unit 2: restaurant 5 role-play performance and writing practice 6 unit 3: living abroad 7 role-play performance and writing practice 8 unit 4: festivals, arts, and crafts 9 role-play performance and writing practice 10 review of lessons 11 final speaking test 12 final speaking test (cont.) and final writing test at the end the variable of writing development involved two writing tests, namely writing practice and final writing test, elaborated below. writing practice after studying each unit in the course textbook (table 3), students were required to write a short reflective essay on writeabout.com. the essays were read and given feedback by teachers through writeabout.com. students revised their essays at least three times until the final assessment took place in week 9. final writing test students were given a final writing test in week 12 (table 3). the test required students to choose one prompt to respond to and write a short passage of 100-150 words to elaborate their response. the prompts were related to the budi waluyo 294 ijolte course materials. both tests were assessed by using the same rubric, which involved five criteria: task achievement, grammar, vocabulary, logics, and mechanics (spelling, punctuation, and capitalization). the scores ranged from 2.5 to 10. picture 1. the appearance of the final writing test question basically, this study used vocabulary acquisition through self-regulate learning as the independent variable. the data were collected through 10 vocabulary tests given to students from week 2 to 11. then, the dependent variable involved speaking in theme-based role play, final speaking test, writing practice, and final writing test. the data for speaking in theme-based role play were collected through role play performances in week 3, 5, 7, and 9, while the final speaking test was conducted in 11 and 12. like role play, the data for writing practice were also collected in week 3, 5, 7, and 9 through a reflective essay assignment. the final writing test took place in week 12. these steps in data collection followed the course schedule, shown in table 3. in the data analysis stage, students’ scores in vocabulary tests, speaking-role play, final speaking test, writing practice, and final writing test were cleaned up for both beginner and intermediate students. after that, bivariate correlation analysis was run by using spss and then, followed by path analysis by a means of mplus. the purpose of the path analysis was to disclose the significant paths between vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning to speakingrole play, final speaking test, writing practice, and final writing test. the findings were presented as follows. budi waluyo 295 ijolte 4. findings and discussion the prior to the path analysis, bivariate correlation analysis was run between vocabulary acquisition and the variables of speaking and writing for both levels: beginner and intermediate level students. for beginner level students, the results disclose that vocabulary acquisition was significantly correlated with speaking-role play (r = .33, p< .001), writing practice (r = .24, p< .001), final writing test (r = .20, p = .004), but not with final speaking test (r = .10, p = .133). meanwhile, speaking-role play was significantly correlated with final speaking test (r = -.14, p = .044) and writing practice was significantly correlated with final writing test (r = .35, p<.001). then, the results of the correlations among the variables in intermediate level students reveal that vocabulary acquisition was significantly correlated with the variables of speaking and writing, including speaking-role play (r = .32, p< .001), final speaking test (r = .27, p< .001), writing practice (r = .20, p = .004), and final writing test (r = .27, p< .001). besides, speaking-role play was significantly correlated with final speaking test (r = .28, p< .001) and writing practice was with final writing test (r = 46, p< .001). table 4 and 5 below provide the detailed numbers. these significant relationships among variables permit path analysis to be conducted. table 4. the results of bivariate correlations – beginner 2 3 4 5 1 vocabulary acquisition .334** .103 .236** .196** 2 – speaking (role-play) -.138* .074 -.113 3 – final speaking test .170* .591** 4 – writing practice .353** 5 – final writing 1 notes. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, two tailed tests. table 5. the results of bivariate correlations – intermediate 2 3 4 5 1 vocabulary acquisition .317** .265** .204** .273** 2 – speaking (role-play) .284** .181* .273** 3 – final speaking test .316** .466** 4 – writing practice .464** 5 – final writing 1 notes. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, two tailed tests. next, the data of beginner and intermediate level students were examined by using path analysis. since the paths of interests were clear and uncomplicated, the path analysis was only conducted for one time for each level of the students and this condition was considered enough to disclose the answers for the research question. the model fit was assessed by employing three indexes, consisting of comprised of root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), tucker-lewis index (tli), and comparative fit index (cfi). the budi waluyo 296 ijolte values for a good fit are rmsea (.06), tli (≥.95), and cfi (≥.95) (jackson, gillaspy jr, & purc-stephenson, 2009). rmsea has been used by most empirical studies, where values less than .5 are considered good and lower than .8 are acceptable (mcdonald & ho, 2002). the details for each level student are provided below. beginner level students the values of rmsea (.05) and tli (.96) showed a good fit, but acceptable for the value of cfi for the examined model. the chi-square of model fit was 8.984 (df = 2, p = 0.01) and 173.346 (df = 10, p< .001) for the baseline model. the analysis results display that significant paths were found from vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning to students’ improvement in speaking-role play (β = .177, se = .034, p< .001), writing practice (β = .135, se = .038, p< .001), and final writing test (β = .145, se = .049, p = .003), but the path to final speaking test was not significant. however, the r2 values in the significant paths indicate that the independent variable did not explain much of the variability in the dependent variables: speaking-role play (r2 = .11), writing practice (r2= .06), and final writing test (r2 = .04). these results suggest that vocabulary acquisition was not the only contributor to students’ improvement in speaking and writing, and obviously not the major one either. figure 1 below illustrates the paths with standardized regression coefficients. figure 1. the path analysis results – beginner students budi waluyo 297 ijolte intermediate level students the values obtained from the path analysis on intermediate level students indicate no significant difference between the actual data and the expected data with the chi-square value at 0, p = .001. the model was considered good as reflected in the values of the indexes: rmsea (.001), tli (1), and cfi (1). different from the results of beginner level students, significant paths were obtained from vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning to students’ improvement in speaking-role play (β = .269, se = .058, p = .001), final speaking test (β = .231, se = .060, p = .001), writing practice (β = .194, se = .067, p = .004), and final writing test (β = .256, se = .065, p = .001). nonetheless, based on the r2 values, these significant paths did not explain much of the variability in the dependent variables: speaking-role play (r2 = .10), final speaking test (r2= .07), writing practice (r2 = .04), and final writing test (r2 = .08). these findings were consistent with the findings from beginner level students, implying that vocabulary acquisition through self-regulate learning was not the only contributor to students’ improvement in speaking and writing. the following figure 2 displays the detailed paths. figure 2. the path analysis results – intermediate students one of the insights obtained through the path analysis in this study is that students’ vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning significantly influenced their development in writing. both beginner and intermediate students displayed the significant paths, depicted in figure 1 and 2. this finding sustains the argument that vocabulary acquisition plays a crucial role in writing development. inadequate knowledge of the target language budi waluyo 298 ijolte vocabulary can lead to inferior writing quality (shi & qian, 2012). the finding concurs with viera (2017) who studied the influence of vocabulary knowledge on written production. by employing an experimental research design, the study discovered that a group of students receiving vocabulary activities performed better in written production than those who did not receive such intervention. however, it must be admitted that despite the essential role of vocabulary in the acquisition of the four english skills, the number of research exploring the link from vocabulary to writing development is still limited. the present study, hence, encourages the future research in this area, so more empirical evidence can be found to sustain the mentioned argument earlier. another insight from the results of this study is that vocabulary acquisition through self-regulated learning was a predictor of students’ development in speaking for intermediate students, but not for beginner students. this also follows the findings of the previous studies. for instance, koizumi (2005) examined the relationship between vocabulary and speaking ability of japanese efl learners at beginner level. the finding suggests the substantial effects of vocabulary knowledge on learners’ speaking ability. in another study, it was found that learners with higher level of proficiency also exhibited higher vocabulary knowledge, which accounted for their high speaking ability (koizumi & in'nami, 2013). the inconsistent significance of the paths from vocabulary acquisition to speaking-role play and final speaking in this study implies that beginner students may show some improvement in speaking due to acquiring more vocabulary, but the level of improvement is limited and may depend of the type of the assigned speaking task. in this study, for instance, beginner students were faced with one on one conversation with teacher, which would directly attest their speaking ability. in such circumstances, aside from their low level of proficiency, beginner students had to cope with other difficulties in speaking too, such as selfconfidence, fluency and accuracy, listening comprehension, and so forth, which might have hindered them from good performances. overall, the findings of this study contribute to the research on vocabulary acquisition in the context of speaking and writing development. acquiring wider and deeper vocabulary knowledge is essential for students’ development in speaking and writing (belisle, 1997; jordan, 1997; milton, 2013; sydow, 2015), yet the effects may vary across learners, depending on their levels of proficiency in the target language (iwashita, 2005). therefore, the present study would encourage vocabulary acquisition through selfregulated learning, but with more explicit instructions that can help low level students’ focus during the learning process. directing students’ vocabulary learning to exam purpose may work better in enhancing students’ use of the budi waluyo 299 ijolte newly taught vocabulary (dobbs & kearns, 2016). 5. conclusions the results of the analysis confirm that vocabulary acquisition through selfregulated learning can influence students’ development in speaking and writing, but the influence level may vary across learners with different levels of 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(1990). self-regulated learning and academic achievement: an overview. educational psychologist, 25(1), 3-17. doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_2 https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2012-0009 https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2012-0009 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38834-2_16 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami046 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami046 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00444.x https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0704.16 https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0704.16 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12135 https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831207312909 https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831207312909 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_2 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_2 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no.1, 31 march issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 1 ethical issues in research involving children in tesol and applied linguistics udi samanhudi queen’s university of belfast, uk usamanhudi01@qub.ac.uk how to cite this paper: samanhudi, u. (2018). ethical issues in research involving children in tesol and applied linguistics. international journal of language teaching and education, 1(2), 1-12 accepted: 28 march, 2018 published: 31 march, 2018 copyright © 2018 international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 .0/ abstract this study sets out to address the ethical issues involved in studies concerning english language learning and acquisition which involve children (those under 18 years of age as outlined in the un convention on the rights of the child) as participants. this small-scale study focused on the analysis of ethical issues in three preliminary of samples of studies which involve children in the field of tesol and applied linguistics. these three articles involved children as participants and are published in reviewed journals in the area of tesol and applied linguistics. the results indicate that although implicitly presented, the informed consent and protection issues have generally been fulfilled by the researchers of the three articles. however, a more explicit explanation needs to be given more spaces in the research report in order to make it more transparent to the public (peter, 2015; thomas, 2009) and to ensure that the research is rigorous and significant (dikema, 2009). subject areas language teaching keywords ethical issues, children, tesol and applied linguistics introduction the current literature documents the past practice of research involving children in which the majority of issues concerning children’s opinions, perspectives and lives, in general, were explored from the perspectives of adult researchers (huang et al., 2014; kirk, 2006). at that time, according to huang et al., (2014), children were seen differently from normal adults (referring to adults without any mental retardation and developmental disabilities) in that they were seen as immature human beings in understanding the world. children were considered incapable of explaining their viewpoint even about their own lives (see also pinter, 2014; kirk, 2007; curtis & cicchetti, 2003; punch, 2002b). their world then explored through the perspectives and understandings of adult caretakers who are close to them such as their parents or teachers (christensen & james, 2000). thus, research concerning children in social sciences such as in the field of tesol and applied linguistics tended to be more about them rather than directly involved the children in the research (pinter, 2004; christensen & james, 2000; hill, 1997). however, this traditional recognition has gradually open access http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 2 changed in the past few decades since the ratification of the convention on the rights of the child (crc) in 1989 (christensen & prout, 2002; alderson, 2000; woodhead & faulkner, 2000, among others). one of the main principles applied in the last 20 years of this document was ensuring the right of children to participate in decision-making processes (christensen & james, 2000a). specifically, article 12 of the convention on the rights of the child (crc) addresses the importance of children and young people’s opinions and voices to be heard by those who are making decisions that affect their lives (galagher et al., 2010). this writing sets out to address the ethical issues involved in studies concerning english language learning and acquisition which involve children (those under 18 years of age as outlined in the un convention on the rights of the child) as participants. the first part of this essay discusses the perspectives of research on children that affect ways of research involving them (punch, 2002b). the second section focuses on ethical issues in research which involves children. the last part will critically evaluate published research involving children in the tesol and applied linguistics contexts focusing especially on ethical issues (e.g., informed consent and protection issues) as reflected in those research articles. literature review perspectives on children in research for a few decades, there have been changes of seeing children in terms of their participation in research due to a developing conceptualisation of children and childhood by experts (kirk, 2007) leading to a heated debate on whether research involving children should be made different from research with adult participants (e.g., kirk, 2007; christensen, 2004; christensen & prout, 2002; punch, 2002b; harden et al., 2000b). traditional perspectives on children were influenced by theories of socialisation and developmental psychology in which they were conceptualised as incompetent and immature (james, 2001; waksler, 1991) which were sharply contrasted from normal adults as competent and mature human beings (diekema, 2009). a new way of thinking emerged in the late 1980s in which perspectives on children were much influenced by interactionism and social constructionism theories and the development in children’s rights which provided a new frame of the social status and position of children (kirk, 2007; james & prout, 1997) in which they are now constructed, like normal adults, as active agents rather than passive objects of research (beresford, 1997). there have been, specifically, four perspectives identified in the current literature in relation to children’s involvement in research such as the children as objects and subjects of the research (see o’connor et al., 2016; cheah & parker, 2015; christensen & prout, 2002), the children as social actors (e.g., christensen, 1998; christensen & james, 2000a) and the children as co-researchers within the research (e.g., lundy & mcevoy, 2012; christensen & prout, 2002; alderson, 2000; woodhead & faulkner, 2000; james et al., 1999). in the first place, children were traditionally seen as different from normal adults. they were considered as immature human beings who are not able to understand the world and to explain their opinions about their experiences in lives so that issues related to them were commonly explored from adults’ perspectives (o’connor et al., 2016; huang et al., 2014; curtis & cicchetti, 2003) especially through those adult care-takers close to the children’s lives (christensen & james, 2000; kirk, 2007). different from normal adults who are considered mature and are able to actively participate (to give consent) in research which involves them (christensen, 2008), children, in contrast, were seen as incompetent to participate in any decision-making activities including in research which involves them (cheah & parker, 2015; christensen & prout, 2002). children, in this case, are thought too immature and incapable of conceptualising their own experiences and worlds (christensen & prout, 2002) so that data obtained directly from them are considered unreliable and invalid (docherty & sandelowski, 1999). this perspective exists, waksler udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 3 argued, because ‘adults routinely set themselves up as the understanders, interpreters, and translators of children’s behaviours’ (waksler, 1991., p. 53) and because most adult researchers tend not to be respectful of the children’s rights in research such as in expressing their opinions and viewpoints (diekema, 2009; morrow & richards, 1996). therefore, early research involving children tended to be about the children rather than involving them as active participants in the research (hill, 1997). this perspective to research clearly shows that children are still treated as objects, that is ‘as a person acted upon by others, rather than as a subject acting in the world’ (christensen & prout, 2002., 2002., p. 480). adult researchers, christensen (1998) asserted, serve children as a source of information with little attention given to their subjective experiences and the personal meanings they may possibly construct about their own lives (see also wellesley & jenkins, 2009). for years, children involved in the field of tesol and applied linguistics research, for example, are treated as passive participants especially those where experimental research approaches are used (e.g., macaro & erler, 2008; vandergrift , 2005; gu et al., 2005). for instance, macaro and erler (2008) reported a study focusing on a classroom intervention study with 11–12-year-old learners of french in the uk. in this research, they compared two groups of young learners, one of which received a strategy training intervention while another group of learners was left without any intervention. it is reported that the treatments were effective in helping the learners learned at their best. however, it is also found that the group with intervention encountered difficulties in completing the tasks due to unclear instructions outlined in those tasks given. this occurred, pinter said, because the researcher thought that the children would understand the word choices used in the instructions as adult participants would (pinter, 2005). this clearly shows that adult researchers still predominantly construct knowledge about children from their own perspectives (woodhead & faulkner 2008). the second perspective on children in research allows researchers to give children a more active role as research participants by treating them as subjects of the research (pinter, 2005) apart from their limited communication capabilities when compared with adults as research participants (alderson & goodey, 1996). this perspective emphasises the importance of recognising children’s capacity to actively participate in research they involve and puts attention to children’s development and maturity to ensure their ability to actively participate in the research (christensen & prout, 2002). therefore, this way of seeing children in research tends to use age-based criteria in order to decide whether a certain group of children can be included in the research (e.g., pinter, 2005; alderson, 2000; waksler, 1991). however, it is common that children located as subjects of the research are not given a wider room for a full participation such as during data interpretations (pinter, 2005). for example, cekaite and aronson (2005) conducted research in an immersion classroom of immigrant children in sweden. focusing on the roles of spontaneous language plays and jokes in the development of the children language, they gained abundant data regarding the children’s spontaneous language use and their interactions patterns. however, there found no clear relationship between the researchers and the children so that the children were not aware of what was going on and why. in other words, the children are not aware of their participation in the research making the interpretations, again, were purely done by the researchers from their own perspectives (pinter, 2005). the third perspective on children in research pays more attention to their autonomy (prout & james, 1990). under the influence of interactionism and social constructionism theories, in this perspective, children are seen as social actors who have valuable experiences and understandings of the world (mathews, 1994; fielding & conroy, 1992) and are seen as those who are able to become valid information resources due to their ability to provide reasonable testimonies (kendrick et al., 2008; fraser & robinson, 2004) and to recall events (docherty & sandelowski, 1999) as adults can do (alderson, 2000). udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 4 children, according to this perspective, are not seen solely as part of a certain group of community (e.g., family, school, social institutions) but are seen as active participants in the society they belong (pinter, 2005). consequently, children are no longer seen as different from adults as research participants (christensen & prout, 2002). both are treated equally in, for example, the choice of particular methods used in the research (o’connor et al., 2016). in this sense, the methods employed by the researchers need to be suitable for the children involved in the study including the questions used to investigate that must be clear and easy to understand by the children (christensen & james, 2000a). in his study about a new literacy approach in a primary school, coppock (2010), for instance, invited children to be actively involved in the research through peer interview activities, data analysis, and wrote a short report of their findings. these short reports by the children were then put together in the final project report as written by the adult researchers. finally, the current perspective on children in research is to do with their role as co-researchers. alderson (2000) argued that placing children as co-researchers like those common to adult participants is very important in research as it may allow them to act actively in the research process (see also o’connor et al., 2016; christensen & prout, 2002). like adults, children have sufficient agency and abilities to engage in the interpretations of the process of their own lives (fraser & robinson, 2004) apart from the complexity of these interpretations process that need some understanding of concepts and theories (punch, 2002b; harden et al., 2000b). this idea is in line with the un convention on the rights of the child (crc) particularly with sections concentrating on children’s rights to actively participate in any activity involving them. it is clearly outlined in the crc that all activities that bring implications to children’s lives must involve their active participations through allowing them acting as a fellow within the research project that is conducted (thomas & o’kane, 1998). this way, according to thomas and o’kane, children are given more opportunities to be involved, informed, consulted and heard in the accomplishment of the research. moreover, involving children as co-researchers in research indicates very clearly that their competence and decision-making abilities are no longer underestimated (curtis, 2003). they are involved, for example, in the process of data analysis and interpretations of the findings and identifications of potential issues in the site for further research (lundy & mcevoy, 2011). this way of looking at children in research is also paralleled in new social science methodologies that see research as a co-production activity which means that the contributions toward the research are shared by both the researchers and the informants (christensen & prout, 2002). to follow is section 3 which presents a discussion about ethical issues in research involving children. the ethical issues in research with children ethics is an essential element in any research either involving children or adults (didcock, 2007; crow et al., 2006; homan, 1991). it is a general term which refers to ‘set of moral principles and rules of conduct’ (morrow & richards, 1996., p. 90). in a research context, ethics has to do with the implementation of those moral principles and rules of conduct in order to ensure participants’ willingness to be involved in the research, to prevent harm to research participants and to promote the good for them (sieber, 1993). this implies that, generally, ethics in studies involving either children or adults such as those found in the field of tesol and applied linguistics (e.g., coppock, 2010; cekaite and aronson, 2005; cahyono, 2003) deal with at least two key issues such as informed consent and protection issues ( e.g., flick, 2014; bryman, 2012; berg & howard, 2012; kirk, 2007; darlington & scott, 2002) in which the informed consent, it is argued, is mostly complicated with research involving children than adults due to their different ways of communicating their experiences and understanding of the world (kirk, 2007; locher et al., 2006). kirk (2007) noted that ethical issues are different udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 5 between research involving children and adults especially in how those ethical issues are approached with children. in line with kirk’s statement, christensen, (2008) said that different from normal adults, children’s way of communication, understanding of the world and experiences are limited due to, for example, their vocabularies constraints and understanding of the world so that adult researchers involving children tend to use ‘special’ methods of data collections and interpretations to enable meaningful participations from the children (see also thomas & o’kane, 1998). other scholars especially social science researchers (e.g., those working in the field of tesol/applied linguitics), however, contended that there must not be such a sharp distinction between research involving either children or adults (e.g., vandergrift , 2005; gu et al., 2005; pinter 2005; christensen, 2004; christensen & prout, 2002; harden et al., 2000b) in both methods and ethical standards (james et al., 1998). in response to this issue, punch said that research should not be made simplistic on whether it should be made different between adults and children participants. it should be made, punch strongly emphasised, dependent on three important things in a research process (i.e., research context, research questions and the individual’s characteristics) and reflexivity in which the researchers critically reflect not only on their roles and assumptions but also on the choice of methods and their application (punch, 2002b). the first ethical issue, informed consent, is further explained in section 3.1 below. informed consent cresswell, (2012) in response to the ethical issue in research, said that a central point of ethical practice particularly in social research is that participants voluntarily give informed consent to be involved in the research (see also atkins & wallace, 2012; crow et al., 2006; homan, 1991). in this sense, it is very important for the researchers to ensure that all participants in the research fully understand the degree of their engagement in the research (bailey, 2007). the consent must also include reasons for why their participation is necessary, how the results of the research would be used and to whom these results of the research would be reported or published (british educational research association, 2004). moreover, for consent to be considered truly informed, crow et al., (2006) further noted that it is also important for the participants to understand the potential consequences of a research project in which they are engaged. thus, given this understanding, the research participants (either adults or children) agree to participate without coercion, to withdraw at any time (baskin et al., 1998) and to be given the right to determine, based on their own interest, to collaborate in the research (harcourt & conroy, 2005). morrow & richards (1996) said that the issue of informed consent dominates the discussion of research involving children because ‘children are mostly considered incapable of giving any consent for any research in which they are involved’ (christensen & prout, 2002) which makes it more complicated to gain consent from children than adults (kirk, 2007). this is different from normal adults who are usually able to provide consent for their own involvement in research (harcourt & conroy, 2005). for example, in uk context as frequently found in many other places (christensen, 2008), consent in research with children is taken to mean consent from parents or those ‘in loco parentis’ because the children, in this respect, are seen as the property of their parents (gallagher et al., 2010). in a wider context like at a school level, gallagher et al added, consent for children participating in research is also taken from a wide range of adult gate keepers within the school area such as school teachers, head masters, and school governors. further, it is generally recognised that conducting research which involves children presents distinct ethical and practical challenges that require special consideration as compared with research that involves normal adults (diekema, 2009; locher, 2006 ). while adults, for example, are described as having the capacity to provide informed consent (scally, 2014), children are udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 6 considered, as mentioned above, being vulnerable and are having no capacity to provide the informed consent (prout & james, 1990). however, with the shift perspectives toward children’s involvement in research, christensen & prout, (2002) asserted that differentiating ethics guidelines or standards between adults and children is no longer necessary. in this sense, the researchers, for example, do not have to use particular methods or indeed, work with different set of ethical standards when working with children (harden et al., 2000b). last but not least is that informed consent is also important to be made transparent to the public by clearly explain it in the research report (scally, 2014) in order to show that the data in the research were valid and that the research is rigorous and significant (corti et al., 2000). to follow (section 3.2) is a discussion of protection issue in research involving children. protection in addition to the informed consent, gallagher et al., (2010) said that in research ethics there is an obligation to protect research participants from risks such as distress associated with research-related procedures, and any present or future psychological, social, economic, or legal harms generated by the study (see also diekema, 2009; kirk, 2007; darlington & scott, 2002). children, according to diekema, (2009) are vulnerable (i.e., incapable of considering the risks and benefits of their participation in research) group of research participants that need extra protections from the researchers as compared to adults who are mostly able to protect themselves from any kind of abuse potentially occur in the research. the researchers, locher said, must be able to maximise the benefits to participants involved in the study and to ensure the least possibility for any harms to occur for them as the research informants (locher, 2006). it is considered good practice, therefore, to highlight the limits to confidentiality in information sheets as well as providing information on how the researcher will manage disclosures (alderson, 1995; davis, 1998). the children must also be ensured that they are being protected from harm that might result from taking part in research conducted by researchers who use quality, scientific methods and analysis (christensen & prout, 2002; lundy & mcevoy, 2011). finally, it is necessary that children gain such a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of research, especially with regard to the selection of them as participants which must be suitable for the purpose of the research (doglas & diekema, 2009). given these facts, it is therefore understood and is emphasised recently that care must be taken very seriously by the researchers. in this sense, the focus, for example, must not be on self-promotion within one’s profession but in the best interest of the child ( harcourt d & conroy, 2005). to sum up, any ethical issues related to research which involves children must be in line with both the ethical and legal requirements used by the researcher to govern the research engaging with children as suggested by diekema (2009). according to diekema, the adult researchers must be aware of the importance of ethical and legal research practice. in this case, the research that they do must be rigorous and significant scientifically. it is also important for the children to be fairly selected and accessed without any pressure toward their family or schools. finally, it should be noted that the researchers must be able to minimise the risks, gain valid and voluntary informed consent, respect the participating children and ensure that the protocol has been approved by an independent ethical review board (locher, 2006). method this small-scale study is an exploratory study that is focused examining the ethical issues as reflected in three preliminary samples research articles in the area of tesol and applied linguistics. this study employed a qualitative approach based on a small number of texts (arsyad, 2013) and analyzed specifically the fulfillment of some ethical aspects important in any research involving children e.g., consent form and protection issues (gallagher et al., 2010; kirk, 2007). as this study used only few texts, this study does not aim to make any udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 7 claims as to the size, frequency and representativeness of the data or the generalisability of the findings beyond the scope of the examined articles. rather, the detailed analysis of ethical issues as reflected in the three articles may serve as a preliminary indication of some trends of ethical issues fulfillment as displayed in the research articles in the area of tesol and applied linguistics as observed in the examined texts (bruce, 2014). therefore, future research is needed to validate these findings across purposefully designed corpora containing more sizable and diverse compilations of tesol and applied linguistics texts (lim, 2012). findings and discussion descriptions of research articles in tesol and applied linguistic areas in order to examine the ethical issues in research involving children in the field of tesol and applied linguistics, three articles were selected. these three articles involved children as participants and are published in reviewed journals in the area of tesol and applied linguistics. article one: gozali, i., & harjanto, i. (2014) ‘improving the grammatical accuracy of the spoken english of indonesian international kindergarten students’. teflin journal, 25(2), 168. article one is an action research report focused on describing some interventions by the teacher used to improve pupil’s particular aspects of linguistics. there were eleven children (students in the classroom) aged 5-6 years old at k2 level involved in this study. the researcher involved one grammar teacher of the k2 classes as a collaborator in this study and was provided with the materials, techniques, and methods of teaching grammar as required for this research. observations both in and outside the classroom were used in this study to collect data in the form of students’ grammatical accuracy from their speech. article two: cahyono, b. y. (2003) ‘aida and her mainstream classroom: a case study of a young english language learner’s literacy development’. teflin journal, 14(2), 219-238. article two is a study focused on a child’ literacy development. this kid is a young english language learner from indonesia who was in a grade 2 (aged 7-8 years old) classroom in a primary school in the south-eastern part of australia. the researcher examined the english learning activities in the participant’s classroom. he noted the kid’s literacy development with examples of her work through series of observation in the classroom. the researcher also conducted interviews with the teacher regarding the kid’s academic and her english language learning. article three: lázaro, a., & azpilicueta, r. (2015). investigating negotiation of meaning in efl children with very low levels of proficiency. international journal of english studies, 15(1), 1-21. article three is a study that is focused on documenting conversation strategies of young learners (ages 7-8 years) of english as a foreign language while playing a game in the classroom. data were collected through observations which were videotaped. the researchers came into the classroom for two weeks before data collection process to make sure that the children are familiar with them and did observations in the classroom to further collect the data. results of analysis of the three articles in section 2 above, it is clearly stated that informed consent and protection are two important issues which need special attentions in research involving children (gallagher et al., 2010; kirk, 2007). firstly, although implicitly presented, the informed consent has generally been fulfilled by the researchers of the three articles in the area of tesol above. this is evidenced by, for example, the involvement of adults (teachers) close to the children in the school context where the studies were conducted. these consents that were likely be given by teachers close to the children’s lives at school may be encouraged by the fact that the children participating in this research (aged between 5 to 8 years old for each) were still considered incapable of giving any consent udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 8 (christensen & prout, 2002; harcourt & conroy, 2005) so that it is the teachers who have control over the children at the schools who were asked for the consents by the researchers (megone et al., 2016; reeves, 2010). given this situation, it is safe to say that the children involved in the three studies above were still treated as passive participants because no opportunities for them to provide even consent for the research as found in other studies in tesol and applied linguitics area as reported by pinter (2005) above. in article 1, for example, in researching children aged 5-6 years old at k2, the researcher involved the grammar teacher to participate during the research. the teacher was one of the information resources about the children through interviews conducted. meanwhile, data from the children were gained through series of observationsthe method which is considered as the most suitable for children – a ‘child-friendly’ data collection (megone et al., 2016). similar evidence is found in both articles two and three in which teachers were involved in the research and it is likely that the informed consents for those children were gained through them. however, none of the three articles mentioned the involvement of parents in providing consents in the research. diekeme (2009) said that children represent vulnerable group of research participants because they are not able to provide consent of their participation in the research. bearing this in mind, it becomes very important, diekema further asserted, that parents are included because it is assumed that they are able to act in the best interest of their children when they decide to or not to allow their children to participate in any research. in other words, involving parents in those three research processes was supposed to have been done by the researchers given those children are the property of their parents (gallagher et al., 2005). furthermore, the implicit presentation of ethical issues especially in dealing with informed consent as practiced by the researchers in the three articles analysed has been challenged by corti et al., (2000). according to them, researchers have responsibilities to clearly explain the ethics before and during the research. it is also vital that understandable language in their research report on how the informed consent was gained prior to the conduct of the research is provided (corti et al., 2000). additionally, the researchers need to explain the approach they used to the children, e.g., as social actors who were considered knowledgeable about their own lives and the topic of the research like normal adults (christensen & prout, 2002) and to explain things included in the consent form (sparman, 2013). this suggests that explicit explanations regarding the access to the participants are worth presenting in the research report in order to make it more transparent to the public (peter, 2015; thomas, 2009) and to ensure that the research is rigorous and significant (dikema, 2009). it is also important that the informed consent is clearly explained because the researchers must ensure that the children engaged in their study fully understand the degree of their involvement in the research (crow et al., 2006). it is also the researchers’ responsibility to explain fully and meaningfully what the research is about and how it would be disseminated and what potential consequences might occur (harcourt & conroy, 2005; morris. 1998). however, in response to such a situation as reflected in the three articles analysed above, some scholars admitted that this practice of presenting implicit ethical issues in research in social sciences like in tesol and applied linguitics area is common because ethical choice in this field typically carries lighter burdens than in some other professional and academic fields like medical research (gallagher et al., 2010; thomas, 2009; pinter, 2005) and the fact that the informed consent issue in social sciences like tesol and applied linguistics is relatively new (akpabio & eksikot, 2014). secondly, the protection issue which indicates the researcher’s obligation to protect the participating children from any harm such as conflict and a threat to self-esteem (kirk, 2007) has clearly been fulfilled by the researchers. in this case, the procedure of ethics in dealing with protection particularly has been shown by the use of anonymity of the participating children in in udi samanhudi international journal of language teaching and education (ijolte) page 9 the research. for example, it is obvious that the names of each participant involved remained pseudonym in the three articles. this may indicate, to some extent, the researchers’ awareness in terms of protection issues in research (christensen & prout, 2002). however, like informed consent issue in general, the issue of protection is not well explained by the researchers. the researchers did not obviously mention that the research process had guaranteed the participants from certain harms that may occur as the implications of their involvement in the research. this might be caused by the limited space given to explain the informed consent in general so that no clear explanations are also found for the protection issue. all these may indicate that the researchers are not fully aware that the consent process is vital. as gallagher et al said, ‘the consent process is the time to clarify any differences of opinions and understandings between the researchers and participants regarding information presented in the consent form’ (gallagher, et al., 2010., p. 474). all in all, although, to some degree, ethical issues (i.e., informed consent and protection issues) have been reflected in the three articles, it would have been better that these ethical issues are clearly explained in the research to provide, as mentioned above, a more transparent information to the public regarding the research process (scally, 2014). following dikema (2009), the researchers, in their research report, need to show that their research is rigorous and significant (corti et al., 2000) one of which is through a valid and voluntarily informed consent as evidenced and explained in the research report (crow et al., 2006). conclusion this study has reported results of analysis of three samples of articles from tesol and applied linguistics area. it is found that consent and protection issues have been well fulfilled by the researchers involving children in this discipline. however, a more obvious explanation regarding how the consent was gained and what was in the consent needs further attention in order to ensure the validity of data gained from the children involved in the study (crow et al., 2006). all these suggest that future research, particularly in tesol and applied linguitics area needs to pay attention to ethical issues prior to the research, during the research process and in the research report in which detailed explanations of, for example, informed consent are worth providing to ensure the research validity and rigour (corti et al., 2000). acknowledgement: i would like to thank dr. lesley emerson (senior lecturer, school of social sciences, education and social works, queens university belfast, uk) for her expert advice and comments on this paper and the indonesian endowment fund for education scholarship (lpdp) for its funding support. references akpabio, e. m., & esikot, i. f. 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(2016) ‘a critical review of health research ethical guidelines regarding caregiver consent for hiv research involving minors in south africa: ethical and legal issues’. south african journal of bioethics and law, 9(2), pp.78-83. paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6963 78 ijolte an autobiography of novice teacher in using multimodality for teaching reading to young learners maria leswinda wulan, nur arifah drajati, sumardi master degree of english education departement universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email:marialeswinda@gmail.com how to cite this paper: wulan, m. l. (2019). an autobiography of novice teacher in using multimodality for teaching reading to young learners. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 7887. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6963 accepted: july 27, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution internationallicense (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ abstract this study is the author’s autobiography as a novice teacher in teaching fifth-grade students with multimodality. i̇ have been teaching young learners for five years in one of an elementary school in indonesia. until this day, i am still in the quest to find the best method to develop young learners’ reading proficiency. i also want to change their perspective about reading. i̇t is necessary to create a reading process which is enjoyable and not boring in the classroom. young learners who were born in the 21st century, digital natives and non-traditional learners. multimodality consists of several different modes. each mode is meaningful and has a role. as a teacher, i could design each mode based on her students’ needs and what they were familiar with. subject areas reading keywords autobiography, multimodality, reading, young learners 1. introduction pisa (programme for international student assessment) is one of the international surveys which tests mathematics, science, and literacy. the members of this survey are countries all around the world. they are more than 70 countries, and 5 of them are from southeast asia; singapore, vietnam, thailand, malaysia, and indonesia. from the result of pisa 2015, singapore is first with 551, malaysia is 18th with 518, vietnam is 21st with 502, thailand is 55th with 415, and indonesia is 52nd with 395. from 72 countries, indonesia was on 63rd. from this result, indonesian has low result in mathematics, and science also has low desire to read. literacy is not about how the country escapes from illiterate status, but it is one of the conditions that a country has to fulfill to compete with others in the job market. scott and ytreberg (2004) shared that books are like a door of the world to young children and make reading an enjoyable activity is a vital part of the language experience. not only enjoying the process https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6963 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6963 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ maria leswinda, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 79 ijolte of reading but also making a habit of reading. it is not an easy task for a teacher to change their students to become a habitual reader. based on researcher experience, reading class for young learners is very challenging. it is challenging to make them sit down and read a book moreover to enjoy this activity. young learners tend to have concise attention and concentration span; also, they like to ask many questions. they still need others to complete the puzzle so that the meaning is acceptable or them. klein in aldabbus (2012) said that young learners change their mood very quickly so that it is not easy to make them sit for several minutes. however, it will be different when they find something that attracts their attention. they will have a strong will to experience it. teachers use it as their chance to engage young in the teaching and learning process. the teacher needs to introduce the happiness of reading and how reading is enjoyable. young learners need something colorful and visually attractive. so it will be more enticing if the books are full color and have some representative pictures. it helps students to understand the book clearer. walsh (2010) shared that multimodality is meaning-making activities that happen over the reading, viewing, understanding, responding to and producing, and interacting with multimedia and digital texts. it consists of oral and gestural modes of talking, listening, and dramatizing as well as writing, designing, and producing such texts. the image, words, sound, and movement within texts are modes. processing of these modes coincide and is often cohesive and synchronous. sometimes some specific modes dominate others. it also helps teachers to manage their classroom by using videos to attract students’ attention and use other modes to assist students in understanding the topic (carpenter, 2016). the students who were born in the 21st century are digital natives who are familiar with the changing in technology. students prefer to use digital communication, such as pictures and videos in the teaching and learning process. it is easy for them to access and understand it. it also provides them with different sources to gives them more knowledge about a particular topic. students not only read it but also visualize it from the video. those sources do not have a limitation, unlike printed material. however, it also gives teacher effect which we have to face. how far digital technologies can be integrated within literacy activity without reducing the benefit and the importance of the rich, imaginative and cultural knowledge that is derived from books sankey et al.,. (2010) explained how multimodality improves undergraduate students classroom situation. it had a high impact on their motivation, and it encourages students to learn more. marchetti and cullen (2015) stated that a multimodal approach in the classroom is a source of creativity for both teachers and students and how each mode correlates not only to contemporary society but to specific cognitive processes. this combination allows for creativity and flexibility in teacherstudent interaction and enhances the learning environment. cárcamo et al. (2017) explain how multimodality gave significant benefits for vocabulary acquisition among 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th graders from two semi-public schools. this study used visual aids, and task-based approach to help students learned new words. bao (2017) wrote about how multimodality is used to help undergraduate students who are lacked in motivation to read. these students have good ability in english, but they found reading is boring. maria leswinda wulan, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 80 ijolte in this study, the writer as the english teacher explained how multimodality approach applied in teaching reading for young learners and how multimodality helps young learners enjoy the reading process, and the research is in narrative inquiry design. most of the studies which have been conducted regarding multimodality were for higher students and pre-service or in-service teacher also most of the studies were in case study design or experimental. multimodality approach for teaching young learners and in narrative inquiry is still rare, especially in indonesia. 2. method sikes and gale (2006) stated that human beings are storytelling creatures who compose narratives to describe their doings as well as to describe their past, present, and imagined world experiences. the main strength of narrative inquiry is located in its core on how people use stories to make others understand of their experiences in areas of inquiry where it is essential to understand phenomena from the eyes of those who experience them (barkhuizen, benson, and chick, 2014). clandinin and connelly (1990) said that narrative inquiry is a form of narrative experience, and educational experience should be investigated narratively. the narrative inquiry also builds on the significance of narrative as a way of making meaning and views. barkhuizen, benson, & chick (2014) narrative inquiry is a suitable design for a researcher who wants to study in language teaching and learning field because it is constructive for us to understand the inner mental worlds of language teachers and learners and the nature of language teaching and learning as a social and educational activity. there are several genres of narrative, such as a memoir, biography, autobiography, diaries, archival documents, medical records, folk ballads, photographs, drawings, and other visual images. even though it has several forms “narrative is always strongly autobiographical (clandinin & connelly, 2000) elbaz-luwisch (2010) shared the advantages of autobiography. it helps to clarify teachers’ own story, as teachers’ reflection platform, and as communication tools in other teachers’ professional development. however, sharing autobiography can be risky. it exposes the teachers’ vulnerability side. the writer is an elementary school english teacher in one of an elementary school in indonesia. the teacher has taught in this school for five years. for this academic year, she taught first and 5thgrade students, but for this study, she chose her 5th-grade students. the fifth-grade students consisted of 37 students, 22 girls, and 15 boys. this class was a different class. they come from different family background and beliefs. they have their own opinion and do not hesitate to show it up. most of them have been learned english since kindergarten, but their english ability is very average. most of them are shy to show off their ability. fifth-grade students also prefer to read the short and easy text because the long text is difficult for them. it also makes them bored quickly. most of the students have a limited vocabulary. they need guidance to grasp the meaning of the text. when the teacher gave instruction, most of them need time to understand it, and the teacher had to repeat it 2 or 3 times for the students. maria leswinda, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 81 ijolte 3. result and discussion young learners are different from other students. they are very passionate about doing a particular activity that is new and interesting in their eyes, but they are easy to lose motivation to do it. they are also easy to get distracted with other activities, and it is not easy to get them to sit for quite a long time (aldabbus, 2012). it is difficult for them to stay doing one particular thing. they also tend to lose enthusiasm in doing things if they face difficulties. they will move to other activities which they think is more comfortable. it is challenging for the teacher to make them comfortable and enjoy reading activities and to make them having fun while doing it. making young learners like the lesson and happily doing the activities is not accessible. the teacher needs to know what the students like and familiar with. after young learners enjoy the process, the teacher focuses then moves to enrich the students’ vocabulary. they need to understand the text. then teachers help them weave the meaning of the word and analyzes each aspect in the text to make the meaning of the text. teaching reading to young learner means the teacher has to help young learners derive meaning as well as analyze and synthesize what they have read in order to fulfill the purpose of reading: reading for pleasure and information (linse & nunan, 2005). teachers must find a suitable method to teach them. most of the teachers still use the traditional teaching model, which is teacher-centered. this model is hardly awakening students’ interest, and the learning efficiency is low. it only helps students’ to feel bored. that is why the needs to improve the teaching method, especially in reading class, are desperately essential (bao, 2017). by implementing the effective reading method, teachers can lessen at least some of reading difficulties that students facing (morgan, 2013) multimodality consists of meaningful modes which connect audio, visual, text, picture, video, film, etc into a process that help students understand certain materials deeper. each mode help students to construct the meaning. it also has its role, and there are always reasons why this mode is selected. each mode makes the students to do a different type of work in order to understand (kress et al., 2001). kress also added that images, sound, animations, and other modes that play essential roles in children's everyday meaning-making should also be standard modes in the education environment. it is also essential to take into consideration that each mode has its limitations and opportunities, meaning that images do what they do and writing does what it does, and in combination, they can do a different thing (kress et al., 2008). moreno and mayer (2007) share that multimodal learning environments use different modes to serve as knowledge, for example, verbal and non-verbal (pictures). these different presentation modes are necessary to attract students‘ different sensory modalities (visual and auditory). 4.1. multimodality in reading class pre-reading activity in the pre-reading activity, the teacher gave the students several pictures about the topic and asked the students their opinion of it. the teacher would use videos when we were in during activity. it maria leswinda wulan, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 82 ijolte usually happened because the topic is comfortable and familiar with them. below is one of the episodes in pre-reading activity in her classroom: today’s topic was shopping. i gave my students the pictures of clothes and its price. showing pictures at the beginning of the lesson always make them excited, and they knew it was time to get serious. these pictures gave them so much effect. moreover, form these pictures, they could guess the topic. i asked them how to read money. some of them had difficulties in differentiating a hundred and thousand and where they had to put “and.” (january 30th, 2019) however, on another occasion, the students needed several pictures and videos in pre-reading activity as a background knowledge because the topic was not in their daily life, and it still foreign for them. when the students faced with this type of topic, not only pictures and videos but also teacher’s guidance was needed. this time i needed more than pictures. this topic was an endangered animal, and it was complicated for them. i showed several pictures of an endangered animal. most of my students did not know what it was. they said those animals were foreign for them. they only realized what they were when i told my students the name of it in bahasa, indonesia. then i played a video, this video told them about why those animals became extinct and the process of trading it. (april 16th, 2019). the use of pictures and videos as necessary for young learners because it was used to brainstorming and to make sure that they know what they were going to learn. young learners need concrete objects which they can see or touch when they learn new things (cameron, 2001). it happens because they cannot understand abstract ideas which foreign for them. if teachers try to explain abstract things to them, it will only create confusion. during reading in this activity, the teacher used short text with easy to understand vocabulary. the teacher used digital text and texts which was available in the students textbook. when discussing the vocabulary, she wrote it on the whiteboard than the students, and she looked it together in the dictionary. she did not give them the answer right away because she wanted them to search it up in the dictionary and became independent learners. teachers are not the walking dictionary. she only corrected it if the meaning did not suitable for the text context. based on the teacher’s experience, young learners would lose their motivation to read or learn the text if the text were too wordy. they preferred to have pictures or videos to visualize the text. in this activity, she used videos which represent the text and the topic of the video. video provides new vocabulary, structure, and function which improve language learners’ necessary skills. the combination of visual and audio help the students to understand the topic better. (julinar, 2019). the usage of videos and pictures in the classroom is beneficial because the student can visualize the content and give students the motivation to join the process (willmot et al., 2012). maria leswinda, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 83 ijolte below is one of the episodes during reading activity in her classroom when the students worked in a group. in this group activity, she used more complex and longer text: after dividing them into several groups, i showed them pictures and words. each group had to choose one of the pictures and list the words which suitable to reflect the picture. i took these words from the text which they were going to learn. i allowed them to look into their dictionaries. when they have done with it, i gave them an envelope based on the pictures they choose. i also provided them with questions for each text, and i put it inside their envelope. while they did it, i went around the classroom and tried to have a conversation with each group about the text. i did this to know their opinion about the text and the difficulties that they are facing. i tried to provide the text that they like and suitable for them without leaving the reading goal, which we had been made. (january 30th, 2019) this group work allowed understanding and got closer to the students. the students tended to be more open when the distance between them and the teacher was closer. some of the students were afraid and shy to show their opinion or to ask questions if the teacher was in front of the class. they thought their friends would point their fingers to them if their words were wrong. the teacher always tries never to say “wrong “ or “ incorrect” every time the student's answers were not suitable for mine. the teacher thought that if it were said, the students’ chance to be active would be gone. it could create trauma for them; then, the motivation to answer the question was vanish. post-reading after the students did the group work, her students shared what they knew about the text to their friends. they could use the questions which the teacher also prepared inside the envelope as guidance to what they had to share. she used several ways in this activity. below was the description of one occasion when the students shared what they knew about the text to their friends: i asked two members of each group to stay at their place then other students who were not staying would go around the class visited several groups. those two members who stayed would present and explain what the text about to the visitors. the visitors would write down what the text about based on the explanation. i also provided the form that they needed to fill as the result of their group work. i asked them to try to communicate in english. (february 20th, 2019) when the students did this activity, the teacher would go around the class to check whether they communicated in english or not. she also interviewed several groups and used english to communicate. she wanted to give her students an example of how to do it. every time they did this activity, the students became very loud in talking. sometimes the other teacher asked her what she and her students were doing that made their class became so noisy. she said that they played the game and her students got too excited. the students had to write down the report based on the activities in the group. there were also two ways to share the report. they wrote down the result, or they report it orally. when they did it orally, they record their presentation with their phone and sent it to me. it was video, not a voice recording. below was the teacher’s impression of their work: i asked them to make a group wall magazine, and then they had to present it by record their presentation. when i saw their videos, the result beyond my expectation. one of the groups hid their cheating paper behind the wall magazine. other group wrote down what they were going to say and someone held it behind the camera. (april 30th, 2019) maria leswinda wulan, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 84 ijolte the teacher gave the students the freedom of how to do their presentation. their presentations were beyond the teacher’s expectation. when she saw their presentation, she knew their effort to do it. it can be seen clearly how creative they were. they still did not realize that they could do everything substantially without pushing them. teaching reading is very challenging for the teacher because the hunting process to find a method to make reading enjoyable is not easy. the students had already had this thought that reading activities were dull and they could not do many exciting activities in it. the process to choose the activities is also not easy because one classroom consists of more than 25 students with different characteristic and preference. the students like it when we play a game or watch the video. however, it also can be annoying, and there will be no improvement if we only do this. not all of the games are suitable for the students. the teacher has to modify it. when playing the game, the students were very hype, and they spoke in a louder voice, which could disturb another classroom, and not all the classroom understood and accepted this. it also needs some time to make students understand the instruction because when they know that we will play the game, they tend to become very noisy, and they do not pay attention to the instructions. making more than 25 students keep quiet, and stay focus was not smooth. the teacher’s first year as a teacher to young learners was not easy. there were some obstacles. she had this image of her ideal students and thought that every student would be like that. however, it was wrong. it was so tricky only to get their attention. they always busy and prefer to do it than paying attention to me. this was the biggest challenge. they were individuals who had their preference and style. multimodality gave her the freedom to design her activities (modes), which suited her students’ preferences. she could freely mix and match several activities which were their favorite so that they were having fun and enjoy the teaching and learning process. these several modes also helped me to control the class. young learners could quickly get bored if the activity were the same and monotonous. if they started to wander around, too noisy, and unwilling to do the task, it meant the teacher should change the activities (thomson, 2001). it was necessary to make them comfortable and enjoy the class because it could give them a positive feeling toward english so that they kept learning english for the rest of their lives (schindler, 2006). students’ feedback the teacher asked the students to write their opinion about her teaching using multimodality, her strength, and weakness. she also had a conversation with them one by one. she went around the class not only to check their understanding but also to have a little conversation. she and the students made these conversations in a group or individual. she also asked them about the modes in her reading class. the teacher explained to them what the modes are. for them, modes are activities which her students do in our classroom. below was one of her student's opinion: my students felt happy when they could do various activities and not only stay in their chair. they thought those activities were entertaining and challenging. they also thought those activities helped them focus on the lesson. (march 22nd, 2019) maria leswinda, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 85 ijolte the teacher made the class activities very packed, and she thought that those activities would make them lose their will to study because there were several modes or activities which have a complicated step and could drain their energy. however, it was not; the students thought it gave them effect to focus and made them deliver their energy wisely. when the teacher asked about pictures and videos which she used in reading class, they gave a very positive response. they thought that it was constructive to visualize the text about. it attracted their attention and made them want to know more about the text. it was easier for them to figure out what the words of the text mean by watching the videos and the pictures. those gave them significant impact. it made them remember the words easily because an exciting thing always lingers in their mind for a long time. below was one of her student's explanation about the use of picture in the classroom; the picture is beneficial. it gives us the visual of the text. however, i think the videos give a more significant impact. it explains what the text about. at the end of it, we have to answer the questions and do the project so we must still read the text. (ka; april 5th, 2019) the students thought that pictures and videos also gave them the spirit to begin the lesson. before the lesson began, most of the students were feeling sleepy, but the pictures and videos helped them to stay awake and focus. below was other students opinion; the pictures and videos not only give us the core of the text, but it also attracts our attention. we had the class in the afternoon. we were tired and sleepy, but it had a very colorful visual, so it made us focus and curious. it washed away our sleepiness and tiredness. our desire to learn and read is also increased. (rd; april 25th, 2019) the students were relieved and happy about the usage of it. some of them thought that videos gave more impact and helped them understand the text more accessible than pictures. however, videos could become obstacles for several students. they found it hard to understand what the native speaker said. not all of the videos had a subtitle in bahasa indonesia though the words were straightforward and easy. when native pronounce it, it became different and made them confused. i do not understand the full content of the videos. i pick it up piece by piece. it does not have a subtitle in bahasa indonesia, so it is a lit bit difficult. however, i like the use of videos at least it makes the class more alive. (af; march 13th, 2019) the teacher intentionally did not include a subtitle and used easy and short videos with easy vocabularies and clear pronunciations from the natives so that her students got used to it. she wanted them to not depend on the subtitle, and their ears got used to listening to how native speaker speak. she thought it would greatly help them to improve their english ability. also, when she thought one skill, she could not leave other skills because one skill supports others. from the students’ feedback, the teacher realized that her students were modern teaching model students who prefer to be active. they like to use several of their sensory modes in the teaching and learning process. multimodal learning environments allow instructional elements to be presented in more than one sensory mode (visual, aural, written). in turn, materials that are presented in a variety of presentation modes may lead learners to perceive that it is easier to learn and improve maria leswinda wulan, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 86 ijolte attention, thus leading to improved learning performance; in particular for lower-achieving students (moreno & mayer, 2007). consequently, students may become more self-directed, interacting with the various elements housed in these environments. 