pengantar juni 2016 abstract this research aims to reveal communication strategies used by students of the english education department of a university in indonesia in english conversations and to find out the moments when the strategies were used. this research employed an interlanguage analysis. there were four participants who were asked to converse under a certain picture and was audio-recorded, transcribed, coded, and analysed. the findings show that the participants employed thirteen strategies when they were having english conversations. keywords: communication strategies, english conversations introduction people are not born with the competency of understanding everything that happens in the world immediately. they use a process to understand how to survive their life. for example, when non english speakers involve in an english conversation for the first time, they might not be able to contribute significantly in the conversation. this might be a matter of employing strategies in speaking english. as what mentioned by muho and kurani (2011), all foreign/second language learners use strategies either consciously or unconsciously when processing new information and performing tasks in language classrooms. these strategies are expected to help learners keep conversing in english. some foreign/second language learners use communication strategies when they find problems conveying their ideas and thoughts in the target language. this happens when the learners cannot select or use appropriate words, idioms, structures, phrases, or the combinations of those language features. these problems are likely caused by their lack of communication competence. by employing the strategies, learners are expected to reduce or remove difficulties in transferring their thoughts and ideas to others (lam, 2006 cited in ugla, 2013). communication strategies in english conversations puthut ardianto earned his undergraduate and master’s degree from the english language teaching depar tment at universitas sarjanawiyata tamansiswa, yogyakar ta. he has been teaching english since 2006 across a range of different age levels and proficiencies. his research interests are creative writing (folktales), learning strategies (speaking), and linguistics. 16-25 17 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 this phenomenon also occured at the english education department where the researcher frequently converses with students in english. in most occasions, although they face some problems when being involved in english conversations, these students do not only keep silent; instead, they force themselves to engange in the conversations by using a variety of strategies. yule and tarone (1991) as cited in spromberg (2011) stated if interlocutors are at the phase where they do not understand one another, they might be expected to “work out negotiate some form of common ground before the interaction can continue” (p. 162). to deal with problems between the interlocutors, understanding the message conveyed by using communication strategies should be applied. therefore, this study focuses on investigating the communication strategies used by english students in english conversations. the other objective of the study is to see in which situations these strategies are used by the learners. in fact, in employing the strategies, interlocutors will neither use the native language nor the target language systematically. in other words, it is called interlanguage. interlanguainterlanguainterlanguainterlanguainterlanguagegegegege according to richards, platt, and candlin (1992), interlanguage is the type of language produced by foreign/second language students who are in the process of learning a language. in other words, interlanguage is the students’ current version of the language they are learning, e.g., an indonesian english learner might say “david not study” instead of “david does not study”. this might happen since indonesian language does not have the same negation form as in english (auxiliary + not). another example is given by tarone (2006) who said that when a student intends to say an electrical cord in english and does not know the term, he would call it ‘a tube’ or ‘a wire with two plugs in both sides’ (p.749). this ‘current version’ of language changes all the time but it can become a fossilized language when the learners do not have an opportunity to use it correctly. interlanguage seems to employ a different pattern from the target language. it does not follow the rules in the target language, such as the forming of verbs for past activities. students might say ‘buyed’ to refer to ‘bought’ since they overgeneralize the forms of the regular verbs. ellis (1994) supported this by saying that “interlanguages, like fully formed natural languages are rule governed, although the rules do not always correspond to the rules found in the target language” (p.462). the position of interlanguage can be said as in between learners’ mother tongue and the target language being learned. it is supported by selinker (1972), who defined the term ‘interlanguage’ to refer to the systematic knowledge of an l2 which is independent of both the students’ l1 and the students’ target language. five central processes the five psycholinguistic processes that shape interlanguage are hypothesised by selinker (2007). they are (a) native language transfer in which learners transfer aspects of the first language (l1) to the second language (l2); (b) overgeneralization of target language rules, when learners use past tense (-ed verbs) for both regular and irregular ones; (c) transfer of training refers 18 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 to difficulties to distinguish between pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’; (d) strategies of communication in which learners might not be aware or even leave out communicatively redundant grammatical items; and (e) strategies of learning which refers to when learners have adopted the strategy that all verbs are either transitive or intransitive, he may produce interlanguage forms such as ‘i am feeling thirsty’. communiccommuniccommuniccommuniccommunicaaaaation stration stration stration stration strategiestegiestegiestegiestegies selinker (1972) proposes the notion of communication strategies to address certain classes of errors made by first/second language learners. this errors occur because of an incomplete learning of the target language. to be able to communicate in the target language, learners employ strategies. meanwhile tarone (1980) offers a concept of communication strategies as mutual efforts between two speakers who agree on a meaning in situations where the same meaning is not shared. the examples of strategies proposed by tarone (as cited in zhang ya-ni 2007) include paraphrasing (approximation, word coinage, and circomlocution), conscious transfer (literal translation and language switch), appeal for assistance, mime, and avoidance (topic avoidance and message abandonment). according to dornyei and scott (1997), the definition of communication strategies is a method of problem management in second language communication that help foreign/ second language learners arrange difficult meanings. they consider the communication strategies as problem solving techniques that cope with the language related problems of which the speakers were aware during the course of communication. here, the communicative strategies are considered as helpers for interlocutors that do not share certain