4. conclusion it is crucial to make the students like the lesson. when they like it, teaching them the lesson will become easier. multimodality gives a significant effect not only for students but also for the teacher. it supports the teacher to convey the lesson, and it changes students’ opinion that reading is boring. both teacher and students are having fun and enjoy the reading lesson. yes, we read books and texts, but the activities to understand what its message can be charming. teachers can freely design the modes depend on their students’ needs. it does not always use pictures and videos. teachers use others to make modes as long as it is suitable for the students. with multimodality, students can experience many activities which are suitable with their learning style and preferences which support their ability to understand the books and the texts. it is essential to make students like the subject. when they like it, teaching them the subject will become easier. multimodality is not only used in teaching reading. it can be used to teach all four skills in english. this is very helpful for teachers who are confused to design activities in the classroom. there are still many things that can be explored. this study only explained a small part. when she wrote this, she realized she still has many flaws in her teaching. it made her do reflective on her teaching practices, starting from the first time she taught elementary school five years ago. this taught her many lessons to become a better teacher. references [1] aldabbus, s. 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(2018). investigating the integration level of information and communication technology (ict) in the english language teaching. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 259-274. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5752 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 / abstract information and communication technology (ict) is perceived as a part of the core of education in this21st century-learning. experts have explored the integration of pedagogical ict in teaching and learning recently. but none of them explored the teacher’s competence to integrate pedagogical ict as they assess the extent to which ict integrated by the teacher in teaching. this research aims to investigate the teacher competence levels to use ict and the extent to which the ict integrated by the teacher in english language teaching. classroom observation and interview were used as data collecting technique to reach the objectives. to produce an indepth description, this case study focuses on the description of the individual teacher as the target of the investigation. teacher’s ict competence levels were classified using professional framework rank ict competence level (unesco, 2011). while samr model was used as the data analysis tool to determine the extent to which ict integrated by the teacher in the english language teaching. the results of this research indicate that the teacher's competence to use ict was still beginner. it means that the teacher is dominant with the use of basic features of presentation, word processor software such as powerpoint and microsoft word and other digital resources. it is also reported that teacher’s ict integration level with the domination at the substitution level and augmentation level. these findings reflect the ability of the teacher in integrating ict in teaching. the teacher is considered only be able to use basic function in a limited number of computer application with only little change and improvement. subject areas language teaching keywords english language teaching, information and communication technology, teacher competence, samr model 1. introduction advanced technology has been prominent for people and creating technology is not only used for recreation but also as a means of teaching. teaching in the classroom https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5752 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5752 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 260 ijolte has been transformed with the integration of information communication technology (ict). the integration of ict in the classroom is viewed as an important strategy to increase the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process (mirzajani, et. al., 2016). researchers already explored the use of ict in the classroom. they show that integrating ict assists teacher to develop students’ proficiency in teaching (barreh & abas, 2013; drajati, et. al., 2018; gheytasi & gowhary, 2015; johnston & marsh, 2014; romrell, et. al., 2014). it can be a medium to facilitate the learning process. furthermore, information and communication technology (ict) has transformed as a basic building block in the society of this disruptive 4.0 era. countries around the world perceive that understanding ict and mastering the basic skill and concepts of ict is a must. whereas ict is also perceived as a part of the core of education, alongside reading, writing, and numeracy. in the education field, to face the industrial revolution 4.0, people are supposed to be able to use ict in teaching and learning. this also to complete the demand of the 21st century-learning. people are challenged to connect their skill relating communication skills, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and innovativeness to integrate ict into their teaching and learning. those are emerged to get maximum results in teaching. hence, educational practitioners must have middle-higher skilled in using technology. indonesian government pushes the integration of ict in teaching through the implementation of government regulation concerning teacher number 74, the year 2008 (indonesian government, 2008). according to the regulation, the teacher must be able to use ict as a means in teaching. moreover, teacher proficiency to integrate ict in teaching is required for the teacher certification. it can be seen that the ability to integrate ict in teaching is a mandate for the teachers as a realization of indonesian government policy to push the integration of ict in teaching. for that reason, integrating ict in teaching is a vital aspect which should be aware for teachers in teaching. meanwhile, the integration of ict in teaching remains barriers. technological innovation is rapidly changing which makes it hard to follow for teachers. the teachers require to learn and adapt how to manage learning behavior differently as they use ict in the classroom (kucirkova, et.al., 2014). most of the teachers are unable to integrate technology in learning because of their lack of proficiency. teachers get frustrated when they try to integrate new icts into the existing curriculum (potter & amanda, 2012). eventually, it makes the icts used in learning become less effective and could be disregarded. by conducting a preliminary research in a school in pringsewu district, lampung province. the researcher found that the teachers have been integrating ict in the teaching-learning process. the integration of ict has spanned across school subjects among the schools included in the english language teaching. in fact, the teachers stated that the adoption process of the integration ict in teaching faces problems and barriers. they added that the sources problems are coming from the external and the internal factor, including the insufficient training for them to integrate pedagogical ict as well as their competence to operate pedagogical ict in teaching. while the effectiveness of the ict relies on the teacher's creativity to manage and to create interesting learning activities that the teacher is going to use. teacher competence is a vital aspect of the integration of ict in teaching. it will, of course, influence how the teachers integrate ict in their teaching. moreover, pedagogical training on the integration of ict in teaching has an important role to elevate the teacher competence. the lack of teacher training in computer skills is a major problem which has been well documented in the literature (anderson et al., 1984). it can be stated that without sufficient training to integrate ict in teaching for the teacher might affect a miss conception of how ict is being used by teachers in learning for students in the classroom, eventually, it will influence the quality of teaching. dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 261 ijolte therefore, it is necessary toassess the teacher’s ict competence level and the extent to which the teachers integrate pedagogical ict in the english language teaching.then the current practices on the integration of ict can be evaluated and it can be used to plan the integration of ict in teaching based on documented needs. hence, the researcher used a tool that can be used to determine and classify the integration of pedagogical ict in learning, samr model (puentedura, 2006). the samr integration model benefits in reflecting and evaluating four distinct level for the integration ict may be used in learning. (romrell et al., 2014)samr is integrated and systematic framework which each classification represents the level of the ict integration. by using samr model, levels of the teacher in integrating ict in learning can be reflected and classified. several scholars and experts have explored the integration of pedagogical ict and samr model in teaching and learning recently. (batiibwe, et. al., 2017; budiman & ngadiso, 2018; cochrane & antonczak, 2014; hilton, 2016; jude, et. al., 2014; kihoza, et.al., 2016; romrell et al., 2014; speirs, 2016). but none of them explored the teacher’s competence to integrate pedagogical ict in teaching while teacher competence to use ict influence the extent to which ict integrated by the teacher. as what research have explored that the knowledge and competencies of teachers to integrate pedagogical ict are keys attributes for the future of education success (kihoza, et. al., 2016). literatures have documented that lack of ict use innovate skills and also the low level of technological knowledge leads to low usage of classroom ict integration among teachers (andersson, et. al., 2014). without a high competence to use ict, we should not expect teachers on integrating ict in their professional practices to be optimum (brás pedro, 2014). it can be concluded that ict use competence level is a fundamental factor influencing ict usage by teacher in the classroom. it is necessary to investigate the teacher competence level to integrate ict as we assess the extent does the teacher integrate ict in the classroom. hereby, this research attempts to describe (1) the teachers’ competence levels to use ict and (2) the extent to which the ict integrated by the teacher in english language teaching. 2. literature review information and communication technology (ict) ict is an acronym which stands for information and communication technology. information and communication technology is all of devices relate to taking, collecting, accessioning, processing, saving and spreading of the information (research and technology ministry, 2006). warsita (2008) information and communication technology is of hardware and software and the method to gain, send and processing the data meaningfully. unesco (2003) stated that information and communication technology generally relates to those technologies that are used for accessing, gathering, manipulating and presenting or communicating information. the technologies could include hardware e.g. computers and others devices, software applications, and connectivity e.g. access to the internet, local networking infrastructure, and video conferencing. in addition, according to tomy in (lloyd, 2005) ict …generally relates to those technologies that are used for accessing, gathering, manipulating and presenting or communicating information. the technologies could include hardware (e.g. computers and other devices); software applications; and connectivity (e.g. access to the internet, local networking infrastructure, videoconferencing). what is most significant about ict is the increasing convergence of computer-based, multimedia and communications technologies and the rapid rate of change that characterizes both the technologies and their use. dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 262 ijolte it can be concluded that information and communication technology (ict) is described as the technology used to manage the information and aid the communication invoking software and hardware to gaining, collecting, accessioning, processing, saving and spreading data and or information. integrating ict in education there are aspects need to be taken into account as the ict integration in education. the use of ict in learning does not replace the traditional face-to-face instruction, yet it is used as a supportive tool in learning. hence, the effectiveness of ict use in teaching relies on the teacher's creativity to manage and to create interesting learning activities for students. teachers require to learn and adjust how to manage learning behavior differently as they integrate ict in teaching (kucirkova et al., 2014). teachers must guide students in the learning process and provide them with the suitable learning strategies to ict integration in learning. meanwhile, studies have shown that the lack of teacher training in computer skills is a major problem in the ict integration in education (anderson et al., 1984). teachers do not only play as the information provider and guide the students but also become supporter and facilitator in learning. it can be concluded that to optimize learning activity integrated with ict it necessary to be supported by middle-higher skilled teachers to use ict in teaching. the concept of ict in teaching and learning there are some aspects which are necessary to consider the integration of ict in teaching and learning, such as qualified/skilled personnel to integrate technology, access to pedagogical icts is exists, sufficient infrastructure to support pedagogical icts integration is exists, training is provided for pedagogical icts, operational staff in ict unit, sufficient budget to support for pedagogical icts is exist (pelgrum, 2001). moreover, mahmud (2008) stated that there are some requirements in applying ict in the process of teaching and learning. they are: school is provided by means and infrastructure enabling the integration of ict. the teacher and the students must fulfill these components in integrating ict as a means in teaching, they are; teacher and student have accessibility to use technology and connect to the internet in the classroom, school, and institution, teacher provides qualified and meaningful learning material, teacher have knowledge and skill to use the device and other digital resources to aid student due to achieve learning objectives, the institution has an adequate budget to provide, develop, and maintain the ict, the existence of willingness from the teachers, students, stakeholder, and all components to integrate technology in the school/institution. ict competence level level integration in teaching relates to the ict knowledge and competence level of the users. the competences of teacher to use ict in pedagogical application is highly influenced by knowledge that they receive. (thomas, et.al., 2013). literatures have well documented that lack of ict use innovate skills and also low levels of classroom ict integration among teacher as the low level of technical knowledge leads to low usage (andersson, et. al., 2014). teachers ict use competencies are well defined by a collection of knowledge, skills, understandings, and attitudes that are inseparably assured with context and pedagogy (doyle & reading, 2012). dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 263 ijolte furthermore, the increase in teachers' ict knowledge triggers the use of technology in their activities. without a high ict knowledge, we should not expect teachers' competence to use ict in their professional practices to be optimum (brás pedro, 2014). unesco (2011) teacher professional framework rank ict competence level into three categories: (1) beginners (ability to perform basic functions in a limited number of computer applications), (2) average users (ability to use a number of computer applications), (3) and advanced user (ability to competently use a broad range of devices and tools). those categories are used to assess teachers' ict competence in english teaching. samr model the samr model is a tool for assessing and evaluating technology practices and impacts in a classroom setting by looking into students, teachers and the changes (myers, 2017; puentedura, 2013). teachers can determine their technology levels as they experience shifts in the design of technology-based learning artifacts and application of technology-driven learning to achieve the next level (ahrens & zaščerinska, 2014). then this model is considered as the most suitable model with the objective of this research since samr is used as a tool to determine and classify the level of ict pedagogical integration and samr was developed based on the teaching process which is the core of this research. puentedura (2006) classified samr has four different levels of the ict use which can be identified in teaching, namely substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. it is described in the picture below: dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 264 ijolte figure 1. samr model. ( puentedura 2013.) substitution is the use of technology for a task that could be accomplished without technology. augmentation provides a technological improvement for a task that could be completed without technology. modification allows for a pre-existing task to be significantly altered in a way not possible without technology. finally, redefinition would be the creation of a completely new task not possible without the technology. 3. method the design of this research is a case study. dey (2005) stated that a case study approach more commonly associated with qualitative methods. briefly, a case study is the types of qualitative method. the researcher described the result of the research based on what the researcher collects from the data and its experiences. this case study research focuses on the description of the individual teacher as the target of the investigation. a case study itself is typically used as a researcher plans to focus on a single unit to produce an in-depth description that is rich and holistic (ary, et. al., 2010). the participants of research must meet certain criteria in order to be included in a study. by using purposive sampling, participants qualified to participate in this research was an english teacher who involved in teaching and learning process in the english classroom. the teacher was selected as the research subject because she has been integrating ict within her english teaching. the underlying principle of selecting this research design and the teacher is due to the fact that the purpose of this research is to get a depth understanding on teacher's competence level as well as the extent to which the teacher integrate ict in the english language teaching. therefore, the study was targeted only to d (false name) who is considered as an english teacher who is able to provide data due to answer the research questions. in order to gain validity of the data, the researcher conducted observation and interview as triangulation to get the data of this research. observation checklist was used to observe the teacher’s and the students’ behaviors. the researcher also took field notes on the behavior and activities of individuals at the research site. the samrbased observations were done three times as the teaching and learning process on the particular in english language teaching with the use of ict was completed in three meetings. moreover, the researcher used semi-structured interview. the answers were open-ended, and there was more emphasis on the interviewee elaborating points of interest. one hour interview was done once to the respondent after the last classroom observation. in addition, member checking was used in this research. the interviewee was dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 265 ijolte asked for confirmation of the data that have been found in the observation and interview. this technique is used in order to verify the researcher’s interpretations and conclusions with the interviewee herself (denzin & lincoln, 2005). then, it is aimed to reach an agreement on the classification of the extent to which ict integrated by the teacher in the english language teaching. in the data analysis, the researcher analysed the data right after the researcher got the data from the observation sheet and interview. the researcher analysed the data based on interactive modal (miles, huberman, & saldana, 2014). the phases of activity were; 1). data condensation. the researcher do the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting and transforming the data that appear in written up field notes. then, the data were organized and reduced or reconfigured. in this case, the researcher selected the data derived from observation on teaching and learning process and interviewing to the english teachers. 2). data display. in this stage, the result of data condensation is organized into 1 figure and 4 tables. the figure is showing classroom observation result of teacher’s competence level to use ict. and the 4 tables describe the samr-based observations result. it is ordered by the level in the samr model, namely substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. 3). conclusion drawing/verification. after the data is considered have constancy, fixed conclusion of the data were drawn in order to be written in the research finding report. in addition, the data found from the whole three classroom observation were analysed quantitatively by using microsoft excel and displayed in the form of percentages. then, the data were described qualitatively in order to give a clear description for the readers. finding and discussion teacher’s competence level to use ict while the teacher has been integrating ict in their english teaching. the teacher’s competence to use ict was assessed by doing observation. after the observation was done, the researcher conducted the interview to find a better understanding of the raised issue from the target of the investigation. the teacher’s competence level assessed were adapted from the ict teacher competency framework by unesco(2011). they were ranked as (1) beginners (ability to use basic function in a limited number of computer applications), (2) average users (ability to use a number of complex computer applications), (3) and advanced user (ability to competently use a broad range of devices and tools). the result of observations when the teacher was teaching english in three meetings is simply described in the following figure: figure 2. showing teacher’s competence level to use ict dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 266 ijolte from the result of the classroom observation, it revealed that the teacher was dominant to use ict at beginner level (87%). it shows that the teacher is able to use basic operation of various types of hardware, such as desktop computers, laptops, printers, and hand-held devices. the teacher also can use the basic features of presentation, word processors software such as powerpoint and microsoft word and other digital resources. at this stage, the teacher is considered only can use basic function in a limited number of computer application. in addition, although some devices such as hand phone and laptop were not provided by the school in teaching. the teacher still have them because the teacher has had the icts since she was in the college. the teacher does not seem to have any difficulties to use those icts. she used those icts in teaching for several activities, either during the process of teaching and learning or during the preparation before teaching in the classroom. likewise, when the teacher was interviewed whether she could use basic operation of various types of hardware such as laptops, hand-held devices, lcd; and software such as word processor, excel, and power point. she describes her competence to use the icts in teaching: i can operate some kind of icts. i often use hand phone, laptop or pc computer to prepare my teaching materials. i use microsoft word to type the teaching material since sometimes i need to print out the materials which are not provided within the students' book. i use powerpoint and lcd projector to present the teaching material in front of the classroom. moreover, i also use microsoft excel to create a draft of students score, and rank the students’ achievement. furthermore, i check my teaching material, such as the grammar, spelling in english using microsoft word. i can handle those basic icts since i often used to those when i was in the college. in addition, similarly with the teacher’s competence to use the basic icts and word processor. at the beginner level, it shows that the teachers are able to use graphics software, a browser, search engine and create an email account as a means in teaching. in three meeting observed, the teacher always uses laptop, speaker as well as lcd projector that has been provided in the classroom. the teacher presents the teaching material in front of the classroom using pictures, sounds, slides, and videos. furthermore, the teacher also has the students in the group to create and present their digital poster about english advertisement in front of their peers using their smartphones or laptop. after presenting their poster, the teachers have the students to upload their digital poster on facebook. then they were asked to give comment about their peers’ poster and performances. although the teacher only did this activity only for once, this shows the teacher is able to use several basics icts in delivering teaching material in the classroom. she explains her competence to use those basics icts when she was asked why the teacher use the icts and how the teacher utilizes the icts as a means in teaching: attracting students' interest and to motivate students in learning is very 87% 13% 0% 0% 100% beginner average advance teacher’s competence level to use ict dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 267 ijolte important. then i use icts, such as movie maker to combine pictures, videos and sound then it regenerates to be a new interesting video as a media in teaching. i also use software such as pics art and canvass to have students create caption or poster. however, i do it rarely because it spent a lot of my energy and time. wifi hotspots have been already provided in this school, then i often use the internet especially using a search engine such as google or yahoo to search teaching materials, picture and any information relating to english language teaching. then sometimes i let students search and use website platform to find any english learning resources, such as watching video on youtube, creating a poster in canvas, giving peer feedback on social media. then they can have reallife practice during the process of teaching and learning. the second level achieved by the teacher is average level with the percentage of 21%. the teacher in this level only could describe and use only a few complex icts tool such as online communication invoking online messaging or social media and online database such as google drive to manage their file in their laptop. it means that the teacher is considered has limited competence to perform a number complex icts tool, such as use authoring environment to design online material, operate various open-ended software as well as the use of network and appropriate software to manage, monitor and assess students project. she describes her understanding about the provided list of icts in the average level and describes icts in the average level used in teaching below: i never know an authoring environment or tools to design online materials or even to use it. i just give students the material in the classroom, in the social media or in whatsapp if it is necessary. i don’t use blog and web since it is very complicated. moreover, when i use those platform i need to manage and maintain them, it will be time-consuming. i just can describe and understand some basics icts, i do not know about the relatively new icts such as mooc, software to manage the progress of various student projects or the network to support student collaboration as what you explained. at the third level was the advanced level. it comprised 0% regarding the teacher’s competency to use various networked devices, digital resources and electronic environments used to create the production of knowledge and ‘anytimeanywhere’ collaborative learning. it showed that the teacher never uses any a broad range of devices like using multimedia recording, production equipment, publication software, and web design tools. in this case, the teacher has insufficient information and training that might hinder to use those devices and tools. meanwhile, studies have well explored that lack of training is a major problem for the teacher to use pedagogical ict in teaching(anderson et al., 1984). as interviewed the teacher about icts invoked in advanced level as a means in teaching such as, publication software, web design tool and production equipment, she answered: i don't understand and don't familiar with those kinds of icts. the development of the ict grows too fast for me. there is a lot of new kind of devices and tools that can be used in teaching english perhaps. i do not get any information about it then how i can use those new technologies. in addition, i live in a village that far enough from the city, i live with people who do not aware about the use of ict even in their daily life. moreover, i never attend any training to use pedagogical ict. the school doesn't provide it yet. then, i do not get adequate information and knowledge about it and how to use it. those situations make me hard to follow the development of pedagogical ict and to use to use it in teaching. then the pedagogical icts that i used in the classroom are limited. dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 268 ijolte the extent to which the ict integrated into the english language teaching the aim of this section is to explore the extent to which the ict integrated into english language teaching. the researcher used samr as a tool to assess the teacher ict integration level since the samr is considered as the most suitable model to classify the level of ict pedagogical integration. samr model provides a framework to describe and classify different levels of ict integration (puentedura, 2006). furthermore, the instrument for the observation sheet used to assess the integration level of ict using samr model is adapted from jude et al., (2014). it is separated within four level of the icts integration level namely substitution icts, augmentation icts, modification icts, and redefinition icts. from the result of the observation that has been done in three meetings. then, it is confirmed by doing member checking with the teacher d (false name) as the research subject regarding the extent to which ict integrated into english language teaching. it is described as follows: table 1. observation table of substitution icts used by the teacher in the english language teaching table 2. observation table of augmentation icts used by the teacher in the english language teaching no activity mean 1. highlighted text in the digital device with color and different font size. 100% 2. use search engines (e.g. google) to look for the reference to the teaching material 100% no class activity mean 1. use icts (e.g. laptop, hand phone, microsoft word) to prepare her lecture, assignments, and examinations 100% 2. use digital taking note instead of a printed notebook. 66,7% 3. use the powerpoint presentation method to deliver lectures 100% 4. upload the teaching and learning materials on facebook or other electronic sites/devices for students to access. 66,7% 5. refer students to electronic databases for reference materials instead of hard copy textbooks 100% 6. when supporting her students, the teacher communicates to them using her cell phone. 100% 7. when supporting the students, the teacher communicates to them using e-mail. 33,3% 8. when supporting the students, the teacher communicates to them through social media such as facebook, twitter, chat rooms, and discussion boards. 66,7% 9. prefer students to submit their coursework assignment through email 33,3% 10. have specific folders in her laptop to manage file of her students’ works. 100% 11. record her lectures on cds/other media and give them to her students 0% 12. take video/audio recordings of herself while lecturing and uses them in subsequent years to teach the same course to another cohort of students 0% grand mean 40,9% dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 269 ijolte 3. use the editorial tools in the word processor to correct grammatical errors in any documents 100% 4. use the editorial tools in the word processor to receive alternative words to use in essays 33,6% 5. use digital libraries (e.g. digilib, mulib) as a source of useful content for the lectures 0% 6. use internet group lists to contact students in matters related to their academics 33,6% 7. modify the folder to be more attractive and order the folder by its name then it can be found it easily. 100% 8. use bulk messaging to contact students in matters related to their academics 66,7% 9. subject students’ work/teaching material to a plagiarism test using plagiarism detection software 0% 10. provide feedback to students’ reports, papers and assignments through their social media or email 33,6% grand mean 36,3% table 3. observation table of modification icts used by the teacher in the english language teaching no activity mean 1. ever combined audio, video, and text notes in presenting material using an application such as "movie maker" 66,7% 2. include a hyperlink to online dictionaries and other sources to the teaching material 0% 3. administer multiple choice questions for tests/examinations through google form or other devices 33,3% 4. use google drive to manage and collect files of students’ works. 33,3% 5. lecture modules in the discipline using e-learning platforms (e.g. muele, edmodo) 33,3% 6. use open education resource to use group discussion facility (e.g. blog, social media, web). 66,7% 7. use online tools (e.g. rm assessor) to assess students achievement/score 0% 8. use note taking application such as “sling note, google note” program to curate online sources. 0% 9. use video conferencing or skype to teach students when the teacher not at the school 0% grand mean 16,6% table 4. observation table of redefinition icts used by the teacher in the english language teaching no activity mean 1. include audio, video, and other interactive online platforms to use as the multimodal teaching material. 33,3% 2. share digital notebook or using a certain application to develop note-taking. 0% 3. create a multimodal task to make the instruction more real, interesting and challenging for students. 0% 4. use open education resource as my study materials (e.g. mooc) 0% 5. use e-learning platforms (e.g. near pod, mooc) to assess my students’ learning 0% dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 270 ijolte 6. use augmented reality when teaching. 0% 7. use electronic games when teaching. 33,3% grand mean 6,2% the results of the observation table above show that the ict integrated by teachers in english language teaching with the domination at the substitution level and augmentation level at the second place. it means that the teacher was under the area of “enhancement”. the substitution icts used comprised 40,9%. at the second level achieved was augmentation with percentage 36,3% and followed by modification (16,6%) and redefinition (6,2%). it means that the teacher was dominant on integrating ict to substitute the use of electronic databases instead of hard copy textbooks and make little change or improvement from the original one. she prefers to make use of electronic databases since she has already got the soft file instead to use of hard copy textbook. with the domination at the substitution level in teaching english in the classroom, the teacher has been observed almost every teaching does the same thing. she uses icts (e.g. laptop, hand phone, microsoft word) to prepare her lecture, assignments and examinations and powerpoint presentation method to deliver lectures with the purpose to be more interesting and more effective to prepare as well as to deliver the material in teaching. moreover, she also uses hand handled device outside the school to support the teaching and learning in the classroom. the intention is just to change using nontraditional teaching strategies from hard copy textbook into a soft file display without any improvement or change (puentedura, 2013). the implementation of this substitution level is done by the teacher, it is as described below: i always make use laptop, hand handled devices such as hand phone or tablet to teach students inside or outside the classroom. i use it as a means to help me in creating more interesting and effective teaching. i also use word processor such as microsoft word office to type my teaching material and powerpoint to present the material. while the time is limited if i only teach students in the classroom so i must support it by giving them additional class using icts, such as social media like facebook, email, or text massaging. i prefer students to be electronic databases, then sometimes i use social media or email to give soft copy material and to submit their task instead of printed text. i also always use digital text since the soft file of the textbook has been provided by the government as well. i use those icts only to give students better experience in learning using ict than using traditional teaching strategies. furthermore, the teacher also uses electronic equipment to make several changes on her teaching strategies, such as highlighted text in the digital device with color and different font size, uses an electronic dictionary and make use the editorial tools in word processor either to correct grammatical errors or to receive alternative words to use in any documents. the ict integrated by the teacher in this activity reaches augmentation level. the teaching material is different from the original one since she has already made several changes on the teaching material for the sake to enhance learning. the augmentation level reached by teacher comprised 36,3% which means the teacher actually has already often made any change or improvement on her teaching material. in the augmentation level she did integrate ict in teaching, she explained: i also make several changes to my teaching strategies in using ict. highlighted text in digital my presentation material such as in ppt and microsoft word with color and different font size, add pictures or moving animation then my students will be easier to focus and easier to understand and also it is intended to attract their interest in learning. i also use the editorial tools in word processor either dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 271 ijolte to correct the grammatical in my documents or use the editing tools in the word processor to receive alternative words in designing my teaching material or lesson plan. in addition, concerning managing the teaching material, the teacher also made changes or improvement using ict. the teachers make use online text messaging. she stated that she used bulk messaging to contact students in matters related to their academics. and the teacher saves any document related to the teaching and learning in the computer in the form various folder. she orders the folder by its name and makes changes the color of every folder so each folder will be easier to recognize and attractive to see. it is as described below: i also use the broadcast message or bulk messaging to contact students regarding their academic. moreover, it helps me to send messages only for once, then i don't need to send the messages each student one by one. about managing my document relating to teaching and learning, i order it by name then i can find it easily and i also design it colorfully that make it looks more attractive. further, the teacher was observed inserted hyperlink to online resources in her teaching material for students to access. the teacher also ever combines video, picture, audio and text note in presenting material in teaching. to help him conduct quiz for students she administers multiple choice questions for tests/examinations through google form so the teacher will easily check and collect the students' answers. moreover, the teacher lectures modules in the discipline using e-learning platforms and also uses open education resource to use group discussion facility. in this case, the teacher has reached modification level with the percentage of 16,6%. however, the teacher rarely does the activities as observed in the teaching and learning process. it is in lined with the teacher's statement that she rarely does those activities because they are time-consuming and spent a lot of energy. she described: i movie maker to combine pictures, videos and sound then it regenerates to be a new interesting video as a media in teaching. using ict to conduct the test sometimes i administer multiple choice questions for tests/examinations through google form or other devices in order to help me to collect students’ answers and avoid heaps of paper to mark. however, i do it rarely because it spent a lot of my energy and time. the least icts used by the teacher in the english language teaching is redefinition level in samr model. it can be seen from the observation result that the teacher only used two kinds of teaching strategies using icts in teaching. moreover, the percentage of icts used by the teacher at redefinition level was too low. the teacher only achieved 6,2% at redefinition level in samr model. it indicates that the teacher could hardly use icts at the redefinition level. at this level the teacher combined videos, ppt, text, sound, and picture to create multimodal text. the other icts used was an electronic game inhttps://play.kahoot.it.however, the teacher only used the icts once from the whole three times classroom observation. the teacher explained: i combine ppt, with pictures, sounds, and videos to create another new video, then i could create new strategies in learning. i also use software such as pics art and canvass to have students create caption or poster. using complicated icts is very time-consuming. even when i have limited knowledge about how icts used for. moreover, sometimes i have limited access to the internet. as the internet was too slow i avoid using the internet to teach students, hence i cancel to use the electronic game in the web like in kahoot.it. https://play.kahoot.it/ dwiono, rochsantiningsih, suparno 272 ijolte conclusion it is found that the teacher’s competence to use ict was still beginner. it means that the teacher is dominant with the use of basic features of presentation, word processor software such as powerpoint and microsoft word and other digital resources. the teacher’s competence level to use ict is in lined with teacher’s ict integration level with the domination at the substitution level and augmentation level as it is analyzed using samr model. these ict levels of the integration reflect the ability of the teacher to integrate ict in teaching that the teacher is considered only be able to use basic function in a limited number of computer application with only little change and improvement. however, the teacher more often integrates the ict to only substitute the use of printed textbook with the digital material without any changing or improvement. this finding supports the previous research that the competences of teacher to use ict in pedagogical application is highly influenced by knowledge that they receive. 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(2013). leading change and innovation in teacher preparation: a blueprint for developing tpack ready teacher candidates. techtrends, 55–63. https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-013-0692-7 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001311/131124e.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/0140528790010406 paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 67 ijolte “defends” as an effective writing strategy to create students creativity mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi teacher training and education faculty, sebelas maret university, surakarta, indonesia email corresponding author: thooneyfathoni@gmail.com how to cite this paper: fathoni, m. i., sumardi, s., & supriyadi, s. (2019). “defends” as an effective writing strategy to cre-ate students creativity. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 67-77. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 accepted: july 24, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract in the educational process, specifically in the classroom, students must be able to produce good writing in academic writing that is relevant to the topic that is given or determined by the teacher. most students get difficulty in learning writing moreover producing good writing. teachers need to help the students build their habits of writing creatively. defends, a strategy that was developed by ellis (1989,1990,1993) can help students to defend a particular position in a written assignment, improve writing strategies, facilitate writing process, and strengthen learning to learn writing skill. defends strategy gives students the means to plan before they begin writing. this strategy guides students to be an independent writer through several stages (decide, estimate, figure, express, note, drive, and search). students are demanded to have not only language skill but also other factors such as creativity. creativity gives a contribution in education field nowadays, the issue of creativity has brought to the forefront of educational policy and practice, including the importance of creativity in writing. research dealing with creativity in writing is needed. this research was an experimental design called post-test design using 2x2 factorial arrangements. the sample was high school students. two instruments used by the researcher; those were writing test and creativity test. the value of ftable at the level of significance is α = 0.05 is 4.01, while the value of fo between columns is 5.734141. fo between rows (16.5821) is higher than ft at the level of significance α = 0.05 (4.01), and fo columns by rows (9.21) are higher than ft at the level of significance α = 0.05 (4.01). subject areas writing skill keywords creative students, defends strategy, effective strategy, students creativity 1. introduction writing is an essential skill in english because it is not only an academic skill, but also an essential skill that can use in any career fields such as business, science, and technology. in academic writing, https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 mailto:thooneyfathoni@gmail.com mailto:thooneyfathoni@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7146 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 68 ijolte students must be able to produce good writing that is relevant to the topic. however, many students still are not aware of the importance of writing, and most students get difficulty in learning writing. huy (2015) said that teaching writing is a process of interaction between teacher and student, where the teacher explains the technicalities in writing (p. 53). to create well-organized writing, a writer should master the aspects related to writing. dorobat (2007) categorize some aspects of writing namely meaning, organization, content, vocabulary, discourse (sentence, grammar), syntax, and mechanics (spelling, punctuation) (p. 130). for a student, writing is exciting and vital. writing is an excellent way to develop students ability to use languages such as vocabulary and grammar. there are cases where students cannot produce good sentences and paragraphs, moreover having excellent skill in writing, the teacher needs to apply a method, technique, or strategy. students’ lack of writing skill may be caused by the inappropriate method, technique, and strategy of teaching used by the teacher. in the classroom, the teacher should be more creative in providing and applying appropriate and exciting method, technique, or strategy in teaching writing skill. langan (2001) states that most problems in writing range from cognitive problems, (e.g., vocabulary knowledge, language structure, and organizational ideas) to psychological problems. there is a strategy from many strategies that can be applied by the english teacher to teach writing in the classroom. one of those strategies is defends that stands for deciding, estimate, figure, express, note, drive, and search. several purposes of defends strategy that explained by catherine collier (2016) in her book are to assist learners in defending a particular position in a written assignment, improving writing strategies, facilitate writing process, and strengthen learning to learn writing skill. the improper methods and teaching strategies used by the teacher in the classroom can lead to a lack of student writing skills. a right and proper teaching strategy are what can maximize students’ ability, and improve their interest to take part actively in the teaching and learning process. teachers are required to be more creative in teaching students writing skills at school by providing and applying appropriate and exciting methods, techniques, or strategies. this is the essential thing that can affect students' writing skills. teachers need to help students build habits of writing creatively so that they recognize writing as a regular part of classroom practice and they come to write assignments with enthusiasm (harmer, 2007, p. 329). producing written works is also more complicated. students are demanded to have not only language skill but also other factors such as creativity, interest, motivation, intelligence, and self-esteem. from those factors, creativity is assumed to be an essential human characteristic which influences students’ writing skill. creativity means to anything that originality what the creator does, and that is exact to the purpose or goal of the creator (baer and kaufman, 2012, p. 3). about the importance of creativity in writing, it believed that creative writing could develop students’ language proficiency, and engage students in writing more complex syntactic structures. mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 69 ijolte 1.1. defends as strategy in creative writing talking about the use of english, writing is one of four skills that are studied by students in learning english. through writing, students can share their feelings, ideas, thoughts, information, and experiences in written words. dorobat (2007) defines writing as a means of recording, assimilating, and reformulating knowledge and of developing and working through his/her ideas (p. 122). the purpose of teaching writing is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to write effectively for a range of purposes and in various contexts. many strategies can be used to teach how to make good paragraphs and essays in writing. there is a popular learning strategy used for writing named defends, a strategy that was developed by ellis. defends a strategy for defending a position in writing (ellis, 1989,1990,1993). defends is an acronym from decide, estimate, figure, express, note, drive, and search. several purposes of defends strategy that explained by catherine collier (2016) in her book are to help the student in defending a particular position in a written assignment, improve writing strategies, facilitate writing process, and strengthen learning to learn writing skill. the mnemonic of defends has symbolized that the strategy instructs seven steps. the first step, students need to decide and also determine the writing goals and themes. this includes considering both the audience and what type of information will be communicated. students are encouraged to record these goals on paper. second, they should brainstorm at least two main ideas that support the entire theme of their writing essay. at least three supporting details should follow these main ideas. third, once the main ideas and details have noted, students should analyze what they have noted in order to determine the best order of these items within the paper. the items order should be logical and should enhance the entire flow of the paper. at this period, students are ready to move past prewriting to the actual writing of their essay or paper (ellis, 1993). the next step encourages students to state their entire theme within the first sentence. fifth, students continue their essay by moving into the main points and details that they listed during prewriting. these should be in complete sentences and should follow the logical order determined in planning. the sixth step instructs students to restate their entire theme in the last sentence of the essay. the wording should be different from the first sentence but should summarize the main point. seventh, or the last step, students should search for errors through editing steps, including rereading the essay to see if it makes sense; checking for correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling; and looking for clarity of the entire theme. every strategy must have advantages and disadvantages. collier (2016) states that there are some advantages to defends. as follow: first advantage, assist student in defending a particular position in a written assignment; second advantage, facilitate writing process and improve writing strategies; third advantage, build awareness of appropriate cognitive academic language; fourth advantage, construct and strengthen awareness of the learning process; fifth advantage, develop analytical skill; sixth advantage, develop independent field skills.; seventh advantage, develop problem-solving skill and develop thinking and planning skills; eight advantage, construct academic transfer skill; ninth advantage, improve retention of content, reinforce content lessons, and strengthen knowledge of academic content; tenth advantage, improve student’s ability to organize and prioritize information; eleventh advantage, strengthen language development; twelfth advantage, expand and improve comprehension; thirteenth advantage, reduce confusion in locus of control; fourteenth advantage, strengthen the ability to discuss what is happening. mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 70 ijolte besides advantages the teacher should be aware of the limitation of the defends strategy, bisland (2004) warns that the use of defends may have some limitations as follows: the first advantage, at the first time, students may struggle to apply the stages of defends strategy, because there are seven stages that they should follow. the other advantage, the process of making the essay by using defends strategy may consume much time. the third possible disadvantage, defends strategy requires the students to be autonomous. students should be involved in this process because it gives them the perception of control over their learning. the last disadvantage, teachers should consider the overall outcome desired. many strategies are available, but the best strategy is the one that is most appropriate to the student’s learning needs (p. 54). producing written works is also more complicated. students are demanded to have not only language skill but also other factors such as creativity, interest, motivation, intelligence, and selfesteem. from those factors, creativity is assumed to be an essential human characteristic which influences students’ writing skill. creativity refers to anything someone does in a way that is original to the creator, and that is appropriate to the purpose or goal of the creator (baer and kaufman, 2012, p. 3). creativity is widely believed to be a ‘good thing,’ enriching the quality of life and learning. creativity is a characteristic of human behavior that seems the most mysterious, and yet most critical to human advancement. therefore, it can be assumed that students’ creativity cannot be purchased, downloaded, or guaranteed, but it can foster the right environment or atmosphere of the teachinglearning process. creativity gives a contribution to the education field because creativity enriching the quality of life and learning. creativity is the production of an idea should be innovative and meaningful in the process of studying english as a foreign language. defends strategy gives students to decide the theme before they begin writing. this strategy will guide students to be an independent writer through several stages, namely decide, estimate, figure, express, note, drive, and search that include writing process stages. defends strategy is a strategy that will help students to improve their writing skill and develop the analytical skill. moreover, this strategy helps students reduce confusion in producing good text. students with high creativity will be able to learn english quickly and also produce excellent writing task. it happens because they are more creative in finding out the solution when they find many difficulties in writing. high creativity students can organize and explore their ideas creatively and write better. they also tend to be active in the learning process. high creativity students can likely optimize their potential and find not any crucial problem to come up with their new ideas when defends strategy implemented in the classroom activity. defends strategy has advantages to develop problemsolving skill and to develop thinking and planning skills. the combination of defends strategy and students who have high creativity will create an active learning process. so, the purpose of this study was to determine defends is an effective strategy to teach writing skill for students having high creativity. 2. method this research designed in an experimental design called post-test design using 2x2 factorial arrangements. ari et al. (2010), experimental research is a research design in which its function is to identify verified functional relationship among the phenomena of interest to educators (p. 296). mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 71 ijolte this research was done at the eleventh-grade students of a high school in purbalingga in academic year 2018/2019. in this research used 60 students from 2 classes as the sample. those two classes were experimental class and control class. two instruments used by the researcher; those were writing test and creativity test. in evaluating students’ creativity test, their level of creativity had been categorized into high and low creativity. its median also helped this as the midpoint. students having high creativity, their scores were higher than the median, while students having low creativity, their creativity scores were lower than the median. to investigate students’ writing skill, the researcher used essay writing. it is a teacher’s made test which was constructed to obtain objectives of writing skill. the researcher evaluated their writing through some aspects, such as content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. after the test given, the result analyzed by using anova. the pre-requisite testing (normality and homogeneity) also used to test the normality and the homogeneity of the data. normality test is used to determine whether the data are in the standard distribution or not, and homogeneity test is used to know whether the sample has the same variance (homogeneous) or not. the writing scores of both experimental and control groups are analyzed using the formula of anova as follows: a) total sum of squares (∑ 𝜒𝑡 2) ; b) sum of squares between groups (∑ 𝜒𝑡 2) ; c) sum of squares within groups (∑ 𝜒𝑤 2 ) ; d) sum of squares between columns (∑ 𝜒𝑏𝑐 2 ) ; e) sum of squares between rows (∑ 𝜒𝑏𝑟 2 ) ; f) sum of squares interaction (∑ 𝜒𝑖𝑛𝑡 2 ) ; f) the number of degrees of freedom associated with each source variation (df) (ngadiso, 2015, p.18). the result of data analysis is consulted to the ftable at the significance level α = 0.05 to know whether the result is significant or not. if the result of fcomputation is higher than ftable, it means that the null hypothesis rejected and the degree of effectiveness is analyzed. 3. finding and discussion the data of this research distributed into eight groups. based on meliasari et al. (2018) distribute the data description into eight groups as follows: (1) the writing scores of the students taught by using defends strategy (a1); (2) the writing scores of the students taught by using compared strategy (a2); (3) the writing scores of the students having high level of creativity (b1); (4) the writing scores of the students having low level of creativity (b2); (5) the writing scores of the students having high level of creativity taught by using defends strategy (a1b1); (6) the writing scores of the students having low level of creativity taught by using defends strategy (a1b2); (7) the writing scores of the students having high level of creativity taught by using compared strategy (a2b1); and (8) the writing scores of the students having low level of creativity taught by using compared strategy (a2b2). mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 72 ijolte 3.1. pre-requisite testing (normality and homogeneity) before analysis of variance (anova), 2 x 2 be analyzed, the normality and homogeneity of the data should be tested. these are a normality test. normality test is used to determine whether the data are in the standard distribution or not. the data are average if lo (lobtained) is lower than lt(ltable) at the level of significance α = 0.05. the computation of the normality test is divided into eight groups of data summarized in table 1. table.1. summary of normality test no variables lo n lt test decision status 1 the writing scores of the students taught by using defends strategy (a1) 0.097 30 0.161 hois accepted normal 2 the writing scores of the students taught by using the compared strategy (a2) 0.119 30 0.161 hois accepted normal 3 the writing scores of the students having a high level of creativity (b1) 0.117 30 0.161 hois accepted normal 4 the writing scores of the students having a low level of creativity (b2) 0.103 30 0.161 hois accepted normal 5 the writing scores of the students having a high level of creativity taught by using defends strategy (a1b1) 0.094 15 0.22 hois accepted normal 6 the writing scores of the students having a low level of creativity taught by using defends strategy (a1b2) 0.073 15 0.22 hois accepted normal 7 the writing scores of the students having a high level of creativity taught by using compared strategy (a2b1) 0.119 15 0.22 hois accepted normal 8 the writing scores of the students having a low level of creativity taught by using compared strategy (a2b2) 0.15 15 0.22 hois accepted normal according to data from table 1, the result of the normality test shows that all data are normal. as it can be seen by comparing the values gained (lo) and ltable, where the values (lo) are lower than lt. thus, it can be concluded that the populations on both teaching strategies and creativity levels normally distributed. mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 73 ijolte the next is the result of the homogeneity test. homogeneity test is used to know the homogeneity of the data. it is used to know whether the sample has the same variance (homogeneous) or not. the data are homogeneous if χo2 (χobtained) is lower than χt2 (χtable) at the level of significance α = 0.05. the result of the analysis is provided in the table 2. table 2. table of homogeneity test sample df 1/df si2 log si2 (df) log si2 1 14 0.07143 12.1381 1.08415 15.1781 2 14 0.07143 50.7667 1.70558 23.8781 3 14 0.07143 47.8452 1.67984 23.5177 4 14 0.07143 35.8095 1554 21.756 ʃ 56 0.28571 84.3299 χo 7.4868 because χo2 ( 7.4868) is lower than χt2 (7.81), it can be concluded that the data are homogeneous. it means the data obtained from the results for both variables derived from homogeneous populations. 