language difficulties. research type this research belongs to an interlanguage study, to which the data will be collected from students’ utterances when they are communicating in the target language (english). selinker (1972) states that “the relevant data to be used in the study of interlanguage consisted of utterances produced by second-language learners when they were trying to communicate meaning in the target language” (p. 749). research participants the participants of this research were first year english education department students of a private university in yogyakarta. they were assumed to have less english exposures compared to second and third year students of the same department. four students with the highest score in the listening and speaking course were involved in this research. those highest scored students were assumed to be able to converse and reveal various strategies compared to the lowest scored students who might stuck during the conversation and would not seem show any strategies. the participants consisted of three female students and one male student from four different classes. pseudonyms were used to protect the privacy of the participants. data collection techniques firstly, based on the information received from the lecturers of the speaking and listening course with regard to the students with the 19 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 highest score, who are assumed to have the ability to converse, the researcher contacted the participants to be interviewed using elicitation basedpicture conversation. this technique was used to elicit participants’ utterances in english. the conversations were audio-recorded and transcribed. member-checking was conducted to maintain the data reliability. no changes were suggested from the participants. findings communication strategies used in a conversation. message abandonment. the data show that when students did not find the conversation message which meets their prior knowledge, they would likely leave out the message. for example, ani remarked “ya... stuff like that (laughing),” when she was going to say one term in the l2, yet she could not find the word. another example was given by iqbal. he stopped continuing what he was going to say since he did not know what to say. he said, “there are two floors so in front of the house there are small garden so it...”. the last evidence about the first strategy was mentioned by caca. she said, “i don’t know how to describe it, but …”. the three utterances show that students would prefer to leave out some information when they did not know what to say in the l2 contexts. topic avoidance. when conversing in l2, students sometimes enjoy talking about topics that make them easy to convey in the l2 sentences. however, if they find difficultis to express their thoughts about one topic, they would skip the topic and go to the next topic. this was shown from ani’s utterances, “err…. err… err… (long pause)… fireplace (saying it in her l1)… fireplace… (gesture: asking for a help). may be this is like javanese design, you know like joglo (javanese traditional house) at the front.” from this example, we see that ani stopped discussing the fireplace in the picture since she could not find the term in l2; therefore, she moved on talking about the design of the house. another remark was given by iqbal who said, “ah... the shape... the house is like triangle i mean the... err… the house is like (pause) the... the roof the roof its roof is triangle, big triangle in the front so at the back”. he stopped talking about the shape of the house; instead, he mentioned the roof shape. circumlocution in the conversation, when students did not know the l2 terms, they did not just stop talking. they employed a strategy named circumlocution, which refers to giving definitions or examples of the terms in l2. the evidence can be seen from the utterances of ani, “you know a place where the families gather there with a fire in the snow season maybe … winter”. in the conversation, ani did not know the l2 term for ‘chimney’; instead, she defined the word as comprehensively as she could. ani also mentioned “a house that has upstairs”, to refer to a two-storey house. not only ani, the other student, vada, also uttered, “we give them for a piece of bread” to mean ‘to feed’. vada also added, “it’s like for make the room become warm with the with the… err… by we burn the wood like in a western…”. vada was trying to say ‘chimney’; however, she could not remember the term in l2. thus, it came out using the circumlocution strategy to keep conversing. 20 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 the circumlocution strategy was also employed by iqbal to refer to ‘fishpond’. he stated, “there is a pool, but not for swim”. in addition, when iqbal wanted to say ‘chimney’ in l2, it turned out to come out as “the place for smoke”. from all the evidences of the circumlocution strategy, this can be said that foreign language learners might not actually not be aware of employing strategies in communication. approximation the next strategy employed by the participants was approximation, which means finding the closest meaning of a word to refer to one thing. this was shown by ani who used the term ‘field’ to refer to ‘yard’. she realised that she commmited an error, yet she could not recall the term ‘yard’. instead, she came up with ‘field’ that she thought would have similar meaning to ‘yard’. another approximation strategy from ani and caca is when they wanted to say ‘fishpond’ in the l2, but they said ‘fish pool’. in addition, ani mentioned, “in the beside” to refer to ‘side of the house’. this approximation happened since they are still in the process of learning. use of all-purpose words in the conversation, students also uttered several words to subtitute words they are lacking, such as ‘stuff’ and ‘thing’. ani used it in her utterance as follow: “ya... stuff like that (laughing)”. here the word ‘stuff’ was actually subtituting words that she found it hard to remember. another one was shown by caca, “chickens, cows, and like err.. what is that call it?”. instead of mentioning the other animal names, she easily filled the empty room in the utterance by saying ‘what is that call it?”. word coinage due to the incomplete understanding of the l2, it might have caused learners’ difficulties in expressing thoughts using l2. for example, students used the ‘-er’ for comparative degree of each english adjective, which needed a certain rule when using it. this can be seen from the utterances, such as: ‘more warm’ for ‘warmer’. another example was shown by caca who said ‘fishes’, since she understood that to form plural nouns, she needed to add ‘s’ or ‘es’. thus, caca still put ‘es’ in the noun. it can be said that the word coinage strategy is a strategy used to refer to a term in l2, in which the new term does not actually exist in the l2. literal translation in learning l2, many of l2 learners still use the literal translation. this happens since the knowledge of l1 most likely influences the l2 learners. this was reflected in the students’ utterances, e.g., ani’s, “the important one of house is not about the shape or the design but who inside the house”. here ‘who inside the house’ has the same grammatical structure as in the indonesian language, the student’s l1. meanwhile the targeted form of the student’s utterance is ‘who is inside the house’. the sentence was lacking ‘to be’ because in the student’s l1, ‘to be’ did not exist. another example was given by vada, “for my daily without i err... without i buy in the market or err…, “ rather than “without buying”. 