3.2. anova this research used a multifactor analysis of variance (anova) 2 x 2. this test is used to find out the effect of the independent variable and attributive variable toward the dependent variable. besides, anova has the function to find out if there is an interaction among the variables. the hypothesis is rejected if fo is higher than ft (fo > ft). the result of the data is presented in the table 3. table 3. the mean scores creativity (b) teaching strategy (a) total defends (a1) compared strategy (a2) high creativity (b1) ʃ = 1274 = 84.93 ʃ = 1146,8 = 76.47 ʃr1 = 2421 = 80.7 low creativity (b2) ʃ = 1107.5 = 73.83 ʃ = 1122.5 = 74.83 ʃr2 = 2230 = 74.33 total ʃc1 = 2381.5 = 79.38 ʃc2 = 2269.3 = 75.65 = 4651 = 77.52 based on the table 4, the description of 2x2 multifactor analysis of variance show that the value of ftable at the level of significance is α = 0.05 is 4.01, while the value of fo between columns is 5.705987 which means that ho is rejected and the difference between columns is significant. besides, it can be seen at the mean score of both classes. the mean score of the students taught by defends strategy is 79.38, and the mean score of the students taught by teacher strategy is 75.65. thus, it can be mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 74 ijolte concluded that students who are taught by using defends strategy have better writing skill than those taught by teacher strategy. table 4. summary of a 2x2 multifactor analysis of variance source of variance ss df ms fo ft(0.05) between columns 209.06667 1 209.0666667 5.705987 4.01 between rows 608.01667 1 608.0166667 16.5944 columns by rows 336.06667 1 336.0666667 9.172155 between groups 1153.15 3 384.3833333 within group 2051.8333 56 36.63988095 total 3204.9833 59 the result of the anova test shows that fo between rows (16.5944) is higher than ft at the level of significance α = 0.05 (4.01). it means that ho is rejected and the difference between rows is significant. in other words, the writing skill of the students who have high creativity and those who have low creativity are significantly different. then, the mean score of students that have high creativity (80.7) is higher than students that have low creativity (74.33), it can be concluded that the students having high creativity have better writing skill than those having low creativity. the result of the anova test shows that fo columns by rows (9.17) are higher than ft at the level of significance α = 0.05 (4.01). it means that ho is rejected and there is an interaction between teaching strategies (defends) and students’ creativity levels to teach writing. the research findings showed that students having high creativity have better writing skill than those having low creativity. it is proven by the mean score of the students having high creativity, which is higher than that of those having low creativity. creative students can adapt themselves to attain their goal. they can explore their ability easily because they think beyond what they see, read, and listen in doing something so they can produce good writing. the use of effective strategies of teaching writing could influence the students’ skill, especially in writing english text. high creativity students can organize and explore their ideas creatively and write better. they also tend to be active in the learning process. high creativity students can likely optimize their potential and find no problem to come up with their new ideas when defends strategy implemented in the classroom activity. on the contrary, students who have low creativity write what they see, read, and listen without being able to think what is beyond? they lack ideas and vocabulary to express them into the written text because they have monotonous concept, idea, and creation. defends strategy has advantages to develop problem-solving skill and to develop thinking and planning skills. briefly, it can be concluded that students’ creativity levels influence the effectiveness of defends. based on the finding in this study, defends is an effective strategy to teach writing. this strategy encourages the students to produce good writing by exploring and reinforcing their ideas through the stages of the organized and systematic writing process. defends strategy provides time mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 75 ijolte for the students to expand and organize their ideas without any modeling. the students can stimulate their ideas and concentrate on producing their authentic writing through instruction. this strategy is beneficial to gain students’ writing skill. collier (2016) states that defends can help the student to defend a particular position in a written assignment, improve writing strategies, facilitate the writing process, and strengthen learning to learn writing skill. this strategy is also helpful for the students to remember the steps of the writing process by providing a letter to cue each step of writing process namely decide estimate, figure out, express, note, drive home, and search. nevertheless, to implement this strategy run well, it is necessary for the students to understand and follow every instruction before they began to the defends steps. the teacher would give help if it needed during the process so that this strategy requires many students’ attentions to do all the process well. defends strategy gives a chance for the students to express their ideas freely since the process focuses on students’ activity. it can be concluded that using defends can foster the students to engage actively in teaching-learning process and be an independent learner. however, students will not produce a creative story or other writing work if creative thinking is lacking. by the goal of teaching writing using defends strategy, the implementation of this strategy requires high creativity students in order to obtain the optimum result. they have to think out of the box and apply their experience so that they can create creative and meaningful writing. through the steps of writing in this strategy, the students also need more concentration and knowledge because this strategy encourages them to follow an organized and systematic process. using defends can help the students link their science ideas, discussion, and expository writing for building independent thinking and self-sufficiency for the students having high creativity. students having high creativity are easily able to solve their learning problem, create something with their new ideas, and apply them better. they tend to have high motivation such as following teaching and learning activities well, doing teacher’s instruction and finishing the task well. also, high creative students like challenges and enjoy every step of activities in exploring ideas. it is in line with munandar (2014), who mentions that the characteristics of highly creative persons are those having imagination, interest, confidence, independent thinking, and high motivation (p. 37). this is also supported by the characteristics of creative persons mentioned by kaufman and stenberg (2006) that their higher sensitivity and imagination characterize creative persons, showing absolute self-sufficiency, openness to experience, independent thinking, and sense of humor (p. 88). therefore, students having high creativity can think beyond and use their creativity in exploring their ideas to finish their task. using defends strategy for students having high creativity will demand them to think more creatively, so they can develop their ideas and create a more effective learning experience. because this strategy is students-centered, defends also allows students to exchange collective and individual feedback. as a result, they can produce good writing, especially an english text. therefore, it requires students having high creativity in doing so, because high creativity students can organize and explore their ideas creatively and write better. thus, students having high creativity suitably taught by using defends strategy because the implementation of this strategy emphasizes on students critical and analytical thinking. mu’alim ibnu fathoni, sumardi, slamet supriyadi 76 ijolte different from high creativity, students having low creativity tend to be passive, less motivation, unserious, and dependent learner. during the learning process, they are different from those having high creativity. students having low creativity are dependent. they need more help and support from the teacher during the teaching and learning process. it happens because they are lazy to do complex activities, need creative and analytical thinking. they like something simple and easy to do. therefore, they find many difficulties in writing, such as: how to get the information, how to develop their ideas, and how to arrange the sentences. based on the research finding the combination of defends strategy and students who have high creativity create an active learning process. it proves that defends is an effective strategy to teach writing skill for students having high creativity. a student not only recording, assimilating, and reformulating their writing with their ideas (dorobat, 2007) but beyond. defends is help the student of having high creativity in defending a particular position in a written assignment, it also improves new various writing strategies, moreover facilitate writing process of the student who has high creativity, and also strengthen learning process of writing skill. 4. conclusion the result of this study implies that defends is an effective teaching strategy to teach writing for high school students. it is proven by the result of this study shows that students who are taught by using defends strategy have better writing than those who taught by using ordinary teaching strategy. by writing skill, students need not only an effective strategy to produce good writing but also their creativity. the research findings reveal that students having high creativity have good writing skill. students having high creativity can solve their learning problem, create something with their new ideas, and apply them better. besides, creative students can adapt themselves to attain their goal. they can explore their ability easily because they think beyond what they see, read, and listen in doing something so they can produce good work. also, high creative students like challenges and enjoy every step of activities in exploring ideas. the result of this research expected to become a reference to other researchers concerning with teaching writing and testing creativity. furthermore, this research can stimulate in conducting similar research at the same strategy, but in different level and objects. some recommendations are dealing with defends strategy. first, this research has revealed that applying defends strategy gives a remarkable impact on students’ writing skill. the teacher should carefully use teaching strategies to teach writing based on students’ needs so that they can achieve excellent writing skill. in this case, the use of defends strategy to teach writing is expected to promote a practical teaching writing skill. second, it is necessary that students can learn how to write through appropriate and systematics 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(2018). the picture word inductive model: its effectiveness to teach writing viewed from students' interest. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3), 248-258. [14] munandar, utami. (2014). pengembangan kreativitas anak berbakat. jakarta: pt. rineka cipta. [15] ngadiso. (2015). statistics. pendidikan pasca sarjana uns. unpublished. [16] nunan, david & linse, caroline t. (2005). practical english language teaching: young learners. new york: mcgrawhill. [17] walliman, nicholas. (2011). research methods: the basics. uk: routledge. acknowledgment the pre-research and the try out data of this research was presented at 2nd english language and literature international conference (ellic) in muhammadiyah university semarang on may 5th, 2018. moreover, also i would like to thank mrs. siti khoeriyah, the high school english teacher who helps me in holding this study, i would like to thank lina yekti oktiningtyas who support me in making the paper, and i would like to thank drs. naslam ap for giving the sponsorship. paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 1 ijolte developing a teaching material prototype for linguistics description of english course h. hustarna, m. melati universitas jambi, jambi, indonesia email corresponding author: arna_unja@yahoo.com how to cite this paper: hustarna, h., & melati, m. (2019). developing a teaching material prototype for linguistics description of english course. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 110. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 accepted: july 30, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract linguistics description of english is a new subject in the curriculum of english education study program in the faculty of teacher training and education in jambi university. hence, the material for this subject is not yet available. therefore, this research aims at developing a prototype of teaching materials for linguistics description of english course. by designing the prototype of teaching materials for this course, the researchers expected that lecturers who will teach this subject would not find difficulties in teaching this course. besides, the use of materials which have been designed based on students’ need and linguistic lecturers’ discussion is anticipated to be able to encourage students to be more active in teaching and learning process. thus, the choice of the topics is suited to the characteristics of the students and drew from the result of the need analysis questionnaire and forum group discussion (fgd) with the lecturers. this research utilized research and development design, based on the theory developed by borg and gall (1983). the result of the research is the prototype of the teaching materials for linguistics description of english course. subject areas teaching linguistics keywords design, linguistics description of english, teaching material 1. introduction the english education study program in the faculty of teacher training and education, universitas jambi is one of the study programs that is highly favored by high school graduates. this statement can be justified by a large number of students who wanted to enroll in this study program every year. during the last five years, there have been about one thousand senior high school graduates apply for this program. this information can be found in the academic information system of universitas jambi (www.siakad.unja.ac.id). this likely happens because english is considered to have promising prospects for the future. therefore, the english education study program always revises its curriculum within a few years to respond to the demands of the students when they graduate later. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.7241 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ h. hustarna, m. melati 2 ijolte the latest curriculum change was in 2017. students enrolling in 2017 have used the 2017 curriculum, while the previously enrolled students have used the 2014 kkni curriculum. the 2017 curriculum in the english education study program, fkip universitas jambi, has experienced a significant change because it responded to the indonesian national qualifications framework (kkni) and graduate competency standards (skl) set by the association of english education study programs (apspbi). in formulating its latest curriculum, english education study program defines three profiles of the graduates. they serve as language teachers, prospective researchers, and prospective entrepreneurs (kurikulum 2017 of english education study program fkip universitas jambi 2017). accurately, in terms of preparing prospective english teachers, the profile of the graduates is described in the following: "ict-based educators and facilitators of creative and innovative learning with good and effective english language skills in daily, professional and academic contexts by mastering theoretical linguistic concepts and learning english" (p.5). one effort to generate graduates who can use english both oral and written form well and effectively in daily usage, professional and academic contexts, while referring to the profile of graduates as prospective beginner researchers in the field of language, curriculum team for english education study program revised some courses. some of them are morphology, syntax, and phonology. these three courses not included in curriculum 2017. these three subjects are merged to a single subject since the three subjects previously were taught at the same semester and by different lecturers so that the materials seemed to be overlapping each other and the students might be confused to study the three subjects at the same time. by having these three subjects fitted into one subject with additional time allocation, it hoped that the materials could be arranged effectively and efficiently based on the process of language acquisition (cakiroğlu, 2018). the substitute for these three courses is named linguistic description of english (ldoe). it is compulsory coursework that will consist of materials related to some parts of branches of linguistics in english, namely phonology, morphology, and syntax. because this is a new course, the teaching materials have not determined. therefore, the research team considered that it was crucial to develop a prototype of teaching materials so that lecturers who will teach this course in the upcoming semester will not be confused in teaching and students will also be expected to get learning materials that suit their needs. by developing the materials through r n d research, it also expected that the materials produced will be able to facilitate the language learning of the students (tomlinson, 2012). table 1 is the topics and competency mapping that the research team drew in the design process. by having these three subjects integrated each other, the students are expected to learn a well-established concept about linguistics, starting from the ability to describe elements of english sounds to the ability to describe words and words formation process, and finally, the skills needed for analyzing english sentences. the design of materials is essential to be conducted carefully since materials are one of the factors that determine the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process (rusdi, 2018). according to rani (2003), good material covers the needs and interests of the teachers, and students and must be suitable to the context where the materials are going to be used. also, hutchinson (cited in tomlinson, 2014) said that materials viewed as “an embodiment of the aims, values, and methods of the particular teaching-learning situation.” h. hustarna, m. melati 3 ijolte table 1. range of topics for linguistics description of english competences topics phonology (able to describe english sounds adequately) phonetics and phonemes syllables and stress intonation weak forms and assimilation, linking, and illusion morphology (be able to describe the concept of english words formation and to analyze english words) words, sentences, and dictionaries identifying the phonemes of words a word and its parts: roots, affixes, and their shapes identifying the syllables and stress a word and its forms: inflection a word and it is relative: derivation compound words, blends, and phrasal words a word and its structure productivity in english word formation syntax (able to identify and analyze english sentence structure in terms of words, phrases, and sentences) syntax and grammar generative grammar identifying the syllables, stress, and phonemes of the words identifying word categories based on its formation constituency, trees, and rules furthermore, lestari (2013) states that a teaching material has to be designed and written by instructional rules. it implies that a teaching material should be able to give a chance for students to study effectively and teachers to teach efficiently in order to reach all competences expected based on what has stated in the curriculum. in line with lestari, tomlinson (2012: 2) states that ideal materials should be “informative (informing the learner about the target language), instructional (guiding the learner in practicing the language), experiential (providing the learner with experience of the language in use), eliciting (encouraging the learner to use the language) and exploratory (helping the learner to make discoveries about the language). 1.1. the rationale of the research this research aims at developing the prototype of a teaching material prototype for linguistics description of english course (ldoe). the result of this research is expected to be beneficial for teachers and students. for teachers, it hoped that the materials developed will help them in teaching the ldoe course. they will have guidance on what to give to the students. for students, it expected that the materials given would fit their need. by developing the materials through r n d research, it is expected that the materials produced will be able to facilitate the language learning of the students (tomlinson, 2012). to reach the purpose of this research, the researchers formulated the research questions as follows: h. hustarna, m. melati 4 ijolte 1. what are the needs for developing a prototype of teaching materials for linguistic description of english course to improve teaching and learning process quality? 2. what are the aspects determining the prototype of teaching materials for linguistic description of english course to improve teaching and learning process quality? 3. what is the result of validation by the expert for the prototype of teaching materials for linguistic description of english course to improve teaching and learning process quality? 2. method research and development framework, based on the theory developed by borg and gall (1983), was used for this research. to conduct a research with this design there are 10 steps that should be conducted, grouped into 3 stages as follows: (1) research and information collecting; (2) product development consisting of 6 activities (planning, developing preliminary form of product, preliminary field testing, primary product revision, main field testing, and operational product revision; (3) product validation, which includes activities such as operational field testing, final product revision, and dissemination and implementation. the steps can be seen in figure 1. figure 1. the research and development framework due to the limitation of the time allocated, the steps of conducting this research modified. after information collecting and planning, the researchers started designing the prototype of the product. next, the researchers directly validated the product to a product validator. the researchers could not do the field testing since the class for ldoe subject is not available in the semester when the research was conducted. in the information collection stage, the researchers did reflection and documentation study, and need analysis by using two instruments. before the two instruments were applied, the researchers reflected the teaching and learning process in phonology, morphology, and syntax subjects done by h. hustarna, m. melati 5 ijolte the researchers as the teachers of those subjects to identify the strength and the weaknesses of the teaching method, materials, and media used. besides, the researchers studied the curriculum of english education study program for ldoe subject to determine the topics that should be included in the teaching materials and competences that should be achieved by the students. the two instruments the researchers used were a questionnaire and an interview protocol. the questionnaires were adapted from some previous studies related to this research while the interview protocol was designed based on the components of a syllabus. the questionnaire distributed to students who had taken three linguistics subjects (phonology, morphology, and syntax). the interview protocol was used in interviewing with english lecturers in a focus group discussion. a need analysis questionnaire distributed after the reflection and documentation study phase conducted. the questionnaire contained 28 statements consisting of 4 aspects (topics, media and instruction, face, and suggestions for improving the quality of the teaching and learning process), and given to 92 participants. the questionnaire designed in the form of close-ended and open-ended questionnaires. the open questions were used to find out the reasons for the participants’ choices and suggestions for the improvement of the teaching and learning process quality. having collected data from the questionnaire, the researchers interviewed linguistics lecturers who have ever taught the three linguistic subjects in a forum group discussion (fgd). the head of english education study program was also invited in the discussion to give a clear explanation about the changes in the curriculum. the result of the questionnaire and interview were then used to design the prototype of the material for the ldoe subject. having finished designing the product, the researchers sent the product to an expert. the expert, in this case, was a lecturer majoring in english linguistics and having ever taught english phonology, morphology, and syntax for more than five years. the researchers revised the product based on the evaluation given by the expert. the result of this research is the prototype of the teaching materials. the analysis to determine the last form of the products only based on the validation result. 3. finding and discussion the finding of this research based on data from the questionnaire, interview, and validation from the validator. data from the questionnaire show that most students prefer to have a lecture as a teaching method for phonology, morphology, and syntax. they like to listen to the explanation from the lecturers about the lesson because they think that it is easier for them to understand it. they did not like to have a group presentation because many of them state that the explanation given by their friends sometimes make them more confused. even though “lecture’ is a traditional method which is not dominant any more in this millennial era, it is still possible to use for subjects relating to many theories like linguistic description of english subject. ‘lecture’ indeed also has some advantages. according to http/www.cidde.pitt.edu/teaching/lecture-method, “lecture provides an economical and efficient method for delivering substantial amounts of information to large numbers of students. it affords a necessary framework or overview for subsequent learning, e.g., reading assignments, small group activities, discussion. it offers current information (more up to date than most texts) from many sources. it provides a summary or synthesis of information from different sources. it creates interest in a subject as lecturers transmit enthusiasm about their discipline” (p.1). h. hustarna, m. melati 6 ijolte however, it is not clear what kind of lecture methods that the students prefer, whether didactic lectures, conventional lectures, or interactive lectures (khalid & ahmad, 2018) since the researchers did not specify it in the questionnaire. in addition to lecturing, they prefer to have a small group discussion to strengthen their comprehension of the lessons that have been delivered by the lecturer. through a group discussion, the students can share information in mutual learning. the cooperation among students will allow them to achieve a better result in the teaching-learning process. thus, in some of the activities arranged in the materials, the students will have several opportunities to do group works so they may talk each other, deliver questions to their peers and share understanding about the topics with their group members (mckimm & morris, 2009). as for assignments, they stated that they liked doing the exercise better than doing other tasks such as writing a summary or doing a project assignment. in the questionnaire, the researchers provided questions about topics that they think beneficial for them to study — the topics related to phonology, morphology, and syntax. for phonology, phonemes (segments of sounds), intonation, stress, and phonetics considered useful for them to study for the improvement of their english ability. for morphology, the topics they chose were a word and its parts: roots, affixes and their shapes, words, sentences, and dictionaries, a word and its forms: inflection, a word, and its relatives: derivation, compound words, blends and phrasal words, a word, and its structure. the choice of the topics for morphology is almost the same as that by participants in sukirman’s study (2015). in his study, the participants chose morphemes, root, inflection, and derivation, the english word, word formation, and word-formation processes, and affixes. it might be the case since those topics are the main components of morphology (katamba, 1993). meanwhile, for syntax, the topics they like were syntax and grammar, constituency, trees, and rules, and word categories. furthermore, the researcher also asked the participants that the layout of the teaching materials and the language used. they thought that the face/ performance of the teaching materials should be engaging, encouraging students to read, and the language should be simple so that the students are easier to understand the materials. in addition to the data from the questionnaire, the researchers also obtained data from an interview conducted in the focus group discussion form. the result of the fgd covers four aspects. firstly, there should be a unity of the materials, and the topics of the lessons must relate to each other. secondly, the materials relating to phonology must be taught first before morphology and syntax. they must be arranged according to the language acquisition process. the participants in the fgd though the case since before the new curriculum was released, the three linguistic subjects were taught at the same semester. hence, the students learned the concept of the three branches at the same time. as a result, the students were often confused and did not understand well the theories they learned. even just for basic things like the main concepts of phonology, morphology, and syntax, many of them sometimes do not know how to differentiate them. therefore, in learning ldoe subjects, the students need to comprehend the basic concept of language, namely analyzing sounds first before morphemes/ words, and sentences in order to enable them to analyze the language they are learning. it is in line with yule’s (2010) arguments that the acquisition process of a language starts from acquiring sounds. from those sound, infants start to combine sounds to form a word or h. hustarna, m. melati 7 ijolte wordlike form to produce a meaningful unit. after that, they start to combine words to form sentences (yule, 2010). another aspect is about the course description and objective of the lessons. those must include the integration of the three branches of linguistics. last, the teaching methods can be matched with each topic of the materials. the arrangement of topics, the content, and exercises follows the guidelines for constructivist theory (bada, 2015). it begins with the elaboration of students’ background knowledge, namely activating their existing knowledge about their language. by being more familiar with their language, the students will be able to see the application of linguistic theory as a tool to analyze languages in the world. then, throughout the content, there will be an elaboration of topics as well as guided questions that can be discussed with the lecturer and their peers. by discussing this, both teachers and students can take benefits, such as obtaining information about students’ comprehension about the material and having opportunities for students to construct knowledge together with their peers. furthermore, the assignments in the developed material contain not only questions regarding material comprehension, but also questions for analysis about language phenomena that exist globally. with this kind of exercise, the students have chances to learn with experience by making themselves familiar with analyzing language. data from the questionnaire and fgd were used to design the prototype of teaching materials for ldoe. after designing the product, the researchers asked the expert to validate it. the validation questionnaire covered statements for evaluating the contents, appearance/structure/layout, and language. the score scale used was from 1 to 4 (1= very poor, 2= poor, 3=good, 4= very good). suggestions for improvement of the product also asked in an open-ended question. for the content aspect, there were five things assessed. they were (1) the appropriateness of the learning objectives with the competences that should be achieved for ldoe subject as stated in the curriculum, (2) the appropriateness of the contents with the competences that should be achieved for ldoe subject as stated in the curriculum, (3) the appropriateness of the materials with the level of the students, (4) the appropriateness of the materials with the present era, (5) the appropriateness of activities and exercises with the need of developing english skills for the students. the result of the validation for this aspect can be seen in table 2. from table 2, it can be seen that the expert who validated the content gave4 for the first statement, 3 for statements 2, 3, 2, and 4 and 2 for statement 5. the average score for this part is 3. hence, it can be concluded that the contents of the prototype of linguistics description of english subject are good. however, the researchers still need to revise some aspects for this part to make them better, especially for the exercises given to the students. h. hustarna, m. melati 8 ijolte table 2. the result of validation for the content aspect of the prototype of teaching materials for linguistics description of english indicators statements choices 4 3 2 1 a. contents 1. the learning objectives are fit to the competencies that should be achieved for linguistics description of english subject as stated in the curriculum 4 2. the contents are fit to the competencies that should be achieved for linguistics description of english subject as stated in the curriculum 3 3. the choice of the materials is fit to the level of the students. 3 4. the materials are fit to the present era 4 5. the exercises and activities are fit to the need of developing english skill for the students. 2 for the appearance of the teaching materials, there were three things assessed. they were (1) the materials have been an organized system so that the contents have related each other, (2) the materials have been displayed chronologically, (3) the balance of the presentation of each unit is right. the result of the validation for this aspect can be seen in table 3. from table 3, it can be seen that the expert gave score 3 for all statements. the average score for this part is 3. hence, it can be concluded that the appearance of the teaching materials for ldoe subject is good. the scores in the table show that the researchers also still need to improve the quality of the appearance. the product evaluated by the expert was only two units. it might cause the validator could not see the consistency of the layout. the topics in those units also did not show the integration of the whole branches of linguistics that students should learn in ldoe subject. for the language aspect of the developed product, there were two things assessed. they were (1) the sentences used in this product are grammatically correct, and (2) the dictions are fit to the level of the students as stated in the curriculum. the result of the validation for this aspect can be seen in table 4. table 3. the result of validation for appearance aspect of the prototype of teaching materials for linguistics description of english subject indicators statements choices 4 3 2 1 b. material instructions 1. the materials have been an organized system so that the contents have related each other 3 2. the materials have been displayed chronologically 3 3. the balance of the presentation of each unit is good 3 from table 4, it can be seen that the expert also gave 3 for all statements. the average score for this part is 3. hence, it can be concluded that the language used in the prototype of the teaching materials for ldoe subject is right. even though as a whole, the expert thinks that the quality of the developed product is good, he still gave some suggestions for the improvement of the developed product. the final product is hoped can be designed by really considering the relation of the materials in this h. hustarna, m. melati 9 ijolte subject with those of the pre-requisite subject (introduction to linguistics subject) to avoid overlapping. for learning assessment, the researchers were suggested to create tasks/exercises which can measure students’ understanding of the materials and encourage students to study actively and independently. as a conclusion, the expert thinks that the developed product can be used in ldoe class with a minor revision. table 4. the result of validation for the language aspect of the prototype of teaching materials for linguistics description of english indicators statements choices 4 3 2 1 c. language aspect 1. the sentences used in this product are grammatically correct 3 2. the dictions are fit to the level of the students as stated in the curriculum (intermediate level) 3 3.1. the strength and weaknesses of the developed product the result of this research is a prototype of teaching materials for linguistics description of english (ldoe) designed using r and d research by borg and gall (1983). this research conducted by simplifying the steps of the research. the strength and weaknesses of the developed product described in the following paragraph. the prototype of teaching materials for ldoe subject has been designed by considering the result of curriculum study, the students’ need and opinion, and suggestions from both students and linguistics lecturers. therefore, this research product has covered materials with topics and exercises needed by english students to improve their english ability. also, the learning materials in this product is arranged based on the language acquisition process so that the contents will not overlap each other, and students will not get confused in learning this subject. these steps of arranging materials match with tomlinson’s main argument in his paper on framework for designing material (2013) where he emphasizes that when developing material for language teaching, one should bear in mind that the activities should match with learners’ need and wants, should be based on principles of learning language, and provide flexibility of use to both teachers and students. as mentioned, the development starts with analyzing the needs of the learners and gaining information from linguistic lecturers, followed with designing and developing the materials, and finally obtaining feedback through validation process where the result of validation process indicates that the materials can be used in the classroom. on the other hand, this developed product also still has some weaknesses. first, the steps for designing this product are not finished until the end of the step. therefore the final product is not achieved yet. second, the prototype of the teaching materials has not been tested in field testing so that the improvement of this product was only based on the expert as well as practitioner validation. next, this product also has not been tested in main field testing so that the effectiveness of this product is still unknown. finally, this product still needs some revisions to obtain the best form. h. hustarna, m. melati 10 ijolte 3.2. conclusion the materials arranged for linguistic description of english is undertaken to fulfill the need for the learning and teaching process for ldoe subject. this subject is a new subject offered in the curriculum of english education study program at universitas jambi and does not have the materials available for teaching activity in the class. by doing research and development, the material prototype has arranged that suits the need of the students as well as the lecturers. the prototype consists of two chapters about discussions on morphology and syntax. each chapter generally contains several components, namely the unit title, lesson’s objectives, unit discussion, and comprehension exercises. even though the prototype of the materials has not been tested in field testing yet, the result of validation by expert validator indicates that the prototype can be used as the representative of the whole complete materials and the researcher are allowed to continue the development process until it becomes a comprehensive material for teaching ldoe later in the class. references [1] aronoff, mark et al., 2005. what is morphology? usa: blackwell [2] bada, s. o. 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(2014). developing material for language teaching. london: bloomsbury academic http://www.siakad.unja.ac.id/ http://www.siakad.unja.ac.id/ international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9096 ijolte investigating the implementation of ict in education reformation: national instructor teachers’ perspectives thomas wahyu prabowo mukti1, veronika swanti2, mikael dian teguh3 1sanata dharma university, indonesia 2yogyakarta independent school, indonesia 3alibaba uc indonesia email authors: thomaswpm@usd.ac.id, swanti@yis-edu.org, wb-dianteguh623882@alibaba-inc.com how to cite this paper: mukti, t. w. p., swanti, v., & teguh , m. d. (2020). investigating the implementation of ict in education reformation: national instructor teachers’ perspectives. international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 13-22. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9096 received: april 18, 2020 accepted: june 19, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/ abstract to facilitate quality teachers to support individual learning and encourage students to use technology, the indonesian ministry of education has launched the national instructor teacher program. although the primary objective of the program is not limited to ict, the instructor teachers’ existence is driven by the demand for technology use in classrooms. this qualitative paper aims to investigate national instructor teachers’ perspectives toward the use of ict in education. data were gathered by interviewing two national instructor teachers from two provinces, namely jawa tengah and yogyakarta. the results of this study showed that national instructor teachers had a positive attitude towards the use of ict. they were able to share and collaborate with other teachers and could find their own solutions related to the barriers in implementing ict in their classes. the results of this study suggest that the government take a different approach in implementing the policy and support teachers forum to encourage ict usage in the classroom and teachers’ autonomy. subject areas educational policy, ict in education keywords ict implementation, national instructor teacher teacher’s perspective 1. introduction teachers are indispensable for their role in nurturing students’ success in the scope of education and never-changing world adaption. it means that teachers are significant for education in general as they https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9096 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9096 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ thomas wahyu prabowo mukti, veronika swanti, mikael dian teguh ~ 14 ~ bring quality to students’ life. however, teachers’ roles are not limited to its namesake, as it will make them no more than a pawn in the ever-growing society. ideally, teachers should be able to introduce, envision, and deliver the real world to the students (rohwati, 2012), allowing them to embrace the idea of adapting society. in short, they should embrace integrity, optimism, and work engagement. in order to realize the aforementioned idealism, learning is nonetheless obligatory for teachers. therefore, the indonesian government has required teachers to simultaneously upgrade their knowledge and skill (undang-undang nomor 14 tentang guru dan dosen, 2005). the government has provided them with a number of programs and ongoing assessments, including uji kompetensi guru (ukg/ teachers’ competency test). ukg is a set of tests that aims to measure teachers’ competence and monitor teachers’ quality. sadly, it has been underperforming, with the latest nation-wide ukg outcome in 2015 rated 56.69 out of 100 – a far cry from ideal (ditjen guru dan tenaga kependidikan, 2016, p. 9). indeed, the quality remains an unresolved problem for education in indonesia. therefore, as an effort to provide solutions to the existing quality issue, the government has launched the national instructor teacher (ditjen guru dan tenaga kependidikan, 2016, p. 10). the program takes quality-rated teachers to assist their under-par colleagues in achieving a certain standard of teaching practice. moreover, the program also employs public participation, in the likes of the regional government, professional association, university, business, and industrial sector, non-government organization, and parents. the government expects that the breakthrough program and public participation can improve education quality in general. the problem in improving education quality in modern days is the fact that digitalization has taken place, occupying all sectors. it means that increasing quality in teaching practice must come hand-in-hand with improving information and communication technology (ict) implementation. ict offers massive exploration to the sphere of teaching and learning activities, breaking the classic interface with a new borderless possibility. undeniably, it helps teachers improve their performance, which leads to a better education quality (sumintono et al., 2012) but also bigger challenges. in this sense, teachers have an important role in the integration of information and communication technology (ict) in education because teachers are the key component for learning using ict in schools (cahyani & cahyono, 2012; hermawan et al., 2018; hu & mcgrath, 2012; marwan & sweeney, 2010; prestridge, 2012; rohwati, 2012; sumintono et al., 2012). however, ict implementation in indonesia is often hampered by the fact that there are no supporting infrastructure, not enough time, and limited resources and the government policy of removing ict subject from the curriculum in (hermawan et al., 2018). it may lead teachers to the conclusion that ict may not be that significant in their classes. it can be seen from the finding that some teachers are still reluctant to implement ict in their class (harendita, 2013) including the finding that 87% of teachers (english teachers in this study) were still in beginner level based on unesco ict teacher competency framework (dwiono et al., 2018). the fact above can explain how difficult it is to implement ict in education. this is where the national instructor teachers are advised to step in. national instructor teachers, generally believed to be ideal teachers due to their teaching practice mastery, should embody the mission to integrate ict in education especially because they are far better equipped in terms of skills and facility (ditjen guru dan tenaga kependidikan, 2016). they must be the front of ict-motored education and be exemplary teachers for their colleagues – as their mission states. author, author ~ 15 ~ thus, it can be concluded that the lingering problem is not on the supporting facility, allotted time, or resources – but on the teachers’ attitude toward ict practice. this study is expected to provide ideal insights on how teachers implement ict in the classroom and find their perspective based on how they implement ict inside and outside the classrooms. this study could offer a different perspective on how ict was implemented from the perspective of national instructor teachers who are supposed to be pioneers and the first ones to be exposed with technology and pedagogical knowledge and later share the experiences to other teachers and train teachers who need help. therefore, readers could gain insight on of how government programs are conducted in the field and what obstacles that might not be considered before implementing the policy. 2. method this paper is concerned with examining national instructor teachers’ perspectives on ict in education to gain a conceptual understanding of the current state of ict implementation in the indonesian context. a qualitative method especially using interview guidelines was employed to gather the data from two national instructor teachers. this way, the researchers will be able to understand their perspective towards the implementation of ict in education. the first participant is a state junior high school teacher and she is teaching biology. she taught in central java. the first participant is coded as “ani”. the second participant is a private elementary school teacher teaching in yogyakarta. the second participant is coded as “nita”. the researchers conducted interviews with the participants more than once, either in a face-to-face setting or telephone call and limited and non-formal observation to see how the participants perceive ict for teaching. personal contact in the personal interview increases the likelihood that the individual will participate and provide the desired information (ary et al., 2010). the interviews were then recorded and transcribed. the transcripts were divided into two transcripts based on the participants and the researchers sent the transcript to participants to check if there was anything to confirm or check and as respondent validation. each researcher then analyzed the scripts using content analysis and made concise summaries of key results systematically to form themes (erlingsson & brysiewicz, 2017). after that, researchers gathered all analysis and discussed the results of each researcher for the member checking phase. the researchers checked again the data analysis therefore all members contributed to the data analysis and the knowledge construction. this phase helped researchers to make sure there was no subjectivity and the data analysis were valid (simpson & quigley, 2016). in addition, to get a deeper picture, researchers triangulate data with the observation. 3. findings and discussion in this section, the researchers would like to elaborate on how national instructor teachers deal with the implementation of information and communication technology (ict) in education. 3.1. the national instructor teachers’ perspectives on the benefits of ict teachers’ perspective on the use of ict holds a very important key to the success of ict implementation both in the class or on the school as the whole system (ertmer et al., 2012; fu, 2013; jimoyiannis & komis, 2007; prestridge, 2012). fu (2013) states that ict in education covers the assistance for students to access thomas wahyu prabowo mukti, veronika swanti, mikael dian teguh ~ 16 ~ information at ease, the support for “critical thinking development, the improvement of teaching and learning, and the support for material access” (p. 115). based on the interview, both ani and nita believed that ict was very important in their class. ani stated, ict is very important. apart from the internet, we sometimes also need information from television. for example, information about natural events or phenomena. maybe radio is also important for students because students also need to keep up to date. … for example, it is about photosynthesis or experiments do directly. we can use learning media. so, students can learn through that we cannot visualization and audio. nita also mentioned, in my opinion, technology can help class learning: the use of the internet, the use of radio may be very helpful in learning so students can see what they are learning through the help of ict. both national instructors agreed on the importance of ict and they did not limit themselves on the use of the internet but all possible ict like tv or radio: both of them still employed the “old model” media. ani even underlined that television and radio were still needed to find information related to students’ lives. nita stated that television, radio, and printed media were still relevant to be used in facilitating students learning. in addition, nita, in the interview, suggested that technology did not only cover computerized programs but it included other media used in classrooms such as laboratory apparatus for science studies. both of them also emphasized the benefit of ict especially for giving students visual aid which is very important for students' understanding (anwariningsih & ernawati, 2013). other than that, nita also added that technology, especially the internet, was very useful for teachers as it enabled them to access materials suitable for teaching. the internet had become their daily resource for classroom teaching materials. nita explained that most teachers at school could easily type on the keywords on the search menu and sort out the suggested links to worksheet or handout providers. ani also underlined the importance of ict. she stated: ict is very helpful for teachers because without ict we will be left behind from the developed countries. through the statements above, ani emphasized how important the use of ict in education was. she understood that teachers need to use the latest technologies in the classroom setting as one of the means in order to catch up with other countries. teachers’ attitude, in this case, national instructors’ attitude, becomes the concern since applying ict in the class may still become a challenge for most teachers since they have their own beliefs related to the implementation of ict as they are expected to use media for teaching students: are they really willing to apply it in the class? the belief can intersect the pedagogical belief they have already had which creates two possibilities: a ‘collision’ or ‘collusion’. both of the possibilities bring their own implications on how ict is used in the classroom (prestridge, 2012). however, they are still expected to apply, give example, and share the use of ict and its methodology in the class. teachers’ explanations showed that both of them had a positive attitude towards the use of ict in the classroom especially related to the sources from the internet. it may be also as the result of the national instructor requirement: having basic ict skills (word processor/data processor, data processor/ author, author ~ 17 ~ spreadsheet, presentation/powerpoint, internet use email, browsing, downloading and uploading data) (direktorat jenderal guru dan tenaga kependidikan, 2017). in addition, the government also facilitates those teachers to join seminars and workshops related to ict. these factors may become one of the contributing factors for teachers to form their positive attitude towards the implementation of ict in the classroom. this positive attitude is very important since they were expected to walk the talk and become the motor of this movement. 3.2. the collaboration on the use of ict the fact that both national instructor teachers have a positive attitude towards the use of ict in the classroom enables them to the further use of ict: collaboration both with students and their colleagues to make use of ict in an optimum way. one of the possibilities of ict usage in the classroom is encouraging inclusion and reflect cultural diversity on the students which depends on how teachers use it (kastuhandani, 2016). in the other hand, national instructor teachers are expected to be the source of information for other teachers and they should share what they have got to other teachers in mgmp (subject matter teacher association) forum (ditjen guru dan tenaga kependidikan, 2016) although it is limiting them from getting ideas or knowledge from other teachers. it is promising since the use of ict can help teachers share effective technology practices and experiences (fu, 2013). in the interview, ani mentioned that she followed many seminars and workshops both in the regional or national scope related to the use of ict in the classroom. further, she also mentioned that she has a responsibility to share what she learned from those seminars and workshops in mgmp forum to other teachers not only in her school. in addition, she also said that all of the teachers in the same subject needed to share whatever they got and their teaching experiences with other teachers in mgmp. thus, there would be no gap between one class to another class and bring possibilities for teachers to collaborate. nita elaborated ani’s explanation by saying that teachers could collaborate in utilizing the ict by sharing links to useful websites and might suggest material resources for teaching to other teachers. here is the role of the national instructor teachers: they need to master the ict so they can share it with other teachers. it means that they are the agent of the collaboration. in addition, the collaboration between teachers was also done through the use of report application for 2013 curriculum based on microsoft excel®, a new method of making report cards online. ani mentioned that she needed to share how to use and input data for other teachers. she stated, ..for teachers who have not mastered the it technology, i or someone else may guide and share their experiences. in this term, there will be no one who left behind but we at least try to finish the online report card. as the national instructor, they realized that they needed to also share the use of icts in the classroom and guide other teachers to support the school operations based on ict since it is very hard for other teachers to master the program. it also shows that both instructional teachers encouraged other teachers to use ict. this way, the sharing, and collaboration may carry a higher possibility for other teachers to implement icts in the classes since it may promote some important aspects such as teachers’ confidence, learning, reflection, and moral support (johnson, 2003). however, if the ict resources are insufficient or even inaccessible especially for teachers to practice skills and increase familiarity with ict, the benefits for teachers’ professional development will be only short-term (eyles, 2018). therefore, the government should address this problem especially for those who are not yet able to access and implement icts in their class. thomas wahyu prabowo mukti, veronika swanti, mikael dian teguh ~ 18 ~ 3.3. the support of the use of ict in the school context the use of icts also needs supports from other components in and outside the school context. the school management, government, and private sectors can contribute to the use of ict in the class. in this study, both ani and nita felt being supported by the school and the government. they mentioned, the school is very supportive because the principal is technology literate. so, whatever we ask, if the school is able to buy, it will be granted. for example, we have had a projector in all classes. then, if the internet bandwidth is still not enough, the school will add it. (ani) schools are quite supportive with the use of today's technology by projector, viewers, internet in each class. however, computers and printers are not yet available in each class. (nita). in addition, ani and nita also told the support from the government, the magelang government itself is very supportive. so, each sub rayon is taken one. the condition is that one of them is for the highest national examination academic scores in sub rayon. …it is only for sekolah unggul (exemplary schools based on the government data) … funding for each school seems like if i am not mistaken 500 million but the one managing (the budgetary) is not a school but the department is cooperating with central java educational quality assurance agency... (ani) in my opinion, the government is quite supportive of the use of today's technology, but it needs to be improved. for example, there is training or workshop of the use of renewable technology, how to access learning material that is fast, valid and easy for teachers, etc. (nita) based on ani’s explanation, she felt that the school supported her effort in implementing icts in her classes. she gave some examples of how the school is supportive although she actually still found some problems. on the other hand, nita highlighted the school support especially in terms of the facility provided for her and other teachers. in addition, government support was also quite adequate based on ani’s explanation. they have allocated the budget for ict needs in each school. however, from ani’s explanation, it can be inferred that the budget was still centralized in the central java educational quality assurance agency and it was only for exemplary schools, not yet for all schools. the government actually had also provided training for some teachers related to the implementation of updated technology and how to access valid learning resources easily and quickly. however, it seems that not every teacher got the chance or information or they were not willing to do so. infrastructure might also become one of the problems. the support is not yet even and it seems that the government still focused on the exemplary schools as the pioneers; not yet all schools. this condition also shows that the centralization policy needs to be revisited by looking at what happens on the grassroots. it seems that the government has not done the research on the schools’ systems and the environment through fully that the support given is still considered not yet adequate. this topdown approach is problematic since we can still find the lack of sufficient ict resources for teachers and students, limited ict skills of both teachers and students and limited training opportunities for teachers (hu & mcgrath, 2012) as we can see in this study. ani comparison to this is the studies that show countries like saudi arabia, india, and uganda uses similar approach (albugami & ahmed, 2015) and it leads to the situation where ict is not fully utilized and teachers become more reluctant since the condition does not meet., therefore, the government needs to be aware of the complexity of the implementation and author, author ~ 19 ~ understand the fact that this process is indeed “fluid, non-linear, reiterative process” (younie, 2006, p. 399). 3.4. the barriers in using icts in the school context both national instructor teachers believed that the use of ict was indispensable for this moment however, they still found some barriers in implementing the ict in their classroom. the barriers and solutions the national instructor teachers are as follows, first, they underlined the technical problems regarding the implementation of icts in the classroom. ani mentioned, … unstable network. so, we need to be patient. therefore, a teacher must not depend on ict but must also look for alternatives, (especially) if the internet is not connected because that happens often. not only that but sometimes the laptop also cannot connect to the lcd and sometimes there is no operator. so, the teacher must cancel plan 1 and replace it with plan 2 both with the learning model for example discovery learning and then the method of discussion, then the students to present (their findings). nita also shared almost similar experiences: difficulties that i have encountered in using technology are internet network sometimes has errors, limited speakers, power outages, and so on. both ani and nita emphasized that internet connection was still the problem. in addition, the problem was also related to the hardware used to support their teaching. ani realized that she should not depend on the internet connection or bandwidth. she believed that teachers should always prepare some alternatives for teaching. however, she still hoped that the government provides a better internet connection. thus, teachers and students will retrieve information faster and easier. it means that the problem related to the infrastructure is not yet solved since 2004 as mentioned by yuhetty who mentioned that ict is the poor condition of the infrastructure, in terms of quantity and also quality (yuhetty, 2004). second, not all teachers could implement ict, even use it. some teachers are not able to use icts because they are not used to it. most teachers currently teaching are digital immigrants who are not yet fully able to understand how to operate things in this all-internet era. it confirms dwiono, rochsantiningsih, and suparno's study (2018) that show teachers can only use the basic function in a limited number of computer applications. in addition, they also still need to understand how the digital natives, their students, fit the ict in their lives (wulandari & pasaribu, 2020) so they can utilize the ict for students’ needs. however, although there were still some problems related to the implementation, both the government and the participants actually also offered some solutions to these problems: … for teachers who are less it literate, i try to guide them using the application and share some information. usually, the representatives chosen by the department, our follow-up plan are then told to socialize to the sub rayon level so that knowledge is not only for one teacher but also useful for other teachers. what we usually do is a collaboration with teachers who are in one subject. we have subject matter teacher association (mgmp). for example, pak x will get x learning application, so all teachers must have it. so that all students have equitable knowledge. thomas wahyu prabowo mukti, veronika swanti, mikael dian teguh ~ 20 ~ the information above shows that teachers still have positive attitudes related to the condition and they know that they need to share what they got from the government workshop or seminar with other teachers. however, some teachers still could not utilize ict in their school since the school’s budget was not sufficient. ani previously mentioned that the government provided some big amounts of money for the development of ict in the school however it was not yet evenly distributed. infrastructure for ict implementation was not a big problem for the exemplary schools which normally have a big budget from the government. however, some state and private schools did not have that budget to equip the school with ict. it is a problem but it could not be denied that the teachers’ support, in the form of teacher forums, helps the teachers to get insights on how ict could be implemented in their schools. although some teachers may not yet be able to implement the technology in the class, at least they have the knowledge related to how to use them and relevant information on the usage of icts and it may give teachers hope that later on, they can use the icts in their own class. third, inappropriate content on the internet that may affect students’ mental was somehow out of teachers’ control. ani happened to find a student who accessed some pornography contents on the internet instead of finding information. she also said that when the school did some inspections, they found that some students had a lot of pornographic pictures on their phones. thus, she realized that teachers need to control and monitor the students. although the school had already had the operator, they still needed to control the information that students got from the internet. in this case, the government is the fittest party to control. 4. conclusion and suggestion the two national instructor teachers believed that the use of ict in education was indispensable. ict can provide a lot of alternatives and help teachers provide better information and understanding. ict also improves students’ engagement as they get more interested in learning using audio-visual media. they also believe that by implementing ict, indonesia will be able to catch up with other developed countries. however, there were some problems related to the implementation of icts in education. they were the technical problems, the inadequate infrastructure and resources, and their control to the students' internet access. the technical problems were related to the electricity and sometimes the ict tools did not work while a more serious issue in the inadequate infrastructure and resources was related to the lack of schools facility that can support current methods offered using ict like no lcd projector, slow internet connection, and no reliable sources for teaching. the teacher control was still one of the problems, especially the control on what websites students can access. the results of this study show technology implementation in national instructor teachers who were supposed to be the pioneers of government programs classrooms. it gave us pictures on how indonesian teachers were still struggling to migrate from traditional learning to the learning needed in this era. it turned out the facility was still the main problem and not all schools had the same chance as other schools so that it was very difficult for national instructor teachers to train other teachers. this research may also become the preliminary data for researchers who wanted to compare how technology was perceived and integrated in the classroom from time to time. therefore, based on the findings, the researchers believe that the government and other components should provide more supports for the implementation of ict in the school. the government needs to author, author ~ 21 ~ provide better facilities and resources not only in urban areas but also in rural and isolated areas around indonesia. in addition, training on the use of technology or gadgets and how to incorporate technology, especially the current ones, for students’ needs very vital. even when teachers are able to use the ict in the class, they may not meet students’ needs due to the lack of understanding of how things are done differently both by the teachers as digital immigrants and students as digital natives. this lack of understanding can cause friction (wulandari & pasaribu, 2020). it is suggested that teachers themselves need to individually improve their knowledge and skills in the use of ict in the classroom or being more autonomous. teachers are also required to be able to manage the information from the internet and learn their students' characteristics so that they can meet students' needs and, in the end, help them to be more autonomous (ardi, 2017; pasaribu, 2020). due to the limitation of this research underlying the implementation of icts in education through national instructor teachers’ perspectives, future researchers are suggested to conduct research focusing on the whole school teachers’ perspectives, the students’ perspectives, or the government’s perspectives. it is also suggested to conduct research evaluating the use of icts at school related to other aspects of education including students’ self-regulated learning, teachers’ or students’ motivation, students’ performance, or teachers’ collaboration. 5. acknowledgments we would like to thank the national instructor teachers who were willing to spend their time on this study and appreciate their willingness to keep learning and using ict in their class and to the editor for the constructive feedbacks. references albugami, s., & ahmed, v. 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(2004). ict and education in indonesia. proceedings asia and the pacific seminar, 50. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan011286.pdf paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 02, no 2, july issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.5065 157 ijolte the language attitudes of minangkabau people towards minangkabau and indonesian language temmy thamrin bung hatta university, padang, indonesia email: temmy_hariri@yahoo.co.id how to cite this paper: thamrin, t. (2018). the language attitudes of minangkabau people towards minangkabau and indonesian language. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(2), 157-175. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i2.506 5 received: may 16,2018 accepted: june 22, 2018 published: july 31,2018 copyright © 2018 by author and ijolte this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract this paper examines the language attitudes of minangkabau people toward minangkabau language (min) and indonesian (bi) in west sumatra, indonesia. the data were collected in the form of questionnaires, in-depth interviews and participant observation with a sample of 200 adult respondents in six research areas. this research uses a likert scale with the categories classified into five alternatives (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = uncertain, 4 = agree, and 5= strongly agree) and there are some tables analyzed based on yes/no questions, no=0 and yes=1. there are twelve questions on the questionnaire pertaining to the attitudes of adults. the results show that the adult attitudes can be classified into three categories, (1) positive; (2) negative; and (3) ambivalent attitudes. the third category is dominant. the term ‘ambivalent” is used for intermediate results. it is shown that the respondents expressed their feeling in both positive and negative comments in the same utterance when answering the questions related to min. for these responses, it is seen that there is a mixed feeling where they use “but” or “although” after expressing their positive feelings thereby countering their first statement. the evidence of the ambivalent and mixed feelings from respondents is shown. this means that minangkabau people tend to avoid the conflict of having negative opinions; they tend to say what they mean in more indirect ways. on the other side, there is a positive attitude in response to the questions about bi. majority of respondents have very strong positive attitudes towards bi. subject areas sociolinguistics keywords language attitudes, minangkabau language, and ambivalent responses 1. introduction there are several reasons why the study of language attitudes is important in sociolinguistics, because a positive or negative attitude can influence linguistic behavior in a community. attitudes can affect the language choice in that community, likely future changes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ temmy thamrin 158 ijolte in language use, and language loyalty (see melander, 2003: 2, obiols, 2002). this study can identify how people’s feel and view about language in general, their own language and others’ languages as well. there are a variety of feelings and attitudes towards their own language. these may be positive or less positive attitudes. some examples of positive attitudes are that people are very proud of their own language; they feel that their own language shows their identity and feel that it is the best language to be used in the family or society. however, on the other hand, there are also less positive attitudes towards the native language. some people or communities feel that their language is not prestigious, and they are shy to speak their native language because it is considered as a low prestige language. the aim of this research is to describe the role of attitudes towards two languages, minangkabau as the local language and indonesian as the official language. specifically, this research observes language attitudes among adults minangkabau people. one of the most important discussions about the language attitudes of min in the past decades is in anwar (1985). anwar describes the problem of language attitudes and use between indonesian and regional languages including the use of indonesian by minangkabau people in west sumatra. in his old data, the use of min and attitude of minangkabau people towards min is different from the present situation. he says that “the minangkabau do not normally use indonesian in the home no matter what the topic of the conversation is but speak in minangkabau throughout because that is the proper language to be used at home. an educated minangkabau does not even use indonesian if it is carried out in informal situations” (1985: 155). furthermore, he says “a minangkabau who tries to use indonesian all the time when speaking to other minangkabau is normally regarded as a crank or even crazy” (1985: 156). the picture of the language situation at that time indicated that people have positive attitudes and preferred to use min rather than bi. this situation contrasts with the situation that is found at present in west sumatra. parents mostly teach bi as the first language to their children. in other words, bi is becoming the home language and the predominant language in other domains of language use. as a native min citizen from west sumatra province, the researcher has great concern about the language choices and language attitudes of minangkabau people, since most of the younger generation does not tend to use min as their primary language for communication because most adults and parents do not give their children the opportunity to speak this language at home. this phenomenon impelled the researcher to do the research on language attitudes. minangkabau is one of the main ethnic groups of indonesia, considered as the fourth biggest major ethnic group of indonesia after javanese, sundanese and madurese (steinhauer, 1994: 759). information from the 2014 census shows the total population in west sumatra is 5,098,790. most minangkabau people are bilingual or even multilingual (marnita, 2011: 299). in standard sources, min has not been listed as an endangered language in indonesia. in the latest edition of the ethnologue (2013), the status of this language is 5 (developing) in the egids scale. this means “the language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustainable” (ethnologue, 2013). moreover, in the report for language development, it is stated that this language is taught in primary schools in grades 1 and 2 (ethnologue, 2013); however, this statement is incorrect. according to my observations and having interviewed primary school teachers from different areas in west sumatra to cross check this information, all of them stated that min is not taught in primary schools. temmy thamrin 159 ijolte the only one subject related to minangkabau culture, named budaya alam minangkabau (the culture of minangkabau nature), is taught in years 4 to 6. in this subject, students learn how to respect the traditional culture, they learn the values and the beliefs of minangkabau people, and how to interact within minangkabau society; it is more concerned with the minangkabau culture and there is no teaching of min itself. therefore, it can be said that min is not taught in formal education. even though the number of speakers of min is great, with approximately more than 5 million speakers, it does not mean that this language is not at risk. if the local people do not have positive attitudes, the number of speakers of this language might decrease and the language, which is regarded as “a safe or a healthy language”, might become “endangered”. some facts show that a language that has many speakers can be at risk. this can be seen in a recent study of children’s language in bilingual community in east java. in his dissertation, setiawan (2013) did comprehensive research of the language use and attitudes of children in a javanese bilingual community. oglobin (2005), as cited in setiawan (2013: 300), claimed that javanese is spoken by 40% of the indonesian population, which means that if the population in indonesia is approximately 238 million, javanese is spoken by around 95 million people (setiawan, 2013: 301). his findings show that the use of javanese language has declined because children’s proficiency in indonesian is better and javanese parents do not promote javanese language as the children’s first language. these results are in line with those of ravindranath and cohn (2014) who also did research into the symptomatic language shift in the javanese of younger speakers. by looking at the condition of the language with the largest speakers in indonesia, the researcher assumed that this might also be happening with the minangkabau language when the native language is not maintained, it can eventually become lost. 2. literature review language is not just an instrument of communication; it is also a symbol of social or group identity (grosjean, 1982: 117). in some community where different languages coexist, language attitudes play an important role in the lives of the speakers of the language. if there is a different judgment or feeling in the community towards a language, this will be shown in the attitudes of the community towards the language itself. for example, some people may feel ashamed of speaking their local language and may believe that the best language is the national language because it is the way to achieve a better life. they may feel that the national language is more prestigious, and that the local language is not appropriate to be taught to children as their first language. they may even feel that the best language is the national language because by having the ability to speak the national language, children will have a better opportunity to get a good job in the future. each of these beliefs can affect people’s attitudes towards languages, especially towards a native language. over many years, studies have shown that positive attitudes towards the local language can lead to the maintenance of the language itself (libster & dailey-o’cain, 2009; ehala & niglas, 2006; kuncha & bathula, 2004; garrett, coupland, & williams, 2003; coady, 2001; ladegaard, 2000). the recent studies cited here discuss language attitudes in different places and different domains. they show that people’s attitudes toward language and individual identity have a strong effect on the maintenance of a language, and on any potential revitalization of the language. temmy thamrin 160 ijolte kuncha and bathula (2004) discussed the role of attitude in language shifts and language maintenance in a new immigrant community in new zealand. the study investigated the language attitudes of mothers and children in the telugu community and observed how they were losing their language while living in an english-speaking country. there are five majors areas are discussed: a) language proficiency, b) attitude towards english, c) attitude towards telugu, d) attitude towards bilingualism and e) language maintenance. the study shows that for the language proficiency, the use of telugu language is greater in reading and writing skills than in speaking and listening skills. it is hardly to find that any of the children used telugu. both mothers and children have positive attitude towards english. they felt ‘proud’ to use the english language. the response to the question about attitudes towards telugu indicate that there is mix feeling where in one side both of respondents have positive attitudes towards this language, while on the other said, they do not feel that telugu is not necessary to be learned. for the attitude towards bilingualism, it indicates that there is shift from telugu to english. in the language maintenance, it indicates that there is such a negative attitude the language maintenance. the results of this study almost the same with the findings of my research where the minangkabau society felt ‘proud’ to their language, but they felt that min is not necessary to be learnt. it is clear that ‘necessity’ and ‘pride’ have been the two influencing factors of language shift ehala and nigelas (2006: 209-277) observed the language attitudes of estonian secondary school students. they argue that “globalization has changed the immediate communication domain from a national state level to a transnational level. because of this global change, the traditional understanding of ethnolinguistic vitality may no longer be entirely adequate”. moreover, they mention that ideological issues regarding group identity become the key that determines which communities retain their language and which are to lose it in the future. there are many reasons why attitude is a fundamental issue (baker, 1992: 9-10). concerning the life of a language, baker explains that “attitudes to that language appear to be important in language restoration, preservation, decay, or death. if a community is grossly unfavorable to bilingual education or the imposition of a “common” national language attempted, language policy implementation is unlikely to be successful”. moreover, baker mentions that a survey of attitudes provides an indicator of current community thoughts and beliefs, preferences, and desires. further, baker says that language attitude is an umbrella term, which can focus on various specific types of attitudes. he gives eight examples of the most frequently discussed topics in language attitude research (baker, 1992: 29; duan, 2004: 17). these are as follows: 1. attitude to language variation, dialect and speech style 2. attitude to learning a new language 3. attitude to a specific minority language 4. attitude to language groups, communities and minorities 5. attitude to language lessons 6. attitude to the uses of specific language 7. attitude of parents to language learning 8. attitude to language preference from the eight topics above, three are strongly seen in my research study: attitude to minangkabau groups, communities and minorities; attitudes of parents to language learning, where most minangkabau parents do not teach min to their children; and attitudes temmy thamrin 161 ijolte about language preferences, where in west sumatra, bi is the preferred language in most domains discussed in this study. according to baker (1992: 41), age, gender, schooling, ability, language background, and cultural background affect whether one’s attitude towards the local language is favorable or unfavorable. each of these indicators will now be looked at in turn. for his age indicator, baker gives examples from his research in 1988, showing that positive attitudes to the welsh language among young welsh people aged between 10 and 15 years were changing at the time. he found an inverse relationship: as age goes up, the favorability of attitude towards welsh comes down. this is unlike the situation in minangkabau society, where the attitude of adults about min is in decline and the preference to teach bi is increasing. gender can also affect language attitudes (baker, 1992: 42). baker illustrates this situation, showing that girls had more favorable attitudes towards the welsh language than boys. the present study found the opposite case in preferences for using bi and min. my research findings show that it is the girls, especially in the city, who prefer to use bi when they speak with other girls. however, when the girls speak to boys, they use more min. conversely, when boys speak to girls they prefer to use bi, while boys prefer to use min with other boys. the educational context may also bring changes in language attitudes (baker, 1992: 43). attitudes to language use can be influenced by school. because of the language policy in indonesia, the government’s preference for having bi as the main medium for instruction is positively affecting people’s attitudes towards bi. ability or proficiency in a language can also affect language attitudes (baker, 1992: 44). this happens when children learn a dominant language such as bi as their first language. automatically, the proficiency of the speakers who learn bi as their first language is higher than among those who learn it as a second language. people’s degree of fluency in a language will affect language attitudes. another factor that may affect the attitude formation is people’s language background, for example the language usage of family, community, and the density of language use in the neighborhood. these may be influential in attitude formation (baker, 1992: 44). the last factor suggested by baker is cultural background. cultural activities such as religion, reading and watching or listening to media in a language may also affect the preference for using a language (baker, 1985; baker, 1992: 45). the attitude of a speech community towards its languages is the crucial factor in language maintenance (bradley, 2002: 1). moreover, bradley mentions that there are three social factors in language attitudes: domains of language use, network for language use, and the degree of accommodation towards the speech of the interlocutor (2002: 4). in terms of domains of language use, speakers might feel that a language is appropriate for a domain of language use. the preference for using a language depends on the context. contact and interaction between people in a social network is another major factor in language maintenance. in some cases, there are some ethnic groups who have more closed social networks, while others have social networks that are more open as they have more communication with outsiders (bradley, 2002: 5). this network pattern can affect the rapidity of changing or shifting to a language. the third factor is accommodation to the speech of the interlocutor. if in one community the people are open to receiving the new culture, and more outsiders are coming, there is more need to adjust to the new culture, which will affect language attitudes and language choice. temmy thamrin 162 ijolte positive attitudes about the local language in the speech community might help its survival, while negative attitudes might lead to a language shift (setiawan, 2013: 34). there is evidence that positive attitudes towards the local language can help the revival of a language, as cited in bradley (2001: 7), crystal (2002) has reported the success of the welsh revival over the last thirty years and the recent efforts to revitalize basque in spain. harlow (2005: 136) has reported that the maori language commission evaluated revival efforts for maori language in 1995 with 2,400 respondents. this shows that the maori people have positive attitudes towards their language, not only among adults but also among youth. less positive attitudes towards local languages can be seen in the research done by some scholars in indonesia. kasih (2005) examined the language shift from javanese to indonesian that is taking place in java, indonesia. she reported that the language choices of parents, mothers as the main caregivers in the family, could contribute to language attitudes. despite the efforts and energy of the local government in promoting javanese in schools, this study shows that the children, and particularly girls from middleclass backgrounds, prefer indonesian to javanese and appear to have less favorable attitudes towards javanese than children from working-class backgrounds. another recent study about javanese children’s attitudes towards the javanese language has been reported by setiawan (2013). in his study, he examined the children in a bilingual community in east java. the results are very surprising: most of his respondents judge javanese negatively and indonesian positively. the respondents consider that javanese is difficult, old fashioned and not a “cool” language. they also believe that javanese does not give self-confidence and prestige to its speakers. it is the language of the poor and the village language. the respondents also believe that it is not a language for science, technology, or business. on the contrary, positive attitudes towards indonesian are given in every statement. there is some correlation between findings in this study and my findings about minangkabau people attitude towards min. anderbeck (2010) examined language use and attitudes in two jambi malay communities near the capital city, jambi, of jambi province in sumatra, a region where many minority languages are at risk of language shift in the context of a rapidly changing society. this is near the minangkabau area in west sumatra. the findings of the study show that the young and the educated generally have lower usage of jambi malay and less positive attitudes towards it, while the women tend to have higher usage of jambi malay and more positive attitudes towards it. marnita (2006), in a study on language attitudes about minangkabau in relation to the use of minangkabau formal speech levels and the choice of medium for informal education, shows that the language profile in minangkabau can be divided into homogeneous and heterogeneous areas. the people who live in homogenous areas still maintain the use of min, especially with adults and older villagers, while those who live in the heterogeneous areas have a shift of language use towards bi among youths and adults. moreover, marnita demonstrates further evidence that most youth are considered to lack understanding of minangkabau formal speech levels and proverbs. in line with marnita’s study, oktavianus (2005), in his comprehensive research on minangkabau proverbs, shows that of 880 respondents in urban and suburban areas, only 30% to 50% of youth aged 20-25 can understand minangkabau proverbs. as my findings, the lack of understanding about minangkabau culture, such as proverbs, is not only found among youth but also among young parents, who ask their children to go to the older people (grandparents) if they have difficulty understanding minangkabau culture. oktavianus suggests that the parents have a role in transmitting the native language and temmy thamrin 163 ijolte avoiding difficulties in understanding it, but in my study this role has been passed on to grandparents. 3. method there are many alternative methods for measuring individual attitudes, including thurstone & chave (1929), likert (1932), guttman’s scalogram analysis, the semantic differential technique, the repertory grid technique, factor analysis and sociometry (baker, 1992: 17). according to baker (1992:17-18), one of the most popular methods of attitude measurement is to produce an attitude scale composed of statements for which responses may be “agree” or “disagree” or are measured using a five point scale: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree. following baker’s method, the researcher created questions that are designed to assess attitudes towards min and attitudes towards bi. the answers are represented by the numbers 1 to 5, showing a range of responses from “no opinion” to “strongly agree”. the response scale is as follows: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = uncertain, 2 = disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree. other questions in this section are designed to get information on participants’ opinions about learning min as the first language, in the form of yes/no questions. in this section of the survey, participants are also asked to fill in blank spaces by writing their own reasons for “yes” or “no” answers. besides using questionnaire, other methods used in the process of data collection included participant observation and in-depth interviews. as labov (1972: 32) states, “the effort to observe how speakers talked when they were not being observed is the observer's paradox. among the partial solutions to this paradox within the face-to-face interview, the elicitation of narratives of personal experience proved to be the most effective”. the researcher used both methods to try to observe various phenomena, using participant observation for data that could not be obtained through questionnaires and formal interviews. observation method is one of the important methods for studying language attitudes in the society. by having the data from observation method, the researcher can cross check the data given by informants through the questionnaire. an in-depth interview was used to explore important information regarding the sociological variables that the researcher expected would correlate with the participant’s attitudes and behavior. the researcher especially tried to get participants to tell me about their opinions on the min and bi language, which language they prefer and asked the parents who speak bi exclusively to their children why they have chosen this language for communication. as quoted from (boyce, c., & neale, p. 2006: 3). in-depth interviewing is a qualitative research technique that involves conducting intensive individual interviews with a small number of respondents to explore their perspectives on an idea, program, or situation. in-depth interviews are useful when you want detailed information about a person’s thoughts and behaviours or want to explore new issues in depth. interviews are often used to provide context to other data (such as outcome data), offering a more complete picture of what happened in the program and why. the researcher was mainly able to interview mothers. according to kuncha and bathula (2004:3) mothers have the main role in introducing and maintaining culture, tradition, and language to their children. therefore, their role is very important. temmy thamrin 164 ijolte to investigate the language attitudes in the minangkabau community and how the language is maintained, the researcher collected data in six research locations in west sumatra, three from high language contact areas (cities): padang (pdg), bukittinggi (bkt), and payakumbuh (pyk). i also collected data from three lower language contact areas (regencies): muaro sijunjung (msj), pulau punjug (ppj), and lubuk sikaping (lbs). table 3.1. demographic information of respondents based on sex, age, and occupation groups sex n % age range occupation n % adult female 102 51 35 60 years old government officers 79 39 private officers 65 32 house wives 35 18 male 98 49 traders 16 8 farmers 5 3 total respondents 200 100 200 100 4. findings and discussions the opinions, feelings, and ideas about min and bi reflect respondents’ attitudes about these languages. positive attitudes in transmitting and learning min will allow min to be maintained, thereby sustaining local heritage. a general attitude can be calculated by comparing the results of adults’ attitudes towards min and bi. these findings answer the following three main research questions: 1. what are the attitudes of adults toward minangkabau language and indonesian language? 2. do adults have positive attitudes towards their own language? 3. do adults have different attitudes towards minangkabau language? these participants answered the questionnaire that deal directly with the main three questions about attitudes towards language listed above. the attitudes of people about their local language play a very important role in the maintenance and the vitality of that language. the language that is spoken most often in the family this is the question about the language is spoken most often in the family. this result is the combination of two different questions from the survey. the question about the best language used and the most often language used at home. since the results almost identical, the researcher combines these two questions into one table finding. the following table shows the preferred language used in the families of respondents from the six research locations. temmy thamrin 165 ijolte table 4.1. the language that is spoken most often in the family these results from the adult group show that in four locations, these adults believe that they speak bi more often and better than min. the highest percentage of respondents who reported that they use bi most often in their home is in pdg. 79% respondents reported that bi is the language used most often in their family. in bkt, pyk, and lbs, most respondents also said that bi is the best language for them: 75% in bkt, 62% in pyk, and 69% in lbs. however, in msj and ppj, the adults reported that the language used most often is min. by looking at the data, no substantial difference can be found between the numbers of respondents who use min and the number of those who use bi in msj and ppj. the next question in the set of language attitude questions is whether minangkabau sounds friendly. the reason for the question, which relates to feelings, is because the tendency of people to use min, especially in high language contact areas, is low or, in other words, it is not preferred. during interviews, when participants are asked why they do not use min for daily speaking. the following are some statements from my respondents who mentioned that min is not good to listen to. majority the respondents mention these reasons, when the researcher asked this question. 1. saya sering mendengar orang yang berbahasa minang dengan mengucapkan carut, seperti yang di ucapkan oleh preman-preman dan orang-orang yang tidak bersekolah. saya khawatir kalau anak-anak meniru ucapan-ucapan kasar seperti itu. “i often hear minang speakers who use swearwords like what the gangsters or uneducated people uttered. i am very worried that my children will imitate and say those rude words”. (er, 45 years) 2. ambo ndak mangatokan bahaso awak ko ndak elok, tapi kadang-kadang tadanga agak saketek kareh. ndak lamak didanga dek anak-anak. ‘i do not say that our “language is not good, but sometimes it sounds very loud. it is not good if the children listen to it”. (amr, 39 years) the following table shows the respondent’s feelings about whether min sounds friendly. languages pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) total (%) minangkabau 21 25 38 59 59 31 42.5 indonesian 79 75 62 41 41 69 57.5 temmy thamrin 166 ijolte table 4.2. minangkabau sounds friendly scales pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) 1. strongly disagree 24 0 18 0 0 3 2. disagree 34 31 27 38 19 22 3. uncertain 26 56 41 22 50 59 4. agree 16 13 15 38 28 16 5. strongly agree 0 0 0 3 3 0 table 4.3. indonesian sounds friendly scales pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) 1. strongly disagree 0 0 0 0 0 0 2. disagree 0 0 6 0 6 0 3. uncertain 3 3 6 13 0 3 4. agree 71 78 53 88 94 88 5. strongly agree 26 19 35 0 0 9 it is apparent from table 4.2 that different areas have different thoughts about whether minangkabau sounds friendly. in pdg, majority of respondents, 34% stated that they disagree that min sounds friendly. in another three areas, most respondents are uncertain whether min is friendly or not. the only area that shows a positive agreement that min is polite is ppj, where the highest percentage of respondents in this place chose scale 4 (28%). it is also evident that there is no substantial difference between the positive and negative attitudes of adults. results show that there is a mixed attitude towards min. the ambivalent attitudes from the respondents suggest that people avoid sensitive issues with a neutral answer. comparing to table 4.3 only a few respondents reported that they do not agree that bi sounds friendly. more than half of the respondents from all areas chose scale 4, agreeing that bi sounds friendly. this data also shows that all of respondents from all areas have similar attitudes toward bi. the highest number of responses is in scale 4, agreeing that bi sounds friendly. people have a very positive attitude towards bi. compared with table 4.2 that shows people’s attitudes towards the sound of min, it appears that people have a more positive attitude towards the sound of bi than min. overall data shows that adults have stronger positive attitudes about bi as a friendly language. table 4.4. minangkabau should be taught as the first language answer pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) no 63 69 59 47 38 56 yes 37 31 41 53 63 44 in table 4.4, the pattern continues in this section about whether min should be taught as the first language to children; respondents continue to have a less positive response. four temmy thamrin 167 ijolte areas (pdg, bkt, pyk, and lbs) have a negative response. more than half of the respondents from these four areas answered “no”. however, in msj and ppj, respondents gave more positive responses by answering, “yes”. in msj, 53% respondents agree that min should be taught to a child as the first language, while 47% disagree. overall, 111 (55.5%) respondents do not believe that min should be taught as the first language, while 89 (44.5%) agree. besides giving yes/no questions, the researcher asked the respondents to write the reasons why they answer yes or no. the following table is a summary of the reasons why adults answered “no”. table 4.5. the reasons of a ‘no’ answer comments n % 1. min is not a global language. 20 18 2. if min is taught as the first language, the children will find difficulties at school. it will difficult for them to learn bi when they grow up. 25 23 3. min can be learned from the society; the children can speak min when they grow up. they can learn it in the society. 8 7 4. min is not a formal language. it is only a local language and only used in west sumatra. 10 9 5. bi is more important because it is the official language 15 14 6. bi is politer than min and it sounds good for communication. 23 21 7. not many people understand min; it is better to learn the language that can be spoken by many people in indonesia. 10 9 total 111 100 according to the table above, most respondents mentioned that bi is more important than min because it is used as media instruction at school, it is politer, min is not a global language but only a local language, and that bi is more widely-spoken than min, as well as other comments. the following table shows a list of comments about why min should be taught to young people as the first language: temmy thamrin 168 ijolte table 4.6. the reasons of a ‘yes’ answer comments n % 1. to respect our local culture 9 10 2. min is my native language. 19 21 3. because i live in minangkabau 20 22 4. it is my identity. 15 17 5. i am minangkabau and you are not minangkabau if you cannot speak min. 18 20 6. to speak with other people who live in minangkabau, such as family or relative 8 9 total 89 100 a range of reasons why respondents think that min should be taught as the first language can be seen from in table 7. the most popular reasons are that that they are living in minangkabau, min is a native language, that min is their identity, that children need to be able to speak to other family members, and that children should respect the local culture. to fully understand the attitudes of respondents towards these two languages, the question of whether bi should be taught to children as their first language was asked. responses to this question can be compared with results for the previous section on whether min should be taught as the first language. table 4.7. indonesian should be taught as the first language answer pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) no 13 31 38 47 66 19 yes 87 69 62 53 34 81 comparing to the question in table 4.7, majority of respondents from five areas (pdg, bkt, pyk, msj, and lbs) agree that bi should be a child’s first language, while in (ppj), most respondents don’t agree. overall, there are 130 (65.0%) respondents who have positive responses and 70 (35.0%) who answered negatively. more than two thirds of all believe that bi should be taught to a child as their first language. similarly, with the question about min, the researchers also asked the respondents give the reasons why they answer yes or no. the following is the reasons of ‘yes’ responses. temmy thamrin 169 ijolte table 4.8. the reasons of a ‘yes’ response. comments n % 1. bi is a formal and official language. 16 12 2. it will be easier to communicate with people who are not minangkabau. 19 15 3. bi should be learned since you are young, so that you will be more fluent when you grow up. fluency in bi is important for finding a job. 26 20 4. to understand school more easily 23 18 5. bi is a polite language. 21 16 6. bi is the preparation for merantau ‘area outside the minangkabau heartland’ 12 9 7. it is a trend to use bi now and it is used by modern people 13 10 total 130 100 from the table above, there are some reasons that are given by a high number of participants. these include reasons such as that bi is used at school, that bi is important for finding a job, that bi is a polite language, that bi is a formal, that bi is a lingua franca, that using bi is a trend and more modern, and that bi is used for merantau. of the respondents who believe that bi should not be taught as the first language, the following comments are given: table 4.9. the reasons of a ‘no’ response. comments n % 1. bi can be learnt at school. 16 23 2. we live in minangkabau; bi is not the majority language. 14 20 3. we are minangkabau people, min is more important 19 27 4. nowadays, the teenagers use bi; i wonder that the young generation cannot speak min for the future. therefore, min should be learnt as the first language at this moment. 9 13 5. bi is not our mother tongue. 12 17 total 70 100 from the table above, we can see that the majority of “no” responses are given because min is their native language, so bi should not be taught as the first language, also because bi can be learned at school, and because bi is not the local language. interestingly, some respondents who realize that bi is used by the younger generation nowadays express a fear that young people will not be able to use min anymore. another interesting question about the attitudes of people toward min is the use of kato nan ampek. as mentioned in the earlier discussion about kato nan ampek, this term refers to the registers for politeness, or etiquette to the different statuses of interlocutors (see chapter 3). kato nan ampek is about speaking with good manners. temmy thamrin 170 ijolte table 4.10. kato nan ampek should be taught to children answer pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) no 21 3 0 0 0 0 yes 79 97 100 100 100 100 after learning that there is a negative response and mixed feelings about the min language, results for this section are surprising. the data shows that almost all respondents answered very positively about whether kato nan ampek should be taught to children. the positive response pattern is found for the adults. in four areas (pyk, msj, ppj, and lbs) all respondents answered, “yes”, while in bkt, only 3% respondents answered “no”, and in pdg, 21.1% respondents said “no”. the total number of adult respondents who believe that kato nan ampek should be taught to children is 191 (95.5%) and only 9 (4.4%) don’t believe this should be the case. these results suggest that almost all respondents believe that kato nan ampek, should be learned, despite the pattern seen in previous sections. when questions are about the minangkabau language, there are less positive responses from respondents—consistently less positive responses are found in msj, ppj, and somewhat less positive responses are found in pyk and lbs—but when the question relates to kato nan ampek, which is one part of minangkabau language itself, respondents nearly all give very positive responses. perhaps this could be because respondents think that min is an impolite language, while appropriate use of kato nan ampek is politer. this question deals with the amount of pride respondents have in their minangkabau language. table 4.11. pride in minangkabau language answer pdg (%) bkt (%) pyk (%) msj (%) ppj (%) lbs (%) no 11 3 0 0 0 0 yes 90 97 100 100 100 100 after learning as can be seen from the table above, interesting results are found again, where almost all respondents claim to have very positive attitudes towards min. it is seen from the results, where 100% of respondents in four areas (pyk, msj, ppj, and lbs) report that they are proud of min. there are only 11% respondents in pdg and 3% respondent in bkt who answered “no” for this question. in sum, the total number of respondents who answered “yes” is 97.5% and only 5 (2.5%). these results suggest that minang people claim to be very proud of their own language. these results are in contrast with results from the previous analysis about min attitudes found in the previous description, where an ambiguous feeling towards min is shown. in one side, minangkabau people felt proud of min. in the same time, they do not think that this language is important to be taught and spoken as the first language. in some societies, it is important for them to have the language as a part of society and for other society language is not important. as quoted from smolicz (1992: 280) he argues that: temmy thamrin 171 ijolte “the cultural groups differ in the extent to which they emphasize their native tongues as core values. one may, for example, be an irish nationalist and be unable to speak irish gaelic, although the irish language continuous to act as a potent symbol of ethnic identity even for those who are either unable to speak it, or who have learned it at school but do not use it as everyday purposes (o’buachalla 1984; harris and murtagh 1987 in smolicz 1992). in much the same way, there are people in various countries of the world with a strongly developed sense of jewish identity who uphold the continuity of jewish tradition, but who speak neither hebrew nor yiddish, nor, indeed, any other specific jewish – developed language or dialect. no one can deny, however, the powerful role played by yiddish in the maintenance of the jewish heritage for many countries in central and eastern europe relating to this quotation, in the case of minangkabau language, it seems that this language is not a core value of the society. they still feel minangkabau as minangkabau and proud to be in part of the society, but the language is not a part of their identity. as a native minangkabau speaker, pride for this language does not seem to be enough if the society does not have strong positive attitudes toward this language. pride is only a feeling. we need actions and commitment from the society especially the parents to give children a chance to learn this language in their early years. it is dispiriting that some children introduce themselves as minangkabau people, but they cannot speak their own language, even though they really are proud to be minangkabau and proud of the minangkabau language. parents must realize it is their responsibility to transfer this language to their children. currently, many parents do not seem to realize that their children’s identity may be threatened. how can the young generation build their relationships with relatives in their hometown if they do not speak min? the attitudes of parents towards their own native language play a very important role for maintaining this language into the future. by dropping the native language in favor of the generic national language, their children may soon lose their identity. 5. conclusion the general conclusion is that there are ambivalent or mixed feelings among all respondents about min, especially when they answer sensitive questions about min. the adult’s respondents mainly chose the “uncertain” option for these sorts of questions. responses are different to questions about their attitudes to bi, where they have positive attitudes towards this language. when, the researcher initially found uncertain answers, the interview questions and observational data about these topics show that there is a tendency for people to say they have less positive attitudes towards min. for example, the respondents stated that bi is more important, that bi is politer, and that bi is the language of the future. from these answers, the implied meaning is that, instead of saying outright that min is impolite and sounds unfriendly, respondents prefer to say that bi is politer and that it is better for communication. this means that minangkabau people tend to avoid the conflict of having negative opinions; they tend to say what they mean in more indirect ways. on the question of whether min should be taught as the first language to children, most respondents don’t support the idea. adults are less inclined to believe that children temmy thamrin 172 ijolte should be taught min as their first language. they are not so concerned with transmitting this language to their children in the early years of childhood. therefore, a general lack of use of, and interest in, min is increasing. an indonesian proverb says, “tidak kenal maka tak sayang”, (if you do not know it, you will not love it), which is true for min itself. if the parents do not introduce this language to their children, how can these children know and recognize it as their own native language? contradictory thoughts are found for questions about kato nan ampek (the four words, speech levels), where almost all respondents believe that kato nan ampek should be taught to children. this means that, when questions ask about their feelings towards the minangkabau language, there are mixed feelings and a hesitancy to answer “agree” or “disagree”, while when there are questions about kato nan ampek, which is a concept dealing with the way minangkabau people speak to different interlocutors, an overwhelmingly positive response is received. it is difficult to understand what this means. perhaps people believe that min might not be as polite a language as bi. therefore, by teaching the concept of kato nan ampek to children, it is hoped that they will know and use the appropriate register for different interlocutors, thereby following the rules of how minang people should talk to each other. these results suggest that many minangkabau people still retain their own customs. as stated by arifin and gani (2007:18), minangkabau society is still relatively strong, as it upholds and implements customs. the customs in this context are the normative values that govern how the society lives. as the norms of speaking in minangkabau society include the use of kato nan ampek, the majority of respondents claim that they use it. the contradictory results between the use of min and kato nan ampek suggest that minangkabau people make a differentiation between minangkabau language and kato nan ampek. they see these two concepts as distinct, where min is considered less important, while kato nan ampek is the cultural norm that should be maintained and transmitted to the younger generation. they mostly do not understand that kato nan ampek is a part of minangkabau language itself. i also conclude that the less positive attitude towards min. besides that, almost all respondents claim that they are proud of min. unfortunately, the pride of these people in their own language is not applied in their daily lives, as we can see in the discussion of domains of language use, especially at home domain. as previously mentioned, it is not enough only to have pride. people need action in their real lives to maintain min as a healthy language, to stop minangkabau people having mixed feelings about their own language, to make people answer in an optimistic way that this language is a good language for communication, to give the opportunity for children to learn this language from birth, and to prevent future generations becoming monolingual in bi. according to bradley (2002: 9), “we can try to change attitudes, we can help people to maintain their languages, but only if they want to”. this means that there is no one that can help a society to maintain their language if the people in that society do not want to maintain it. temmy thamrin 173 ijolte references [1] anderbeck, k. l. 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(2010). language maintenance and language shift among chinese immigrant parents and their second-generation children in the u.s. bilingual research journal, 33, 42-60. international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7962 ijolte attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance: evidence from monolingual context in the southern philippines michael b. cahapay college of education, mindanao state university, fatima, general santos city, 9500 south cotabato, philippines email corresponding author: mbcahapay@up.edu.ph how to cite this paper: cahapay, m. b. (2020). attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance: evidence from monolingual context in the southern philippines. international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9174 received: february 02, 2020 accepted: may 22, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/ abstract the influence of language attitude on the academic achievement of young children in the monolingual context has not been explored. thus, this research ascertained the degree of relationship between attitudes toward the mother tongue and the academic performance of the learners. it entailed correlation research design. the respondents were 20 grade ii pupils in a rural public school considered as monolingual in the southern philippines. the data gathered were treated using frequency distribution, weighted mean, percentage rate, and pearson product moment correlation coefficient. it was found out that there is a significant relationship between attitudes toward the mother tongue and the academic performance of learners. amid the vast body of diverse researches in the area of language education, the present study weaves pieces of evidence that attitudes of learners toward mother tongue are associated with their academic performance in the context of a monolingual environment. it is suggested that such a conclusion should be further tested in other contexts. subject areas mother tongue education keywords academic performance, language attitude, language education monolingual context, mother tongue https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7962 mailto:mbcahapay@up.edu.ph https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.9174 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ michael b. cahapay ~ 2 ~ 1. introduction scholars have often extolled, either directly or indirectly, the importance of the attitudes that learners hold toward the mother tongue as a facilitator to increased learning gain. the construct of language attitude, defined as the feelings people hold about a language, is often associated by scholars to different learning outcomes (carrol, 1964; gardner, 1985; crystal, 1997; dornyei, 2009). it appears, however, that an essential consideration that may have been overlooked in the entire equation of the discourse about the influence of attitudes toward mother tongue on the learning gains is the type of linguistic environment. comprehensive scholarly discussions have provided substantial attention to mother tongue education in the context of multilingualism that typically characterizes the communities in southeast asia and the philippines (teo, 2005; mohanty; 2010; tupas, 2015). however, despite the linguistic diversity taken in general and the exposure of learners to different languages, still, some communities as individual units are “almost” monolingual or linguistically homogeneous characterized by the presence of one dominant native language that is highly used by its people. moreover, a vast body of recent studies that investigated the language attitudes of learners is either fixed on mother tongue against the background of multilingualism, restricted on the learning of a particular foreign language, or unrelated to the possible learning gains of the learners (e.g. hohenthal, 2003; rahman, 2008; chalak, & kassaian, 2010; galloway, 2011; liu & zhao, 2011; bobkina, & fernandez, 2012; mamun, rahman, rahman, & hossain, 2012; yang, 2012; asmari, 2013; tahaineh & daana, 2013; becker, 2014; beyogle, 2014; goktepe, 2014; ahmed, 2015; samadani & ibnian, 2015; agbalu, 2016; dejiafuye, 2016; naima, 2017; papapavlou & mavromati, 2017; salmon & menjívar, 2017; tódortodor & dégi, 2017; bouhmama & dendane, 2018; mäkelä & posti, 2018; mbato & kharismawan, 2018; teklesellassie & boersma, 2018; zebaria, allob, & mohammadzadehc, 2018; dharmaputra, 2019; nduwimana, 2019; fischer & niebuhr, 2020; orfan, 2020; tsunemoto & mcdonough, 2020; vennela & kandharaja, 2020; yilmaz, 2020). there is a need to empirically explore how learners feel about their mother tongue and its association with their academic performance that is an immediate practical concern of most education stakeholders. turning the situation multifaceted is the possible role of the linguistic environment, either multilingual or monolingual, where the mother tongue is being examined (cholakova, 2015). this subtle aspect has been either disregarded or overlooked in many reviewed studies. a study on the possible influence of attitudes toward mother tongue on the academic performance focused on the monolingual context will provide a new perspective of looking at mother tongue education. it may offer a basis to policymakers, curriculum developers, school administrators, teachers, and parents for considering the mother tongue as an effective language of instruction based on a particular linguistic environment. thus, this study intended to determine the relationship between attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance of monolingual children. 2. methods 2.1. research design the researcher found the correlation research as an appropriate design to accomplish the main purpose of this research. a correlation is a research design that describes the degree of association or relationship michael b. cahapay ~ 3 ~ between two or more variables (creswell, 2012). this design helped this study accomplished its purpose to determine the relationship between the attitudes toward the mother tongue and the academic performance of the learners. 2.2. respondents the respondents of this study were 20 grade ii pupils enrolled in a public elementary school in the southern philippines. they were officially enrolled during the school year 2013-2014, which was the onset stage of the implementation of mother tongue education in the country. 2.3. setting this scholarly investigation was conducted in a rural public elementary school in the southern philippines. though minimally exposed to second languages through media, the community where the school is located is considered monolingual. the large majority of the population speaks a common mother tongue. 2.4. data sources an effective survey questionnaire formatted on a scale was used to measure the attitudes of learners toward the mother tongue. it was content validated by three experts in language education, elementary education, and child psychology to ensure the appropriateness of the items. a vernacular version was also prepared and furnished during the actual data collection process to ensure dependable responses from the respondents. on the other hand, the grade point average of the learners in the second grading period was collected from the class adviser to serve as data for the academic performance variable of this research. consent from the teachers and parents were obtained as part of the ethical considerations of the research process. 2.5. data analysis the gathered data for this research were treated using frequency distribution, weighted mean, and percentage rate. the association between attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance was computed using pearson product moment coefficient correlation. the test was done at 0.05 level of significance. 3. results 3.1. attitudes toward mother tongue this study initially attempted to describe the attitudes of the learners toward the mother tongue. the result of the questionnaire survey is shown in table 1. michael b. cahapay ~ 4 ~ table 1. attitudes toward mother tongue. statement mea n description i like to communicate in my mother tongue every day. 4.60 strongly agree i think mother tongue is superior to other languages. 3.85 agree i like to learn the mother tongue as a subject. 4.30 agree i am interested to read stories in the mother tongue. 3.95 agree i am excited about my mother tongue subject. 4.05 agree i believe i will get a good job if i speak the mother tongue. 3.70 agree i am proud if i excel in my mother tongue class. 3.85 agree i like to listen to mother tongue radio programs. 3.85 agree i admire my teacher in the mother tongue. 4.30 agree i desire to be in a group that speaks mother tongue. 4.15 agree i love to listen to songs in the mother tongue. 4.00 agree i believe the mother tongue is an important part of my life. 4.25 agree i feel superior when i speak the mother tongue. 4.05 agree i love to express my ideas in the mother tongue. 4.25 agree i appreciate people who speak the mother tongue. 4.00 agree i like to watch television programs in the mother tongue. 3.85 agree i am interested to join activities in the mother tongue. 4.30 agree i want to live with people who speak in the mother tongue. 4.00 agree i exert effort to improve proficiency in the mother tongue. 4.45 agree i love to read articles in the mother tongue 4.20 agree overall mean 4.09 agree n=20 as specifically rated by the learners, the data show that they like to communicate in mother tongue every day as manifested by the highest weighted mean it generated, which is 4.60, described as strongly agree. meanwhile, the learners exert effort to improve their proficiency in mother tongue obtained a weighted mean of 4.45; like to learn mother tongue subject, 4.30; admire teacher in the mother tongue, 4.30; interested to join activities in the mother tongue, 4.30; believe mother tongue is important, 4.25; and love michael b. cahapay ~ 5 ~ to express ideas in the mother tongue, 4.25; all described as agreeing. furthermore, the learners desire to belong in a group that speaks mother tongue earned a weighted mean of 4.15; excited in mother tongue subject, 4.05; feel superior when they speak the mother tongue, 4.05; listen to songs in the mother tongue, 4.00; appreciate people who speak the mother tongue, 4.00; and want to live with people who speak in the mother tongue, 4.00; all described as agree. moreover, the learners are interested to read stories in mother tongue got a weighted mean of 3.95; proud when they excel in mother tongue subject, 3.85; like to listen to radio programs in the mother tongue, 3.85; and like to watch television programs in the mother tongue, 3.85; all described as agree. overall, the attitudes of the learners toward the mother tongue garnered an overall mean of 4.09, described as agreeing. this implies that they have a favorable attitude toward the mother tongue. 3.2. academic performance furthermore, this research attempted to describe the level of academic performance of the learners. the result of the secondary data review is shown in table 2. table 2. attitudes toward mother tongue. grade point average f % description 90-100 0 0% advanced 85-89 10 50% proficient 81-85 8 40% approaching 75-80 2 10% developing 74 and below 0 0% beginning overall mean 83.65 approaching n=20 based on the record of grade point average for the second quarter of the school year gathered from the class adviser, ten learners (50%) got an academic achievement between 85-89, described as proficient. meanwhile, eight learners (40%) earned a mastery level between 81-85, described as approaching proficiency. on the other hand, two learners (10%) on the record obtained a grade point average between 75-80, described as developing. overall, the academic performance of the learners obtained an average of 83.65, described as approaching proficiency. this connotes that the learners have an average cognitive achievement. 3.3. relationship between attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance this research ultimately determined the relationship between attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance. the result is shown in table 3. michael b. cahapay ~ 6 ~ table 3. relationship between attitudes toward mother tongue, and academic performance. attitudes toward mother tongue academic performance (r=0.52) 0.02* * p < .05. the result of correlation shows that attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance of learners obtained an r-value of 0.52 with a p-value of 0.02, which is less than 0.05 significance. based on the interpretation of tabulated values from ±0.41 to ±0.70, this denotes marked correlation. this means that the attitudes of the learners toward the mother tongue have a significant positive relationship with their academic performance. 4. discussion the favorable attitudes of learners towards their language can be framed within the social identity theory (tajfel & turner, 1986). this theory responds to how social identities of people influence their attitudes toward something in their group. the concept of social identities is believed to be most influential when people view their membership in a particular group to be essential to their identity, and they sense strong relations to the group (leaper, 2011). following this theory in the monolingual context of this study, it is expected that the learners who were mostly raised within their cultural group would have favorable attitudes toward their language. such propensity of learners to favor their language has been empirically reported in diverse contexts. for example, liu and zhao (2011) disclosed that mainland chinese students considered their native language superior to other languages. on the other hand, ibarraran, lasagabaster, and sierra (2008) revealed that immigrants in spain, having been exposed to diverse linguistic context, possess attitudes towards their languages most positively. these studies support the result of the current paper, offering a common viewpoint that regardless of linguistic circumstances, there is a propensity for learners to hold desirable dispositions about their mother tongue. considering the philippine context, there seems to be an ambivalent attitude toward the mother tongue when putting into the scene the second language that is part of the curriculum. javier and vicerra (2010) put forward that learners demonstrated high favor toward english as it is considered to be the language for economic advancement reasons. thus, they prefer to get educated in english than in any language. on the other hand, valerio (2015) found positive attitudes towards a particular language in different domains. while the learners have positive attitudes toward the english language as their second language, they also favored the use of the presumed mother tongue as the medium of communication during class discussions. moreover, the aspect of attitudes toward the mother tongue as a factor that influences academic performance contributes to the mentalist theory on language attitude. this theory presents three variables: the affective, the conative, and the cognitive (lambert, 1967). this theory conceives language attitude as a predictor of behavior (obiols 2002). applied in this study, this theory can be reframed to envisage language attitude toward the mother tongue as a predictor of behavior such as performance in school. michael b. cahapay ~ 7 ~ this positive association between language attitude and academic performance has not gained many impressions in other language attitude theories. the construct of language attitude as associated to different learning outcomes has been discussed by carrol (1964), krashen (1982), gardner (1985), and dornyei (2009) but learning outcomes can be very broad to encompass not only grades, but also motivations, engagements, habits, and proficiency. most of the mentioned scholars extensively focused on motivation and proficiency in language learning. bringing this discussion in language research, the same can be observed. for example, richards (1998) claimed that the attitudes of learners towards the language itself could shape their motivations for learning. other studies (e.g., liu, 2009) have confirmed that positive attitudes towards a language usually lead to increased motivation to learn and higher proficiency in the language. but, once again, these studies do not point out the role of language attitudes to the learning outcomes as grade point average, which reflects many factors of student learning. furthermore, oribabor and adesina (2013) found out that mother-tongue instruction aided learning better than foreign language as a medium of instruction among young learners. this has also been the position of the supporters of the mother tongue as a part of the basic education, claiming that children enjoy greater educational success from mother-tongue instruction (naique, 2012) and enables them to immediately construct their world and articulate their thoughts (nolasco, 2009). in the philippines, a pilot study on the effectiveness of mother-tongue instruction was reported by dumatog and dekker (2003). the results provided evidence on the positive performance of the learners who participated in the program. the learners who were taught in the mother tongue achieved remarkably better in five learning areas than the learners who were not taught in the mother tongue. while this conclusion may hold acceptable in many contexts, it does not explore if the language attitude of the learners, as an internal learner factor, does facilitate better grades in school. as regards the possible role of the linguistic environment monolingual or multilingual in the level of language attitudes of the learners, current theories of language attitude have not explored this possible area. however, emerging theoretical interests have surfaced around this matter. for example, the paper of jayasundara (2015) examines “the monolingual and bilingual child language acquisition on the theoretical concern and the varied language acquisition processes which reflect in the language competence of both monolingual and bilingual child” (p.31). on the other hand, related studies have been undertaken to analyze the differences in language attitudes and academic performance with the linguistic environment as an arbitrating factor of interest. for example, costley, gkonou, myles, roehr-brackin, & tellier (2018) matched the attitudes and academic performance of the multilingual learners in the sample with the attitudes and academic performance of the monolingual learners. their results indicated that the learners held very favorable attitudes towards learning the language. it was noted, though, that the monolingual group illustrated somewhat more variance than the multilingual learners. when it comes to academic performance, learners from both groups appeared to show similar levels of language proficiency. this time, the multilingual specifically displayed greater variance. this study offers a glimpse as to how the linguistic environment intervenes in language attitudes and academic performance of the learners. furthermore, cholakova (2015) carried out an interesting comparative study on the influence of a foreign language in a multilingual and monolingual environment. the major results indicate that in a michael b. cahapay ~ 8 ~ monolingual environment, learners use the foreign language as a compulsory subject in the school curriculum and use it just when necessary, such as when they travel to another country. on the contrary, in a multilingual environment, students use foreign language extensively inside and outside the classroom. this study does not directly reveal the underlying attitudes of the learners toward their language, but it demonstrates how learners in a monolingual environment tend to restrict using a language that is not their own. weaving the pieces of evidence discussed above, the current body of literature supports that learners generally hold different attitudes toward languages, language attitudes contribute to learning outcomes, and the linguistic environment is an important consideration in language research. amidst the vast body of diverse researches in the area of language education, the present study provides a piece of evidence that attitudes of learners toward mother tongue are associated with their academic performance in the context of a monolingual environment. before you begin to format your paper, first write and save the content as a separate text file. keep your text, and graphic files separate until after the text has been formatted and styled. do not use hard tabs and limit the use of hard returns to only one return at the end of a paragraph. do not add any kind of pagination anywhere in the paper. do not number text heads—the template will do that for you. 5. conclusion this study showed the relationship between attitudes toward mother tongue and academic performance of learners in a monolingual environment. as a whole, it was revealed that there is a direct positive significant association between attitudes toward the mother tongue and the academic performance of the learners. it should be further noted that this result is gathered in a monolingual context. this work provides evidence to researchers, educators, and parents that young learners can take advantage of the opportunity to benefit from mother-tongue instruction as this provides a strong foundation to sustain their interest in learning, which would ultimately lead to increased academic achievement. as this case may be said in a monolingual context, thus related studies should be endeavored in other contexts to explore how the mother tongue can maximize the cognitive achievement of the young learners. references agbalu, m.b. 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(2012). attitude and motivation in l2 learning among um master students. international journal of management and sustainability, 1(1), 13-22. retrieved from http://www.pakinsight.com/pdffiles/ijms%20pp.13-22.pdf yilmaz, b. (2020). language attitudes and religion: kurdish alevis in the uk. kurdish studies. retrieved from https://kurdishstudies.net/ zebaria, i.a., allob, h.a., & mohammadzadehc, b. (2018). the role of personality characteristics in forming efl university students’ attitudes towards learning english as a foreign language: a case study. modern journal of language teaching methods, 8 (6), 343-351. doi:10.26655/mjltm.2018.6.9 https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2020.1744319 http://www.pakinsight.com/pdf-files/ijms%20pp.13-22.pdf http://www.pakinsight.com/pdf-files/ijms%20pp.13-22.pdf https://kurdishstudies.net/ paper title international journal of language teaching and education december 2019, volume 3, issue 2 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7391 158 ijolte g.r.a.s.p.s strategy: decreasing students’ difficulties in writing persuasive text stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi abstract in literacy, writing becomes an essential component. it becomes the most difficult skill to be learnt because students need to express their ideas and write them accurately. they expect interesting learning in writing process in terms of developing their writing skills. this qualitative research showed the students’ ability to explore their writing skills in real-world situations by using g.r.a.s.p.s. (goals, rules, audience, situation, product/performance, standards). this study which was done in two cycles, was carried out in a private school in surakarta. one class from the social program was taken for sampling. 35 students contributed to the study. observation, questionnaire, recording, students’ products, writing assessment reports were used to collect data. findings show that students could be motivated to express their ideas. the interesting teaching-learning process in the classroom made students enjoy their roles in real-life situations. the pressure in writing became lower and the students also showed their self-confidence. these findings indicate that teachers have to use authentic assessments and performance and or product tasks to make students interactive in teaching-learning activities and use evaluation rubrics that provide students real description of their performances. subject areas keywords 1. introduction communication activities can be held in the form of spoken and written. writing is one of the essential elements of literacy that must be learned. hoover emphasizes that “writing is a vital component of the comprehensive synergy of literacy. it is the way to express the ideas in literary form. that is why writing should be kept a hand in, in order to participate in literate society” (hoover 2008, p. 1). writing is a basic skill in language and believed to be the hardest one to teach and learn (walters, 1987) as the writer must transcribe his/her thoughts while maintaining control over a number of aspects varying from word choice and spelling to overall text structure and layout. according to nursisto, writing is a communication ability using the highest level of language. the most difficult level is writing. (nursisto, 2000, p.5). https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7391 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i2.7391 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 159 ijolte the teaching method, the environment, the lack of student motivation, the use of the students’ mother tongue, the ill-structured sentences in composition and the limited vocabulary are the main causes of the students’ lack in writing. raimes said that when students complain about how difficult it is to write in a second language, they are talking not only about the difficulty of finding the right words and using the correct grammar but also about the difficulty of finding and expressing ideas in a new language. (raimes, 1983, p. 13). harmer said that writing belongs to productive skills besides speaking in which the language users require the ability to produce language both spoken and written. through writing, the students can communicate in written form. it can be said that writing needs a process; it cannot be learned instantly (harmer 2004, p.86). this study found that writing becomes a complex activity if the students have less ability in writing elements such as content, grammar, vocabulary, mechanic, and organization. they will get difficulties to start writing. those difficulties and problems make the students do not feel enjoy in writing. according to jarvis (2000), many students do not enjoy writing. they feel that because they are afraid they cannot do it correctly at the first time. therefore, students need to practice regularly in order to have a good writing skill. then, the students themselves or possibly the reader will understand it” (tesl journal, vol. 8, no. 7). based on the indonesian curriculum of senior high school (competence based curriculum or 2006 curriculum), students are hoped to develop their communicative competences both in spoken and written form, which is proven in four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. in indonesia, writing in senior high school is not only to fulfill one of the graduation requirements from senior high school in the form of a practical exam but also to prepare students’ study in university. besides, the students can advance college performance and academic success, apply their writing skill in academic writing, the application letter and business proposal, reports, and memos which support them in future work. it can guide students to be a successful person and get a better position in their job. that is why writing needs to be learned at senior high school. this study found a strategy that makes the students feel enjoy and have low pressure in writing. g.r.a.s.p.s. strategy allows the students an opportunity to be creative. g.r.a.s.p.s. stands for goal, role, audience, structure, product, performance or purpose, standards, and criteria. the teacher can determine the goal and standards and criteria. meanwhile, the students choose the role, audience, structure, and product. the students can decide the issue they are most interested in – social, environmental, political, local, or globalthat they are would like to tackle in their writing. this study focuses on persuasive writing in this research. students can create their own writing by following the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. it can make them express their idea or opinions to write easily. besides, it also allows them to practice grammatical structures so that they can write coherent, contextual, and acceptable sentences. this study believes that by allowing the students to choose their own topics, they will feel free and motivated. according to wiggins and mctighe (2005, p.169-170) cited by ball (2012, p. 129), g.r.a.s.p.s. is a useful strategy to integrate writing into all content areas. when assessing content along with skill (writing) make certain that two rubrics are used; one for the content and one for the skill. an existing g.r.a.s.p.s. can be revised to fit the subject area and/or the needs of the group of students. therefore, the g.r.a.s.p.s. strategy is excellent for differentiation. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 160 ijolte 2. literature review 2.1. teaching writing the success of students in learning writing is determined by the teacher’s role in helping them in writing. it means that the teacher has an important role to help the students to understand and learn how to write effectively, give clear explanations and instructions and guide the students in each step of the writing process. harmer (2004, p. 41) defined some tasks that the teachers must perform before, during, and after the process of writing. they are demonstrating, motivating and provoking, supporting, responding and evaluating. the teachers have to do demonstrate in the process of writing to make the students be able to understand writing conventions and genre constraints of particular types of writing. as a result, the teachers have to be able to draw the two features to their attention. in the process of writing, teachers become the main supporters in supporting the students when they are doing writing in the classroom, especially when they get difficulties and feel stuck. the teachers have to help them to solve the difficulties. thus, the students will be motivated to do their writings. harmer stated that the teacher’s roles in the teaching and learning process of writing. they will be explained as a motivator, resource, and feedback provider. when the students work on the writing tasks, the teacher must motivate them by creating a nice learning atmosphere, persuading them of the usefulness of the activity, and encouraging them to create as much as efforts to achieve the optimal result (hammer, 2007, p. 261-262). this study inferred that teachers hold an important role in the students’ success in learning writing. they have the responsibility of guiding and facilitating the students’ writing by being good motivators, resource and feedback providers. 2.1.1. teaching writing in senior high school the curriculum designed by the central government throughout the provision of curriculum policies is used as the basis of english teaching in indonesia. there are twelve types of text for senior high schools such as recount, narrative, procedural, descriptive report, new items, analytical exposition, persuasive exposition, spoof, explanation, discussion, and review. the syllabus is set to emphasize and make the learning process become interactive, inspirable, fun, challenging, motivating learners to involve actively, a given adequate space for innovation, creatively, autonomy based on learner’s potential, interest, physical and physiological development. 2.1.2. persuasive text larson (2004, p. 11) said that persuasion is a process that changes attitude, beliefs, opinion, or behavior. in that definition, the process of persuasion gets attention from the receiver. it means that the purpose of persuasion is the writer or the speaker try to influence the receiver or reader to do the ideas writer or speaker without violence and coercion. he also said that the focus of persuasion is not only on the sender, the message, or the receiver, but all of them are equally focused on. all of them have to make cooperate in making a persuasive process. so, it can be said that persuasive is a result of the combined efforts of source and receiver (2004, p. 14). it can be concluded that persuasion is an effort to persuade people by using data or pieces of evidence and understand the psychological fact from a receiver. persuasive text, also known as the argument essay, applies factual logic and reason. it tries to persuade a reader to adopt a certain point of view or to take a particular action. the argument must always use sound reasoning and solid evidence by stating facts, giving logical reasons, using examples, and stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 161 ijolte quoting experts. according to junior skill builders (2008), it is said that argumentative (persuasive) writing is to convince the reader of your point of view on some subject; alternatively, you may be required to convince the reader to take some particular action as agreed of your opinion. to produce qualified persuasive texts, the students need to be stimulated in expressing ideas and to be guided in their writing process. besides, they also need to be supported by providing them qualified and understandable inputs. feez (2002, p. 4) states that creating texts requires making choices about the words that are used and how it can be put together. she also states that there are various kinds of texts called text type. 2.2. review of g.r.a.s.p.s strategy according to wiggins (2004), the acronym of g.r.a.s.p.s is goal, role, audience, situation, performance/product/purpose, standards, and criteria. the goal provides a statement of the task. besides, it establishes the goal, problem, challenge, or obstacle in the task. the role defines the role of the students in the task. it states the job of the students for the task. the audience identifies the target audience within the context of the scenario. the situation sets the context of the scenario and explains the situation. performance or product or purpose clarifies what the students will create and why they will create it. standards and criteria (indicators) provide students with a clear picture of success. it identifies specific standards of success. the teacher can issue rubrics to the students or develop them with the students the teacher can decide on the goal and the standards and criteria, and the students choose the role, audience, structure, and product. the students can decide the issue they are most interested in – social, environmental, political, local, or globalthat they are would like to tackle in their writing. wiggins (2004) added that students can explore their idea or opinions in writing. this strategy allows students to demonstrate understanding with some options in the performances and or products. it also allows students in practicing grammatical structures so that they can write coherent, contextual, and acceptable sentences. hudelson (1989) in thomsan (2003, p. 25) found out that the quality of writing was better when students were allowed to make decisions about their topics. this study believes that by allowing the students to choose their own topics, their work is more successful. g.r.a.s.p.s allows students to demonstrate understanding with some options in the performances and or products. the scoring rubrics include distinct traits of understanding and successful performance. the scoring rubrics highlight what is appropriate, given the evidence needs to be suggested by the desired results. the culminating activities that the students produce are the products that are based on the goal of a performance task. performance task-g.r.a.s.p.s is a design tool to develop a performance task with an emphasis on context and role-playing (wiggins, g. & mctighe, j., 2008). wiggins, g. & mctighe, j. (2008) said that a teacher can construct in a scenario for a performance task, edit a task, remove or add products, or up-load other pertinent information to the task. rubrics are designed for each task for each type of product. the g.r.a.s.p.s. frame includes real-world goals, meaningful roles of students, authentic or simulated real-world audiences, and a contextualized situation that involves real-world applications. in line with this, ball (2008) mentioned that g.r.a.s.p.s. should be used as a tool when designing a classroom performance task scenario. the teacher creates performance tasks for the students as an opportunity for them to demonstrate what they know and are able to do in relation to a given concept or skill. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 162 ijolte nuha iter (2017, p. 552-558) recommends to g.r.a.s.p.s strategy should be utilized to evaluate performance tasks in all courses. students’ recommendations must be considered in reforming the course content and their results can be used as data to reform policies and practices related to the qualification program. teachers use authentic assessments and performance tasks to make students interact in the courses. by using rubrics in evaluation provide real descriptions to students about their performances. through the performance task, the students can value their work processes and products. 2.2.1. using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy in teaching writing in this modern era, teachers can use many strategies to teach english. a new paradigm of assessment in higher education, such as performance task-g.r.a.s.p.s, is used in this study to address the main problem of this research. g.r.a.s.p.s should be used in designing a classroom performance task scenario. tomlinson and mctighe (2006, p. 5) stated that teachers allow students to construct or perform an original response rather than just recognizing a potentially right answer out of a list provided, performance assessments can measure students’ cognitive thinking and reasoning skills and their ability to apply knowledge to solve realistic, meaningful problems. teachers create performance tasks for the students as an opportunity for them to demonstrate what they know and are able to do in relation to a given concept or skill. the grasps frame includes real-world goals, meaningful roles of students, authentic or simulated real-world audiences, and a contextualized situation that involves real-world applications. students generated culminating products and performance, and consensus-driven performance standards (criteria) are used to determine success. performance tasks with these features provide meaningful learning targets for learners, worthy performance goals for teaching, and the kind of evidence needed to assess true understanding (tomlinson, & mctighe, 2006) the teacher can construct performance tasks based on the g.r.a.s.p.s. acronym (wiggins, et.al:2004). the teacher can provide a statement of the task and establish the goal, problem or challenge. the goal provides the student with the outcome of the learning experience and the contextual purpose of the experience and product creation. the teacher can define the role of the students in the task and provide the student with the position or individual persona that they will become to accomplish the goal of the performance task. the majority of roles found within the tasks provide opportunities for students to complete real-world applications of content. the teacher can identify the target audience and the context of the scenario. the audience is the group that is interested in the findings and products that have been created. these people will make a decision based upon the products and presentations created by the individual(s) assuming the role within the performance task. the teacher can set the context of the scenario and explain the situation students will learn about the real-world application for the writing performance task. the teacher can clarify what the students will need to create and why it needs to be created, provide a clear picture of what success looks like and establish the rubric for product and or performance. this is designed using multiple intelligences. the product or performance provides various opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding, depending on their learning style and abilities. based upon each individual learner and or individual class, the educator can make appropriate instructional decisions for product/performance development. for the standards and criteria for success, the teacher can adapt this project for individual students and ensure support for learning needs (differentiation). stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 163 ijolte 3. research method the research method used in this study is classroom based on action research (car). the study used the four phases which is a kind of ‘classic,’ and it often appeared in the literature on action research. it was developed by kemmis & taggart (2007) cited by burns (2010, p. 9) which involved planning, acting, observing and reflecting. this study proposed a solution-g.r.a.s.p.s. strategy to develop the writing competence of second-grade students. there were four phases used in this study which is a kind of ‘classic,’ and it often appeared in the literature on action research. kemmis and taggart developed it (1988) cited by burns (2010, p. 9) which involved planning, acting, observing and reflecting. these phases can be seen in figure i. figure 1. kemmis and mctaggart ar model 3.1. the overview of the implementation of the research problem students’ ability in writing is low solution teaching writing using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy students the eleventh grade no. of cycle two cycles cycle 1: hortatory exposition. theme : free planning doing the teaching activities into three phrases: openings, main activities, and closing. action m1: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: free, using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m2: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1, using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m3: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1, using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m4: (post-test cycle 1) composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1 observation ss there are 34 students in the classroom. one student died because of a car accident. elements of writing have fulfilled the kkm. the kkm of writ stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 164 ijolte ing is 76. the average score increased from 79.49 in pretest into 80.94 in the post-test 1 t prepared the material well, explained what g.r.a.s.p.s was and it was implemented in teaching writing, gave modeling, some students cs the students can decide the thesis they are most interested in their writing make them feel easier to organize and decide the content. group work helped the low students, activity increased and enjoyable. reflection a. cs situation (teaching-learning process) strengths: more attentive, the teacher-centered decreased weaknesses: the teacher explained the elements in the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy too fast and some students were absent. b. ss ability (writing result) strengths: the elements of writing have fulfilled the kkm. the kkm of writing is 76. the students gained 16.44 (82.2) in content, 16.15 (80.75) in vocabulary, 16.03 (80.3) in grammar, 15.97 (79.85) in mechanics and 16.35 (81.75) in an organization. weaknesses: the word amount was 400 until 450 (less than 500) post test the post-test was conducted. cycle 2: hortatory exposition. the theme is different. free planning doing the main teaching activities into three phases: opening the class, main activities and closing action m1: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: free using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m2: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1 using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m3: composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1 using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. m4: (post test cycle 2) composing hortatory exposition with the theme: same with m1 with g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. observation ss improved in content, vocabulary, grammar, content, and mechanics (spelling/punctuation). the average score increased from 81.00 in the post-test 1 into 83.03 in the post-test 2 (34 students) t prepared the material well, modeling was given written, the simple presentation ran well. cs active group work, more fun, and they could do the tasks well. they were very interested in the goal and simple presentation that they had to make. they wanted others could read their writing. reflection a. cs situation (teaching-learning process) strengths: more attentive and group work activities ran active and well. weaknesses: there are still a few passive students. b. ss ability (writing result) strengths: the elements of writing have fulfilled the kkm. the kkm of writing is 76. the students gained 16.97 (84.85) in content, 16.65 (83.25) in vocabulary, 16.47 (82.35) in grammar, 16.35 (81.75) in mechanics and 16.59 (82.95) in organization. the word amount reached 500 words more. final reflection a. the elements of writing increased significantly. students could do the task actively. b. the class situation became very active. the students could construct the draft of the writing. they worked enthusiastically even though the class became crowded in group discussions. c. the students cannot wait to show their writing to others. d. the teacher could make a simple presentation run well. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 165 ijolte the study used a collaborator who planned to carry out a classroom action research by applying g.r.a.s.p.s strategy to improve writing skills. in applying this method, an exposition text was used. hopefully, after this classroom action research was carried out, the students were able to develop their idea and produce a text by using appropriate language features and structures. when constructing performance tasks, it helps to use the acronym g.r.a.s.p.s. (wiggins, et.al:2004). 1) goal. the teacher can provide a statement of the task and establish the goal, problem or challenge. the goal provides the student with the outcome of the learning experience and the contextual purpose of the experience and product creation. 2) role. the teacher can define the role of the students in the task and provide the student with the position or individual persona that they will become to accomplish the goal of the performance task. the majority of roles found within the tasks provide opportunities for students to complete real-world applications of content. 3) audience. the teacher can identify the target audience and the context of the scenario. the audience is the group that is interested in the findings and products that have been created. these people will make a decision based upon the products and presentations created by the individual(s) assuming the role within the performance task. 4) situation. the teacher can set the context of the scenario and explain the situation students will learn about the real-world application for the writing performance task 5) product/performance and purpose. the teacher can clarify what the students will need to create and why it needs to be created, provide a clear picture of what success looks like and establish the rubric for product/performance. this is designed using multiple intelligences. the product or performance provides various opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding, depending on their learning style and abilities. based upon each individual learner and or individual class, the educator can make appropriate instructional decisions for product/performance development. 6) standards and criteria for success. the teacher can adapt this project for individual students and ensure support for learning needs (differentiation). 3.2. reliability and validity this study used to mean as a technique to describe the description of the writing competence based on the average score of the second-grade language program students. according to sugiyono (2007, p. 49) mean is obtained by adding all the scores of the students divided by the number of the students in the group. the formula is as follows : note : m = mean (average) ∑x = the total score of the whole students n = the number of students m= ∑x n stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 166 ijolte the qualitative data will be analyzed by using the constant comparative method as suggested by hopkins (1993, p. 149). we described in four stages of the constant comparative method: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category; (2) integrating categories and their properties; (3) delimiting the theory; and (4) writing the theory. 4. research finding and discussion 4.1. finding this study and the collaborator observed the process of teaching and learning in the classroom and learning progress that the students achieved. based on the observation of this study and collaborator and interview with the students, this study could describe what really happened during the teaching-learning process. the teaching and learning process ran good enough. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy stimulated students in learning to write. the students always found difficulties from where and how to begin the sentences when they were asked to construct paragraphs. so, by having g.r.a.s.p.s strategy, the students actively engaged with the text. besides, they could have a more in-depth understanding of the organizing and language features of a text in the group. based on the result of post-test 1, this study concluded that the students had shown their improvement in writing in cycle 1 even though they reached less than 500 words. the highest score was 84 reached by two students in post-test1. there was an improvement for the three students who got the lowest score in the pretest. they could reach 76 in post-test 1. the post-test 1 score of cycle 1 could be shown in graphic 1. graphic 1. the post test score of cycle 1 table 2. the students’ score of post test 1 viewed from each element element score content 82.2 vocabulary 80.75 grammar 80.15 mechanics 79.85 organization 81.75 there was an improvement in cycle 1. this study found that no one had reached 500 words in the writing. the students still focused on grammar and content. they worried if they wrote much, they would make mistake in grammar, cohesion and coherent (organization). so, this study and the collaborator stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 167 ijolte planned cycle 2 which emphasized improving the elements above. the observation was conducted during the cycle by this study and the collaborator. the focus of attention was the process of teaching and learning in the classroom and the progress of the students. the teaching and learning process in the second cycle was better than the first. it proved that the class activities had been enjoyable for the students. most of the students were more active in activities. they were also excited about the action after they had finished their writing; they could show their writing to others. the practice activity in cycle 2 was more alive. post writing activities were useful. the students learned best from their inability in cycle 1 in writing a text or essay. they could construct sentences meaningfully and acceptable. the elements of writing had fulfilled the kkm. the writing score in cycle 2 improved and fulfilled the kkm. it happened because the teacher used different actions in cycle 2. the students showed improvement in writing. students could improve their writing skills netter by using the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy. this strategy stimulated the students in learning to write. besides, working with friends in the group made the students feel comfortable and they could help each other. the students’ writing skills in post test2 increased with that in post-test 1. after examining the result of the students’ writing in the post-test, this study concluded that there was an improvement in students’ writing skills. the highest score gained by the students who got 86 in post-test 2. the lowest score gained by a student who got 79. the average score between post text 1 and post-test 2 improved from 80.94 to 83.06. in brief, the post-test score of cycle 1 could be shown in graphic 2. graphic 2. the students’ score of post test 2 table 3. the comparison between the score of post test 1 and post test 2 no explanation students’ score post-test i post-test 2 1 the highest score 86 86 2 the lowest score 76 79 3 average score 80.94 83.06 it was clear that the students’ writing ability improved in cycle 2. table 4.3 showed the students’ scores viewed from each element of writing. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 168 ijolte table 4. students’ score of post test of cycle 2 viewed from each element element score content 84.85 vocabulary 83.25 grammar 82.5 mechanics 81.75 organization 82.95 graphic 3. the comparison between post test 1 and the post test 2 scores table 5. students’ scores of post test of cycle 1 and post test of cycle 2 viewed from each element of writing element students’ score post-test i post-test 2 content 82.2 84.85 vocabulary 80.75 83.25 grammar 80.15 82.5 mechanics 79.85 81.75 organization 81.75 82.95 it could be seen that there was an improvement in every element of writing. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy encouraged the students in writing class. the students could deliver their idea easier when they wanted to write a text or an essay. they could construct sentences grammatically even though they used simple sentences. the vocabulary mastery also improved because the topics of writing that they faced every meeting were different. all elements in writing also improved and fulfilled the kkm. the students were more active and enjoyable in doing the writing process. it happened because they worked in a group when they learned writing. based on observation and post-test cycles, it shows there is an improvement in students’ writing skills. the improvement can be shown from the result of the comparison between the condition of the preliminary research and after the implementation of the research. the students can write a good text or an essay. therefore, the students’ scores had fulfilled the kkm. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 169 ijolte the class situation also improved. it could be seen when the students involved actively in the group. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy gave a chance for the students to enhance their understanding of the text. it also decreased the students’ passiveness and the teacher’s dominance in the class. 4.2. discussion the description above has provided an overview of the research of finding the implementation of g.r.a.s.p.s strategy in teaching persuasive writing. the result of this research was satisfying in term: 4.2.1. the improvement of students’ writing skill; based on the findings, it can be theorized that the use of the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy can improve students’ writing skills. table 4.5 students’ scores of pretest, post-test of cycle 1 and post-test of cycle 2 viewed from each element of writing element score pretest post-test i post-test ii content 78.85 82.2 84.85 vocabulary 79.45 80.75 83.25 grammar 79.3 80.15 82.5 mechanics 79.45 79.85 81.75 organization 80.45 81.75 82.95 1) g.r.a.s.p.s strategy improved the students’ writing content as it can help students to explore the idea for writing. 2) g.r.a.s.p.s strategy helped the students when they organized their writing. 3) g.r.a.s.p.s strategy improved the students in grammar. 4) g.r.a.s.p.s strategy improved the students’ vocabulary 5) g.r.a.s.p.s strategy improved the students’ mechanics of writing (spelling and punctuation) in the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy, students can explore their own ideas to find out their topic in writing. the quality of writing was better when students were allowed to make decisions about their topics. buchanan, k.p. (2001), stresses the importance of children choosing their own topics for writing. turbill (1983, p. 43) cited by buchanan, k.p. (2001) stated suggested that children write best, and develop most rapidly as writers when the write on topics they care about. the motivation for writing should come from the child and not from a topic a teacher has selected. manning (1999, p.130-132) cited by buchanan, k.p. (2001) added that when students are provided a topic, they may have insufficient background knowledge or limited interest to write effectively about it. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy helped the students to develop their idea into well-organized text. this study asked the students in groups to discuss one topic related to health and beauty, education, lifestyle, sport, art, online games, entertainment or culture. they might also have their ideas if they had. after that, they started to find the thesis they are interested in and the arguments support it in sentences. during the discussion, the students were more active because the ideas or topics were general and interesting. besides, they worked in groups which have the same interest. srinivas, h. (2011) said that working in a group or collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of students stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 170 ijolte working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. it is lined with the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy which asked the students to determine the product/performance/purpose besides the role, audience and situation. the students had the opportunity to converse with peers, present and defend ideas, exchange diverse beliefs, question other conceptual frameworks, and were actively engaged. the shared learning allows students to engage in discussion, take responsibility for their own learning, and thus become critical thinkers. it can be said that it can promote critical thinking (gokhale, a.a., 1995). it can make the students were able to organize their idea well based on the draft that they had well-managed in the generic structure. the students could have dictionaries and hand out books to help them in enriching their vocabulary. dictionary became an important thing in this case. the teacher moved from group to group in order to control the students’ activities. some students raised their hands if they wanted to ask some english words. so, the teacher came to the group to help them. the choice of words in their writing became more varied as they were trained to think creatively to choose the appropriate words based on the context of the situation. the choosing of their own idea for writing make them feels more curious in learning vocabulary. they were not easily got bored in the writing process. besides, a supportive classroom atmosphere can run optimally. according to ajabshir, z. & vahdany (2017), peers can be experts and novices at the same time: more proficient and less knowledgeable learners both may contribute knowledge to each other in order to increase the level of their performance. a study of watanabe (2008) cited by naghdipour (2017), showed that the study showed that the three participants preferred working with group members who contributed their ideas, regardless of their proficiency level. 4.2.2. the improvement of the teaching-learning process. 1) the students’ interest in ‘writing’ increased 2) g.r.a.s.p.s helps students to participate actively in writing class. 3) g.r.a.s.p.s is helpful for the students for workgroup and independent activities. this study gave the students assistance and motivation in giving an explanation about grammar appropriate with hortatory exposition. teaching and learning media such as computer presentation media and grammar tasks as practical skill were used in order to make the students comprehend the concept of grammar and word order (the generic structure of hortatory exposition) easier. teachers should manage learning strategies suitable for students at a particular level in order to enhance language learning. the continuous grammar practices individual and groups can improve the students’ grammar mastery. the sentences became more accurate. according to thornbury (1999) cited by uibu, et.al. (2015), the choice of the appropriate strategy has also been found to ensure success in further language learning as it helps to learn a language more effectively. the students in the structure or modeling stage were given detailed explanations about how to write sentences using spelling, capitalization, and punctuation that used in hortatory exposition. in groups, the students are guided to check the mechanics of the writing. so, they could check the mechanics of their writing and their friends’ writing independently. the feedbacks of the teachers and students can improve this skill. according to mollestam & hu (2016, p.22), giving positive feedback is also needed to motivate the students in writing. this statement has the same line as erkkila (2013:16). she said that teachers will stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 171 ijolte give positive comments to arouse and strengthen the students’ positive feelings to make a better paragraph. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy can improve the students’ participation in writing. the students showed were motivated more active during group activities. they could create their own writing ideas so that they can express their idea or opinions in writing easier. this study found that by allowing the students to choose their own ideas or topics, they will feel free and motivated. this strategy had put the students into a more active situation. group work activities provided the students with more chances to have interacted with their friends. they could get a new atmosphere in the class because they could change ideas actively. the students could help each other. research findings suggest that group work technique helps students learn better and improves their achievement (meteetham et al., 2001). the students can choose products and or performances. it clarifies what the students will create and why they will create it. they decide the issue they are most interested in the real-world issue, such as social, environmental, political, local, or global that they are would like to write in their writing. according to wiggins (2004), this strategy allows students to demonstrate understanding with some options in the performances and or products. g.r.as.p.s strategy encourages the students to be active during the class. in the discussion session, they actively share their knowledge. besides, they help each other their ideas to decide the issue, what they want to makethe product or performance and the audience. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy makes the students understand the material of the lesson by asking the member of the group without being afraid. they wrote by using their own words and ideas. they showed more attention during the writing process. the class was more alive. good atmosphere was created in the class because the students can exchange their ideas actively. finally, students could improve their writing skills. 5. conclusions this research showed that the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy can improve writing skill. therefore, the g.r.a.s.p.s strategy is an appropriate way that can be used by teachers in teaching writing. it can overcome the problem arising in writing class. based on the illustration above, it implies that using g.r.a.s.p.s strategy in writing class is strongly suggested. it can help the students to develop their writing draft and construct the text or essay. the teaching steps to do g.r.a.s.p.s strategy in the classroom are: (1) asking about interesting topic nowadays like the real-world issue and making a statement of it, (2) asking about what they want to make at the end of the writing process, such as performance and or product and the audience. the students must decide the activities by themselves, (3) giving text modeling, (4) working in a group mostly, (5) giving motivation and positive feedback to the students. g.r.a.s.p.s strategy can motivate the students in expressing their ideas; the interesting teaching-learning process in the classroom will make the students feel enjoyed because of their roles in real-life situations. it can low pressure in writing; the students also showed their self-confidence. references [1] ball, patrice (2012). grasps: a focus on writing. aligned to the wisconsin state standards and mps learning targets. stefanie nike nurtjahyo, nur arifah drajati, sumardi 172 ijolte [2] carr, w., & kemmis, s. 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(2008). perception of learner proficiency: its impact on the interaction between an esl learner and her higher and lower proficiency partners, language awarenesses, 17. 115-130. [25] wiggins, g., & mctighe, j. (2004). understanding by design professional development workbook. alexandra, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. [26] wiggins, g., & mctighe, j. (2005). understanding by design (2nd ed.). alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development, alexandria, virginia, usa. [27] wiggins, g., & mctighe, j. (2008). understanding by design (2nd ed.). alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development, alexandria, virginia, usa. http://pubs.sciepub.com/education/5/5/12/index.html http://pubs.sciepub.com/education/5/5/12/index.html paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2019, volume 3, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 45 ijolte the teacher’s beliefs and practices on the use of digital comics in teaching writing: a qualitative case study muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto the graduate school of english department, universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia email corresponding author: muflikhatun7nisa@gmail.com how to cite this paper: muyassaroh, m. n., asib, a., & marmanto, s. (2019). the teacher’s beliefs and practices on the use of digital comics in teaching writing: a qualitative case study. international journal of language teaching and education, 3(1), 45-60. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 accepted: may 09, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract in the industrial era 4.0, the use of digital comic as a multimodal teaching medium is seen as the new trend in efl classrooms. although many teachers had already used this medium, so far, the exploration of the use of digital comics for teaching writing in vocational school has not been extensively investigated yet. this study aimed to explore teacher beliefs, practices, and problems in implementing digital comics to teach writing for vocational students. this medium implemented by using the genre approach. this study used a qualitative case study approach. the subject was an experienced english teacher who held m. a. in english language. one of the interesting findings, the teacher, believed that the implementation of comics was the best method to switch the vocational students’ stereotype on english; from english as the most challenging subject to english as the enjoyable subject. however, as a consequence, the combination of digital comics and process approach confronted a major challenge, namely time management. subject areas teaching writing keywords digital comics, descriptive and recount writing, belief, and practices, teacher professional identity 1. introduction in the industrial era 4.0, the use of digital comic as a teaching medium seen as the new trend in efl classrooms. comics, as a multimodal composition, has far-reaching benefits for preparing learners to respond cogently and adeptly to 21st-century composition demands (issa, 2017). in indonesia, efl latest books contain realistic images of students’ activities with actions and social relations (elmiana, 2019). even more, the significant influence of comics is argued as a post-facto reason for linguistic change because it contains unusual speech patterns (unser-schutz, 2015). digital comics are electronic comics which are distributed and screened digitally (ferdiansyah, 2018; jang & song, 2017; susilawati, 2017; winarti, masrupi, & juniardi, 2018). based on its forms, at least, digital comics are distinguished into two: online and offline. many of these online comics can https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6502 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 46 ijolte be downloaded or printed. from this process, online comics have changed to become offline comics. rozema (2015) mentioned that comics (or manga in japanese term) cover a wide range of genres for its readers, including girls, boys, women, and men. based on its categories, there are fantasy, school life, romance, comedy, tragedy, historical, supernatural, horror, science, fiction, gender bender, etc. commonly, one comic may contain some categories. for instance, one of the popular comics entitled naruto is classified as the boy's comics, which its story involves fiction, ninja-school life, and comedy. each of the comics’ genre or category is the representation of the author’s point of view and set of belief (park, 2016). this popularity was used by some efl teachers to engage their students in creating a positive atmosphere during the teaching-learning process. as a teaching medium, many teachers applied comics to teach the reading skill (liu, 2004). since comics contains images and texts, this medium quickly attracted efl students’ attention (januarty & azizah nima, 2018). it also became a useful tool to foster students meaning-making and reading comprehension (mcgrail, rieger, & doepker, 2017). its positive use in efl learning enhances the comics' popularity. on the other side, some comics may include controversial contents such as cyberbullying, suicide, domestic violence (jang & song, 2017), and also lgbt characters (abate, grice, & stamper, 2018; baudinette, 2017; galvan, 2018; howard, 2018; kedley & spiering, 2017; vega, 2015). considering these sensitive contents, the adaptation of comics as a teaching medium is not an easy decision. the teachers, who prefer to use this medium than other media, should be careful and aware of its consequences because this kind of comics is appropriate only for adult learners. adolescent and young learners may face difficulty to understand or use of this genre of comics for learning writing. in efl learning, it is known that there are three main approaches in teaching writing namely product approach, process approach, and genre approach (jang & song, 2017; nordin, 2017; osman, 2017). first, the product approach aims to teach efl learners on how to create a sophisticated text by imitating a given pattern. second, as the opposite, the process approach instead concentrates on how a text is written through the back-and-forth cycles of prewriting, drafting, evaluating, and revising. third, compared to the two other approaches, the genre process approach emphasizes the learners to create texts based on social contexts (badger & white, 2000). in indonesia context, the english teaching in schools commonly applies a scientific approach which follows the k-13 as the current national curriculum of the ministry of education. teachers’ considerations to implement a particular approach are mainly affected by their beliefs. richardson (1996) defined the teacher’s belief as an individual’s thought or understanding of classroom practices, change, and learning to teach. furthermore, he divided this belief into two groups. first, teachers’ belief about education is difficult or impossible to change, and second, teachers’ belief about education can change depending on the content and nature of influences that one undergoes. beijaard et al. (2000) argued that there were three influential factors of teachers’ belief, such as teaching context, teaching experience, and the biography of the teacher. these elaborations indicate that a teacher’s belief may change if the teacher experiences a new thing in a relatively long period. muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 47 ijolte his/her cognitive view possibly interlinks the teacher's belief on a particular phenomenon. beiijaard et al. (2000) described teacher professional identity as of his/her understanding of their own professional identity. it covers three domains, such as: the teacher as a subject matter expert (a teacher who bases his/ her profession on subject matter knowledge and skills), the teacher as a pedagogical expert (a teacher who bases his/ her profession on knowledge and skills to support students’ social, emotional, and moral development), and the teacher as a didactical expert (a teacher who bases his/her profession on knowledge and skills regarding the planning, execution, and evaluation of teaching and learning process). all in all, these were some relevant studies towards comics between 2014 and 2019. first, after the use of comics in the classroom, johnson (2016) and susilawati (2017) succeed to gain their students writing ability. second, according to the students’ perceptions, yusof, lazim, and salehuddin (2017) found that they were excited when the graphic novel was introduced in their class mainly because it had more pictures than words. third, according to the teachers’ perceptions, cheung (2015) recognized that not all of those teachers used comics frequently. moreover, some of them were confronted by difficulties (e.g., adapting to japanese comics’ right-to-left reading sequence) during its implementation as a teaching medium. this indicated that the use of comics as a teaching medium could not guarantee the improvement of students’ writing ability if the teachers have difficulties towards the medium. fourth, mcgrail et al. (2017) found that comics was a powerful medium for enhancing decoding skills, which contained contextual clues. empirically, these findings proved that there were some advantages and disadvantages to using comics as a teaching medium. despite the controversy of comics, this medium had already implemented and inquired in some degrees of institution: kindergarten (mcgrail et al., 2017), elementary (deligianni-georgaka & pouroutidi, 2016; johnson, 2016; mcgrail et al., 2017; yusof et al., 2017), junior-high (rokhayani & utari, 2014), senior-high (anggraini, 2014; cheung, 2015; susilawati, 2017; winarti et al., 2018) and university (kim, 2018). although many teachers had already used this medium, so far, the exploration of the use of digital comics in vocational high school has not been extensively investigated yet. interestingly, the researchers found that there is an experienced english teacher who used comics as the medium to teach his vocational students. the present study aimed to explore the implementation of teaching writing by using comics in vocational high school. the research question was, how are the experienced teacher’s beliefs on the implementation of digital comics associated with the teaching practices? 2. method this study took the site in one of vocational high school in boyolali, central java province, indonesia. the subject was an english teacher in this school, namely mr. ryan (a pseudonym), who regularly used comics as a medium to teach his students during three recent years. he had already taught this vocational school for nearly10 years. he also held m. a. in english language. the researchers applied a qualitative single case-study approach. yin (2014) stated that this design muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 48 ijolte focused on investigating a unique or temporary case in-depth within its real-world context. the data were obtained from three sources, such as participants, events, and documents. first, the participants were mr. ryan and his students who experienced in using comics in their classes. their data were elicited through semi-structured interviews. second, the event was the teachinglearning process where comics implemented in the grade 10th and 11th classrooms. in collecting the data, the first researcher became the observer in two classrooms (1 classroom of the grade 10th and one classroom of the 11th grade). each of these classes consisted of 30 students. in total, the observations were conducted eight times or four times for each class. a video recorder recorded all observations. third, the documents were mr. ryan’s syllabus, the lesson plans, the comics, and the students’ writing tasks. these data were gathered with the help of mr. ryan. to ensure the credibility, the researchers used member-check and triangulation processes. firstly, the member-check was conducted after the researchers transcribed the interviews. each of interviewees was given the result of interview transcripts. they needed to confirm that the interview transcripts were consistent with the interview sessions. secondly, the triangulation was applied after the member–check process. it aimed to corroborate the same finding from the data which were obtained from multiple sources (e.g. interviews, observations). for instance, one of the sub-finding themes, namely the implementation of digital comics was developed inductively from the teacher’s interview transcript. next, this theme was confirmed by the observation note, which discussed the same theme. last, it was verified by the teacher’s lesson as the document data. as explained by yin (2014), there were five general strategies to analyze data. for this study, the researchers applied two of them, namely pattern matching and explanation building. first, identifying the teacher’s belief and its influential factors based on the interview transcripts. second, all transcriptions were analyzed inductively to develop several (sub) themes. the themes of the interviews and the observations were crossly checked to integrate the corresponding data. meanwhile, the documents (e.g., lesson plans) were used as the supplementary data to support the data. third, the researchers started to elaborate on the results, then compare it to previous studies, and interpret it based on the relevant theories. 3. finding and discussion to ease the explanation of the results and the discussion, this part was divided into four points i.e. the belief on the characteristic digital comics for language learning, the belief on teaching english writing in vocational schools, the strategy to maximizing the use of digital comics, and the difficulties encountered by the students and the teacher. 3.1. the belief of the characteristics of digital comics for language learning the teacher believed that the use of comics is the best method to switch the vocational students’ stereotype on english; from english as the most challenging subject to english as an enjoyable subject. this stereotype rose because those students are middle-low learners. “based on the background of vocational students, they are middle-low learners who considered that english as muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 49 ijolte one of the most difficult for them, then, my belief towards the use of comics, as a method to change the students’ mind, in order to help them realized that english is not a difficult subject and more enjoyable to learn.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) this finding was congruent with the previous studies (cheung, 2015; johnson, 2016) where the middle-low learners needed a particular treatment (e.g., using new media such as comics or graphic novels) in order to help them in confronting their learning difficulties. this kind of learners was not only found in vocational school but also from various degrees; from elementary to university students, private and public institutions. for the teachers of these learners, changing the negative stereotype became more important than teaching skills and knowledge. one of the most advantages of comics was this media used simple sentences and exciting plots which did not burden the students in their learning. “because comics are seen as a straightforward book which does not use complex sentences, the simplification of sentences in comics would help the students to learn meanings and story’s plots, that is why they would not feel burdened in learning english.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) indeed, there were other media (e.g., magazines) which also used simple sentences. however, those media were not persuasive enough like comics. mr. ryan confessed that he liked and collected comics. although previously he used to read comics books, now he preferred to read digital comics because it was more efficient. either the comics are in printed version or a digital version, mr. ryan still liked to read comics. indeed, it was clear that reading comics is mr. ryan’s hobby. his hobby was somewhat unique, but he did not have any intention to hide it. “…fortunately i also like comics, whatever its kinds. i have some collections. however, recently, i used to read it online, efficient, and simple. (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) compared than magazines and novels, comics were considered as the most appropriate media to learn specific english. as argued by kiss and wagner (2016), by persuasively connecting visual and linguistic information to their existing schemas and through a complex process of comparing and contrasting, the students made new, unique, meaning and cultural understandings. first, for instance, the visual represents how the characters act in various situations. second, the short-texts represent the conversations among characters and the atmospheres (e.g., sounds) of settings. the combination of these two produces a life story which is easily absorbed by the students’ imagination. it is more than what one wants to say, but also ‘how’ one wants to say it. surprisingly, mr. ryan and his students shared the same interest, i.e. comics. he noticed it when he saw his students brought comics to the school, and they hid them inside their bags and drawers. “i did not choose comics from out of nowhere; in a glance, i saw that the students seemed to like comics. i knew it when there was a school inspection; it was found that, in their bags, there were so many comics.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) this unintentional event strengthened mr. ryan’s decision to apply comics as teaching media. even more, by demonstrating his interest in students, it also helped him to engage a good relationship with them (beijaard et al., 2000). this finding supported ferdiansyah (2018) that facilitating the enhancement of students’ background knowledge played a vital role in assisting them to comprehend muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 50 ijolte the genre of the text. besides the printed comics, mr. ryan also liked to read online comics. his hobby enriched his knowledge on the variety of comics’ genres (e.g., adults 21+). he needed it because he should select and recommend which comics are appropriate for his students. “...yes sometimes i like to read comics online. so i did understand that the comics genres are varied; it also has many adult genres. i also knew which one of these digital comics which are is appropriate for my students.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) this finding was congruent with cheung (2015), where the teacher had ‘an insider knowledge’ because of his familiarity towards comics as an inspirational book. knowledge of comics’ genres is vital for any teacher who plans to use comics in his/her class. the adults’ genres are not appropriate for vocational high school learners. teachers should be knowledgeable and learn many things; not only about their subject (utami & prestridge, 2018). unfortunately, these genres can be easily accessed through digital comics by using smartphones. therefore, during its implementation, the teacher needs to supervise students while they are accessing digital comics. last but not least, mr. ryan also changed his hairstyle into japanese style to act like the character in comics. this action supported to create an enjoyable atmosphere in his class. “i used japanese comics, and it means that i put japanese features into the teaching-learning process, i also tried to change my hairstyle became japanese style. surprisingly, my students were more interested in following my writing class.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) this finding supported salcedo and sacchi (2014) that culture teaching was positive in teaching-learning activities because it gained students’ motivation for diverse cultures. despite mr. ryan‘s spontaneous action, this action succeeded to gain the students’ attention. indirectly, it showed that the teacher had already built a mutualism relationship with his students where the teacher accommodated the students’ interest, and the students gave their attention to the teacher during the teaching-learning process. 3.2. the belief in teaching english writing in vocational schools this belief was gained from the teacher’s personal experiences as a vocational school student and his current professional experiences as a language teacher. on the one side, from his perspective, mr. ryan believed that english is not a difficult subject to learn because he had exciting experiences. while he was studying in vocational school as a student, he was regarded as a high achiever since he had several achievements in english competitions. he enjoyed learning english because his teachers could conduct an enjoyable atmosphere by providing some attractive ways of teaching. nevertheless, he felt that the situation did not occur in writing class because of less attractive stimulation. it impacted his writing skill, which was not better than his speaking ability. muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 51 ijolte “...i am one of the alumni of this school, so i knew very well, how the characteristics of vocational students and their english learning are. at that time, i liked english very much, and i was frequently asked, as the school representative, to join competitions. it possibly happened because my teacher was able to create an enjoyable learning atmosphere. however, i did not know why, when the english learning talked about writing texts, i and my friends were bored. then i thought, maybe, his stimulations to encourage us to write were insufficient. finally, my writing was not good at that time.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) mr. ryan, as a vocational student, was able to hold a positive belief towards english learning. because his english teacher was a good example, he was able to enjoy and master english since his school period. this experience also inspired mr. ryan to be a teacher. this finding was by gabinete (2017) and american and pouromid (2018) that teachers’ early education experience played a significant role in shaping certain beliefs. on the other side, from his professional perspective, mr. ryan got many new insights into english teaching regarding the development of students’ writing skill during his undergraduate study. he obtained them by accomplishing a set of coursework. also, he performed a set of plans to prepare himself in learning. he applied various media in his teaching to suit it with the materials. ”during my undergraduate, my knowledge about teaching is continuously expanding. i knew that ‘ideal’ is the goal, based on technical standards. indeed, it should be like that, so did in teaching writing. when the time came, i frequently changed my teaching media over and over, included this comic to teach writing. yeah, it should be matched with materials and circumstances. at first, i doubt it too, because all manga (i.e., japanese comics) are produced by japan, not american.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) in this experience, mr. ryan began to develop the two domains of teacher professional identity (beijaard et al., 2000). first, as a didactical expert, he knew that he should keep the learning objective on the right track even though he frequently changed media to achieve that learning objective. second, as a pedagogical expert, he conducted many experiments in his class by applying various media by the aim to find the most suitable media for the students. it should be noted that his english mastery, as a subject-matter expert, had already gained far before his pedagogic and didactic domains. also, mr. ryan did pre-service teaching to have professional training. he got experience in teaching high school students who needed extra effort to attract their attention, especially for writing. at the time, he utilized pictures to encourage students’ ideas. then, he also performed in-service training to improve his teaching quality. he had utilized pictures in teaching, but he got a suggestion from his mentor that it was not suited for high or vocational students since they should receive a higher level of media rather than just pictures. therefore, mr. ryan improved his teaching media into a more valuable one. in this point, he had an idea to use comics as the combination of pictures and words in teaching writing rather than pictures. muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 52 ijolte “about teaching experiences, the teacher-trainee program, that was my only experience before i became a real teacher, teaching senior high school students, it was difficult to attract their attention to write, possibly because i only used some of the comics' pages. mmm, while i am becoming a teacher, i got some developmental training or workshops to become more professional. moreover, during that time, i got suggestions from the trainers or the instructors, so i could deeply explore the media; it is more than just ordinary pictures, so my students become smarter.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. august 2017) here, mr. ryan’s pedagogical domain much more expanded than the others. his knowledge of the media was more in-depth than before. he also noted that in order to gain students’ attention, using some comics pictures seemed to have an insignificant impact. from this case, mr. ryan realized that he should use something much better, such as digital comics. it sums up that teacher learning is the interconnection between practice, theory, and ‘the person of the teacher’ (korthagen, 2016). 3.3. the strategy to maximizing the use of digital comics the implementation was divided into four stages: preparation, brainstorming, drafting, and revising. these stages are the reflection of teaching, which implemented the genre approach. this approach emphasizes the learners to focus on the social purposes of the texts. the integration of this approach with comics was believed as the best decision based on the consideration of the students’ interest, the teacher’s experiences, and the teaching objective. preparation stage before implementing comics in teaching writing, mr. ryan did some preparations in order for him to present the effective teaching process and achieve the learning goal. in this study, he checked on the syllabus and material to plan a lesson. then, he browsed on the internet to find suitable comics for having an adjustment to the material. he prepared comics for material and exercise. he also learned those comics in detail before taught it to his students. “...matched it with the standard and the basic competence as provided in the syllabus, then i checked the lessons. next, i searched for some sources or references for comics (on the internet). after that, i should understand its contents. that is impossible if i teach comics, but i do not understand it.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) finding suitable comics and changing the comics’ contents were some strategies which have already done. the learning materials, the lesson plans, and the syllabus are vital elements to keep the learning process on the right track. preparing the materials between descriptive and recount texts were different. for the material of the descriptive text, mr. ryan selected one of the comics' panels and replaced the original speech bubble which contains only one short sentence (picture 1) with the new speech bubble which contains two or more complex sentences (picture 2). indeed, the new sentences were also suited to the character’s face-expressions. muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 53 ijolte picture 1. original speech-balloon picture 2. adapted speech-balloon for the material of recount text, mr. ryan composed complete pictures and dialogues because it would cover the whole story. nevertheless, he also changed the content of the story, so it was appropriate to the syllabus as a guideline which covered the material. as one of the comics' references, mr. ryan read and downloaded digital comics such as line webtoon in its website www.webtoon.com/en “...the one which is available on the internet, it is easy (to be accessed) and varied. hmmm, webtoon.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) a korean webtoon is different from a scanned version of print comics, and it is a new form in global comics market japanese comics industries are leading (jang & song, 2017). most of their comics artists, or known as webtoons, are korean. this website provides free access to read and download all of the comics. for the webtoon’s readers, including mr. ryan, these digital comics are easier to read than printed comics because the panels of the story are arranged in vertical not in horizontal (jin, 2015). this arrangement makes the readers feel comfortable to read it by scrolling on smartphones screen even though their which have limited screen dimensions (5-7 inch). brainstorming stage in the interview before the class began, mr. ryan said that he usually showed some pictures which did not contain any words to activate the students’ thought. then, gradually, he mentioned some simple descriptive-vocabulary to describe the pictures. http://www.webtoons.com/en http://www.webtoons.com/en muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 54 ijolte “...as the warming up activity for the students, usually i provided some pictures, without any english words or phrases to get their attention. so they could express their thoughts or perceptions first. after that, i gave some simple english vocabulary. 80% of them were interested, especially for the students who liked pictures; they were able to express their ideas.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) this practice supported astuti’s (2016) argument that gaining an exciting and motivating learning atmosphere is the teacher’s responsibility. on the other side, the students have the responsibility to respond to the teacher’s efforts. more precisely, these positive atmospheres can be achieved only if the teacher and the students are willing to be engaged. in the classroom practice, mr. ryan began his descriptive-text lesson by introducing the textual devices (e.g., speech-balloons, captions, onomatopoeia) of comics to his students. he showed and explained it through lcd. mr. ryan: ok, my students, let us see the elements of comics! which one is the speech-balloon?” (showing pictures) mr. ryan: most you have already known them, but maybe some of you are still unfamiliar with them. they are japanese comics. yes, manga. you may understand them by enjoying the unique pictures and simple speech bubbles. what manga’ titles that you have read? student a: naruto, sir! student b: one piece! student c: for anime, i like doraemon and detective conan! (observation 1. august 2017) to avoid confusion for the students who were not familiar with comics, scaffolding knowledge towards the textual devices should be done first. all the mentioned comics above were japanese comics which were popular among indonesian readers. based on the students’ responses in this conversation also implied that many of them were familiar with japanese comics. furthermore, it is also essential to inform the students that japanese comics use right-to-left reading sequence, which is different from conventional comics which use left-to-right reading sequence (cheung, 2015). indeed, these activities are essential to construct the students’ knowledge gradually. next, to complete the warming-up activity, mr. ryan showed some pictures of the comics’ characters to his students. he delivered some questions about the characters to trigger the students’ enthusiasm and ideas. one of the students gave quick responses to it. this student answered the question by using english-indonesia mixed-code because he forgot some english vocabularies. “naruto, sir! he is a strong ninja. he wears a blue headband. there is a symbol of his birthplace in his ikat kepala. he has kumis like doraemon in his pipi. he has many jurus untuk mengalahkan his enemies. (student b. observation 1. august 2017) mr. ryan asked the student to express his ideas and did not interrupt him even though he used mixed language. he responded and corrected to the students’ sentences after the students finished his answers. using dictionaries and smartphone were allowed to help the students to find the vocabulary. muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 55 ijolte “bando is the indonesian language. use ‘headband’ to mean ‘ikat kepala.’ then, find out about ‘kumis’, ‘pipi’, ‘jurus’, and ‘mengalahkan’ in english!’ (mr. ryan. observation 1. august 2017) the use of mixed languages (l1 and l2) revealed the students’ high enthusiasm, which spontaneously responded to the teacher’s questions. it represented that their needs and knowledge are still constructing (astuti, 2016). another possibility, mr. ryan assumed that the direct correction was not necessary; mainly, it was still in the brainstorming stage. after the oral brainstorming, mr. ryan helped his students to practice written brainstorming. he guided the students to make a list of physical characteristics, which was mentioned in the speech-balloons on the whiteboard. then, for the next several minutes, these students were asked to write more or make a list of what the other characteristics in the comics. “...yes because the learning objective is the students should be able to write descriptive text, i guided them to elaborate the ideas first, so when they started to write descriptive paragraphs, they already have the concepts. not all students have the ability to write the text without elaborating the concept first. that is why i gave them some times to think about what they wanted to write about the topics. next, i asked them to make a list of ideas, and then they could continue to write the text.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) the oral brainstorming was usually done by the help of the teacher’s guidance (e.g., the guided questions) while the written brainstorming was done independently by the students themselves (e.g., mind-map or shop-list). the students might use one or mix various techniques of brainstorming as far as it could help them in the drafting stage. in this stage, mr. ryan practiced two techniques of brainstorming, oral and written. commonly, the oral brainstorming was practiced first and then continued with the written brainstorming. direct corrective feedback, especially in the oral brainstorming, is not recommended if it would delay the students to generate their ideas. drafting stage to deal with the drafting stage, mr. ryan allowed his students to do this activity in a group so he could manage the time allotment efficiently by checking his students’ drafts. he emphasized that the students should focus on the content and the meaning of the text and also reminded them not to worry about grammar or spelling mistake; nevertheless, those aspects were important in writing too. creating a learning atmosphere where students felt worried less about making mistakes and making suggestions to improve their ability was important (peterson & portier, 2014). comics could assist the students with the sequence of stories in making a draft. when his students got confused about the continuance of the plot, they could see the comics. this point occurred while mr. ryan was teaching recount writing. mr. ryan also responded to students’ questions and controlled their progress on drafting. “…and because i used comics, they were more independent; they could read the pictures and the dialogues by themselves; only if they confused about how the story sequences were.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. sept 2017) the drafting stage was mainly representing the learner-centered activity, which revealed the students’ readiness as autonomous learners. this finding supported the previous studies’ (astuti, 2016; ferdiansyah, 2018) results that collaborative or group writing is a practical approach to muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 56 ijolte promote students’ collaborative endeavor, self-esteem, and confidence which are useful to build learning autonomy. after the students accomplished the drafting process, mr. ryan allowed them to write onto a text by developing the main ideas. he gave an example of how to generate the draft by showing his draft. he did not write beyond the draft. “when i gave the model writing for the students, the models have never been too difficult, or something different from the earlier draft. i could do that, but they would confuse.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. sept 2017) it should be noted that the given an example or the model was given to teach the students on ‘how to write’ not ‘what to write’ (badger & white, 2000). mr. ryan wanted his students to learn how to think logically in order. indeed, this was more than just copying or reproducing that model. then, the students wrote a text in a pair. they might ask mr. ryan when they confronted difficulties. mr. ryan had a view that teaching writing was not testing writing, so he permitted his students to open standard or offline dictionary. however, they were not allowed to access google translate or other online dictionaries to prevent the misinterpretation in translating sentences. mr. ryan’s assumption was in line with (vidhayasai, 2015), who found that the mistranslation of google translate mostly occurred at the lexical level. “if there are difficulties, you may ask me! however, do not use google translate instantly! try to find the word of the meaning by word! do not put the sentence or the whole text into google-translate!” (mr. ryan. observation 1. agt 2017) mr. ryan recognized the potential of allowing the use of smartphones or laptops during the learning process. it promoted collaboration between the teacher and the students (ekanayake & wishart, 2014). students working with digital tools could evolve their creativity because their effort in visualizing the story was created by thinking of creative designs in their digital storytelling (ferdiansyah, 2018). here, mr. ryan emphasized three vital processes, i.e., the processes of developing ideas initially, the process of finding the words’ meaning carefully, and the process of translating their sentences manually. these processes focused on developing the students’ knowledge of how to write texts correctly. during this stage, mr. ryan also observed that his students became more active while reading their digital or printed comics to rewrite the stories. some of them were also busy with their dictionary. since all the students were busy, mr. ryan checked the students’ works by going around in the classroom. “i realized that the students were more active; they were busy to involve in the writing process. some students accessed comics via their smartphones, some others brought it from the house, and the rest of them were busy to find words in the dictionary, all of them were busy to write comics. i was so excited but also exhausted, because i had to go around checked their works.” (mr. ryan. interview 1. agt 2017) loughran and berry (2005) emphasized that teachers should make students aware of the pedagogical reasoning, feelings, thoughts, and actions that accompany practice across a range of teaching and learning experiences. fortunately, mr. ryan was able to sense the positive response from his students while he was applying comics. he has a high level of awareness, intuition, and consciousness. this sensitivity is only possible to be acquired by the teachers who have a strong affection muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 57 ijolte towards their students. these teachers will give their best to seek and try numerous ways to ease their students in learning. moreover, the use of digital comics encouraged the students to engage with the current trend of technology. to sum up, the drafting stage put more focus on the students’ activities rather than the teacher’s role. all of these students’ activities were given to guide them to become autonomous learners. meanwhile, the teacher was needed to observe the students’ progress during these activities. here, the teacher played a role as a guide and an observer. discussing & revising stages mr. ryan allowed his students to discuss what they had written with their peers. they might ask for some suggestions of the content and corrections of the grammar and usage in this proofreading stage. all of them became peer reviewers to check and improve their drafts. mr. ryan also took a sample of student’s draft, and then he explained to his students how to review it. the review should be started by checking the content first before it went analyzing the grammar. “the students’ revising process took quite of time. it was not only involving my feedbacks but also the peers’ feedbacks, as far as they can do. after the review on contents and grammar was done, the last step was the editing process.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) while having discussion and revision among students, mr. ryan also gave some comments on their work generally. he had some considerations; time and independent learners. he wished that his students could edit their writing after having the revision. in the revising process, the drafts received feedbacks from both sides; the teacher and the peers. unfortunately, mr. ryan did not give the detail explanation on which area (e.g., content, grammar, and organization) that should (not) be reviewed by the peers. it might cause inefficiency because there was a possibility that the teacher’s feedback would overlap with the peers’ feedback (arif & lestari, 2014). furthermore, giving particular kinds of feedback had a significantly different effect on the quality of the students’ writing (saukah, dewanti, & laksmi, 2017). 3.4. the difficulties encountered by the students and the teacher there were two main difficulties. first, mr. ryan explained that he was not used to drawing comics by himself. drawing comics spent much time, whereas he should prepare many other things before teaching. furthermore, he also needed to edit some of the comics’ contents. “…ideally, i should draw it by myself, but i was not used to it. it took much time whereas this media was not the only one important thing which i should prepare before teaching. moreover, after i download the comics, it still needed to be edited so it could match with the material.” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) second, there was a problem with the post writing activity because of time allotment. he understood that teaching writing needs entirely of time. “to teach writing is time-consuming. even with the time allotment, it was not enough. moreover, i could not conduct the post-writing activity for the students. consequently, that task was given as their homework” (mr. ryan. interview 2. september 2017) muflikhatun nisa muyassaroh, abdul asib, & sri marmanto 58 ijolte the problem of adapting comics was not found in any previous study because the other teachers preferred to create their comics. winarti et al. (2018) proved the usefulness of latest technology helped teacher or learners who wanted to create their digital comics. those applications are storyboard thattm, cartoon story maker (csm), makebeliefescomix storybird, toondoo, bitstrips for schools, digital storytelling, and boomwriter. it seems that adapting comics is more complicated than creating a new one. the time management problem was in line with cheung (2015) and wang (2014). in responding to this finding, the researchers assumed that it was correlated to the back-and-forth cycles of genre approach and the time preparation. the time allotment for english is only 135 minutes per week. the implementation of digital comics in a classroom needs to be supported with other electronic tools such as laptop, projector, and screen. this preparation needs approximately 10 minutes per meeting. it may need longer time if the tools do not work correctly. although the problem of time allocation is inevitable, it can be minimized if the teacher can prepare and recheck all of his equipment before the implementation 4. conclusion the materials arranged for linguistic description of english is undertaken to fulfill the need for the learning and teaching process for ldoe subject. this subject is a new subject offered in the curriculum of english education study program at universitas jambi and does not have the materials available for teaching activity in the class. by doing research and development, the material prototype has arranged that suits the need of the students as well as the lecturers. the prototype consists of two chapters about discussions on morphology and syntax. each chapter generally contains several components, namely the unit title, lesson’s objectives, unit discussion, and comprehension exercises. even though the prototype of the materials has not been tested in field testing yet, the result of validation by expert validator indicates that the prototype can be used as the representative of the whole complete materials and the researcher are allowed to continue the development process until it becomes a comprehensive material for teaching ldoe later in the class. references [1] abate, m. a., grice, k. m., & stamper, c. n. 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(2017). teacher trainees’ perspectives of teaching graphic novels to esl primary schoolers. 3l: the southeast asian journal of english language studies, 23(3), 81–96. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2017-2303-06 contact komilie situmorang ©2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by4.0). komilie situmorang faculty of nursing, universitas pelita harapan, tangerang, indonesia abstract study abroad (sa) is a daunting process in which students who encounter cross-border face a whole new world. they go through positioning and being positioned by others. there is an on-going salient power asymmetry in their language use, which affects their desire to speak up and participate in the new community. this study aimed to scrutinize the ways indonesian students negotiated their identities through their language use. using open-ended questionnaires (oeq)and semi-structured interviews, this study focused on 7 participants who were in the midst of the master’s degree program in england. the results indicated that the participants experienced the identities negotiation multifacetedly. participants who exercised their agency and invested in their language use challenged the positioning attached to them. as a result, they constructed new identities and gained central participation in the local community. meanwhile, participants who could not resist the power asymmetry withdrew and formed a more solid community with other international students. lastly, some participants were also found to maintain their emotional security by not making any contact through their language use. participants who resisted any contacts but with fellow home students interestingly developed an increased nationalism. therefore, this article calls for the teachers’ attention and how to devise the english language teaching classroom better and program providers’ of how to provide the support for the sa students best. article history received 15 april 2020 accepted 17 june 2020 published 31 december 2020 keywords: agency, identity negotiation, investment, language use, study abroad 1. introduction study abroad (sa) is always dreamlike until one gets into it. not a few assume that crossing the border is the best way to learn english (kinginger, 2013). this assumption is made logical by the concept that when immersed in the language, one will quickly grasp the feel and the maximum exposure to the language. however, the process is not that simple. savicki and cooley (2011) state that every linguistic and cultural context encounter requires adjustment and adaptation. when looking at it closely, the students’ participation and non-participation prove to be daunting. they have to position themselves in a completely new situation and are subject to be positioned. to describe this process, kinginger (2013) summarizes that “some students thrive while other flounder” (p. 341). while campbell (2015) believed that sa could be the best medium for the students to gain language proficiency through frequent interaction, it is a battlefield in which there is an on-going invisible power. there is a large gap between the native speaker and the non-native speakers. learners who come to a new community is not solely accepted and made as a central participant. they need to display the required international journal of language teaching and education https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.9073 mailto:komilie.situmorang@uph.edu https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i2.9073 74 k. situmorang capital like accent, fluency, and cultural awareness to be accepted in the community. moreover, learners need to have a strong commitment to resist and position themselves for their favors. in other words, they have to be able to fit or reorganizes themselves when rejected. many experiences despair that they withdraw themselves, putting off their desires to join the community, although some succeed. various studies have looked into the international students’ identities negotiation in different countries during sa. identities that are studied include nationality, gender, age, ethnicity, and foreigner identities ((kinginger, 2008; polanyi, 1995; pellegrino-aveni, 2005; tan and kinginger, 2013; lino, 2006). within this research, investment and agency have gained popularity as the drive to negotiate the identity (darvin, 2019; norton 2017). as many studies have been looked into the different international students’ identities in sa, some indonesian research has also shifted their focus to the indonesian identities in sa. sabaruddin (2019, p. 37), an indonesian student learning in australia, reflected that “students can be successful if they are willing to socialize and intensely be involved in the culture of the country they study.” mardiningrum’s (2017) study on five efl teachers in the us indicated that the participants perceived that they lacked english proficiency and struggled to keep up with the native speakers. there are only limited studies done in the context of indonesian in sa, yet they both confirmed the real struggle in sa. there is an urgent need for more empirical studies to uncover students' struggles during sa and how they negotiate their multiple identities in different cultures. as no studies have been done in the united kingdom (uk) context, this study offers a novel perspective. it enriches the literature of indonesian students’ negotiation of identities in study abroad. therefore, this study provides real pictures from the fields, which are the students' voices. the findings can offer more precise insight into the teachers’ attention in devising the english language teaching classroom and program providers to think of ways best to support sa students. due to the arguments mentioned above, this present studied was set to uncover: 1) in what ways do the indonesian students negotiate their identities during the sa? 2. literature review identity negotiation when learners cross the border, they make sense of who they are, what they want to be, and their relationship to their new context. norton (2000, p. 5) defines this making sense process as identity negotiation in which she explains it as “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future.” this definition explains that identity is fluid, flux, multiple, and continually constructed across time and space. in negotiating the new identities, the learners will add and drop the community and socialize to gain validation and central participation (lave and wenger, 1991). they strive to be accepted in the community by their language use. however, language use and participation are the real battlefields where power asymmetry is structured internally. to be considered the central participants, the learners need to have the ‘right capital’, including the right accent and the right attitude qualities (bourdieau, 1991). therefore, the process of identities negotiation is long and exhaustive. previous studies have provided empirical evidence that learners may accept or reject the community they aim for when trying to gain participation. rejection will mostly lead to two results. first, the learners will find another community that will support him to construct his desired identity formation (norton and toohey, 2011), switch again and again, and find available support (heller, 1992), and second, the learners resist negotiating their identity as a consequence from suffering the ‘symbolic domination’ – the condition where they are seen as incapable of participating. another possibility can be that they position themselves as illegitimate as they believe they are not the rightful speakers (pavlenko and blackledge, 2004). therefore, learners in sa are highly suggested to actively position and reposition themselves for their favors. they need to keep making sense and participate through the language practice and the cultural encounters because identities negotiation is “not simply in as discursively constructed categories of self but as lived experiences of participation in specific communities, where meanings of particular positions, narrative and categories must be worked out in practice” (pavlenko, 2011, pp. 319). furthermore, it has also been suggested that negotiating identities is the interplay between how others position and reposition the learner (interactive positioning) and how learners position themselves in the context (reflective positioning) (pavlenko and blackledge, 2014). interactive positioning challenges international journal of language teaching and education 75 the learners directly when having interaction. when they talk with native speakers and cannot grasp or respond, they may be excluded from the conversation. equally, in the same situation, their reflective positioning is also challenged in which they will voluntarily position themselves as incapable speakers. the backlash, however, is less intense if the conversation is made through media. learners who receive an email or message may have a longer time to think before replying, leading them to a more positive positioning. support available from the host community has been working in two ways. the finding shows that support availability gives learners room to speak (pellegrino, 2005). the students feel that they are not struggling alone because they feel supported. meanwhile, another finding has shown that learners despise the support availability because it makes them look incapable and humiliated thus decide not to use the support (duff, 2002). therefore, whether or not support should be available seeks an answer in this study. investment and agency in identity negotiation the notion of motivation in second language acquisition theory is claimed not enough to explain why a motivated student gives up speaking when faced with the desired context (darvin and norton, 2015; norton 2000). more than motivation itself, the student needs a commitment to the learning that “accentuated the role of human agency and engaging with task at hand, accumulating economic and symbolic capital, in having stakes in the endeavor and persevering that endeavor” (kramsch, 2013, p.195). therefore, rather than solely relying on the traditional conceptions of good and bad, motivated and unmotivated, introvert and introvert learners, we need to dive deeper into the learners' learning commitment of what we call the investment. learners invest in their language learning because they know that they will achieve something good in exchange for learning. investment indicates the willingness to engage in language learning regardless of the marginalization experienced due to the power asymmetry. being invested, the learners will supposedly position and reposition themselves through situations and find a place where they can claim their voice. investment is used to “capture the relationship of the language learner with the changing social world. it conceives the language learner as having a complex social identity and multiple desires. the notion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with target language speakers, but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world” (norton pierce, 1995: p.17-18). therefore, investment is an inseparable part of the negotiation of identities as it is the bridge between the social and the historical relationship of the learners to the language. investment is found to lead to much higher retention in the classroom. ryan (2012) in norton (2017) shows that only 9/25 students attend the class before explaining the concept of investment. however, after the explanation, 25/29 students are attending the class. besides, learners who invest in their language learning will voluntarily abandon their comfort zone and find the target language community to acquire the proper language learning (wallace, 2003). the previous study of jackson (2008) indicates that two of her participants consider that they should not wait to be accepted and are responsible for building the relationship. therefore, they invest in their time and energy. language choices, control over investment, negotiation, participation, and non-participation are maneuvered by human agency. human agency highlights the struggle in the situation where a learner can say ‘no’ to marginalization. galluci (2011) shows that a student named lucy validates her status as a powerful english speaker when she feels that she cannot challenge her flatmates to keep speaking italian to her but a mixture of sardinian and spanish. this evidence indicates that through human agency, learners can challenge the positioning imposed on them by negotiation or resistance. to resist, learners may set up a counter-discourse that positions them as powerful persons rather than a marginalized subject position (norton, 2000). so, human agency is a “socially mediated capacity to act” which works together with investment to decide whether to negotiate or resist. 76 k. situmorang 3. methodology this study aimed to explore and understand the natural meaning in a social problem and how they are coped (cresswell, 2013). therefore, the research used qualitative research as it aimed to get “the bottom of what is going on in all aspects of social behavior” (holliday, 2015, p. 50), and its design took the form of a case study. yin (2014) mentions that a case study can, at the same time, help to examine the real-life and define the complexities which cannot be explained by survey research. therefore, the case study design was chosen because of its feasibility in eliciting explicit and implicit data from the dynamic participants. purposive and homogenous sampling criteria were utilized, and 7 participants were recruited. the participants were coded as aif, lanno, sota, putri, wenger, meza, aldi, postgraduate students in a university in england. data collection was done through open-ended questionnaires (oeq) and semistructured interviews. oeq acted as the familiarisation to the topic, and the semi-structured interview was used to explore and confirm the data from the oeq (vasilopoulos, 2015). the data collection underwent the process of collection, transcription, and member checking. the data analysis between the oeq and the semi-structured data was not done separately but in integration. the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis designed to “provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (downe-wamboldt, 1992: pp.314). the categories were gained after rereading the data and making sense of the connections made in the data. this is in line with cohen et al. (2007), who suggests establishing the codes that flow from the data to gain a rich data pool instead of making pre-ordinate categories. the data analysis is shown through decontextualization, recontextualization, categorization, and compilation (bengtsson, 2016). after rereading the data and making sense of the emerged codes and the categories, the analysis results in three big themes. each theme represented the participants’ different ways of negotiating identities. 4. results and discussions constructing new identities – i am part of the community lanno and wenger two participants demonstrate their desire and commitment to construct their new identities through their voluntary moves to approach the locals. this willingness is then interpreted as an investment because they understand that they will get what they expect in return. knowing that exposure to different cultures will improve his personality and expand his career opportunities in the future, wenger invests in his language participation. i can come to a new culture that will improve my thinking, habits, and perspectives, which will be beneficial and enriching. by living independently and getting in touch with the new culture, i will be able to do networking and get out of my comfort zone. i am glad that i am in many ways helping myself to improve. (wenger) enacting sa, these two participants find that interacting with locals is not as easy as they once imagined. the locals do not necessarily open up and welcome their presence (pellegrino, 2005). they are put in a situation where they feel powerless when using the language. they feel that they are invisible and thus experience the situation where they feel marginalized. it is not easy to talk to people. why? because they are british, it is their language. they would not want to waste their time just talk to us. they look lazy and unwilling to talk to us; some are nice, though. i am not sure whether they originally are unsociable. i think they may be introverted. yes, probably they are introverts who prefer to talk only to people of their kind. (lanno) through lanno’s excerpt, when emphasizing british, it can be seen that lanno is aware of the ‘language ownership’ notion. he is aware of the asymmetrical position between the legitimacy owned by the locals against them. lanno is positioned as the ‘foreigner’ who look for chances to talk in english. therefore, they would not talk to him because they see him as someone with limited command. they exclude him from the talk and not giving him room to speak (pavlenko and blackledge, 2004). the use of human agency is seen to be exercised during this situation. lanno, however, challenges the position given to him by repositioning the way he sees the locals. instead of saying that his friends are excluding him, he sees them as introverts. he does not allow the prejudicial attitudes to limit him from approaching the locals. he international journal of language teaching and education 77 denies the on-going power difference and assumes that being introverted is why they will not talk to him. as a result, he decides to keep talking to them. wenger also experiences a very similar situation. he shares the unbalance linguistic power situation in his classroom. he asserts how real the struggle is. there is a salient difference found in using the language, and he calls it a barrier. for example, when he tries to speak, he cannot get a slot because his classmate does not let him. he even feels intimidated to speak. he indeed makes contact with the locals when sitting in the class but only to a certain extent. i don’t speak the language fluently, which is probably why they have difficulty communicating with me. i mean, it so different between the east and the west in many terms. i don’t speak to my classmates. they dominate, and in some way, i feel intimidated. i usually talk to international students. we encourage and listen to each other. (wenger) wenger finds himself silenced in the class as he positions himself to be in the powerless position. bluntly he explains how he feels dominated to be around his local classmates. he, too, using his human agency, resists the position opposed to him by not speaking to his classmates often. simultaneously, he still uses the language but in a less harmful way with his fellow international students, where he acquires support. analyzing the two situations faced by lanno and wenger, it can be seen that both of them experience the so-called invisible marginalization. they are both positioned unequally because they could not display the required language to join the locals (bourdieu, 1991). wenger contrasts the difference between using the language to the locals and the international students. on one side, he positions himself as a marginal speaker as he emphasizes that his local friends ‘have difficulty when communicating’ with him. on the other side, he feels supported when talking to his international friends because they can understand each other. in this case, both lanno and wenger experience symbolic domination, which forces them to validate the languages' ownership to validate the languages' ownership to validate language's ownership. british owns the language. the analysis uncovers that english used, among lanno, wenger and their friends is not as solely a medium of communication but as a vehicle of power that medium of communication but as a vehicle of power that validates the inequality between the owner and the sole user. using their human agency, both lanno and wenger reorganize the positioning opposed to them in different ways. instead of withdrawing themselves, they gradually show salient effort as they are aware of the benefit if they are continuing to gain participation in the local community. they seek new ways into the interactions (heller, 1992) and resist the label of incompetency. through several efforts, lanno exercises his agency. although being put unequal due to his limited command, he sticks to his local friends. he starts as a peripheral participant by joining friends in pub quizzes and investing his time in meet-up drinks and gatherings. he indeed pays the price to move from a peripheral into central participation. investing time and paying prices do benefit lanno. his determination to fight back for the positioning imposed on him results in him considered central to the pub quizzes and drinks on the weekend. i try to avoid indonesians, and here, my campus is in a remote area. my classmates always hang out in the pub or somewhere in the city. i have to give extra effort because i have to walk a mile from the dorm to the bus stop if i want to join them. the bus frequently comes late, it could be 10 minutes, and at worst it could be 1 hour. besides, i must work twice harder in my study if i want to join them because i need to digest the language slower than them, so i am pressing myself to follow their pace. as a result, when my british and american friends invited me to the weekend for a drink, i have been relaxed, and i say, yes, i am in. (lanno) wenger also displays a similar struggle. having been turned down by his local classmates, he seeks other communities that will support him in developing his local community participation (norton and toohey, 2011). he decides to volunteer in a charity shop, which serves as his incubation tube of becoming a centric participant. in this shop, he meets the elderly, who are surprisingly very friendly and welcome. he gains confidence because the elderly see him as a fellow worker and listens to him. as a result, he subscribes to the charity shop cultures and repositions himself as confident speakers. he is given access to speak about his interests and various topics. his investment is paid off with him forms bonding with the charity shop’s community. he remains as peripheral in his classroom but central to the charity shop. 78 k. situmorang i volunteer at a charity shop to gain exposure to the locals, and i am glad that i do. i meet retired elderly who are very nice and kind. we talk about a lot of things, like issues happening in england, sports and different views. i like how they appreciate me the way i am and accept me. (wenger) both lanno and wenger experience the powerless situation through their language uses. on one side, lanno repositions the way he sees the marginalization by taking the benefit from the way he looks at them as introverted. on the other side, wenger resists the marginalization by abandoning the community to find another community that will better support him. he displays a similar finding to pellegrino's (2005) study that locals do not always welcome international students friendly. therefore, support from the host is inevitably vital as they help the students boost their confidence to use the language. human agency also drives lanno and wenger to reposition themselves from unfavorable situations to their imagined favorable situations. the price they paid is manifested in their investment in joining the community. although they are marginalized at first, lanno repositions himself and resists the positioning by sticking to the locals until they validate him as a community member. meanwhile, wenger resists the powerless situation by finding the community that will support him. he eventually finds the charity shops community by perpetually negotiating his identities across the different communities. through lanno and wenger's experience, it is evident that agency and investment play essential roles in negotiating the identities. the agency drives learners to resist or to bend during the marginalization while investment keeps them going during the difficult times. as a result, they gain central participation in the community they aim. in the case of lanno and wenger, they expand the learning outside the class. they exercise their agency while investing in their language learning outside the classroom, such as going to the pub meet-ups and volunteering in charity shops. as a result, they subscribe to a more natural and flexibly fun conversation. galluci (2011) argues that significant language learning and identities negotiation more likely to take place for lanno and wenger. growing with the imposed positioning – i will soon be part of the community sota the second finding shows that identity can be negotiated through marginalization by seeing it as unproblematic. sota experiences a powerless situation when talking to his local classmates. he is rejected from the engagement and not included in the classmates’ talk. i have many international friends, but i don’t have locals, i mean, i have some classmates, but we are not very close to each other. they have jobs, so it’s difficult to get together. it is hard to have time together. arguably, it is not merely because they are too busy or because they have jobs. there is a salient emergence of the marginalization simply because he cannot demonstrate the required linguistic capital needed for the talk to start with (bourdieu, 1991). being busy is merely a way to say that sota is ‘linguistically incapable.’ this argument is generated after the story about the classroom situation is explained by sota. his professor has made clear the on-going power difference between the local and the international students. the professor has been speaking very slowly from the first time, so the international will catch what he is saying and advising the local students to do the same. furthermore, the professor has set the rules that international students should get the chance to speak first before any of the local students. the following excerpt strongly supports the claim that instead of being busy, the local students refuse to talk to him and position him as solely someone incapable. my professor is so kind and understanding. he knows our situation. they speak very slowly to make sure we understand and make the local students' policy to do the same to understand the discussion. what’s more, we are given the privilege to speak first in any discussion. as soon as we, the international students, have no question, it will be given to the local students. it’s exciting, and i like it. what can be inferred from the excerpt is that sota must have first positioned himself as someone incapable of english before coming to the class. he has feared that he will not understand what the professors and his local friends say, which is why he feels supported when offered the privilege in the classroom. to put it in other words, he does not resist the positioning impose on him but lives with it. he views his powerless international journal of language teaching and education 79 states as a way to get help and thus appreciates the help given. this support helps his language learning and provides him room to speak up in the classroom. however, sota’s experience contrasts with duff's (2002) participants, who use their agency to ignore and remain silent in the class to avoid humiliation from their classmates. it is remarkable how sota uses his human agency to self-position himself as an incapable speaker and remains engaged in the class positions him as an outsider. he also invests in the interaction by capturing the privilege to speak because he sees that he will be improving his language learning and academic achievement as benefits. although his local friends now refuse to talk to him after class, he experiences favorable identity negotiation, which puts him in a positive situation. evidently, in addition to the agency's use, sota’s positive self-positioning amidst the marginalization of his language use owes to the support availability. this finding highlights the importance of support available to positively support students' self-strength and confidence and affect their identities formation. thus, although sota is yet a peripheral participant, using the support and his agency, he can follow the learning trajectories in the class and reformulate his identity. identities formation – i am a non-native speaker putri putri expresses the salient powerless state to be among her classmates. she bluntly claims that she suffers from being around her classmates and thus position herself as a marginal speaker. putri sees a significant inequality of power between the british and her. she feels deserted and homesick. when i first came, i missed home a lot. it is entirely different from what i have imagined before. it so hard to adapt to other languages. there is this ‘language barrier’ between us. it is entirely hard to interact and follow them in conversation because they usually talk just to each of them, the brits. from the excerpt, it can be seen that putri had imagined living in harmony with her language use. however, after trying to interact with locals, she realizes that it is not as easy as she has dreamed. she cannot follow her friends’ speech and is positioned as ‘incapable.’ being in the situation where she is set as the outsider, putri is forced to admit her british friends (bourdieu, 1991). moreover, the classroom language is not solely a tool of communication but as a tool of power to indicate ownership. she is led to realize that she does not demonstrate the required capital, so she is not right to be in the conversation. her notion of ‘language barrier’ helps understand the demarcation line between her and the local students (pavlenko and blackledge, 2004). suffering from the marginalization, putri uses her agency to resist new ways to engage with the local students. she withdraws herself from the powerless situation. instead, she seeks a community where she feels safe and owns equal power to speak – a place where english is used to communicate and support each other. she feels linguistically comfortable with her international fellow students, who are also nonnative speakers. with this community, she develops her confidence in using the language. her english improves, and she experiences improvement. indeed, dropping her desire to be in the local community does her less damage. i am close with international students; there are like ten international students coming from mexico, japan, and singapore. they become my close friends. my singaporean classmate, who is also my flatmate, becomes my very important support system. she helps me proofreading my paper. since we come from, she is so kind, and i mean indonesia and singapore are close enough, we feel like neighbors, that kind of sistership, keeping each other. choosing to make no more meaningful contact with the local students, putri finds a community where she negotiates her new identity as a non-native speaker. she actively uses the language and ends up with much better english proficiency. she and her other international students use non-imposing english, and they grow together without power marginalization as non-native speakers. 80 k. situmorang resisting identity formation aif, aldi, and meza some participants use their agencies to block contact with the local students and international students because of the marginalization, resulting in bad experiences. aif suffers the salient power inequality, which positions him as an incapable speaker. british students are very different from us. some of them are polite, but some are not. some are nice when asked, but some look us down. we are being careful talking to them because they give an unfriendly impression every time we talk. (aif) commenting on the difference between the british and him, aif implies the validation that his british friends are the rightful speaker. he also bluntly expresses how powerless he is against his friends when he opens his mouth. this condition forces him to stay silent not to be humiliated or looked down on when using the language. his interest in participating in the class is greatly diminished, and he opts for silence. he remains silent during the class and emails the professor when having a question to avoid being seen as stupid. this finding aligns with duff (2002) whose participants choose to stay silent because they are afraid to be laughed at by their friends. though he was first thinking of having the british accent, now he protects himself and is no longer motivated. he cuts the idea of developing bonds with the local students. further, aif does not necessarily develop a bond with international students because of his flatmates' bad experiences. his flatmates happen to be very noisy and eat his food frequently without asking first. his bad experiences provoke his resistance toward creating bonding with them. he is now prejudiced against both locals and international students. as a result, he speaks bahasa indonesia as a counterdiscourse, the language in which he is powerful and legitimate. he speaks bahasa indonesia all time and meets up with indonesian during his free time. meanwhile, meza and aldi see their study abroad as a transit terminal which they only need to pass for their goal. they both avoid the contacts because they have first positioned themselves as incapable and foresee that it will be difficult to talk to locals. therefore, they play safely in their comfort zone and maintain their emotional security. i don’t go out very often, so i don’t talk to people very often. only if i must. my brain is an indonesian brain, so when i want to speak english, i need to think for a while and translate it in my mind. (aldi) i speak bahasa indonesia, not english because i spend most of my time with indonesian friends. (meza) aldi and meza limit themselves from interacting with locals consciously. they both do not experience identity formation because they do not make any meaningful interaction with either local or international students. it is arguable because they do not value the interaction as something that will benefit them. instead, they use their agency to go and meet their indonesian friends whenever they have time. the interesting thing to point out is that they have increased awareness of being indonesian after being in england. meza feels extreme nationalism after meeting with the diasporas who tell her stories about their desire to go home from the land of the minority. she subscribes to their story and thus creates a conception that she will need to home afterward. similarly, at the same time, aldi experiences the sense of being an ambassador who bears the image of his country. i am an indonesian ambassador, a representation of my country. i need to behave, so they will not have a bad impression of indonesia. (aldi) aldi holds his identity as an indonesian speaker though he is on a sa program. he wants to make a favorable impression about indonesia by holding upright indonesia value during his time in the uk. this finding is in line with dolby’s (2007) and kinginger’s (2008) studies in which american students try to behave during their sa program to erase the prejudicial concept about america. looking at meza’s and aldi’s excerpts, it can be concluded that they do not necessarily experience direct marginalization as the reason why they resist the interaction. resisting interaction can be due to their own-self positioning as indonesian and their less desire to interact with the locals. they feel powerful and linguistically at ease when speaking bahasa indonesia and meeting with indonesian. as a result, they make no identity formation as they only make contact when necessary. their language learning trajectories international journal of language teaching and education 81 also do not seem to experience improvement because they speak bahasa indonesia all the time. 5. conclusion the ways indonesian students negotiate their identities multifacetedly according to their agency and investment to endure with the situations. lanno and wenger reorganize their self-positioning and the positionings imposed on them. sota grows with support, given though the marginalization seems to be very salient. putri establishes her new identity as a non-native speaker, thus use the language to communicate and support each other. in contrast, aif uses his agency to resist contacting local and international students speaking bahasa indonesia, where he feels powerful. meza and aldi use their agency to remain in the safe zone without attempting to make contact. another thing to conclude is that motivation itself is not enough to describe why learners want to study or quit. the struggles experienced by the participants of this study show that learners need to invest commitment and have a clear goal of why they need to learn something and thus use their agency to help them maneuver their choices. this research calls to the english teachers' and program providers' attention as an implication. teachers in the classroom can now swift their views of being in the middle of the native speakers may create the best learning conception is not entirely true. there is an invisible power inequality that challenges the students and shuts down their motivation. therefore, teaching them the concept of an investment of why they learn english will benefit them more. for program providers whose original purpose is to have the students back with global identities and competencies, they need to think of a way to support them. this could be done by making the pre-departure and teaching the pedagogical initiatives based on pre-existing research. acknowledgments the author would like to thank universitas pelita harapan for the material and moral support is given while writing this paper. references bengtsson, m. 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(2019). motivation and instructional preference of efl students at tertiary level. international journal of language teaching and education, 3 (1), 28-44. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6559 accepted: june 18, 2019 published: july 31, 2019 copyright © 2019 international journal of language teaching and education this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/license s/by/4.0/ abstract the aims of the study were to find out the relationship between students’ motivation and instructional preference and to identify the main components of motivation that underlay the students to learn english and the students’ most preferred instruction. this study is beneficial to contribute to teachers’ understanding of the need to consider students’ preferences when planning the teaching-learning activities and to choose the instructional methods to use in teaching. a mixed-method design was used in this study by combining quantitative and qualitative data to analyze. descriptive statistics and interview analysis were used. the participants of this study were 323 students at a private university in palembang, indonesia. an 82-item questionnaire assessing motivation and instructional preference and semi-structured interview were used. the questionnaire consisted of 50 items measuring motivation and 32 items measuring instructional preference. the result showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between motivation and instructional preference. it means that students who had a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences than those who had a lower level of motivation. the result of the study also indicated that the primary motivational components underlying the students to learn english were instrumental orientation, intrinsic orientation, and integrative orientation, and the students’ most preferred instruction was mastery learning. this study implies that teachers should be aware of diversifying the instructional methods used in their classes. they should take into account the students’ characteristics when planning and implementing educational processes. subject areas teaching english as a foreign language keywords motivation, instructional preference, efl students, tertiary level 1. introduction in countries where english is used as a foreign language (efl), the chance to practice english with native speakers is almost unavailable to students. this seems to be the main factor which makes english challenging to learn (ihsan and diem, 1997). due to this reason, it is difficult for efl students to motivate themselves to learn english, a situation that ryan (2009, 124) described as a “depressing https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6559 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v3i1.6559 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dwi ratnasari 29 ijolte picture.” however, according to chamot (1987), difficulties in learning english are not only actual for students who learn english as a foreign language (efl), but also for those who learn english as a second language (esl). now, if this is the case, there must be factors besides the lack of native speakers that cause these problems in learning english. according to dardjowidjojo (1995, 2003), efl teachers in indonesia realize that many external factors commonly cause efl students to fail in learning english. among these are big classes, the geographical location of the schools, supplementary textbook availability especially in the library, access to a language laboratory, and teachers’ qualifications (alwi, 2000; dardjowidjojo, 1995, 2003; huda, 2000, lauder, 2008; renandya, 2000). each of these conditions is related to the others and has made the problems of english teaching even more complicated for an individual efl teacher to solve. personal characteristics, such as age, gender, aptitude, learning styles, personality, motivation, and language background, also influence students’ success in efl learning as oxford (1994) said that students’ characteristics need to consider when analyzing why english seems challenging to learn because an understanding of students’ characteristics is crucial for a successful instruction in a second or foreign language. parkay and stanford (1992) also said that variables such as the teacher’s personality and teaching style, the students’ characteristics, the culture of the school and surrounding community, and the resources available influence instruction. these variables contribute to the models of instruction that teachers use in the classroom. effective teaching demands that teachers must comprehend at least the students’ age and gender as well as their motivation. such knowledge will help teachers design and tailor the activities conducted in the classroom. motivation is one of the students’ characteristics is targeted by educators to advance learning. it provides the main impetus to start learning a language (deci, koester, and ryan, 2001) and later becomes a driving force for maintaining a long and often dull learning process (dornyei, 1998). it does seem clear that understanding students’ characteristics, such as motivation, helps teachers design the instruction. teachers need to respond to individual differences in educational processes and adjust their activities to the students’ characteristics, such as motivation. therefore, there are links between motivation and pedagogical aspects of language teaching, such as instruction, that are also worth exploring. however, in indonesia, the profile of indonesian students’ motivation for learning english is not well researched. likewise, “students’ instructional preference” is still quite a vague concept to indonesian efl teachers although it can help them teach english more efficiently if they know and employ the instruction based on their students’ preferences. therefore, this study, which mainly focused on one students’ characteristic, that is motivation, sought to analyze the relationship between students’ motivation and their instructional preference. besides analyzing the relationship between motivation and instructional preference, this study also identified what motivated students to learn english and what the preferred instructional method of the students was. instructional preference, in this study, is understood as an “individual’s tendency to choose or express a preference for a specific teaching technique or combination of techniques” (sadler-smith, 1996:31). thus, the objective was not to determine whether one method was better or not, but rather to understand the extent of students’ preferences for a particular instructional method. dwi ratnasari 30 ijolte 2. method the central methodology used in this study was descriptive quantitative. this quantitative study aimed to investigate the relationship between students’ motivation and their instructional preference and identify the main components of motivation, causing the students to learn english and the most preferred instructional model of the students. also, qualitative data were obtained and used to gain broader perspectives on efl students’ motivation and instructional preference. descriptive statistics was used to describe the sample and to answer the research questions, and rank spearman correlation was used to analyze the quantitative data because the data obtained were ordinal (santoso, 2000; sarwono, 2006). 2.1. participants this study was carried out at english education study program, faculty of teacher training and education, universitas pgri palembang, indonesia. the total number of the population can be seen in table 1. table 1. total population no. semester number of students 1. i 596 2. iii 501 3. v 479 4. vii 442 total 2018 source: faculty of teacher training and education, universitas pgri palembang, academic year 2009/2010 in this study, stratified random sampling was chosen since the population embraced several distinct categories, i.e., semester. a stratified random sampling allows the researcher to take into account the different subgroups of people in the population-based on specific characteristics (jackson, 2008). all of the classes ranging from the first year to the fourth year of study were taken as the sample. since there was only one academic session, the semesters taken for the sample were from semester i, iii, v, and vii. 2.2. instrument the questionnaire used in this study was an adapted version of schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy’s instrument used in their study. a 103-item questionnaire was constructed, on which students indicated their agreement or disagreement with various statements on six-point likert-scales (strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, agree, and strongly agree). six-point scales were used to eliminate neutral responses. the first 64 items of the questionnaire concerned motivation and the next set of 39 items concerned preference for classroom instructional activities. the items on motivation, as suggested by schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy (1996), were based on the theory of self-determination (deci and ryan, 1985; feldman, 1989). however, some items, i.e. items concerning instrumental and integrative orientation, were added based on the theory of socioeducation (adachi, 2009a, 2009b, 2010; gardner, 1985, 1988, 2000, 2001; gardner and macintyre, 1991, 1993), so that the wordings could precisely describe the efl contexts in indonesia. the items on instructional preference were also based on schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy (1996). however, some items, i.e., items concerning mastery learning, theory into practice, behavior modification, and dwi ratnasari 31 ijolte non-directive teaching, were added based on parkay and stanford’s instructional models (1992). 2.3. validity and reliability analysis before the questionnaire was administered to the sample of the study, it had been distributed to 40 students at another university in order to get its validity and reliability. the non-valid items are highlighted and can be seen in the appendix. from seven components of motivation, six components were valid and reliable since the r coefficients of the components and the α coefficient (α = 0.606) exceeded the r table (r = 0.22). the six components are intrinsic orientation (r = 0.462), extrinsic orientation (r = 0.501), instrumental orientation (r = 0.653), integrative orientation (r = 0.836), attitudes towards americans and british, and their culture (r = 0.628), and self-confidence (r = 0.578). the total number of items of these six components is 50 out of 64 items. from nine models of instruction, seven models were valid and reliable since the r coefficients of the models and the α coefficient (α = 0.864) exceeded the r table (r = 0.23). the seven models are balanced approach (r = 0.589), cooperative learning (r = 0.777), silent approach (r = 0.713), mastery learning (r = 0.495), theory into practice (r = 0.720), behavior modification (r = 0.634), and non-directive teaching (r = 0.646). the total number of items of these seven models is 32 out of 39 items. 2.4. quantitative enquiry in order for the students to answer the questionnaire items seriously, the completion process of the questionnaire was conducted in a single class session. during the completion process, observation was conducted to monitor and to help the respondents to understand difficult parts. spss 16.0 package was used to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaire. by using a quantitative method, facts and data have an objective reality (burns, 1997). 2.5. qualitative enquiry for broader perspectives of students’ motivation and their instructional preference, qualitative data analysis was also applied. a semi-structured group interview was conducted for qualitative inquiry. the rationale for choosing a semi-structured interview was because it permits greater flexibility than the close-ended type and permits a more valid response from the participants’ perception of reality. in the semi-structured interview, a guide is developed for some parts of the interview in which, without fixed wording or fixed ordering of questions, a direction is given to the interview so that the content focuses on the crucial issues of the study (burns, 1997). the rationale for using a group interview was because it allows participants to answer in any way they choose and to respond to each other (jackson, 2008). for the interview, six relevant questions were designed to elicit respondents’ opinions on main issues concerning motivation and instructional preference. eight students were selected on a random basis from the 323 students from different semesters, i.e., two students from each semester. the interview was conducted in four separate sessions with two students from the same semester in each session. in analyzing the qualitative data, an open coding method was used. the data was broken down and categorized into concepts. then, it was carefully examined and compared for similarities and differences (o’donoghue, 2007). dwi ratnasari 32 ijolte 3. findings and discussion 3.1. relationships of motivation and models of instruction one of the questions of this study aimed to investigate the relationship between motivation and instructional preference. in other words, this research question attempted to examine if the students who had a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences than those who had a lower level of motivation. the result obtained from the spss 16.0 computation for this relationship is shown in table 2. it shows that the r coefficient was 0.554. it can be inferred that there was a strong positive relationship between motivation and instructional preference since the r coefficient was 0.554 (table 2). in this case, the result of the study indicates that students having a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences than those having a lower level of motivation. table 2. motivation and instructional preference motivation instruction spearman's rho motivation correlation coefficient 1.000 .554** sig. (2-tailed) . .000 n 323 323 instruction correlation coefficient .554** 1.000 sig. (2-tailed) .000 . n 323 323 **. relationship is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). in order to get a better understanding of students’ motivation and their instructional preference, each aspect of the two variables was also analyzed. the aspects of motivation and instruction turned up many significant relationships, though not substantial in magnitude. some of the relationships were moderate in magnitude (not greater than 0.500), and some others are weak in magnitude (not greater than 0.250) (table 3). the findings of this study showed that motivation and preference for instructional models were related. the correlation coefficient was positive and high, r = 0.554, which means that the relationship between students’ learning motivation and their preference for instructional models was strong. a study by garcia-ros, perez, and talaya (2008) also showed that there was a link between motivation and instructional preference. this study supports the findings of the previous studies (schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy, 1996; schmidt and watanabe, 2001) which demonstrated that students who had a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences than those who had a lower level of motivation. dwi ratnasari 33 ijolte table 3. relationships among components of motivation and models of instruction balanced approach cooperative learning silent approach mastery learning theory into practice behavior modification non-directive teaching r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) intrinsic orientation .270** .000 .011 .843 -.184** .001 .196** .000 .268** .000 .316** .000 .262** .000 r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) extrinsic orientation -.145** .009 .174** .002 .366** .000 .044 .431 -.019 .732 -.061 .274 -.010 .860 r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) instrumental orientation .456** .000 .144** .010 -.070 .207 .447** .000 .475** .000 .391** .000 .488** .000 r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) integratve orientation .242** .000 .174** .002 .036 .517 .302** .000 .348** .000 .373** .000 .339** .000 r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) attitudes .155** .005 .230** .000 .122* .028 .230** .000 .206** .000 .234** .000 .228** .000 r coefficient sig. (2-tailed) self-confidence .165** .003 .354** .000 .074 .186 .179** .001 .136* .014 .231** .000 .127* .022 **. relationship is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). furthermore, relationships among aspects of motivation and instruction turned up numerous significant relationships. students who were intrinsically, instrumentally, and integratively motivated preferred the same types of instruction: first, theory into practice, i.e., an instructional model where the teacher orients students to the materials to learn. i.e., tells students what they will learn and why it is crucial, presents new materials that consist of knowledge, skills, or processes that students are to learn, models what students are expected to do, checks for students’ understanding, gives students opportunity for practice under guidance, and makes assignments that give students chance to practice what they have learned on their own; second, behavior modification, i.e., an instructional model where the teacher begins the lesson by presenting stimulus, observes students’ behaviors, and reinforces appropriate behaviors as quickly as possible; and third, non-directive teaching, i.e. an instructional model where the teacher acts as a facilitator of learning, creates learning environments that support personal growth and development, and acts in the role of a counselor who helps students to understand themselves, clarify their goals, and accept responsibility for their behavior (parkay and standford, 1992). while intrinsically motivated students preferred a balanced approach where listening, speaking, reading, and writing skill are taught equally in class, instrumentally motivated students preferred both balanced approach and mastery learning. however, integratively motivated students only preferred mastery learning, i.e. an instructional model where the teacher sets objectives and standards for mastery in english, teaches english directly to students, follows cycle of teaching, testing, re-teaching, and re-testing, provides additional help in correcting errors, and provides corrective feedback on students’ learning (parkay and stanford, 1992). facilitative feedback, primarily focusing on organizational aspects, can have a positive effect (boramy, 2010). it is interesting to note that when the learner’s peers initiate directive feedback, it also seems to have a positive effect on the learner’s motivation levels (hirose, 2012; miyazoe & anderson, 2010). on the other hand, students who were extrinsically motivated preferred silent approach where the teacher does most of the talking and the students only answer when they are called upon. in other words, these students prefer to sit and listen and do not like being forced to speak in class. they also think that communication activities are a waste of time in class. contrary to extrinsically motivated students, students who had self-confidence in learning english preferred cooperative learning in which the activities allow students to work together in pairs or small groups (4 to 6 students), the teacher gives assignments that require students help each dwi ratnasari 34 ijolte other while working on a group project, and the group members contribute to group goals according to their talents, interests, and abilities (parkay and standford, 1992). although the motivational components and the instructional models used in this study were not entirely the same as those in schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy’s study (1996), this study has successfully proven that students might prefer different learning structures depending on the motivational components they possessed. results of schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy’s study (1996) showed that intrinsically motivated students who expected to succeed showed a preference for a balanced approach in the foreign language classroom, appreciated challenging exercises and activities that encouraged their curiosity, even if they were not easy. on the other hand, students who scored high on the anxiety component would instead not participate actively in class and preferred to be silent. students who scored high on intrinsic orientation indicated a preference for activities that allowed them to participate actively and that would help them to improve their ability to communicate, including, group and pair work, while students who scored low on intrinsic orientation and high on anxiety factor rejected group activities, pair work, and other communicative activities, and preferred to be silent and work alone. 