21 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 code switching code switching happens when students cannot find the bridge to convey their thoughts. this is the switch from the l2 (english) to l1 (indonesian). in this research, code switching was found when one of the participants remarked “err…. err… err… (long pause)… fireplace fireplace… (gesture: asking for a help). may be this is like javanese design, you know like joglo (javanese traditional house) at the front”. the words ‘tungku’ in the indonesian context means fireplace. another example was given by ani, who mentioned, “(what is it, sir?) err… i… the house has a fire what is it?. err… what is it called?. ‘fireplace’, what’s in english?”. on another utterance, ani also still switched to her l1, namely: “i imagine that this house has a big what.. big… field eee… is it field?… ya big field with err….” indirect appeal for help the data show that in doing the english conversation the participants? actually frequently needed interlocutor’s assistance to continue the conversation. this was indicated by their nonverbal (gestures) and verbal language. ani said, “and… err… beautiful park, err… there is err… (what is pond?), err… (long pause)”. another evidence from ani is: “err…. err… err… (long pause)… fireplace fireplace… (gesture: whispering to ask the l2 term)”. she was asking the term of those words in l2; however, she used gestures in conveying it. direct appeal for help other than the indirect appeal for help strategy, the oposite strategy named direct appeal for help also occurred in the data. this was shown from the utterances of the students, such as “(what is it called, sir?) err… i… the house has a fire what is it?. err… what is the name?. what is ‘fireplace’ in english, sir?”. the next example of the direct appeal for help was still from ani’s remark “you know a place where the families gather there with a fire in the snow season maybe … winter. and… what else?”. for the data, it was evident that the student was literally asking a question to get help from others. use of fillers it cannot be denied that in a conversation, both the interlocutor and the speaker will do some pauses to think for a while about what they want to say next. this strategy is usually aimed at extending the time to think of the coming up utterances. the data show that the participants of the research used this strategy as well. caca stated, “the shape of the house hmm… wait... “. the word ‘wait’ here was the filler used by the speaker to think what to utter next. ani also indicated the same strategy by saying “you know a place where the families gather there with a fire in the snow season maybe … winter”. in this utterance, the words ‘you know’ were used to extend the time for the speaker. self-repair in this strategy, students would repeat what they have said in a corrected form without any influence from the interlocutor. this strategy also appeared in the data. examples of the data from the conversation were expressions such as “i think that fish can relax ourselves when we saw… when we see the fish was err...” (vada). in that utterance, vada said ‘when we saw…’ however he then corrected himself by saying ‘when we see’. 22 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 another example was from iqbal, “i just want my house to be comfort… to comfort”. self-repetition in self-repetition strategy, students tend to repeat the same words or phrases without any changes. this strategy was found in utterances like “i can plant and i can use it for my daily without i err... without i buy in the market (ani). another example was given by vada, “… it control our… it control the..” and “like durian or mangos there that need a big … a big… err... err... a huge space to… err... a huge space for the grow tree.” conclusion students most likely employ a variety of strategies in their attempt to converse in their l2, which in this case is english. these strategies help them to maintain the conversation to take place although what they utter sometimes does not seem to have any grammatical process since the idea of communication strategies is to bridge the gap between the interlocutor and the speaker. the participants of the research also used several strategies in their conversation in l2. these strategies need to be acknowledged by english lecturers and school teachers to be promoted as one solution for students with low english proficiency. references dörnyei, z., & scott, m. (1995). communication strategies: an empirical analysis with retrospection. in j.s. turley & k. lusby (eds.) selected papers from the proceedings of the 21st annual symposium of the deseret language and linguistic society (p. 155-168). provo, ut: brigham young university. dornyei, z. & scott, m.l. (1997). communication strategies in a second language: definitions and taxonomies. language learning. 40, 173–210 ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language aquisition. usa: oxford university press. muho, a. & kurani, a (2011). learning strategies in second language learning and teaching. mediterranean journal of social sciences. vol 2(3). issn 2039-2117 richards, j.c. et al. (1992). longman dictionary of anguage teaching and applied linguistics. (second edition) harlow, essex: longman group uk limited selinker, l. (1972). interlanguage. iral, 10, 209– 231. spromberg, sarah. (2011). communication strategies used by high school english language learners in multilingual classrooms. new york: hunter college tarone, e. (1980). communication strategies, foreigner talk and repair in interlanguage. language learning, 30, 417–431. tarone, e (2006). interlanguage. elsevier. 747-750 ya-ni, zhang. (2007). communication strategies and foreign language learning. us-china foreign language 43–48/doi=10.1.1.87.2984 appendix 1 inventory of communication strategies with descriptions, examples (based on dörnyei and scott, 1995a, 1995b) no strategy description example 1. message abandonment leaving a message unfinished because of some language difficulty pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 pengantar juni 2016 abstract this study aims to investigate learners’ perspective on teaching strategies which motivate learners to speak english. thirty university learners were given questionnaires and one learner was interviewed. the 5-point likert scale questionnaires were interpreted based on ranges of criteria. the interview was used to support or clarify the findings from the questionnaires. this study showed that five teaching strategies: problem-solving strategies, simulation, lecture, role play, and direct contact belonged to a strong criterion (mean: 3.00 – 3.99). it indicated that those strategies motivated learners to speak. in addition, the other five teaching strategies: brainstorming, demonstration, games, large-group discussion, and one-to-one teaching strategies showed the mean score ranging from 4.00 to 5.00 which belonged to a very strong criterion indicating that these teaching strategies strongly motivated learners to practice speaking. the current study concluded that the ten teaching strategies motivated learners to speak english; therefore, the use of those teaching strategies in teaching speaking skills should be taken into account by teachers and course designers to help learners enhance their speaking skills. keywords: speaking, teaching strategies, teacher roles introduction mastering languages means mastering them both in spoken and in written forms. however, verbal language, or speaking, seems to decide more whether or not someone masters language. therefore, speaking skills in language learning are very crucial since they becomes one of the determinant factors whether or not a language is mastered by language learners. on the other hand, teaching speaking does not seem easy for english teachers as “the ability to speak a second or foreign language well is a very complex task if we try to understand the nature of what appears to be involved” (richards & renandya, 2002, p. 201). learners might be shy, afraid, or doubtful to speak up and practice their english. this situation will be a big problem for learners since it can hinder their improvement. therefore, teachers should take parts to overcome this issue. what teaching strategies motivate learners to speak? ika wahyuni lestari is a full time lecturer at the english education study program universitas muhammadiyah yogyakar ta, indonesia. she has been teaching english at the ter tiary level since 2009. she gained her master in english education in 2015. her research interest is in teaching speaking and teaching methodology. 73-81 74 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 in teaching speaking skills, teachers play various roles, which contribute to learners’ success during the speaking activities. for example, harmer (2007) stated that teachers can be a prompter who helps learners when they suddenly have no idea of what to say during speaking activities. besides, teachers can also act as participants during speaking activities without dominating them. the last role is that they can be feedback providers to learners. therefore, the contribution and role of a teacher to improve learners’ speaking fluency are absolutely important. because teachers bring big impacts to learners’ success in speaking, they should maximize their teaching so that learners can achieve their goals. their teaching can be improved by using teaching strategies appropriate for verbal communicative skill. various teaching strategies can be chosen based on the learning goals and learners’ needs, e.g., asking learners to have discussion with their classmates and providing scenarios to be roleplayed. apart from wisely selecting teaching strategies, teachers should also take learners’ different characteristics into account to help them achieve the learning goals. determining learners’ preference on particular teaching strategies is not an easy thing to do. therefore, this paper aims to investigate what kinds of the teaching strategies motivate learners to speak. literature review defining teaching is not a simple thing to do. although many teachers have almost similar methods in teaching, they might have different perceptions on what teaching is for them. some may believe that teaching is solely transferring knowledge to learners. others may think that teaching is promoting learning. harmer (2007, p.107) revealed that “…being democratic and letting learners participate in decision-making takes more effort and organization than controlling the class from the front.” it implies that teaching is not only controlling learners but also promoting learners’ participation. in spite of the diverse beliefs, most teachers would agree that teaching strategies are important in determining a success in learning. a brilliant lesson will not be successfully understood by learners if teachers do not apply appropriate teaching strategies. orlich, callahan, harder, trevisan, and brown (2010, p.4) defined a teaching strategy as “thoughtful planning to do something”. in addition, franzoni and assar (2009, p.19) defined teaching strategies as the elements given to the learners by the teachers to facilitate a deeper understanding of the information. the emphasis relies on the design, programming, elaboration and accomplishment of the learning content. teaching strategies must be designed in a way that learners are encouraged to observe, analyze, express an opinion, create a hypothesis, look for a solution and discover knowledge by themselves. therefore, teaching strategies can be defined as a plan used to deliver a lesson which covers teaching goals and planned procedures in implementing the strategy. various teaching strategies have been proposed and applied in language classroom to help both teachers and learners achieve learning goals. those strategies have also been proven through a number of studies. wehrli and nyquist (2003) mentioned some teaching strategies that can be applied in a speaking class: 75 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 brainstorming brainstorming is a strategy in which learners think of ideas or solutions towards a problem. it is usually done to lead learners to the materials that will be taught, so the learners get initial knowledge on what they are going to learn. conklin (2006) pointed out that brainstorming enhances learners’ teamwork and productivity. it also allows learners to generate as many ideas as possible in a short period of time. brainstorming can be done in small groups and let learners share their ideas either in a written form or in an oral one. problem – solving strategy leading learners to critical thinking as well as improving their speaking fluency can be done through problem-solving learning. problem solving strategy enables learners to work collaboratively as a team to solve a problem raised by the teacher. it also increases learners’ motivation.through the use of english to solve real-life problems, learners are encouraged to practice speaking, which will lead to learners not only to think critically, but also to learn as a team with others (conklin, 2006). simulation simulation is a good strategy to improve oral fluency. in a simulation, learners play as themselves in a particular situation, for instance, attending a business meeting, researving a table in a cafetaria, and many other. harmer (2007) pointed out three advantages of bringing simulation in the classroom: it is fun and motivating, it helps reluctant learners to speak, and it provides a wider range of language as it is used in the world outside the classroom. through this strategy, learners can actively practice their english. demonstration wehrli and nyquist (2003) stated that demonstration can be in a form of performing an activity so that learners can observe how it is done in order to help learners prepare transferring theory to practical application. this particular teaching strategy enables learners to visualize what they are going to learn. for example, learners can experiment on making something and explain it to their classmates and teacher. with the use and exposure of english, it will likely enhance their speaking skills. games in the last decade, many teachers use learning games as a medium to teach a lesson to learners. through the use of games in learning, both teachers and learners can create learning games, which can be helpful in language class. harmer (2007, p.349) revealed that games “aim to get learners talking as quickly and fluently as possible”. they can also create fun learning. with a good awareness on the language items taught through games and the appropriate selection on the kinds of games, teachers can promote learning in a non-threatening way. brewster, ellis, and girard (2002) claimed that games for teaching encourage learners to praticipate and motivate shy ones to speak. also, learning through games offers practice in fluency which is dominated by learners rather teachers. 