3.2. motivation in learning english as a foreign language table 4 shows the results for the descriptive statistics of motivation data which are listed based on ranking from the highest mean to the lowest one. table 4. descriptive statistics of motivational components n minimum maximum mean instrumental orientation 323 1.272 6.000 5.072 intrinsic orientation 323 2.416 5.916 4.978 integrative orientation 323 1.222 6.000 4.468 self-confidence 323 2.428 6.000 4.339 attitudes towards americans and british 323 1.500 5.666 3.896 extrinsic orientation 323 1.000 5.200 2.981 valid n (listwise) 323 with reference to table 4, the highest mean score of the motivational component for the sample of the study was instrumental orientation which was then followed by intrinsic orientation, integrative orientation, self-confidence, attitudes towards americans and british, and extrinsic orientation. therefore, the main components of motivation underlying the students to learn english were instrumental orientation, intrinsic orientation, and integrative orientation. reasons for learning english all students opined that english is learned for instrumental reasons, i.e., to be able to read and understand any sources of english, to become more knowledgeable and educated, to get a better job or financial benefits, to add their social status, and to have a marvelous life. however, along with instrumental reasons, four students identified intrinsic reasons; and three students identified integrative reasons, i.e., to communicate and make friends from other countries, and to spend a period in an english speaking country. only one student identified extrinsic reasons along with instrumental reasons, i.e., to show her ability to her family and friend. dwi ratnasari 35 ijolte possibility of going abroad to learn english six students considered going overseas to learn english. however, the remaining two suggested to study in their home country because there were still many competent teachers; besides, the government could invite native speakers to teach in their home country. anxiety when learning english five students, when asked whether they felt anxious when learning english, expressed their confidence with their english. however, one male student sometimes felt anxious, but tried to relax when the anxiety came; and the other ones felt anxious or did not have self-confidence when learning english. from the data, the results of the study indicated that the primary motivational components that underlay the students to learn english were instrumental orientation ( 𝜇 = 5.072), intrinsic orientation (𝜇 = 4.978), and integrative orientation (𝜇 = 4.468). these quantitative results were consistent with the qualitative results on motivation. in qualitative results, the main motivational components were also instrumental orientation, intrinsic orientation, and integrative orientation. both these quantitative and qualitative findings were consistent with the findings of kimura, nakata, and okumura’s study (2000), who suggested that the main components of language learning motivation observed in efl context were complex, consisting of intrinsic, integrative, and instrumental components. rahman’s study (2005) also demonstrated that instrumental orientation was the main motivational component for the students to learn english. the first two motivational components of this study (i.e., instrumental and intrinsic orientation) were also consistent with the first two motivational components found in schmidt, boraie, and kassabgy’s study (1996). however, integrative orientation, as the third motivational component in this study, was not found in their study. instead, they found that extrinsic orientation was the third motivational component of the students to learn english. 3.3. instructional preference in learning english as a foreign language the results for the descriptive statistics of instructional preference data are listed based on ranking from the highest mean to the lowest one (table 5). dwi ratnasari 36 ijolte table 5. descriptive statistics of instructional models n minimum maximum mean mastery learning 323 2.600 6.000 5.149 non-directive teaching 323 1.250 6.000 5.109 theory into practice 323 2.833 6.000 4.944 behavior modification 323 1.666 6.000 4.784 balanced approach 323 1.000 6.000 4.739 cooperative learning 323 1.250 5.750 4.151 silent approach 323 1.000 6.000 3.107 valid n (listwise) 323 with reference to table 5, the highest mean score of the instructional model for the sample of the study was mastery learning which was then followed by non-directive teaching, theory into practice, behavior modification, balanced approach, cooperative learning, and silent approach. therefore, the most preferred instruction of the students was mastery learning. ways of teaching to overcome students’ anxiety in learning english four students suggested non-directive teaching, i.e., an instructional model where the teacher understands what the students want, acts as a facilitator of learning, creates opportunities for students to improve their self-understanding and self-concepts, and involves the students in a teaching-learning partnership. two students suggested behavior modification, i.e., an instructional method where the teacher begins the lesson by presenting stimulus, observes students’ behaviors, and reinforces appropriate behaviors as quickly as possible. however, only one student suggested theory into practice, i.e., an instructional model where the teacher orients students to the lesson to be learned and allows students to practice what they have learned. the other one suggested mastery learning, i.e., an instructional model where the teacher sets objectives and standards for mastery in english; follows the cycle of teaching, testing, re-teaching, and re-testing; gives immediate corrective feedback to students on their learning, so that the students know whether their responses are right or wrong, but does not criticize students who make mistakes in class; and provides additional time and help in correcting errors. ways of teaching to improve students’ english proficiency when asked to identify ways of teaching to improve students’ english proficiency, three students suggested theory into practice. other three students suggested non-directive teaching. one student suggested mastery learning. the other one suggested cooperative learning, i.e., an instructional model where students work together in pairs or small groups, do discussion and presentation, do communicative and interactive activities. dwi ratnasari 37 ijolte instructional preference when asked to identify the instruction they prefer, four students chose theory into practice. other two students chose non-directive teaching. one student chose mastery learning, and the other one chose a balanced approach. the results of the study indicated that the most preferred instruction of indonesian efl students was mastery learning (𝜇 = 5.149). mastery learning is also believed by some researchers (e.g., gentile and lalley, 2003; guskey, 1997) to be the students’ most preferred instructional model. besides, parkay and stanford (1992) said that mastery learning is an outstanding system of the instructional model because it uses diagnostic progress testing and feedback with correction procedures. mastery learning, first set by benjamin s. bloom in the late 1960s, is developed as a way for teachers to provide higher quality and more appropriate instruction for their students (guskey, 1997). it helps teachers provide a higher quality of instruction for more of their students. bloom (1974) outlined two important procedures in mastery learning, i.e., providing students with regular feedback on their learning progress, and pairing that feedback with specific corrective activities designed to help students remedy their individual learning difficulties. bloom further mentioned that there are two essential elements in mastery learning. the first is feedback, corrective, and enrichment process. the second is congruence among instructional components. these two elements show that mastery learning is both flexible and broad in its applications, and, as a result, highly appealing to teachers at all levels. mastery learning is usually implemented through a careful process of organization and planning, followed by specific procedures for classroom application and student assessment or evaluation. mastery learning offers a useful instructional tool that can be flexibly applied in a variety of teaching situations. based on these results, we can assert that the underlying structure of preference for instructional methodology is articulated around four characteristics identified by parkay and stanford (1992): (1) the objectives and standards for mastery; (2) the cycle of teaching, testing, reteaching, and retesting; (3) the provision of corrective feedback to students on their learning; and (4) the provision of additional time and help in correcting students’ errors. however, the results of the qualitative data showed that the students’ most preferred instruction was theory into practice. mastery learning, the most preferred instruction in quantitative findings, was ranked in qualitative findings as the third preferred instruction after non-directive teaching. the different findings between the quantitative and qualitative data might be because the students selected for the interview were chosen randomly from the entire sample. 4. conclusions motivation plays a crucial role in learning a language. it is not only important in getting students to engage in academic activities but also crucial in determining the instruction conducted in the classroom (oxford, 1994). that is why good teachers have to understand students’ motivation because an understanding of students’ motivation is critical for successful instruction in a second or foreign language. effective teaching demands that teachers must comprehend students’ characteristics, at least students’ motivation. such knowledge helps teachers design and tailor the dwi ratnasari 38 ijolte activities conducted in the classroom. parkay and stanford (1992) also said that students’ motivation influence instruction. their motivation contributes to the model of instruction the teachers use in the classroom. the findings of this study have successfully underlined the needs to consider students’ motivation when planning and implementing educational instruction. the findings from the study of indonesian efl students support several conclusions which have been made about language learning motivation and instructional preference. the results of the study indicated that there was a positive, strong, and significant relationship between motivation and instructional preference. students who had a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences than those who had a lower level of motivation. the quantitative data as the primary source of this study also clearly indicated that the main motivational component that underlay the students to learn english was instrumental orientation. what had been defined as intrinsic and integrative motivation in the esl context was also found to be the second and the third main motivational component among efl students. about instructional preference, the quantitative data also clearly indicated that the students were inclined towards mastery learning model of instruction. by contrast, the silent approach came to be the least-valued method. also, as found in this study, students who had a higher level of motivation would have more instructional preferences. therefore, teachers should be aware of diversifying the instructional models used in their classes because students can become more experienced and capable students when interacting with diverse models of instruction (check, 1984; entwistle and peterson, 2005; loo, 2004; sadler-smith and smith, 2004). diversifying instructional models in university education is crucial. facilitating different instructional models encourages the development of teaching skills for the choice and adaptation of teaching methodologies which are best suited to the individual characteristics of the students (garcia-ros, perez, and talaya, 2008). it is also suggested that when learners enjoy positive experiences of their preference, they are more likely to take control of their language l e a r n i n g a n d b e c o m e i n d e p e n d e n t (lee, 2010). references [1] adachi, r. 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(2010). learning outcomes and students’ perceptions of online writing: simultaneous implementation of a forum, blog, and wiki in an efl blended learning setting. system, 38(2), 185–199. [35] o’donoghue, t. (2007). planning your qualitative research project: an introduction to interpretivist research in education. london: routledge. [36] oxford, r. l. (1994). variables, individual in language learning: classroom implications. in r. e. asher & j. m. y. simpson (eds.), the encyclopedia of language and linguistic (vol. 9, pp. 4893-4899). oxford: pergamon press. [37] parkay, f. w. & stanford, b. h. (1992). becoming a teacher: accepting the challenge of a profession (2nd ed.). boston, ma: allyn and bacon. [38] rahman, s. (2005). orientations and motivation in english language learning: a study of bangladeshi students at undergraduate level. the asian efl journal quarterly, 7(1), 29–55. retrieved july 16, 2009, from http://www.asianefl-journal.com/march_2005_sr.php [39] renandya, w. a. (2000). indonesia. in wah kam ho & ruth y. l. wong (eds.), language policies and language education: the impact in east asian countries in the next decade (pp. 113-137). singapore: times academic press. [40] ryan, s. (2009). self and identity in l2 motivation in japan: the ideal l2 self and japanese learners of english. in z. dörnyei & e. uhioda (eds.), motivation, language identity, and the l2 self (pp.120-143). clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. [41] sadler-smith, e. (1996). learning styles: a holistic approach. journal of european industrial training, 20, 29-36. [42] sadler-smith, e. & smith, p. j. (2004). strategies for accommodating individuals’ styles and preference in flexible learning programmes. british journal of educational technology, 35(4), 395-412. [43] santoso, s. (2000). buku latihan spss statistik parametrik. jakarta: pt elex media komputindo. [44] sarwono, j. (2006). analisis data penelitian menggunakan spss 13. yogyakarta: cv andi offset [45] schmidt, r., boraie, d., & kassabgy, o. (1996). foreign language motivation: internal structure and external connections. in j. d. brown (ed.), university of hawai’i working papers in esl, 14(2), 1-71. [46] schmidt, r. & watanabe, y. (2001). motivation, strategy use and pedagogical preference in foreign language learning. in z. dörnyei & r. schmidt (eds.), motivation and second language acquisition. honolulu: university of hawai’i second language teaching and curriculum center. http://www.jalt-publications.org/archive/ii/2001a/art3.pdf http://www.jalt-publications.org/archive/ii/2001a/art3.pdf http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/march_2005_sr.php http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/march_2005_sr.php dwi ratnasari 41 ijolte appendix questionnaire semester : ____ directions:  read the following statements carefully.  respond the statements honestly based on your own opinion by giving a tick (√) on one of six answer choices (std, d, sld, sla, a, or sta).  before you hand in this questionnaire, please make sure that there is no statement that has not been answered yet.  thank you for your participation. part a. motivation no. strongly disagree (std) slightly agree (sla) disagree(d) agree (a) slightly disagree (sld) strongly agree (sta) std (1) d (2) sld (3) sla (4) a (5) sta (6) intrinsic orientation 1. i enjoy learning english very much. 2. learning english is a hobby for me. 3. learning english is a challenge that i enjoy. 4. if the fees for the english program were increased, i would still enroll because studying english is important for me. 5. my attendance in the class will be good. 6. i plan to continue studying english for as long as i can. 7. after i graduate, i will probably continue studying english to a higher degree. 8. i often think about how i can learn english better. 9. i can honestly say that i really put my best effort into trying to learn english. 10. studying english is fun. 11. even if there were no homework, i would try to study outside of the class. 12. i like studying english. 13. i really want to learn more english in this program than i have done in high school. extrinsic orientation 14. studying english is a waste of time. 15. i do not enjoy learning english, but i know that learning english is important for me. 16. i wish i could learn english in an easier way, without going to class. 17. the main reason i am taking english program is that my parents/spouse/employer want me to improve my english 18. i want to do well in english because it is important to show my ability to my family/employer/friends/others. 19. it is important for me to do better than other students in my class. 20. my relationship with the teacher in the class is important for me. 21. one of the most important things in the class is getting along with other students. 22. i put off doing my homework/assignment until right before the due date. instrumental orientation 23. english is important for me because it will broaden my view. 24. being able to speak english will add to my social status. 25. i am learning english to become more educated. 26. i need to be able to read/understand books/magazines/newspapers/ novels/movies in english. 27. if i learn english better, i will be able to get a better job. 28. increasing my english proficiency will have financial benefits for me. 29. if i can speak english, i will have a marvelous life. 30. english is important for me because it will make me more knowledgeable. 31. english will be useful for me in getting a good and high-ranking job in indonesia. dwi ratnasari 42 ijolte no. strongly disagree (std) slightly agree (sla) disagree(d) agree (a) slightly disagree (sld) strongly agree (sta) std (1) d (2) sld (3) sla (4) a (5) sta (6) 32. i study english because i want to be an english teacher. 33. english class is important for me because if i learn english well, i will be able to help my children learn english. integrative orientation 34. i am learning english because i want to spend a period of time in an english speaking country. 35. i want to learn english because it is useful when travelling in many countries. 36. i want to learn english because i would like to emigrate to an english speaking country. 37. english helps me to think and behave like english native speakers. 38. i would like to make british/american friends. 39. i would like to communicate with people in other english speaking countries. 40. i am studying english because i would like to live abroad in the future. 41. english will help me to better understand the english native speakers and their ways of life. 42. i really like to emulate/imitate the english native speakers. expectation of success 43. english class will definitely help me improve my english. 44. i expect to do well in the class because i am good at learning english. 45. if i do well in the class, it will be because i try hard. 46. if i do not do well in the class, it will be because i do not try hard enough. 47. if i do not do well in the class, it will be because i do not have much ability for learning english. 48. if i learn a lot in the class, it will be because of the teacher. 49. if i do well in the class, it will be because this is an easy class. 50. if i do not learn well in the class, it will be mainly because of the teacher. 51. if i do not do well in the class, it will be because the class is too difficult. attitudes towards americans & british, and their culture 52. british/americans are conservative people who cherish/hold customs and traditions. 53. british/americans are very friendly people. 54. most of my favourite actors and musicians are either british or americans. 55. british/american culture has contributed a lot to the world. 56. i am interested in british/american lifestyles and cultures. 57. i am interested in lives and cultures of english speaking countries. self-confidence 58. i feel comfortable if i have to speak in my english class. 59. it does not embarrass me to volunteer answer in english class. 60. i like to speak often in english class because i am not afraid that my teacher will think i am not a good student. 61. i am not afraid if other students will laugh at me when i speak english. 62. i do not have difficulty concentrating in english class. 63. i think i can learn english well because i perform well on tests and examinations. 64. i am good at english. dwi ratnasari 43 ijolte part b. instructional preference no. strongly disagree (std) slightly agree (sla) disagree(d) agree (a) slightly disagree (sld) strongly agree (sta) std (1) d (2) sld (3) sla (4) a (5) sta (6) balanced approach 1. it is important for teacher to maintain discipline in english class. 2. teacher should make sure that everyone in the class learns english equally well. 3. students should ask questions whenever they have not understood a point in class. 4. students should let the teacher know why they are studying english so that the lessons can be made relevant to their goals. 5. listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be taught equally in english class. 6. activities in this class should be designed to help students improve their ability in english. cooperative learning 7. i like english learning activities in which students work together in pairs or small groups. 8. teacher should give assignments that require students help one another while working on a group project. 9. i prefer to work by myself in english class, not with other students. (reverse coded) 10. pair works and group activities in english class are a waste of time. (reverse coded) silent approach 11. in english class, teacher should do most of the talking and students should only answer when they are called upon. 12. i prefer to sit and listen, and do not like being forced to speak in class. 13. communication activities are a waste of time in this class because i only need to learn what is necessary for me. challenging approach 14. i prefer activities and materials that really challenge me, so i can learn more. 15. i prefer activities and materials that arouse my curiosity even if it is difficult to learn. 16. i prefer a class with lots of activities that allow me to participate actively. directive teaching 17. during class, i would like to have only english spoken. (reverse coded) 18. in my english class, teacher should explain things in indonesian sometimes in order to help us learn. 19. english class is most useful when the emphasis is put on grammar. mastery learning 20. teacher should set objectives and standards for mastery in english. 21. teacher should teach the subject directly to students. 22. teacher should provide corrective feedback to students on their learning. 23. teacher should provide additional time and help in correcting errors. 24. teacher should follow cycle of teaching, testing, re-teaching, re-testing. 25. it is important for teacher to give immediate feedback, so that students know whether their responses are right or wrong. 26. teacher should not negatively criticize students who make mistakes in class. theory into practice 27. teacher should orient students to the lesson to be learned. 28. teacher should tell students what they will learn and why it is important. 29. teacher should model what students are expected to do. 30. teacher should check for students’ understanding. 31. teacher should give students opportunity for practice under the teacher’s guidance. 32. teacher should make assignments that give students chance to practice what they have learned on their own. behavior modification 33. teacher should begin the lesson by presenting stimulus. 34. teacher should observe students’ behaviors. 35. appropriate behaviors should be reinforced by the teacher as quickly as possible. dwi ratnasari 44 ijolte no. strongly disagree (std) slightly agree (sla) disagree(d) agree (a) slightly disagree (sld) strongly agree (sta) std (1) d (2) sld (3) sla (4) a (5) sta (6) non-directive teaching 36. teacher should act as a facilitator of learning. 37. teacher should create opportunities for students to increase their selfunderstanding and self-concepts. 38. teacher should involve the students in a teaching-learning partnership. 39. teacher should understand students. paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8750 ijolte a problem-based learning approach and its effects on the writing performance of nigerian undergraduates muhammad mukhtar aliyu1, yong mei fung2, sabariah md. rashid2, vahid nimehchisalem3 1department of english and literary studies bauchi state university, nigeria 2department of english, faculty of modern languages and communication, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia email corresponding authors: mamukhtar@basug.edu.ng how to cite this paper: aliyu, m. m., fung, y. m., rashid, s. m., & nimehchisalem, v. (2020). a problem-based learning approach and its effects on the writing performance of nigerian undergraduates . international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 23-35. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8750 received: february 14, 2020 accepted: may o2, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract writing is considered as an important but a difficult language skill for undergraduates. to develop writing skills, undergraduates need to be given the opportunity to interact with and help one another in the writing process. they also need to be supported by teachers in the process. however, most of the traditional teaching methods adopted by writing instructors in nigeria do not allow students to interact in the learning process. in this light, this study investigates the effects of a problem-based learning approach (pbl) on the writing performance of nigerian undergraduates. the study employed a preandpost-treatment quasi-experimental research design. the participants (n=18) involved in the study were an intact class of second-year students taking english composition course and two tutors in a college in north-eastern nigeria. the study was conducted over a period of 12 weeks. to determine the effects of pbl on the participants’ writing performance, a rating scale was used to rate the content, organisation, vocabulary, grammar and mechanical accuracy of the preand posttreatment writing scripts. a paired-sample t-test analysis was run to compare the mean scores of the undergraduates’ preand post-treatment writing. the results showed significant improvements in all the components (content, organisation, vocabulary, language use and mechanics) of the participants’ writing in the post-treatment. the paper concludes with a discussion on the pedagogical and theoretical contributions of the findings. it provides writing instructors with a student-centred approach that would help to develop their students’ writing skills. subject areas second language writing keywords esl classroom, pbl, writing instruction, nigeria https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8750 mailto:mamukhtar@basug.edu.ng https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8750 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 24 ~ 1. introduction in nigeria, english is used as a second language, the official language as well as the medium of instruction at all levels of education (primary, secondary and tertiary levels). proficiency in the english language has been one of the determining factors for the chances of pursuing higher education and higher skilled jobs in the country. this is because a credit pass in english is a requirement for admission to all universities in nigeria (tikolo, 2012). from the perspective of the labour market after graduation, proficiency in english remains one of the most important skills required for employment in the country (dabalen, oni, &adekola, 2000). thus, this necessitates the need for nigerian undergraduates to be proficient in writing in english. however, researchers have shown that many nigerian undergraduates have various difficulties with their writing in english which reduce their writing quality. various problems have been identified in the writing of nigerian undergraduates. for instance, theodore (2013) pointed out that the students lack good communicative and imaginative skills to express their ideas clearly to the readers. in addition, they lack ideas relevant to a writing topic, and they commit grammatical and mechanical errors (bodunde & sotiloye, 2013). these problems are attributed to various factors, which include the instructional methods through which the students learn writing (oluwale, 2008). research has shown that most of the instructional approaches used by nigerian instructors in writing are product-based, where much emphasis is given to the written product, rather than what the students think or do while writing (muodumogu & unwaha, 2013). in most cases, students are only given topics and then asked to produce essays on their own. in some other cases, they are provided with basic information about the topic, such as theme, structure, tone and other aspects of style and asked to write an essay (omachonu, 2003). the written output is assessed thereafter emphasizing mostly the mechanical correctness of the writing. these methods make students view writing as a boring and difficult task. as a result, the students make little or no improvement in their writing (obi-okoye, 2004). the methods are adopted by the nigerian instructors due to some factors which include limited access to new approaches and research findings that have been proven effective in improving learners’ writing skills. another factor is the large number of students in classrooms (babalola, 2011). this shows the need to adopt new approaches to teaching and learning of writing that would help both students and instructors in the teaching and learning process. with this in mind, the researchers investigated the effects of the problem-based learning approach (pbl) on the writing performance of nigerian undergraduates in order to provide an effective method of teaching and learning writing in nigeria. the rationale behind using the pbl approach in the writing instruction is that researchers describe writing as a complex process which involves cognitive, metacognitive (devine, railey & boshoff, 1993) and social factors (mclane, 1990). for students to develop their writing skills, these factors need to be taken into consideration. further, scholars have suggested that in order to develop students’ writing skills, instructors should adopt approaches that engage students in their writing process and allow them to work together, supporting one another to learn strategies for planning, revising, and editing their writing (graham & harris 2009; xiao 2007). in the pbl approach, these factors are considered in the learning process. pbl is a student-centred approach based on the constructivist theory which contextualises learning in a real-life situation and allows learners to work collaboratively in order to learn (jonassen, 1997; muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 25 ~ mardziah, 1998). it focuses on assisting students to develop flexible knowledge, effective problem-solving skills, intrinsic motivation, collaborative and self-directed learning (barrows, 1996). in the pbl approach, subject content is given to students as an ill-structured problem, which is a problem related to their real-life situation and is complex enough to stimulate their thinking (jonassen, 1997). the descriptions of the ill-structured problem are not clearly defined and the information needed to solve it is not contained in its problem statement. thus, there may be various solutions to the problem based on students’ perceptions and interpretations of the nature of the problem (shin, jonassen, & mcgee, 2003). the ill-structured problem stimulates the students to think, interact, discover the solutions to the problem, and eventually acquire the knowledge and skills required for the course (jonassen, 2000). using the ill-structured problem in pbl creates cognitive conflict among the students, which promotes their higher order and critical thinking (hmelo-silver, 2004; savery & duffy, 2001) and develops their cognitive skills. in addition, the students take the major responsibility for their learning. they work in small groups discussing an ill-structured problem, decide and discover for themselves what they will learn and how they will learn (mardziah h. abdullah, 1998). through the discussion, the students share expertise and support one another via monitoring and assessing their own performance and that of their peers. they also determine where and how to find the appropriate resources for the information needed in order to provide the viable solutions, such as textbooks, library and online material. the problem-solving activities stimulate discussions among group members and keep them motivated to learn more about the subject. this helps the students to develop their writing skills as well as social and other related skills. instructors, on the other hand, take the role of facilitators that guide students’ learning. they support and guide the students to focus on the learning objectives. they create a suitable learning environment and monitor the learning process (hmelo-silver & barrows, 2006) through stimulating the students’ abilities to analyse information. through the facilitation, the students develop their learning skills. furthermore, the facilitators assist the students in identifying appropriate resources to obtain the required information and apply new information to their problem-solving work. the facilitators also help the students to summarise what has been learned and evaluate peers and themselves. as the students more gain experiences, the facilitators withdraw their supports and intervene only when it is necessary. integrating the pbl approach into the writing instruction provides opportunities for students to be actively engaged in the writing process. in recent decades, many researchers have explored the effectiveness of the pbl approach in various disciplines and have reported its positive effect on students’ learning skills, such as acquisition and retention of content knowledge, development of thinking skills (hande, mohammed & komattil, 2014), attitude (batdi, 2014), and other soft skills (deep, salleh, & othman 2016). however, in the esl classroom, few studies have explored the usefulness of the pbl approach. mardziah h. abdullah and tan (2008) carried out a study in an online esl context in malaysia using pbl and revealed its linguistic and affective benefits to the esl classroom. it provided a context which stimulated communication among students and caused them to generate extensive discussions on various topics. through the discussions, the students acquired problem-solving skills, self-directed learning skills and other aspects of language like grammar. similarly, norzaini azman and shin (2012) conducted a study in a university in malaysia and found that the pbl approach developed learners’ speaking skills. othman and ismail ahmad shah (2013) investigated the effects of the pbl approach on students’ acquisition of course content and writing muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 26 ~ performance. their findings showed the effectiveness of the approach on the students’ acquisition of the course content and writing performance particularly in terms of supporting their argument in the writing. the literature shows that these studies carried out with esl learners did not involve the writing classrooms. this is also true in the nigerian context, whereby the literature did not reveal any study that has employed the pbl approach in the nigerian esl classroom. 1. purpose of the study the present study intends to investigate the effects of the pbl approach in improving the writing performance of nigerian undergraduates. findings of this study would shed light on the suitability of the pbl approach in the nigerian esl writing classroom, which in turn could be used by writing instructors to develop their students’ writing skills. the following research question is formulated to guide the study: what is the effect of the pbl approach on the various aspects of writing performance (content, organisation, vocabulary, grammar and mechanical accuracy) of nigerian undergraduates? 2. method 2.1. research design the study adopted a preand post-treatment quasi-experimental research design. the data were collected for the period of 12 weeks. the pbl treatment of the study was carried out for seven weeks. in the first three weeks, the participants collaboratively discussed one ill-structured problem and provided viable solutions to the problem in their writing. through the discussion, the participants brainstormed and generated ideas related to the ill-structured problems. from the ideas, they identified issues which they needed more information about. they shared the issues among them and identified resources to look up or consult during self-directed learning. in the fourth week, a debriefing session was conducted with the tutor to discuss writing and pbl related issues. in weeks 5-7, the participants worked on another illstructured problem following the same steps as in weeks 1 to 3. 2.2. participants the participants of the study consisted of 18 second-year students in an intact class of introduction to english composition course in a college in north-eastern nigeria. they were of mixed gender with age ranged from 24 to 38 years old. the participants were divided into three groups of six participants each. all of them had also completed and passed the introduction to composition i course. for the purpose of this study, the participants were assigned into their respective groups using systematic random sampling method. the participants were numbered based on their sitting arrangement. 2.3. material and instruments writing activity is the main material used to collect the data of this study. the activities were given in the form of ill-structured problems. one ill-structured problem was given for each of the preand posttreatment activities and all the students were asked to write individually and propose viable solutions to the problems. for the pretreatment, the ill-structured problem given was a problem related to students’ muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 27 ~ accommodation which had been under renovation for about three semesters. as for the post-treatment, the ill-structured problem was about a rule passed by their institution regarding admission into the department of english. the other two ill-structured problems were given during the pbl treatment. the first ill-structured problem was about terrorism in northern nigeria which involved students. the second ill-structured problem was on nigerian undergraduates’ excessive engagement with social media, which negatively affected their academic performance (see appendix a for details on the ill-structured problems). the participants were asked to collaboratively discuss following the pbl steps and propose viable and plausible solutions to the problems. they were given three weeks to work on each problem and come up with proposed solutions. all the ill-structured problems were validated by a panel of experts (creswell, 2012) to ensure that the problems are related to the students’ real-life and are complex enough to stimulate their learning. the panel comprised three experts who were researchers and esl instructors in a local university in malaysia. they all had phd qualifications with more than 20 years of teaching experience in tertiary institutions. in addition, a pilot study was conducted to identify any possible problems related to the ill-structured problems. jacobs, zinkgraf, wormuth, hartfiel and hughey’s (1981) esl composition profile was adapted to rate the participants’ writing. the scale has five components with a total score of 100: content 30, organisation 20, grammar 25, vocabulary 20 and mechanics 5. each component comprises the following four categories: excellent to very good, good to average, fair to poor, and very poor (see appendix b for the description of the components). all the participants’ scripts were rated by two nigerian english language instructors experienced in rating students’ writing. one of the instructors had a phd in english language and taught english in tertiary institutions for 24 years. the second instructor held an ma degree with 26 years of experience teaching english in tertiary institutions. the raters were trained on how to use the writing scale before marking the participants’ preand post-treatment writing scripts. 2.4. data collection procedures as mentioned previously, the data of the study were collected for a period of 12 weeks. in the first week, the researchers administered a pre-treatment writing activity. in the second week, the researchers explained the basic concepts of the pbl approach to the participants to enable them to participate effectively. they also explained the roles and responsibilities of the tutors and those of the participants. the participants were grouped into three groups of six participants each, using systematic random sampling. thereafter, the researchers showed the class how pbl is practically carried out. then each group was asked to carry out the processes. in week 3, the pbl treatment was administered to the participants. an ill-structured problem was presented to the groups and they were asked to propose viable (written) solutions following savery and duffy (1995) model of pbl. the stages are as follows: 1. generate working ideas or possible solutions; 2. identify available information related to the problem; 3. identify learning issues (things about which they need to find more information); 4. identify resources to look up or consult; muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 28 ~ 5. assign tasks to the various group members (i.e., share the learning issues); 6. gather information (conduct self-directed learning); and 7. propose solution(s). the participants were able to cover five steps; they were able to generate ideas (possible causes and solutions related to the ill-structured problem) by brainstorming. they also identified learning issues and the resources to look up or consult for the needed information. finally, they shared the learning issues among themselves to come up with findings in the subsequent meeting. in the second meeting of the third week, these processes were repeated to enable the participants to get the concept clearly. in week 4, every group member presented his/her findings to their respective groups. every group discussed its findings and criticised the source of the information. they further identified more learning issues on some items with which they were not satisfied, and finally drafted proposed solutions to the ill-structured problem. in week 5, every group reviewed, edited their draft and redrafted the solutions. finally, every group presented its findings to the class. after taking corrections and observations from peers and tutors, every group made the corrections and submitted the proposed solutions to the researchers. in week 6, there was a debriefing session where issues related to the pbl approach and writing were discussed and clarified by the researchers. in week 7, the second ill-structured problem was presented to the participants to propose possible solutions. the same pbl activities of weeks 3 to 5 were repeated in weeks 7-9. throughout the pbl process, the first author and the course lecturer were facilitators who helped the participants through open-ended questioning. another debriefing session was conducted in week 10. in week 11, the posttreatment activities were administered. finally, the participants were interviewed in the last week. 2.5. data analysis before running any analysis, an inter-rater reliability analysis was conducted to determine the level of consistency between the scores of the raters using intra-class correlation coefficient (icc). from the analysis, a highly significant agreement was found between the scores of the two raters (f = 8.544, p=.000, 95% ci [.760 .951]). the average measure icc was .883. this means that there is 78% of agreement between the two raters. the result indicates a strong agreement between the raters as the intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.6 and above is considered acceptable (landis & koch, 1977). the result is presented in table 1. table 1. intra-class correlation coefficient average measures intra-class correlation 95% confidence interval f-value df1 df2 sig. lower bound upper bound .883 .760 .951 8.544 17 51 .000 following the reliability analysis, a normality test was run on the preand post-treatment writing scores to ensure that the data meet the requirement for parametric analysis. the skewness values ranged between-.243 and .780 while the kurtosis values ranged between -.445 and 1.730. based on the literature, muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 29 ~ skewness and kurtosis values between ±2 are acceptable (george & mallery, 2003). thus, the results of the normality tests indicated that the assumption of normality was met. therefore, to determine the effects of the pbl approach on the participants’ writing, the scores of the 18 pre-treatment scripts were compared with the scores of the 18 post-treatment scripts using a paired-sample t-test with the significant level set at α =.05. 3. results and discussion the results of the descriptive statistics showed that the mean of the total score for the pre-treatment writing was m = 57.16 and it increased in the post-treatment to m = 65.86. the result further showed that the mean scores for each of the components increased in the post-treatment. table 2 presents the results of the descriptive statistics. table 2. descriptive statistics of the pre-and post-treatment writing scores (n= 18) treatment mean sd std. error mean pre-treatment content 18.33 1.72 .406 post-treatment content 21.33 1.70 .402 pre-treatment organisation 12.00 1.15 .271 post-treatmentorganisation 14.08 1.19 .280 pre-treatment vocabulary 12.19 1.17 .277 post-treatment vocabulary 13.50 1.40 .330 pre-treatment language use 12.36 1.73 .409 post-treatment language use 13.88 2.57 .607 pre-treatment mechanics 2.277 0.39 .092 post-treatment mechanics 3.055 0.53 .127 pre-treatment overall 57.16 4.03 .950 post-treatment overall 65.86 5.62 1.325 based on the writing scale, the results presented above show that the content of the participants’ writing in the pre-treatment had limited knowledge of an ill-structured problem, minimal viable and plausible solutions to the ill-structured problem and inadequate development of the thesis. as an illustration, an example is given in excerpt a written by habib (mistakes are underlined). the excerpt is selected as an example because it is representative of the rest of the participants. most of the participants made the same types of mistakes. in the excerpt, habib proposed viable solutions to the students’ accommodation problem due to the slow progress of their hostel renovation. habib offered only one viable solution to the problem. however, he did not clearly explain and support it with relevant examples on how it is applied in other institutions. all other solutions proposed were only restatements of what was known, what was being practiced in the school as could be seen in the second and third paragraphs. this shows habib’s insufficient knowledge of the ill-structured problem, inability to provide substantively viable solutions to the problem and lack of thesis development of the writing. muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 30 ~ excerpt a in an institution hostel is an inexpensive supervised lodging, especially for youth on bicycling trip and for student lodging. this are some of the possible solutions of lack of students’ accommodation in the campus because the hostels are under renovation. first of all the university is expected to provide accommodation for students outside the school that is, to look for an estate nearby, that may make transportation easier for them, and also the students should continues to pay their normal accommodation fees as usual. secondly, if the nearby estate or building that can accommodate the students cannot be found, then the school should found it even if it is far away from the school and they have to provide means of transportation to make it easier _ the while going to the main campus. for example, here in college of education azare, the number of students is very large, that the hostels cannot accommodate the students in the campus. the school decided to rent another building outside the campus, and it is far from the main campus. the school provides buses for the students transportation at low cost. thirdly, the students can group themselves to rent a low cost houses nearby in order to reduce the cost of payment and they can even trek to the main campus on time. in conclusion, if certain majors should be taken, i hope there will be no more any problem of accommodation or hostels to the students. in terms of organisation, the writing of the participants in the pre-treatment was nonfluent and disconnected solutions. the results also showed that the writing lacked logical sequencing and development of the viable solutions provided by the participants. for instance, excerpt a lacked logical presentation of ideas as the only viable solution offered by habib appeared almost at the end of the writing. in addition to the organisation, the results show that the pre-treatment writing of the participants displayed a limited range of vocabulary related to an ill-structured problem. the writing also contained frequent errors of word form, choice and usage that obscure meaning. these could also be seen in excerpt a. there are a limited range and inappropriate use of vocabulary. for example, the use of the words ‘inexpensive supervised’ and ‘lodging’ does not give a clear definition of hostels. in addition, the use of the words ‘estate’ and ‘building’ repetitively to refer to accommodation also shows an inappropriate choice of word. as for language use, the results show that the pre-treatment writing of the participants has a major problem in complex and simple sentence structures. it also has frequent errors of agreement, tense, number, negation, word order, articles, pronouns, prepositions and fragments which obscure meaning. in excerpt a there is an error of agreement “this are” in the second paragraph. another example is the wrong form of verb in “should continues” in the second paragraph. finally, the results indicate that the writing dominated by errors of spellings, punctuations, capitalisations and paragraphing. for example, the use of capital letters in the words institution and hostel. the second sentence of the second paragraph was also not properly punctuated and that affects the intended meaning. also ‘measures’ is wrongly spelled as ‘majors’ in the last sentence of the excerpt. for the post-treatment writing, the results showed some improvements in the content of participants’ writing. it indicated that the participants had some knowledge of the ill-structured problem and adequate range of viable and plausible solutions to the problem. the comparison of samples written by the participants before and after the treatment shows despite its limited development, the thesis was mostly relevant to the problem in the post-treatment writing. these are shown in excerpt b also written by habib. the excerpt provided viable solutions to the problem regarding the students’ admission requirements into the department of english at the participants’ institution. the ideas of the excerpt were muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 31 ~ clearer and more developed compared to the pre-treatment ones. for example, habib provided three viable solutions to the ill-structured problem. he also explained and gave examples for how the solutions should be implemented. for instance, in the second paragraph, habib suggested that a basic remedial programme for literature in english should be organised by the institution. he also provided justification to support his claim by referring to other universities that used the same remedy. excerpt b it is however clear that, this policy is inappropriate and instead, we suggest the following ways as solutions to this problem. first, department of english should organise basic program in literature in english to cover up the deficient in the requirement. this is referenced to what i know of the universities of kano (buk) and sokoto (udus) where deficiency (ies) in english and/or mathematics is remedied through the basic program by which a minimum of passing marks of 40% is required to qualify a candidate to read either of the two courses. this should be emulated by my department in literature in english program. second, higher institutions departments particularly english should liaise with the curriculum planners to put and mandate the study of english or literature in english from ss i of secondary school. this will complement the department’s need as substantial to the students (applicants) even before they apply for admission. lastly, the department should consider the general english rather than an aspect (i e literature) for admission unless if the applicant wishes to read (study) literature. if not, it is inappropriate and the department should stop misappropriating the requirement for studying english. the results further show that the organisation of the solutions is more logical in the post-treatment script. for example, compared to excerpt a, excerpt b is more organised, in which cohesive makers first, second and third have been used to indicate the transition of ideas and to signal the viability of the solutions. in excerpt b, there is also an adequate range of vocabulary related to an ill-structured problem. although there are occasional errors of word form, choice and usage, meaning is not obscured. varieties of vocabulary items have been used. for example, the word policy is used for the rule. in addition, there are frequent errors of agreement, tense, number, negation, word order, articles, pronouns, prepositions. however, the meaning is not obscured. there are less grammatical errors in excerpt b than in excerpt a of the pre-treatment writing scripts. finally, there are some improvements in the mechanics. despite the frequent errors in spellings, punctuation, capitalisation and paragraphing, the meaning of the writing is not obscured. there are also no serious spelling or punctuation mistakes in excerpt b. from the results of the paired-sample t-test, a significant mean difference is obtained in the overall scores of the participants’ writing before and after the pbl treatment (t= 9.09, p =. 000). this suggests the positive effects of the pbl approach on the participants writing performance. the results further showed significant improvements in all the components of the participants’ writing in the post-treatment writing: content (t= 13.78, p = .000), organisation (t= 8.93, p = .000), vocabulary (t = 3.31, p =.004), language use (t= 3.38, p =. 004) and mechanics (t= 6.01, p =. 000). this also shows the positive effect of the pbl approach on each of the components of the participants’ writing. the summary of the results of the paired-sample ttest is presented in table 3. muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 32 ~ table 3. comparison of pre-and post-treatment writing scores (n= 18) components mean sd std. er mean 95% confidence interval of the difference t-value df sig. (2 tailed) lower upper content 3.000 0.92 0.217 2.540 3.459 13.78 17 .000 organisation 2.083 0.98 0.233 1.591 2.575 8.93 17 .000 vocabulary 1.305 1.67 0.394 0.473 2.137 3.31 17 .004 language use 1.527 1.91 0.450 0.576 2.479 3.38 17 .004 mechanics 0.777 0.54 0.129 0.505 1.050 6.01 17 .000 overall 8.694 4.05 0.955 6.677 10.711 9.09 17 .000 to answer the research question on the effect of pbl on the participants’ writing performance, it could be seen from the statistical analysis that the pbl approach has significant effects on the participants’ writing performance. the significant improvements were observed in the content, organisation, vocabulary, language use and mechanics of the participants’ writing. the findings confirm the assumptions of the study that the pbl would develop the students’ writing performance based on the view of the constructivist theory of learning which suggests that learners build new knowledge from previous one through social interaction. based on the results of the study, the findings show that pbl encouraged the students to generate ideas relevant to the given topic (ill-structured problem) through their interactions. this enabled them to develop the content of their writing. the interactions and the tutor facilitation also enabled the students to logically organise their ideas in the writing. these findings are in line with the findings of previous studies which revealed significant positive effects of pbl on students’ learning performance. hande et al. (2014) as well as tarmizi and bayat (2010) found out that pbl enables students to acquire knowledge of the subject. the findings are also similar to those of othman and ismail ahmad shah (2013) who observed that pbl allowed students to enrich the content of their writing and support their argument critically as the result of extensive reading and critical discussions the students had during the pbl activities. furthermore, the significant improvements observed in the language use, vocabulary and mechanics of the participants’ post-treatment writing are indications of the usefulness of pbl. this shows that the ill-structured problems, the peer collaboration and the tutor facilitation during the pbl process encouraged the participants to exchange and share their knowledge on mechanics, vocabulary and the language use. it is not surprising that the participants improved their writing performance because the illstructured problems were related to their real-lives; they all had first-hand information about these problems. it was easier for them to generate substantial ideas. another reason is that after writing first draft of their essays during the pbl process, a member in each group read the essay aloud among his/her group members. this allowed each group to deliberate on the content, organisation, vocabulary, language use and mechanics of the essays and make changes to improve them. in addition, the participants also received feedback from the tutors which also helped them to improve their writing. these findings also agree with those of previous studies, which revealed that frequent and timely feedback motivate students and allow them to make necessary changes to their final project parts and improve performance in the pbl learning environment (webb & moallem, 2016). other muhammad mukhtar aliyu, yong mei fung, sabariah md rashid, vahid nimehchisalem ~ 33 ~ studies also showed that pbl provided students with an opportunity to learn new words and grammatical rules. for instance, mardziah h. abdullah and tan (2008) revealed that the pbl approach provided the students with a real context that stimulated discussions on various topics, both academic and social, thereby allowing them to learn new vocabulary and develop their knowledge of grammatical rules. the findings also support the suggestions made by graham and harris (2009) on the need to engage and support students in the writing process in order to improve their writing skills. 4. conclusion based on the findings, it can be concluded that the pbl approach has significant effects on the overall writing performance of the participants. theoretically, the study adds to the previous attempts to extend pbl from its original use in the medical classroom context to the esl classroom, especially, writing. the findings support the constructivist’s theory of learning. the study shows that engaging students to discuss and write collaboratively on an ill-structured problem under a tutor’s guidance, as in the pbl context, would significantly improve content, organisation, language use, vocabulary and mechanics of the students’ writing. from the pedagogical perspective, the study provides empirical evidence on the benefits of pbl in writing classrooms, which confirms the assertion made by graham and harris (2009) on the need to engage and support students in the writing process for improved performance. furthermore, it is previously mentioned that the instructors lack awareness or absence of new approaches and research findings that have been proven effective in developing students’ writing skills (babalola, 2011). therefore, the study provides writing instructors, particularly in the nigerian context, with a studentcentred approach that would allow them to engage, support and monitor their students in the writing process. this would eventually help to develop the students’ writing skills. for the students, the findings of this research revealed that the pbl approach would improve their thinking and communicative skills while expressing their ideas to readers in writing, which according to theodore (2013) many nigerian undergraduates lack. also, the students would minimise their grammatical and mechanical mistakes, pointed out by bodunde and sotiloye (2013). 5. recommendation this study was carried out for only one semester with second-year students. thus, further studies should administer the pbl treatment for a longer period. for instance, the pbl intervention could be administered for two consecutive semesters in either second or third year of the undergraduate programme. alternatively, the intervention could be administered for one semester in the second year and another semester in the third year of the programme. another limitation of the study is that there is no control group. future studies should use more students or larger groups of students particularly in public universities in nigeria, where there are many students in a class and can be divided into 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(2016). feedback and feed-forward for promoting problem-based learning in online learning environments. malaysian journal of learning and instruction, 13(2), 1-41. paper title international journal of language teaching and education juli 2020, volume 4, issue 1 e-issn: 2598-2303 p-issn: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8754 ijolte emi in vietnam: what high school teachers think and do thi phuong doan nguyen1, van loi nguyen2 1nguyen thi minh khai gifted high school, vietnam 2can tho university, vietnam how to cite this paper: nguyen, t. p. d., & nguyen, v. l. (2020). emi in vietnam: what high school teachers think and do. international journal of language teaching and education, 4(1), 36-52. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8754 received: february 17, 2020 accepted: july 10, 2020 published: july 31, 2020 this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/ abstract the current case study was driven by a recent policy on using english as a medium of instruction (emi) in the mainstream school system in vietnam. it aimed to explore what science teachers believed and reported doing about emi in teaching science subjects in the high school context. nine emi teachers of different science subjects at a specialized high school in the mekong delta of vietnam participated in a semi-structured interview. thematic analysis revealed the perceived positive impacts on teachers’ and students’ english proficiency, and negative influences on science content coverage. in practice, the teachers reported a focus on simple contents, explaining specialized terminologies and key concepts as the input. they mainly employed a lecture style and teacher initiation-student response interaction, switching between english and vietnamese during their lessons. these results imply that emi across the curriculum has the potential to improve english proficiency of students, but the emi policy needs to consider its transparency in goals and communication to stakeholders especially teachers and school managers. subject areas english as a medium of instruction keywords english as a medium of instruction, high school teachers, perception, practice 1. introduction english is serving as an international language connecting different peoples in different regions, at different levels and from different cultures (crystal, 2012). in southeast asia, the asean charter signed in february 2009 made english the sole official working language of the association (kirkpatrick, 2011). indeed, english has been widely used in certain fields or more exactly as the language of science and technology (alhamami, 2015; lehtonen & lönnfors, 2001; yip, tsang, & cheung, 2003). this status has led to an emphasis on english education, specifically the implementation of english-as-a-medium-of-instruction (emi) policy in many various educational systems worldwide. in vietnam, following the issuance of decision no. 1400/qđ-ttg “teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education system, https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8754 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v4i1.8754 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 37 ~ phase 2008 to 2020” and decision no. 959/qđ-ttg “developing the gifted high school system, phase 2010 to 2020” (moet, 2010), strategies were devised to prepare young generations for sufficient english competence to work in an integrative context (moet, 2008, 2010). in particular, the policy of teaching science subjects in english was issued and piloted in many gifted high schools. however, the literature on emi implementation has highlighted both benefits and problems. on the one hand, emi is believed to improve teachers’ and students’ english proficiency, increase learners’ accessibility to scientific references, enhance graduates’ job prospects, and raise institutions’ ranking (alfehaid, 2018; alhamami, 2015; doiz, lasagabaster & sierra, 2011; galloway, 2017; hu, li & lei, 2014; hudson, 2009; tatzl, 2011). on the other hand, it encountered operational challenges namely lack of competent learners and teachers, insufficient resources and support, inadequate methodology, and especially causing negative impacts on students’ academic performance and mental development (başıbek et al., 2014; byun et al., 2011; doiz, lasagabaster, & sierra, 2011; hamid, nguyen, & baldauf jr, 2013; kennedy, 2011; shohamy, 2012). in vietnam, research on emi in higher education has reported similar concerns regarding teacher and student readiness, and resource accessibility for emi success (vu & burn, 2014). few studies, however, have been conducted in the high school context (linh, 2016; nhan, 2013). in particular, research on science teachers’ perception and practice of using emi at high school level remains scarce. therefore, this case study aimed to fill this gap by examining the case of a gifted high school where emi has been piloted in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology classes since the academic year 2014-2015. the following research questions were investigated: 1. what are the perceptions of science teachers at a specialized high school about emi in teaching science subjects? 2. what are their self-report ways in which emi classes are conducted? 2. literature review 2.1. english as medium of instruction (emi) emi has recently appeared as a worldwide educational trend; however, the milieu in which it evolves varies, and there has been to date little consensus on its definition. emi is defined by dearden (2014) as “the use of the english language to teach academic subjects in countries or jurisdictions where the first language (l1) of the majority of population is not english” (p.4). the instruction of content subjects in or through english apparently excludes the english language teachers or a focus on the language itself. likewise, emi as indicated by madhavan and mcdonald (2014) refers to teaching a subject in situations where there are no explicit language learning aims and english is not the national language. the overriding aim of emi is the acquisition of content, academic, or subject-related knowledge. doiz, lasagabaster and sierra (2011) use emi as a synonym with clil (content and language integrated learning). this terminological adoption also appeared in two studies on teaching science subjects in english in gifted high schools in vietnam without clear rationale (linh, 2016; nhan, 2013). dearden (2014) identified this confusion of emi with such terms like clil, esp, eap, and teaching english as a foreign language through english, highlighting that emi is none of them, not a fixed concept either, but “one that is evolving as an increasing number of countries adopt it as a system of education” (p.7). given the situation above, emi in the current paper is defined as an approach in which english-asa-foreign language is used as a medium to teach subjects other than the english subject. according to moet’s policy, the dual objectives of embracing emi in vietnam are to enhance the english abilities of both teachers and students, and widen roads to further education (linh, 2016; nguyen & thanh, 2012; tran, 2011). in the short term, the emi program aims to mitigate the language obstacles faced by gifted thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 38 ~ high school students in mathematics olympics and other international competitions as well as to empower high-achieving students to win scholarship in english-speaking countries (hong, 2010). 2.2. science teachers’ perception of emi implementation empirical evidence has lent support to emi education in terms of teachers’ perception of its positive impacts on students’ english proficiency (alfehaid, 2018; alhamami, 2015; başıbek et al., 2014; hu, li, & lei, 2014). in a large-scale study on the perceptions of teachers (n=100) and students (n=500) from six universities in the arabian gulf towards the effectiveness of emi, belhiah and elhami (2015) found that the emi policy seemed to considerably improve students’ english proficiency. similarly, in tatzl (2011) the eight lecturers of applied sciences at an austrian university believed that emi students’ linguistic skills, especially subject-specific vocabulary, confidence building and access to english learning resources were much enhanced. these benefits mostly matched those reported by channa (2012), namely students’ improved communicative competence, self-confidence and motivation to explore scientific references in english. however, in terms of content learning, research on emi implementation reported negative effects in many ways. williams (2015), in his systematic review on the globally published research centering on emi implementation in higher educational contexts, underscored the effect that students’ and instructors’ english abilities and the academic requirements had on the success of emi programs. specifically, the poor english proficiency of emi students caused detrimental effects on their academic and mental lives (barrios, lópez-gutiérrez, & lechuga, 2016; başıbek et al., 2014; dearden, 2014; doiz et al., 2011; tatzl, 2011). likewise, sultana (2014), in a mixed-method study to investigate emi effect on the academic performance of 115 bangladeshi first-year students, revealed students’ low participation in classroom discussions and activities along with hindrances in identity recognition. in addition, research conducted by manalastas and batang (2018) showed that the confidence of students in the english only class was lower than those in the multi lingual class due to language barriers in expressing themselves. according to belhiah and elhami (2015), most arabian students perceived great improvement in their linguistic proficiency; in contrast, their teachers indicated that the students failed to have the appropriate reading, writing or speaking skills for understanding course materials, answering exam questions in english, or communicating the content effectively in english. the researchers further highlighted that the students resorted to non-academic english, and had a basic communicative ability. yip, tsang and cheung (2003), in particular, compared the academic achievement of emi chinese students and chinese-medium students learning science, and found that the emi students had lower achievement in science knowledge than their peers because they had difficulties in fully comprehending abstract concepts, distinguishing between scientific terms and applying scientific knowledge in new or realistic situations. in practice, research has also indicated that emi teachers concentrate time and effort on preparing materials, explaining, repeating the information, which restricted the full content coverage (alhamami, 2015; barrios et al., 2016; dearden, 2014; doiz et al., 2011; tatzl, 2011). indeed, the varying and low english abilities of emi learners present obstacles to the implementation of emi curriculum in many contexts. to cope with this, how do science teachers deploy emi in their practice? 