76 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 large-group discussion discussion is a teaching strategy, which is appropriate to be applied in learner-centered learning. it can be prepared and unprepared as harmer (2007, p.351) stated that “some discussion just happen in the middle of lessons; they are unprepared for by teacher, but, if encouraged, can provide some of the most enjoyable and productive speaking in language classes”. by participating in a large group discussion, learners can articulate their ideas and feelings as well as listen to others’ perspective. lecturing lecturing is a conventional teaching strategy and tends to be regarded as an old teaching method. however, some teachers still apply this teaching strategy. wehrly and nyquist (2003) asserted that lecture is “primarily didactic presentation of information, usually to a large group and often with the use of audiovisual aids to transmit information.” role-play learning a language means learning how to use it in a real-life situation. therefore, role-play can be a proper teaching strategy used in a language classroom. harmer (2007, p.352) stated that role-play is very effective “to encourage general oral fluency or to train learners for specific situations”, for example becoming a receptionist, seeing a doctor, and so on. in a role play, learners are prepared to encounter situations where they must use english in the real world (thornbury, 2005). direct-contact direct-contact teaching strategy means that classroom teachers invite a guest speaker while teaching. in language learning, direct contact with native speakers of the target language offers an experience for learners as well as becomes a trigger to form a good attitude towards a target language and its speakers (bartram, 2010). to promote speaking, teachers can invite english native speakers so learners can practice their english with the native speakers. one-to-one strategy harmer (2007, p.122) explained that teaching one-to-one means “an individual learner working alone with a teacher over a period of hours or weeks”. it is usually called ‘private classes’. as in one-to-one class a teacher focuses only on one learner, the learner has a greater chance to do all the speaking rather than in a large class in which the teacher must share his attention to more than one learner. in addition to the above strategies, franzoni and assar (2009, p.19) mentioned other teaching strategies presented in the table 1: as the basic reference in conducting this research, the teaching strategies used in this research are the ones proposed by wehrli and nyquist (2003), which are brainstorming, learning based on problem solving, simulation, demonstration, games, large group discussion, lecturing, role play, direct contact, and one-to-one teaching. methodology participants the participants of this research were 30 77 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 university learners (n = 30) selected using convenience sampling. they were from different majors: 14 participants were learners of the agriculture department and the other 16 were learners of the international relations department. although they were from different departments, both groups were taught with the same english materials as they learned general english with the four integrated english skills. they also belonged to the same level of english proficiency which is beginner determined by their ept score (< 375). data collection and analysis method 5-point likert scale questionnaires written in the indonesian language were distributed to the thirty respondents. in addition to the questionnaires, an approximately 21-minute audio-recorded interview was done to obtain richer information on the reasons of which teaching strategies that motivated learners to speak. the data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistics by finding the percentage and the mean score of each teaching strategy. the mean scores were, then, interpreted based on the range of criteria of interpretation. the mean score 1.00 – 1.99 showed low agreement on the statement, the mean score 2.00 – 2.99 showed neutral agreement on the statement, the mean score 3.00 – 3.99 showed strong agreement on the statement, and the mean score 4.00 – 5.00 showed very strong agreement on the statement (alsamaani, 2012). the data from the interview, on the other hand, were transcribed and coded. findings and discussion after the statistical technique was conducted to the questionnaires, each teaching strategy showed the results presented in the following table 2: after the computational technique done to the questionnaires, based on the range of criteria, it was found that there were only two criteria: strong and very strong criteria. the strong criterion ranges from 3.00 – 3.99 which can be interpreted that most respondents agreed with the statement. the second criterion which appeared in this study is very strong criterion which ranges from 4.00 – 5.00 which can be interpreted that most respondents strongly agreed with the statement. those two criteria can be interpreted that the teaching strategies belonging to those criteria motivated the learners to speak english. the table showed that five teaching strategies were in strong criterion; those were learning based on problem solving strategy (mean: 3.95), simulation (mean: 3.93), lecture (mean: 3.89), table 1. teaching strategies (franzoni and assar, 2009, p. 19) 78 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 role play (mean: 3.71), and direct contact (mean: 3.63). the data indicated that the participants believed that the strategies motivated them to speak in language class. besides strong criterion, five teaching strategies also belonged to very strong criterion. based on the interpretation, very strong criterion, ranging from 4.00 – 5.00, means that the respondents strongly agreed on a statement. in this case, they strongly believed that the five teaching strategies motivated them to speak english. the first teaching strategy with very strong criterion was brainstorming which had mean score 4.13. the second strategy was demonstration. it had mean score 4.07. the third teaching strategy was games with mean score 4.16. the forth teaching strategy was large group discussion which obtained 4.25. the last teaching strategy was one to one teaching strategy with mean score 4.11. the findings of the questionnaires which resulted in strong and very strong criteria indicated that all the ten teaching strategies motivated the learners to speak english. this finding was in line with that found by wehrli and nyquist (2003). therefore, it is strongly suggested for english teachers to apply those teaching table 2. findings from the questionnaire 79 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 strategies to encourage learners to practice their speaking skills. teachers can vary their teaching strategies in teaching speaking to provide greater opportunities for learners to practice speaking. based on the interview conducted to niar (pseudonym), a female learner of agriculture department, it was found that some teaching strategies really motivated her to speak english while some others did not. when she was asked a question on what teaching strategies which motivated her to speak, she said that “games, especially the group ones, can motivate me to practice my speaking ability in english. through games, learners can learn english as well as cooperate