2.3. science teachers’ practice in emi classrooms a number of studies have revealed that the inadequate command of english of both teachers and students in emi classrooms restricted both instruction and learning. in various cases, the prominent linguistic strategy increasingly adopted to deal with language barriers in emi classrooms is code-switching between l1 and english (hu et al., 2014; karakas, 2016; kim, 2011; muttaqin & ida, 2015; owu-ewie & eshun, 2015; probyn, 2005; simasiku, kasanda, & smit, 2015; tan & lan, 2011; vu & burns, 2014). according to simasiku, kasanda and smit (2015), since emi classes resulted in limited students’ interaction, the majority of namibian teachers expressed their advocacy of code-switching. the thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 39 ~ researchers argued that emi induction in namibia was inappropriate as it failed to take account of the english proficiency of teachers and students. similarly, the fact that korean students failed to understand the course material in emi classes has led to an unavoidable need for using l1 (kim, 2011). kim (2011) further argued that preference for l1 in emi classes depends on the amount of explanation in their course textbooks. code-switching back to l1 is normally used to summarize the course content, to explain the difficult concepts and discuss complex processes, or to facilitate interaction with students (hu et al., 2014; karakas, 2016; vu & burn, 2014). selective teaching is also opted to address the issue of inadequate linguistic ability. tan and lan (2011) observed that the malaysian teachers tended to focus on key terms as a means to help students overcome their linguistic barriers. this finding is partly corroborated with the study of uys, van der walt, van den berg, and botha (2007) in southern africa. in this study, the vocabulary identified by the content teachers is not much related to the learning materials or too simple for the learners. besides, based on observation, this study also found that only a few teachers taught vocabulary, and none of them used any strategies to introduce new vocabulary. contrary to the shortcomings of content teachers reported above, lehtonen and lönnfors (2001) reported the lecturers in their study had extensive experience in emi, and used different teaching styles relevant to students’ cultural, academic and linguistic backgrounds. moreover, interactive teaching methods, clear and simple instructions along with slow speed and intelligibility were emphasized (lehtonen & lönnfors, 2001). in vietnam, researchers have pointed out a similar picture. vu and burns (2014) reported the challenges in emi implementation at a public university. semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 lecturers. four main challenges in emi implementation emerged, namely teachers’ inadequacy of english competence, students’ lack of english proficiency, pedagogical approach, and resource availability. manh (2012) investigated the possible impacts of emi at higher education institutions (heis) and concluded that one of the serious problems in the implementation of emi policy in vietnamese heis is the low english proficiency of lecturers and students. he added that the curricula at heis present obstacles to content updating and flexible implementation, alongside with a traditional and passive teaching methodology. overall, the challenges inherent in the adoption of emi at tertiary level in vietnam were similarly reported in other heis namely taiwan (hou, morse, chiang, & chen, 2013) and spain (barrios et al., 2016). in summary, most of the studies have consistently found challenges facing emi implementation. however, the contexts in these studies vary. it is uncertain to what extent the findings on the emi programs at tertiary level can be extrapolated to the high school context. consequently, this case study has been conducted to add evidence to the literature. 3. methodology 3.1. research design the current study examined a special case, which is a gifted high school. since this research focuses on the questions of “what” and “in what ways” regarding a particular educational program, the case study approach has been deployed. as defined by gay, mills, and airasian (2011), case study research places a focus on “a unit of study known as a bounded system” (p.443). the cases under study consisted of two groups: the teachers who participated in teaching subject lessons, and those who observed the lessons. the comparison of these cases was supposed to produce rich data. 3.2. context and participants before conducting interviews, a call for participation was sent to concerned science teachers at the school. nine science teachers volunteered and were explained the purpose of the study. anonymity was ensured thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 40 ~ by assigning a code to each participant. nine subject teachers included five females and four males, teaching mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. six of them were under forty years old, had the master of science degrees and have been teaching for more than five years. since a requirement for achieving a ms degree is the english proficiency equivalent to b1 (cefr), it is estimated that their english competence should be equivalent to the level of b1. five out of the six science teachers have delivered a total of eight emi demonstration lessons. seven lessons were conducted with the tenth and eleventh grade students while one was instructed to the twelfth grade. students selected for emi piloted lessons were majoring in mathematics, physics, chemistry and english. the three other teacher participants acted as both subject teachers and heads of a subject division. they participated in the study as observers and managers. 3.3. data collection and analysis an in-depth interview was employed with interview questions focusing on perceived impacts of the emi teaching strategies, and evaluation of the emi program alongside with emi training and policy issues. face-to-face individual interviews were employed owing to their flexibility. prior to the interviews, an interview guide was sent to emi teachers. the interview guide to teacher-leaders consisted of four parts: evaluation of emi feasibility, evaluation of piloted emi lessons, policy issues, and evaluation towards the emi program. the interviews were conducted in vietnamese, and each interview lasted around forty minutes. the interview database produced a transcript of 22,450 words in total. then the six-phase thematic analysis proposed by braun and clarke (2006) was used to analyse the data. the six-phase guide consisted of data familiarization, codes generation, themes searching, themes reviewing, theme defining, and report production. 4. results 4.1. science teachers’ perceptions of emi in teaching the high school teachers’ perception was captured through four major themes: (1) emi perceived impacts on learning, (2) emi perceived impacts on teaching activities, (3) roles of emi teachers, and (4) facilitating roles of l1. perceived impacts of emi on learning table 1. perceived impacts of emi on learning subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 impacts on content acquisition lacking in-depth knowledge x x x x x x x x x impacts on students’ english proficiency improving english skills in general x x x x x x x x x improving speaking, listening, reading most x x x x 0 0 0 x x note: 0 means no data reported science teachers’ perceptions towards the impact of emi on learning are described in terms of students’ content acquisition and english proficiency. all teachers thought that students’ knowledge acquisition in the long term would be negatively affected by emi classes. particularly, students cannot gain in-depth and systematic knowledge of the whole subject content, as stated by t5: “if students study the subject in english only, they will just learn it at the surface level. they cannot recall the full contents and systematize them.” thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 41 ~ indeed, the language barrier and time limit have impeded the emi teachers and students from achieving full comprehension of concepts or theories. the elaboration on subject content knowledge and association to other related concepts could not be carried out effectively. t7: it takes more time to use emi in teaching, meaning that time for teachers’ instruction and time for students’ comprehension must be extended. with existing time limits, the expansion of knowledge and links to realities are limited. in emi classes, students not only process the subject knowledge, but also acquire it through a foreign language, which is possibly overloading for them. t6 commented that students would possibly not understand a lesson of high academic level even if it was taught in l1 (vietnamese), and proposed: “the content of that lesson should be reduced… [and] this strategy indeed works.” simplification or reduction of subject content in emi classes has been viewed as a technique to overcome the language barriers while searching for long-term measures. this results in the partial missing of content knowledge. however, it has been paid off by the strengthened english proficiency. most of the teachers confirmed this impact, explaining that emi students are exposed to more english, so they would enhance their english competency. t1 said: “emi is an appropriate approach to improve students’ english ability because emi brings students many chances to be exposed to english at school.” listening skills can be sharpened through watching experiment simulation videos in english, which also supports students’ memorization of knowledge as reported by t8. the teachers were also clear about the crucial role that specialized terminologies play in supporting students to access relevant materials online, and improving their subject reading ability: “emi improves students’ reading skills in terms of understanding physics-related issues.” (t9) writing is the least improved skill for students in some emi classes, as more numbers and symbols are used in science subjects: “in math, the writing of long sentences is not popular. more symbols are used.” (t2) all in all, despite the negative impacts of emi on students’ content learning, the teachers confirmed its benefits in improving both students and teachers’ english proficiency as well as its influence on teachers’ pedagogical methods. perceived impacts of emi on teaching activities the impacts of emi on teachers’ instructional activities are discussed with relevance to teachers’ english proficiency and their teaching methods. regarding teachers’ english proficiency, it seems all the four english skills of the teachers are strengthened, especially english for subject-related matters. t2 said, “emi has improved my speaking, listening and reading skills in terms of math related issues. for the writing skill, when preparing the lesson plan, i need to write a lot, from simple to complex sentences.” indeed when english is used as a medium of instruction, the practice of the four language skills has come into play and is optimized in the specific academic subjects. for example, the writing skill of emi teachers is sharpened as they need to present the lesson contents in english. significantly, the improvement in speaking tends to outweigh. t3 reported: “emi has improved my speaking skill most and also my resource of specialized terminologies. it makes me more confident in using english now.” thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 42 ~ table 2. perceived impacts of emi on teaching activities subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 impacts on teachers’ english proficiency improving english for subject-related fields x x x x x x x x x impacts on teachers’ teaching methods reducing content x x x x x x x 0 x slowing down speed of instruction x x x x x x x x x simplifying language use in tasks x x x x x x 0 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported the perceived enrichment in the subject-related vocabulary has given emi teachers a sense of confidence in their english ability. despite not mentioning clearly which skill was most improved, t7 clarified why emi enhanced the english competence of science teachers: t7: firstly, the teachers have to study how to teach math in english, read relevant materials, learn the foreign language, learn the subject-related terminologies, pronunciation, and grammar. they have to research a good deal of things in order to be able to teach only one emi lesson. when studying how to teach a science lesson in english, emi teachers have to prepare not only the content but the language. as english is a means to transfer the content, they are obliged to learn how to deploy it effectively by reading all related resources in english, learning the terminologies, then learning the linguistic forms including pronunciation. whilst researching, they are learning the language as well, their english proficiency is consequently improved. in fact, some modifications to the teaching methodology have been adopted in emi education. alterations such as reduced content and slower delivery of the lesson have been deployed by emi teachers: “the content delivered is reduced and slower speed rate is used, particularly for subject-related concepts as teachers need more time to explain them clearly.” (t5) t6 further explained in detail techniques she used for emi teaching: “the questions and quizzes to students should be short, simple, less language use, and corresponding to students’ level.” tasks presented in simplified english appropriate to students’ level are preferred in emi classrooms. the science teachers were well aware of how to manipulate language to suit students’ level and which content to teach them. linguistic issues have impacted not only teachers’ teaching methodology but also teachers’ perception about their role in emi classrooms. thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 43 ~ roles of emi teachers table 3. roles of emi teachers subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 teaching subject content as primary duty x x x x x x x x x helping students to learn specialized vocabulary x x x x x x x 0 0 helping students to write a quiz answer 0 0 0 0 0 0 x 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported when being probed about their roles in emi classes, the teachers thought their main duty is teaching the subject content and they view english as a medium of instruction, not the goal of instruction. in general, the teachers admitted their english was not sufficient to deal with students’ linguistic problems and support their proficiency development. despite this, they believed that helping students with subject-related or specialized vocabulary was what they could do indeed. one teacher reported: “it is not my job to teach students the english language… thing i can do is supporting the subject-related vocabulary.” (t2) language barriers seem to affect the emi practitioners in the study in many ways from the selection of teaching content to a clear-cut role in the emi classroom. one of the major practices to compensate for language hurdles is code-switching to l1. facilitating role of l1 table 4. facilitating role of l1 subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 helping to elaborate on complex words, concepts, tasks x x x x x x 0 x x improving students’ knowledge retention 0 0 0 0 x 0 0 x 0 facilitating teacher-student interaction 0 0 0 0 x x x 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported owing to the inadequate english proficiency of teachers and students, all the teachers acknowledged the necessity of l1 (vietnamese) in emi classes. l1 is used as a strategy for elaborating more on complex words, concepts or issues, as t5 explained: “for explaining complex terminologies or concepts, vietnamese will be useful and make them [abstract concepts] linger in their mind.” while t5 believed l1 might increase the retention of knowledge, t6 flexibly permitted students to respond to her questions in l1: “in case students cannot answer the question in english, i allow them to use vietnamese.” although l1 is not favored in emi environments, its necessity in facilitating the interaction between teachers and students is undeniable as emphasized by t7: “actually vietnamese is not encouraged to use in the emi classroom. it is used as an alternative in case both teachers and students cannot make themselves understood in english.” at the dawn of emi practice, while language competencies of teachers and students still pose challenges, the use of l1 has to some extent positively influenced the success of an emi lesson. it is a tool for emi practitioners to resort to in communicating knowledge and avoid communication break-down. thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 44 ~ overall, most teachers expressed positive attitudes towards emi impacts, particularly on students’ and teachers’ english proficiency. the concern here is how teachers’ practice in emi classrooms has been influenced by their perceptions of emi. 4.2. science teachers’ implementation of emi in science classes regarding the practice of the emi teachers in classrooms, three main themes have emerged: (1) teachers’ preparation, (2) the input in emi classes, and (3) interaction in emi classes. emi teachers’ preparation table 5. emi teachers’ preparation subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 content delivered selecting comprehensible topics x x x x x x x x x reviewing learnt/taught knowledge x x x x x x x x x instructional materials vietnamese mandatory textbooks x x x x x x x x x english-medium textbooks x x x x x x x x x lesson plans in english available x x x x x x x x x bilingual textbooks x x 0 0 0 x 0 0 0 monolingual dictionaries 0 x 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 language preparation learning to use specialized and academic language x x x x x x x x x seeking language support from english teachers or friends x x x x x 0 0 0 0 focusing on speaking skill x 0 x 0 0 0 0 0 x communication approach preparing prompt questions 0 x 0 0 0 0 x 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported the preparation of emi teachers summarized in table 5 reveals four subthemes classes. the teachers tended to select simple and comprehensible content for review in english (not for teaching). to prepare emi lessons, they used vietnamese textbooks and english-medium textbooks or english lesson plans available online. some teachers used bilingual textbooks. the extract below represents the teachers’ practice: t2: we have to prepare many things. the topic chosen for emi teaching should be of less use of english. i mean there are fewer concepts and more rules so that when students look at the rules, they will understand and can do application tasks. for teaching materials, i use both bilingual and english-version textbooks of moet for high school students. besides, i select basic content from vietnamese mainstream textbooks and vocabulary from southern african textbooks for high school. oxford dictionary online is also used for checking vocabulary meaning and pronunciation. according to t2, the topic selected for teaching in english should elicit little language use, fewer theoretical concepts and more formulas to facilitate students’ content learning. especially, linguistic accuracy was one of the concerns of emi teachers; they used monolingual dictionaries to check lexical meaning and pronunciation. they also sought support from colleagues, friends or english teachers. ultimately, the language used in classroom is the most concerning issue of emi teachers: “i work with mr. long [pseudothi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 45 ~ name of the english teacher] to correct my language use.” (t1). t3 reported her worry about how to improve her speaking skill with fluency and confidence. t2 also reported that designing the leading questions to activate students’ knowledge was quite time consuming and challenging: “preparing prompt questions was one of the hardest parts… if the prompt questions were too easy or difficult, students don’t know how to answer.” prompt questions, properly designed in content and form, can be seen as a communicative technique for teachers to trigger students’ background knowledge and link to the new knowledge. the input in emi classes table 6. input in emi classes subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 practice quizzes x x x x x x x 0 x specialized terminologies x x x x x 0 0 x x core theories or concepts x x x x x 0 x x x review lessons in english 0 0 0 0 0 x 0 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported the input provision in emi classes as presented in table 6 reveals activities restricted to concept teaching, related english terms, and quizzes. re-teaching lessons that had been taught in vietnamese can be associated with the metaphor “old wine, new vessel”. t6 revealed what she taught in her piloted lessons: t6: it’s the review lesson on the previous knowledge, and the goal was to introduce to students subjectrelated vocabulary and concepts. the content is very much simpler than the one taught in vietnamese. [w]hen students review the knowledge in english, they may not feel scared and confused. according to t6, this was a scaffolding strategy, meaning that lists of specialized terminologies and related concepts in english had been gradually presented to students before classes. the teacher believed that teaching in this way helps reduce students’ worries and anxiety. she also emphasized that the content introduced to students was not as complex as the ones in vietnamese. however, to compensate for the loss of disciplinary knowledge due to language barriers, deeper knowledge was introduced to students through practice quizzes. t6 spent most of her time on preparing those quizzes: “for each specific point in the lesson, i have to search and prepare the illustrated quizzes.” one of the goals of science subjects at high school is that students can understand and apply rules in solving tasks. to achieve this, tasks are often designed in the same formats as those used in the english subject but the content is related to the science knowledge. t6 said, “the formats of quizzes in chemistry are similar to the ones of the english subject such as matching, multiple-choice questions, true or false… but the content of these quizzes refers to chemistry.” similarly, t3 modified the subject-related knowledge and vocabulary specified in vietnamese and designed handouts for students to review them before classes: “i prepare some learning materials in which the physics content is explained in vietnamese and related vocabulary in english with vietnamese meaning is provided as well. i ask students to review them in advance.” the teacher reported without knowing the vocabulary, the students cannot catch up with the lesson. in response to that, some pre-teaching of vocabulary should be done before the actual practice. interaction in emi classes the interaction in emi classes, as shown in table 7, involves three dominant themes namely teachers’ questions, students’ responses and teachers’ lectures. speaking english was also practiced by four of the thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 46 ~ teachers, while some of them organized discussion for students’ interaction, or partly used l1 and even body language to interact with students. table 7. interaction in emi classes subthemes t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 teachers’ questions to students x x x x x x x x x students’ responses to teachers’ questions x x x x x x x x x teachers’ lectures of core concepts x x x x x x x x x group discussion 0 0 x 0 x 0 0 x 0 students’ questions to teachers x x 0 0 0 0 x x 0 complete english use x x x 0 0 x 0 0 0 mostly english use, partly l1 use 0 0 0 x x 0 0 x x body language use 0 0 0 x 0 0 0 0 0 note: 0 means no data reported the above picture illustrates that there are interactions between learners with the content delivered, and between learners and teachers. nevertheless, the table shows that not all the teachers employed interactive activities. this was because the teachers lacked confidence in their english competency: “most activities stick to the plan since i am not confident in my english ability and just worry that i will make a lot of mistakes if i use english too much.” (t2) without adequate english competence as she expected along with her fear of making mistakes, t2 dared not risk going off the track of the lesson plan. in contrast, t4 claimed that what she taught in class was not exactly the same as what she wrote in the lesson plan. the teacher’s flexible pedagogical methods in emi as quoted below shows that interaction is not limited to the use of linguistic forms. she said: t4: teaching in english does not mean that i learn the english plan by heart. during classroom interaction, for some cases i used simpler language, but for other cases i explained in academic language. sometimes students could not thoroughly understand all my explanations, so i tried using body language and l1. i think they worked for my students. in addition, t8’s observation of emi classes revealed that emi teachers’ diversification of instructional techniques could maximize students’ participation in class activities: “different teaching techniques such as pair work, group work or delivering handouts have been used.” such a variety of learning activities may have well accommodated various learning styles, creating safer zones for the shy to interact with their peers. t4 explained: “some students are too confused to speak in english. i supported them with cues, pictures or diagrams.” pictures and diagrams can be served as vivid illustrations to add meaning to the lesson, or as a guide to enhance students’ spoken production. despite all the challenges, according to t7, students understood the lesson taught in english as they could solve the quizzes and pose questions to teachers: “i think students comprehend the lesson. they can do the task and be able to raise questions to the teacher. it means they are learning.” 5. discussion emi is perceived to negatively affect students’ content acquisition in that students cannot acquire in-depth knowledge as learning in their mother tongue. due to the low english ability of both teachers and students, the teachers have to simplify or reduce the teaching content. this pedagogical technique has also been reported in the study of solodovnikova, zeremskaya, and zhitkova (2016). the russian lecturers and students think it is hard to use english for explaining core principles of technical disciplines or giving thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 47 ~ various opinions on problems, so they simplified lectures. emi’s weighty influence on students’ academic learning occurs even in contexts where students have good english proficiency; however, it is more exacerbating in countries where emi is used with low english ability students (galloway, 2017). the inadequate linguistic ability of teachers and students not only impedes students’ acquisition of academic knowledge but also affects teachers’ teaching methodology. indeed, in efl contexts where emi can be seen as alien to students (bashir & batool, 2017), it is more strenuous, demanding and time-consuming for teachers to deploy appropriate pedagogical techniques (cankaya, 2017; solodovnikova et al., 2016). the speed of covering instructional activities and the quality of disciplinary knowledge transferred become slower and less deeper, which has been already highlighted as pedagogical challenges in emi classes (kilickaya, 2006). lack of training in emi pedagogy and limited english ability have resulted in the popular use of translated language, corroborating with findings of a monotonous classroom environment with less spontaneity, interaction and humor (cankaya, 2017; solodovnikova et al., 2016). limited english proficiency also interacts with workload, incentives and the time consuming nature of emi (kirkgoz, 2005) in shaping the emi teachers’ perception of their single duty as content teachers only. they do, to some extent, support students’ language learning but restrict it to specialized vocabulary. this finding contrasts with results from keuk and tith (2013) in that cambodian lecturers failed to provide any significant linguistic supports despite the linguistic challenges faced by the students. the emi stakeholders’ emphasis on subject knowledge at the expense of language supports has been criticized by wit (2011) as a hindrance to the quality of emi education. emi teachers, while experiencing the language barriers, code-switch to l1 as a strategy to facilitate students’ comprehension. according to karakas (2016), since students fail to understand emi lessons, which might account for little participation in class activities, l1 can be resorted to summarize the course content. using l1 occasionally and judiciously is practical for both the teachers and students to master disciplinary knowledge (karakas, 2016). above all, emi is believed to increase the english proficiency of both teachers and students, especially reading and listening skills. this is partly true (ibrahim, 2004) as teachers and students have more exposure to the target language (comprehensible input) and opportunities to produce it (comprehensible output) in emi environment. nevertheless, only a formal register of language is adopted in emi (ibrahim, 2004) since teachers and students use a few linguistic skills to communicate certain academic topics in classroom. similarly, lei and hu (2014) found that the emi program researched is ineffective in improving chinese students’ english proficiency. galloway (2017) also indicated the less effectiveness of emi on students’ english proficiency compared to traditional language study, except bigger gains in students’ reading and listening proficiency. serious concerns about the expected effect of emi on enhancing students’ english proficiency have been raised (lei & hu, 2014) since research into the extent of this impact is still scarce (galloway, 2017). teachers are under pressure to prepare for emi teaching as it is not simply the language barrier that is challenging but the precise and appropriate presentation of disciplinary knowledge in a foreign language, searching of authentic resources and meeting expected outcomes of the lesson. those preparations have made emi teachers and students cognitively overloaded (gao, 2008). actually, finding authentic materials relevant to the current cognitive level of students is difficult because there have been scarce mainstream sources specifically designed for emi education in the context. therefore, collecting various resources as an immediate solution may have resulted in inconsistency between course contents (gokmenoglu & gelmez-burakgazi, 2013) and more seriously across the curricula (martinez, 2016). as emi is still foreign to students in the efl context like vietnam, teachers try to make the content learning less strenuous in that only specialized terms, key concepts and core theories are fed to students. however, it is this simplification of content that may result in students’ lack of skills to apply what had thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 48 ~ been taught or relate the content to realities. such content only serves the purpose of examination in which much cramming occurs without any added explanation. seriously, when exams are completed, there is a sense of relief among students and the answers to incomprehensive topics or concepts are left behind (bashir & batool, 2017). there were student-student and teacher-student interactions in emi lessons, but those interactions are limited to teacher initiation and student response. lack of english competence has decreased students’ overall confidence, hindering them from posing any questions to teachers. students’ low confidence and lack of motivation towards emi courses have resulted in failure in emi courses (smith, 2004). a traditional image of the lecturer standing in front of the class and lecturing from notes like a monologue might clarify how monotonous an emi class is (solodovnikova et al., 2016). as indicated by ibrahim (2004), students who experience difficulties in expressing themselves would be reluctant to ask questions and even to develop interpersonal relationship with their teachers and friends. obviously, a good deal of time and efforts is needed for the establishment of a genuine emi class where a high degree of interaction and motivation among teachers and learners can be found and the double acquisition of disciplinary and linguistic knowledge can be achieved. 6. conclusion and implications generally, the vietnamese science teachers express positive perceptions towards the impacts of emi on students and teachers’ english proficiency. nevertheless, the teachers think that if the sole use of english is strictly followed, students’ content coverage will be defected in the long run. teaching in a new language, teachers have to employ appropriate strategies such as giving simple language instructions, slowing down, and providing more practice quizzes. in addition, to overcome the language hurdles, the teaching of key terminologies, core concepts and theories as primary input were implemented. to conduct an emi lesson lasting forty-five minutes, emi teachers need to spend much time on preparing and conducting class activities. inevitably, limited english ability affected the teachers’ perception of their role as content teachers only, increased the use of translated language, decreased spontaneity and improvisation in emi classrooms. since the aim of embracing emi at high school in vietnam is to create a workforce of good english competence (moet, 2008, 2010), possibly resulting from a mistaken view of emi positive impacts on graduates’ upward social and economic ability (galloway, 2017), an unclear path for emi implementation has been followed in the context of this study. language policies enforced suddenly and in a top-down fashion to make sweeping changes are likely to be met with negative reactions (bashir & batool, 2017; martinez, 2016). despite its limitation in self-report evidence and generalization, this study adds further evidence to conclude that the feasibility and sustainability of emi programs in terms of qualified human resources, coherent and systematic curriculum, targeted students, physical resources, and commitment of stakeholders cannot be underestimated. in this respect, some implications for future implementation of emi can be considered. as the low english proficiency of teachers and students has been a recurring concern in emi (martinez, 2016), there should be a bridging program to prepare emi teachers before launching the emi programs. besides, an intensive training program on emi pedagogical methodology is expected to support the emi teachers in designing their instructional activities to engage students more productively instead of teacher-fronted lectures. furthermore, a set of qualifications of emi teachers and students, clear objectives and outcome specifications should be set up. it would be ideal to have an official curriculum specifically designed for emi teaching. this will save teachers’ time and energy for searching and designing materials and serve as a reliable resource for students to practice their learning autonomy. based on the research findings, some implications for english teaching practices in the classrooms have been drawn. specifically, the lexical instruction in the emi classes in this study was conducted in a thi phuong doan nguyen, van loi nguyen ~ 49 ~ traditional way and detached from context. teachers gave students handouts or lists of related words with translated meaning in l1 to see in advance. instead, interactive vocabulary teaching should be implemented by using pictures, synonyms, antonyms, examples or situations. moreover, crucial aspects of vocabulary learning should be well attended including conceptual meaning, sound form, spelling, grammatical category, collocation, 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(2003). evaluation of the effects of medium of instruction on the science learning of hong kong secondary students: performance on the science achievement test. bilingual research journal, 27(2), 295-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2003.10162808 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847698162-014 https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2016.2277 https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2011.08.003 http://flss.vnu.edu.vn/tin-tuc/hien-ke-day-toan-tin-bang-tieng-anh-hieu-qua http://flss.vnu.edu.vn/tin-tuc/hien-ke-day-toan-tin-bang-tieng-anh-hieu-qua https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2003.10162808 paper title international journal of language teaching and education 2018, volume 2, no 3, 30 november issn online: 2598-2303 issn print: 2614-1191 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5907 346 ijolte attendance and gender relations on grades and other aspects* andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk department of liberal education, kyungpook national university, sangju campus, south korea email: kootvanwyk@gmail.com how to cite this paper: chung, a., harding, g., kim, j., & wyk, k. (2018). attendance and gender relations on grades and other aspects. international journal of language teaching and education, 2(3).346-372 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5907 accepted: october 18, 2018 published: november 30, 2018 copyright © international journal of language teaching and education. this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (cc by 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4 0/ abstract three aspects prompted this study: why are females in first year university in a countryside campus performing better than males as opposed to high school where the reverse is the case? why are there waves of performance increases semester by semester? why is there in the second semester always an increase in performance over the first semester? for this matter the researchers took a number of participants in total over the period 2012-2016, namely 3,963 students in freshman english at a countryside campus (sangju) for kyungpook national university as their target. in the year 2016, only the first semester was calculated in this research. three aspects were considered as far as data is concerned: attendance variables, grade variables and gender. performances were always better in the second semester over the first and females almost always outperformed the males. what also came up as secondary considerations, are questions whether the environment like nature and the role of ‘table-talk’ of parents reverberating or not the gdp of the country over the period may have had an effect on the students. it was found when the gdp went up the students’ performance took a break but when the gdp is low the students increased their focus and performed better as their grades indicated. these last aspects were just mere observations and should be carried out with further investigation elsewhere. the attendance of females was always showing better attendance results than males for freshmen at sangju campus, south korea. while the gdp dropped and rose through the years investigated, the attendance of the students did not display a serious rise and fall but remained almost unchanged. subject areas *cognitive linguistics, comparative historical linguistics, education, computer technology, english literature but all in the same esl teaching environment keywords gender, grades, attendance, motivation, esl https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5907 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v2i3.5907 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/40/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/40/ andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 347 ijolte 1. introduction showing up in class may have an influence on the performance of the students academically and the studies on the aspect of attendance and its relation to grades have been the study over decades by many scholars. there are the romanticists who hold fast to a definitive relationship proven to be brighter should the student attend faithfully. there are also the skeptics who indicate that attendance does not automatically mean an increase in performance. the reality is that attendance accompanied by other factors can lead to good performance. so clinically the isolation of attendance and grades as a measure to evaluate is too meager an option to arrive at a true picture of this complex interrelated phenomenon in education. many factors cut into this esl event that can affect the students, males and females as a whole and also the same as separate components. scholars have studied the role of uniform wearing; [1] smoking; [2] sleep (too little or too much); [3] exercise; [4] expectations of the teaching moment; [5] wellness; [6] campus couples and campus dating; [7] diet; [8] assigned seating; [9] compulsory policies or absence thereof; [10] depression and popularity; [11] substances; [12] stress and coping with it, illness and social interaction; [13] alcohol; [14] humor; [15] financial support; [16] “undecided classification;” [17] appraisal; [18] discretion; [19] peer-effect; [20] anxiety; [21] friends; [22] environment; [23] study time and time planning; [24] learning styles; [25] adjustment; [26] mandatory attendance; [27] single sex and mixed sex classes; [28] gender; [29] persistence or retention behavior; [30] attrition; [31] motivation; [32] creative thinking; [33] major choices; [34] adaption, transition and coping; [35] and lgbtq attitudes. [36] each of these factors makes inroads into the class situation in its own way at times, but sometimes clustered together creating side-effects that kick the can of understanding of the situation further down the road. almost every class is unique and hasty generalizations are out of place. but, for analysis and getting some understanding as to what appears to be happening, a study like this is essential since it provides models to look at or to avoid. 2. literature review showing up in class may have an influence on the performance of the students in the article by credé, roch and kieszczynka (2010) [37] it is indicated that “class attendance without participation simply denotes physical presence”. [38] responding on this observation, some participants in this research pointed out that a student who just attend class but do not participate is like a statue in the class or just “filling-up the empty seats”. attendance by itself, while an important ingredient [39] to achieve in class any acandy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 348 ijolte ademic success, cannot guarantee that success. more than just sitting in class napping is needed. students either perform or retain. a number of studies investigated the cognitive and non-cognitive factors that affect these two aspects influencing both the attendance and grades. [40] although this research is currently investigating the effects of attendance on performance of esl students in south korea in a rural area, at kyungpook national university at sangju-campus, and given the fact that some students are transported here from the city daily, a study was done on the effects of attendance on performance with business students in nigeria, africa. ibrahim et al. studied three aspects at ahmadu bello university in nigeria: 1. the influence of attendance on performance; 2. the influence of classroom participation on academic performance; 3. difference in mean performance of students attending regularly and those who are not regular in attending; 4. difference in mean performance of those students who participate in class and those who are not. 5. difference in mean performance of those students who are doing both [to be a regular student and participating] as opposed to those who are only doing one [either only a non-regular student or participating/not]. they used a survey design method for 290 students for the academic years 2011/2012 and they used three secondary data: class attendance; records of participation and examination results. during the research they compared the scores of the students’ achievements against the scores of attendance and participation. similar with a number of earlier studies, e.g. marburger (2001) that showed that students who missed class were significantly more likely to respond incorrectly to questions relating to material covered that day than students who were present; or daniel (2006) who showed that “a significant link exists between absenteeism and learning” (ibrahim 2014: 90); or millis, dyson and cannon (2009) who indicated that “frequent attendees had higher passing rates on the examination and for the course than the passing rates for sporadic attendees” (ibrahim 2014: 90); or the same scholars indicating that if a student participates well in the class then the scores in the examination will be also higher, it was also their finding. some investigators of these two aspects, attendance and grades, suggested that more is needed to fully understand the total picture. chung (2004) indicated that a wider range of factors are needed to adequately understand what affects students’ achievement. although there are barriers for a student due to the fact that they are married and are parents, working 20 to 30 hours per week, volunteering, taking additional credit hours to graduate on time, struggling to overcome a learning or behavioral disability, chung feels that they know they are going to miss class occasionally so they andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 349 ijolte plan ahead. several avenues are available to them for rescue: office hours, tutoring, e-mail correspondence, web sites, cell phones. this means that what goes on outside the classroom is for chung just as important as what is going on in the classroom. chung indicated that three studies dealt with at-risk populations for example: american indian adults; developmental mathematics students; and developmental algebra students. immerman (1982) worked with 23 american indians and reported a significant difference between attendance and the final grade. bereson, carter and norwood (1992) studied 263 developmental mathematics freshman students but they could not find any correlation between attendance and the final grade. thomas and higbee (2000) studied 119 developmental algebra students and focused on the aspect of involvement and achievement. [41] it is because of these statements of chung that one can say the factors of health, substance abuse, alcoholism, smoking even, game addiction, depression, self-perception, peer-awareness, and all that were listed supra, are necessary ingredients that could influence either the attendance record or if the attendance is perfect, the performance of the student. lifestyle studies were conducted by a number of scholars and the concept of wellness is prime for a study or this kind. there is no doubt that it affects either attendance or performance. it is not the intention of this particular research ongoing here to present the evidence for the role of lifestyle on attendance or its relation to the achievement of good grades on this campus in south korea. another study should be done for that utilizing a questionnaire elsewhere. the study by k.a. cook, [42] is worth mentioning here. the study was done at loyola university in order to see if the factors of alcohol, diet, tobacco and exercise play a role in the grade average attained. “this study examined the relationship between a healthy lifestyle and college students’ grade point average. a healthy lifestyle was measured by diet, exercise, sleep, alcohol use, and tobacco use. the participants included 52 undergraduate students from loyola university new orleans, who represented a range of ages, races, and gender.” whereas older studies do indicate that these factors influence the average grade, this study by cook cancelled for their investigation alcohol, tobacco and exercise as factors influencing the average grade but these factors do lend to a perception that due to hangovers in overuse or lack of activity, that it may have contributed to a lower average grade. cook admits that they had limitations. one of the handicaps in their research is that they do not know if the students were honest in their answers. they relied on their self-perception as measure and this may be noteworthy when considering that they are countering other findings on the role of alcohol on grade average or tobacco on the same or exercise. andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 350 ijolte many scholars have also investigated the role of the ‘carrot and the stick’ [43] and its role for attendance improvement or grade improvement. these are studies on educational policies regarding the effect that mandatory or voluntary attendance has on performance. in the current study being undertaken here, our focus was mainly on the aspects of gender, attendance and grades. [44] many studies were conducted in the past to evaluate the role that attendance plays on grades. [45]then there were also the studies that investigated gender and its part in attendance or gender and its part as far as grades are concerned. some focused on the role of the teacher impacting the attendance and grades. [46]other studies charted the trends as far as grades are concerned for the years before 1994. [47]attendance as focus was the study by m. vanblerkon in 1992. [48] 3. methodology before you begin to format your paper, first write and save the content as a separate text file. keep your text and graphic files separate until after the text has been formatted and styled. do not use hard tabs, and limit use of hard returns to only one return at the end of a paragraph. do not add any kind of pagination anywhere in the paper. do not number text heads—the template will do that for you. finally, complete content and organizational editing before formatting. please take note of the following items when proofreading spelling and grammar: 3.1. participants the number of participants in total over the period 2012-2016 was 3,963 students in freshman english at a countryside campus (sangju) for kyungpook national university. in the year 2016, only the first semester were calculated in this research. for many of the years mentioned, the students were brought in by busses to the campus from urban centers or surrounding bigger towns. for the years 2012-2013 two teachers provided their data, namely graham and koot and for the period 2014-2016, three teachers provided data, namely graham, koot and andy. of the 3,963 students, 2,826 were males and 1,136 females. 3.2. data collection the data was collected in the following way. there was no survey investigating the students’ viewpoints but what was done is to take the final grade-sheets of the teachers and calculate the absences by males as opposed to the absences by females in each class and for each teacher for this period running between 2012 until 2016. the final grades were then computed and the average of each teacher was brought together. then the avandy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 351 ijolte erage of all three teachers for males and females were calculated and placed on a line graph to show the ebb and flow for the genders male and female over this period. the attempt was not to show the individual differences between the teachers regarding grades or absences, but to demarcate the trend of the performances of the students for each semesters of each year between 2012 to the 1stsemester of 2016. 3.3. data analysis figure 1. male and female attendance 2012 – 2015. figure 2. average attendance percentage among all teachers. graham koot andy male female male female male female 2012/1 97.16 97.44 96.53 97.44 0.00 0.00 2012/2 95.21 96.52 98.90 99.14 0.00 0.00 2013/1 94.80 96.79 97.14 98.72 0.00 0.00 2013/2 95.68 96.89 98.55 98.46 0.00 0.00 2014/1 95.38 98.15 98.56 98.47 97.04 96.91 2014/2 94.88 95.48 97.19 96.24 96.58 97.92 2015/1 96.48 97.31 99.40 99.15 96.47 97.12 2015/2 96.29 97.01 99.77 99.63 96.40 97.76 summary average male attendance 96.92% average female attendance 97.63% semester male female 2012/1 96.85 97.44 2012/1 96.85 2012/2 97.06 97.83 2012/2 97.06 andy 2013/1 95.97 97.76 2013/1 95.97 male female 2013/2 97.12 97.68 2013/2 97.12 0.00 0.00 2014/1 96.99 97.84 2014/1 96.99 0.00 0.00 2014/2 96.22 96.55 2014/2 96.22 0.00 0.00 2015/1 97.45 97.86 2015/1 97.45 0.00 0.00 2015/2 97.49 98.13 2015/2 97.49 97.04 96.91 semester male female semester male 96.58 97.92 2012/1 96.85 97.44 2012/1 96.85 96.47 97.12 2012/2 97.06 97.83 2012/2 97.06 96.40 97.76 2013/1 95.97 97.76 2013/1 95.97 2013/2 97.12 97.68 2013/2 97.12 2014/1 96.99 97.84 2014/1 96.99 andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 352 ijolte figure 3. student average scores among all teachers. figure labels: use 8 point times new roman for figure labels. use words rather than symbols or abbreviations when writing figure axis labels to avoid confusing the reader. as an example, write the quantity “magnetization”, or “magnetization, m”, not just “m”. if including units in the label, present them within parentheses. do not label axes only with units. in the example, write “magnetization (a/m)” or “magnetization (a·m–1)”, not just “a/m”. do not label axes with a ratio of quantities and units. for example, write “temperature (k)”, not “temperature/k”. 5. results and discussions it is for each semester of a year between 2012-2016 but in 2016 only the first semester. the teacher’s individual averages have been combined to get an overall average for each semester. 5.1. grading policies and standards of marking it is evident from the results of the three teachers that their grades display individual differences or individual marking systems but that been said, they also displayed the same trend over the period regardless of the differences. what this indicates is that even though they acted independently, there is a constant “self-canonized standard” internalized in each teacher that without communication about it to each other during grading, they experience the same up and down trend overall for these years, yet at different results for the number of a’s allocated. [49] that is very encouraging since it means semester male% female% semester male% female% semester 2012/1 77.36 83.91 2012/1 77.36 83.91 2012/1 2012/2 81.68 87.41 2012/2 81.68 87.41 2012/2 2013/1 78.60 84.29 2013/1 78.60 84.29 2013/1 2013/2 82.60 87.61 2013/2 82.60 87.61 2013/2 2014/1 81.61 85.71 2014/1 81.61 85.71 2014/1 2014/2 82.89 86.06 2014/2 82.89 86.06 2014/2 2015/1 80.35 84.26 2015/1 80.35 84.26 2015/1 2015/2 82.17 87.55 2015/2 82.17 87.55 2015/2 2016/1 82.93 85.30 2016/1 82.93 85.30 2016/1 semester male% female% semester male% female% semester andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 353 ijolte that the teachers are not allocating grades with random “feelings” and ad hoc impressions in an erratic uncontrolled manner. [50] the university also encourages through the textbook that grading is multifaceted. it provides opportunity for students to get feedback on how they understand the information and how they need to improve. students are to a greater degree by some teachers more than others, involved in scoring each other. [51] the culture of grading is understood and emphasized by all teachers among themselves at this campus. there are outcries across the globe that one should create a culture of learning not grading. [52]. 5.2. increase in compatibility led to increase in grades-theory it is noticeable that in every year, the average for both males and females is higher in the second semester. why is that? perhaps students have a better understanding of the standards expected from them in terms of portfolio completion, writing competencies [53] and presentation skills. this will explain the rise in the second semester by both groups. what also needs to be addressed is the outperforming of one gender over another for a particular semester. females are better than males but the increase in a particular gender performance for some semesters shows increase from what is expected to be their average curve over the period of past performances. these are “pockets” of increase that needs explanations. if the expectations of the teacher is better understood a second time the question that should be posed is what hindrances were there in the first round from the instructor that could have prevented them from understanding fully what their teachers’ expected from them? what barriers interfered with the esl communication between the source language and the target language? 5.3. adaptation strategies during transition wang et al found [54] that students who live in the countryside find adapting more difficult than those from urban areas. adaption was determined not only by coping strategies but also social support. this aspect is very important for knu sangju campus for the campus is remote from the main centers of temptation of downtown. across the main-gate are some drinking places, convenient stores, restaurants and coffee shops, pc and game rooms as well as accommodation newly built, but other than that, nature is the friend of the student on this campus and this demographic factor facilitates purportedly friendship so that bonds are closer in a wider scale than it would have been in the ‘concrete jungle’ of the city. this ‘wider circle of friends’ opportunity at sangju campus, may be a contributive factor to positive outcomes such as “retention, quality of college life, ability to deal with andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 354 ijolte academic stress, satisfaction with social and academic aspects of college life, and college adjustment”. [55] successful students are normally seen as those who remain in college, enjoy psychological well-being and performing well academically. [56] for some students the transition may be stressful from highschool to university. it is suggested that “the factors influencing first-year students’ adaptation to college are complex and not have a clear conclusion in past studies”. wang et al investigated to see if the family or the individual cope strategies are playing strong parts in the success of transition adaptation. the demographic variables in wang et al’s study that affects adaptation behavior in college were: only child; dialect speaking; city/countryside; family income and the major involved. [57] they found that social support led to coping strategies that in turn led to psychological health, which then ultimately affected the shape that the behavior adaptation is going to take in college. [58] the parents, college, society and friends are all necessary to give the students more support and help “in order to stimulate them to mediate their emotion positively, and spend the adaptation period as quickly as possible”. [59] does it mean that females receive more social support that helps their coping strategies so that they are performing better than males during the transition period? is the first semester the transition period from high school to university and after summer that adaptation is completed explaining the higher wave every year for both males and females in the second semester on the line graph above? 5.4. south korean gdp for the same period 2012-2016 and attendance grades a question that came up during the study by some researchers was whether there is a link between the socio-parental input or “table-talk” of the family alternating or affecting the motivation of the student, the attendance and performance statistics at the university of the countryside, the gdp of the country over a period of 2012-2016, and also the historical events in and around the country or so-called “national news”. there is just enough data available to make a probe here into this question, but unfortunately such a study requires a doctoral or master level of research or another venue than this research to answer it more decisively. • economic highlights in south korea between 2012-2015 the statistics of economy of that period in south korea was as follows. volume and value of exports over the same period indicated that although there was large volume of exports in 2010 it dropped in 2011 and very much in 2012 to almost touch the 0% line and continued to creep along that line until present. the values of the exports have decreased in andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 355 ijolte 2015 to -10% [60] the unemployment rate went down from 3.35% in 2012 to 3.15% in 2013 sliding down to almost 3% in 2014, but increased from then on upwards to 3.65% at the end of 2015. [61] bloomberg concluded that south korea’s economy expanded 2.6% in 2015 from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2012. industrial production was 1.5% in 2012; 0.7 in 2013; 0.3 in 2014; -0.6 in 2015. annual exports in 2012 were -1.3%; in 2013 it was 2.1%; in 2014 it was 2.3%; and in 2015 it was -8.0%. unfortunately, we do not have student interviews to evaluate whether their parental counsel at table-talks at home played any role in the increase of their motivation at school. if, for example, the father is struggling financially because the economy is down and would negatively speak about it at a table-talk, the student may come back to school with a survival “extra” push-drive to combat the negative outlook on the future by his/her own performance at school in academics. [62]. • comparing the gdp of south korea for 2012-2016 with the final grades of the genders at knu sangju campus the gdp in south korea was 2.3 in 2012. profits were 754 in the 3rd quarter of 2012 but lost -2,513 in the 4th quarter. profits in 2013 first quarter were 1,661 but dropped in second quarter to 335 and 3rd quarter to 51 and 4th quarter to a loss of -1,365. in 2014 1st quarter it was 1,103; 2nd quarter dropped to 238. the third quarter were -92 losses and the 4th quarter 441. the first quarter of 2015 was 559 and increased to 818 in the second quarter but crashed to -6,024 in the 3rd quarter and -2,125 in the 4th quarter. in 2016 1st quarter it was up 236 winning and 20 in the second quarter. at knu sangju campus the performance in grades during the 1st and 2nd quarter was 83.91% for females and 77.36% for males in 2012. for the 3rd and 4th quarters in 2012 the female performance was measured at 87.41% and the males at 81.68%. did the worldwide economy meter play a role in the seriousness of the increased performance? this point is worth noting as one will see further on with the slump in the world economy in 2015 and the students output in that year. the gdp in south korea was 2.3, very low in this year. in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2013 the female performance measured 84.29% average close to the first and second quarters of 2012. the male performance average measured for the same period 78.60%. in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2013 the female performance was 87.61% and the male performance 82.60%. the gdp in south korea during this period was 2.9. the gdp increase in south korea also displayed an increase of female and male performances. the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2014 saw female students performing an avandy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 356 ijolte erage 85.71% and males 81.61%. for males this was quite high. the gdp in south korea was 3.9 during this semester. it was the highest for these years that is under consideration. for the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2014 both females with 86.06% and males with 82.89% maintained the momentum of the first quarter. the gdp in south korea fell to 3.5 and 3.4. the males were high this year. the next year, namely the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2015 the females gained 84.26% and the males 80.35% still higher than the first semesters of 2013 or 2012 when they were in the seventies. of course the achievement is relatively similar than in 2014 quarters 1st and 2nd or the first semester. the gdp of south korea fell to 2.7 and 2.4 in this semester. the grades of the males during this shocking drop were higher than in 2012. the females were the same as in 2012 when the gdp was almost the same. in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2015 the female performance measured 87.55% which is close to what they achieved in the second semesters of 2012; 2013; almost in 2014 and now in 2015. the males remained also stable for the second semester with 82.17% which is similar to the second semester of 2014. the gdp of south korea fell further to a shocking low of 2.2 but started a steep climb to 2.8 before the year was out. they were supposed to mirror either an increase (survivor motivation) or decrease (depression) in this event. this particular dip of the gdp in south korea did not alter the performance of the female or the male students in south korea at sangju campus. they did not slump back in their grades due to a gloomy outlook in south korea and worldwide. it was a bad year in south korea for the gdp but the females increased by 3% and the males by 2%. considering the following year, the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2016 the females were the same as the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2014, but the males performed their best ever with 82.93%. the gdp of south korea climbed in the first semester to 3.1 but trended down to 2.8. did the shock of the end of 2015 readjust our high school students to be more motivated in the first semester of 2016, especially the males? did the uncertainty in economy on the global markets and the gdp of south korea of the second half of 2015, mirrored in at table-talks at home from the parents possibly made them resilient to overcome the negative with positive output? especially the males since the females did not show that same increase as the males did in the first semester of 2016? these are questions that we did not intend to answer decisively in this research and at present this part of our research calls for further investigation in the future with interviews, surveys, and other data applied to andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 357 ijolte make it verifiable with controls. it is thus an open question that needs further research in the future. figure 4. comparing the proliferations of gdp with the attendance scores. figure 5. effect of an export-driven economy of korea on students performance [64]. • attendance in genders during the slump of the second quarter of 2015. the attendance of the students for males and females displayed for the year 2015 for all three teachers a highest attendance constancy (rounded off) graham 96% males 97% females; koot 99% males, 99% females; and andy 96% males, 97% females, higher for every teacher than the previous years. gdp south korea attendance scores[45] male female 2012a 3.5 3.868 4.1955 2012b 2.3 4.084 4.3705 2013a 2.7 3.93 4.2145 2013b 2.9 4.13 4.3805 2014a 3.2 4.0805 4.2855 2014b 3.9 4.1445 4.303 2015a 2.7 4.0175 4.213 2015b 2.9 4.1085 4.3775 2016a 3.1 4.1465 4.2855 andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 358 ijolte of course females are attending better than males overall. world and south korean financial stress did not decrease the attendance conscientiousness seemingly for our students at knu sangju campus. • environmental beauty and nature’s impact on students’ performance whether the urban campus will be different than the countryside campus was not investigated here. these statistics will help to establish the role of environment: fresh air, beauty of nature, absence of hindrances to study, more time for reflection, ‘cognitive escapism’ played on the good performance of the students amid financial woes of the world at large. what this factor means is that the ‘concrete jungle’ of the urban setting may have a negative influence over students’ natural cognitive development and factors like pollution may add to the stress for urban students, but that knu sangju campus students are fortunate to enjoy fresh air, beautiful nature, tranquility, peace and slow pace that are excellent ingredients for an holistic educational development of the student. transportation to and from the school may add to stress in an urban setting that is not present at the countryside campus of knu. such a study should still be conducted to ascertain the effect of nature environment on the velocity of performance of students’ attendance rate and grades for males and females at the two campuses. • lifestyle as influence on students’ performance the demographics of knu sangju campus at present provide an ideal educational environment where nature plays a larger role than in urban centers. it may also affect the lifestyle of the students on this campus and wellness, [65] as defined in the literature, and the concept of holistic health regarding control over aspects of nutrition, exercise, fresh air, alcohol intake or abstention of it, smoking habits, sleeping habits, regular water intake, all that may affect the motivational level of the students during performance and contribute to their attendance records and grades. these aspects were unfortunately not scientifically tested by this research with a survey and suggestions here are mere observational side comments. it would be interesting to compare the two campuses regarding these lifestyle aspects to see how it affects their attendance and grades. it will also help solve the question regarding the role of the environment in the statistics of the attendance and grades of males and females. 6. conclusion females are still outperforming males at knu sangju campus for the years 2012-2016 first semesters. the line graph of the totals of the averages of the three teachers indicates that both genders in some years increased together and in some years decreased together. there were years when the males increased in performance but the females remained dormant or regular in andy chung, graham harding, joonhong kim, koot van wyk 359 ijolte theirs. for the 3rd and 4th quarters in 2012 both genders increased and it happened that this period saw an economic slump in the world. in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2013 the economic fall in the world reflects an increase in performance of both genders at knu sangju campus. the year 2014 saw the genders performing stable throughout the year. this stability in gender performance is maintained with no decrease and increase until the end of the 1st semester of 2015. in the 2nd semester of 2015 the gender performance increased similarly to the second semesters of 2012 and 2013 although the world economy saw a retreat during this time. a slight normalization came in the 1st semester of 2016 with south korea’s gdp and the genders on knu sangju campus performed similarly to the 1st semester of 2014. the overall result is that doom and gloom in the financial markets affects the male performance at knu sangju campus positively so that there is an increase. grades are higher under difficult financial times for both genders, but in the first semester of 2016, especially for the males. 7. references [1] ackerman, m. e., & morrow, j. e. 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