with others. they are also fun. learners who at first do not want to speak up are ‘forced’ to speak.” the second strategy which encouraged her to speak was discussion. niar stated that “discussion motivates learners to speak, especially if the learners are given a chance to share what they have got from the discussion in front of their classmates.” besides discussion, niar also agreed that role play was motivating to be applied in speaking class as she said that it could be a fun activity for learners as they could prepare their performance and those who were still reluctant to speak could be given a part which urged them to speak. problem solving strategy and direct-contact seemed to be quite motivating for learners to speak english. as niar said, “problem solving strategy quite motivates me to speak. however, it will be effective for learners who are really confident to speak. sometimes those who know how to solve the problems but are unconfident will tend to be silent and be passive.” besides problem solving strategy, the direct-contact strategy was also quite motivating for learners to speak. in this teaching strategy, learners have chance to practice their speaking ability with people who have mastered english well or even native speakers. niar said that “if i meet native speakers, i have to speak in english and it can force me to speak although my english is not good. we are also proud to ourselves if we can speak with native speakers.” based on the interview, some strategies were found to be less motivating or not motivating at all to be applied in speaking class. the first teaching strategy which was less motivating was simulation because simulation would only be effective for those who were able speak english while those who were not able to speak english well would unlikely take parts in the activity. the second strategy which was less motivating was brainstorming. niar claimed that brainstorming was “not really motivating as learners who will be encouraged to speak are those who know the answers of the questions given by the teacher.” in addition, lectures were believed to give less motivation to learners to speak as niar said that “it will make learners to be passive learners”. not only lectures, one-to-one teaching strategy also did not motivate learners as “learners have no partner to have conversation with other than the teacher.” the last teaching strategy which did not motivate learners to speak was demonstration. niar believed that “it only gives sample on how to use the language but not motivates us to speak”. the results of the interview showed different results from the ones in the questionnaire in which the participant revealed that simulation, brainstorming, lecture, one to one teaching 80 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 strategy, and demonstration did not motivate the participant to speak english. it might happen because those teaching strategies did not provide more exposure for learners to speak and they only worked for learners who had strong confidence in speaking english. thus, teachers who plan to apply these teaching strategies should consider learners’ individual differences so that the learning process can give equal opportunity to practice speaking. conclusion and implication the objective of this study was to investigate learners’ perception on the kinds of teaching strategies which motivated them to practice speaking. from the 5-point likert scale questionnaires distributed, the findings showed that nonenglish department learners agreed that the ten teaching strategies asked in this study motivated them to practice speaking. those ten teaching strategies were brainstorming, problem solving strategy, simulation, demonstration, games, largegroup discussion, lecture, role play, direct contact, and one-to-one teaching strategies. the results of the present study can lead to some pedagogical implications. firstly, the study which gather learners’ opinion on the teaching strategies which motivated them in practicing their speaking skill may lead to the awareness that learners are motivated to speak when their teachers apply a particular teaching strategy. secondly, the findings may provide a clearer overview on what teaching strategies teachers can apply to help their learners improve their speaking skills. at last, considering that the present study revealed the teaching strategies which motivated learners to speak based on learners’ point of view, course designers, particularly those who focus on the enhancement of learners’ speaking skills, should include the teaching strategies in the teaching plan as they might help learners enhance their speaking skills. as the present study involved a limited number of participants, the findings might not represent the whole population of non-english department learners in indonesia. therefore, it is expected that further research with a bigger number of population can be carried out to obtain a more-thorough result on teaching strategies which motivate learners in speaking. also, the current study only gathered learners’ point of view and perception on what teaching strategies motivates them to speak; no observation or experiment was conducted to empirically tested whether particular teaching strategies do improve learners’ speaking skills or not. hence, an empirical study should be conducted to prove that a particular teaching strategy is found effective to improve learners’ speaking skills. references alsamaani, a.s. (2012). assessing saudi learners’ beliefs about english language learning. international journal of english and education, 1 (2) baxter, d. (2007). teaching strategies for adult learners. rivier academic journal, 3 (2), 1-3 bartram, b. (2010). attitude to modern foreign language learning: insights from comparative education. london: bloomsbury publishing brewster, j., ellis, g., and girard, d. (2002). the primary english teacher’s guide. essex: pearson education ltd. conklin, w. (2006). instructional strategies for 81 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 diverse learners. california: shell education cothran, d.j., and pamela, h.k. (2006). learners’ perspectives on direct, peer, and inquiry teaching strategies. journal of teaching in physical education, 2006, 25, 166-181 franzoni, a. l., & assar, s. (2009). learner learning styles adaptation method based on teaching strategies and electronic media. educational technology & society, 12 (4), 15–29. harmer, jeremy. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. longman: pearson press orlich, d.c., callahan, r.c, harder, r.j., trevisan, m.s., brown, a.h. (2009). teaching strategies: a guide to effective instruction (9th edition). washington: washington university press richards, j.c. and theodore s. rodgers. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching: second edition. cambridge: cambridge university press richards, j.c and renandya, w.a. (2002). methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice. cambridge: cambridge university press thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking. longman wehrli, g., and nyquist, j.g. (2003). creating an educational curriculum for learners at any level. aabb conference. retrieved from http:// www.tulane.edu/som/ome/upload/ comparisonofteachingmethodologies.pdf pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 pengantar juni 2016 abstract working collaboratively has been widely promoted in education. in the area of english language teaching and learning, working collaboratively can frequently be seen in speaking activities, in which students were assigned to practice speaking with their peers. unfortunately, working collaboratively in writing is not as popular as in speaking. this study aims to explore the collaborative writing in an efl context. as a part of a bigger study, the data were collected through out a semester and integrated with weekly meetings, which aimed to reach several objectives through a variety of activities, including group painting, individual writing, and collaborative writing. a total of 64 freshmen that were divided into two groups participated in the study. in the collaborative writing activity, students were instructed to do group painting and write a story written in groups based on their paintings. each member of the group took turns to write the story, which cohesiveness and coherence should be given attention. students were given freedom to choose their own topics for painting and writing to encourage them express their ideas. the data were gathered through class observation and students’ reflection that was submitted at the end of the semester as a part of class assessment. the observation revealed that students faced some challenges when performing the tasks. time management, student interdependence, and types of writing were among the issues emerging in collaborative writing activities. from students’ reflection, it was found that while most students stated they enjoyed the activities, one student expressed that the collaboration did not work as well as she had expected. introduction learning practices in english language classrooms across indonesia have long focused on the teacher-centred approach to learning, that is, teachers as the main collaborative writing in an efl context sri rejeki murtiningsih also known as jackie, received her undergraduate degree in english education from universitas negeri yogyakar ta (uny) and earned her masters in education from flinders university of south australia. after receiving her ph. d in education from the university of oklahoma, jackie mur tiningsih star ted teaching in the english education depar tment at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakar ta. her research interests include teaching esl/efl reading and writing, reflective practice, and curriculum development. she can be contacted to jackie.mur t@umy.ac.id 82-90 83 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 subject who deliver the lesson while students as the listeners. in this approach, teachers usually stand in front of the class telling the students what to do with the workbooks and telling them the answers of the questions. this may lead to students’ dependence to the teachers and lessen students’ independence in learning. in addition to this, english teachers teach the lesson using bahasa indonesia, due to lack of english proficiency. at the same time, many students learn english passively and have little efforts to improve their english proficiency at their own personal time. they spend much of their time doing things that do not support their english learning, such as watching television, playing online games, or scrolling their smartphones. students depend too much on the teacher and study for test purposes only. the teacher and student aspects contribute greatly on students’ development of english language skills. making students more independent has been a big issue for english language teachers, especially for those who teach in the area where independent learning is not culturally encouraged – like indonesia. many english teachers, especially in the higher education context, have been trying to use a more student-centred approach that sees students actively being engaged in their language learning. a variety of teaching techniques that are more student-centered have been endlessly implemented to improve students’ language proficiency. for example, many students are encouraged to work collaboratively with their peers to work on a project and present it in front of a group of an audience. applying the student-centered learning in english classes can be an alternative way to develop students’ language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. writing has been considered as one of the most difficult problem because “it remains unclear how students acquire the skills needed to produce an effective piece of writing in another language” (khanalizadeh, 2012, p. 334). thus, it is imperative for english as a foreign language (efl) teacher to develop students’ writing skills to help students’ success in learning a language. in many efl contexts, writing has not been promoted as a continuous activity. in china, for instance, lo and hyland (2007) state that writing activities have been focused on achieving good grades in examination and grammatical accuracy. in indonesia, the common practice that takes place in the efl higher education contexts is that students are asked to produce an academic paper at the end of the semester. unfortunately many teachers have been quite reluctant to provide feedback to students’ writing, especially error correction. this might be caused, as bitchner, young, and cameron (2005) argue, by practical reasons and ability and willingness of the teacher. one way to develop students’ writing skills is to have students actively participate in the language learning process, which is by collaboratively working together with their peers in order to better acquire the language. by having students working together, a teacher actually creates the environment for students to learn from each other (lantolf & thorne, 2007). the learning environment can help students be less dependent on the teacher. in addition, this method can be a way to shift the paradigm from the teachercentered approach commonly found in english language classrooms in indonesia. 84 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 while it is believed that many english teachers in the indonesian higher education contexts have experimented a variety of writing activities, research on collaborative writing in indonesian contexts has been scarcely conducted. the objective of the study is to investigate the extent to which the collaborative writing work in an efl context. theoretical framework the theory that underlies this study is sociocultural perspectives from vygotsky (1978). in his book, mind and society, vygotsky (1978) maintains that children learn from other people around them. when they learn their first language, for example, they will acquire the words from adults who communicate with them or with other adults. similarly, when children get older and go to school, they may also learn a new language that is used by the people around them. vygotsky (1978) also asserts that human development is inherently a socially situated activity, which implies there is always a need for humans to get together with others to achieve a certain goal. in the case of learning a foreign language learning like english, language learners can learn and acquire english from the people around them. learning form their teachers and their peers is also a form of learning from their environment. peers and teachers who speak english can provide environment for english language learners to acquire english faster, which in turn, would influence their language proficiency. to make sure that the environment supports learners’ language development, english teachers can design language learning activities that require students work collaboratively. working collaboratively would require students to communicate to each other in the target language. following vygotsky, lantolf and thorne (2007) also argue that second language learners learn the target language through internalization and imitation. by this, they mean that language are obtained from the interaction with the people around them and that the learners would carry the language into future performance. imitation, according to lantolf and thorne (2007), plays an important role in language acquisition as it involves psychological and neural processing to actually produce the language. this is especially true when a language learner tries to imitate the teachers to speak or produce a word in the target language. while speaking skills may have been the most visible skills that language learners can acquire from collaborative working, the other language skill, such as writing, can also enjoy the advantages of collaborative working. in addition, collaborative writing is also grounded in both social constructionist and cognition theory. they provide important insights for knowledge construction. in social constructionist theory, the emphasis is on students’ discourse as a means of learning and writing as a manifestation of internalized social interaction. according to vygotsky (1978), children learn new ideas through their social contacts. by getting in contact with each other, it could give them some advantages during their peer discussions about writing. this kind of learning is also based on the co-author working in the students’ zpd (zone of proximal development). vygotsky mentioned that children can accomplish tasks and solve problems under the assistance of a more capable peer (vygotsky, 85 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 1978). furthermore, collaborative writing allows students to have more feedback, which can occur either from the teacher or the peers since there are less group of students compared to many individual students. the feedback is also more detailed and constructive to create a better learning process. literature review writing skills in language learning in a preliminary study, it was found that english language students in indonesia viewed that speaking is the favorite skills of all language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. it was also revealed that writing was considered to be the most difficult skill in learning a language because it heavily depends on the vocabulary mastery (nation, 2009) and grammar to convey meaning. in addition, elola and oskoz (2010) mentions that activities that many teachers design for their classes focus more on english speaking skills, rather than writing skills. there has been a number of attempts to improve students’ english writing, e.g. by performing grammar correction towards students’ writing. on the other hand, writing skills are actually depended on the external and internal factors (lo and hyland, 2007). the external factors that influence writing skills include activities provided by teachers, language input, and peer collaboration. internal factors refer to learners’ attitudes, personal motivation and learners’ perception on the activities. these two factors intertwine each other. teachers play a very important role in english learning. this refers to the fact that the activities that a teacher designs would highly relate to students external motivation in writing, which will lead to students’ engagement in writing. this includes providing a non-threatening environment for the students to engage in writing activities. lo and hyland (2007) designed a writing program in which the writing topics were related with students’ environment and real readers. they applied discussions, demonstrations, and exploration to engage the students before they started writing. after conducted the procedure for six meetings, students were seen to be more motivated and engaged in writing. their compositions were longer and showed better contents. this might indicate that students would likely perform better when they are provided with more opportunities to write that makes sense to them. collaborative writing to consider that every single writing activity in an english class is conducted individually is probably too extreme. speck (2002) maintains that every writing activity would have involved other people indirectly. for example, doing brainstorming with others, getting feedback from teachers, having conversation with friends, and researching the topics together are all evidence that writing processes cannot be done individually. however, collaborative writing in this study means that students with a friend or two to actually produce a piece of writing together. collaborative writing, though it is not common in indonesia, has been practiced by many english teachers around the world. the common practices that takes place around the collaborative writing activities are asking students to do peer review (storch, 2005). in peer review activities, students are usually asked to provide suggestions 86 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 to their friends’ writing (rollinson, 2004). this activity requires students to reflect on their own learning and, at the same time, students have to review the lessons that they have had. storch (2005) argues that collaborative writing should be pushed a little further than providing feedback to their peers. she then did a collaborative writing in which students worked in pairs and wrote a piece of writing together. the results showed that the grammatical accuracy of the pieces of writing that the students produced were higher than when the students did the individual writing. also, the pieces writing from students’ collaborative work displayed higher levels of language complexity and were more succinct. the results also showed that the collaborative writing activities received positive from the students. they enjoyed the activities and considered them helpful to improve their writing skills. another study on collaborative writing is also conducted by khatib and meihami (2015). his study shows that a group of students who did collaborative writing outperformed their peers who did writing without the collaborative activities. the collaborative groups’ writings were better in terms of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. hodges (2002) argues that collaborative writing had encouraged students to “redraft their work purposefully and explicitly in pursuit of particular creative effects” (p. 4). redrafting seems to be the reasons why collaborative writing would benefit the students. to do the collaborative writing, mulligan and garofalo (2011) also did the collaborative writing with their students. although issues of fairness in task distribution among students should be considered by the teachers, they claimed that collaborative writing did have positive impacts to their students’ writing, as well as their speaking skills. they suggested several steps that teachers could take to carry out collaborative writing. the first, as they suggested, is to pair students, either choosing their partners themselves or being chosen by the teachers. mulligan and garofalo (2011) suggested teachers to rotate partners to avoid to encourage students to work with different people with different levels of proficiency. the second step is to provide opportunities for the pairs to brainstorm the topics they want to write about. this step can also be used to talk about the organization of the writing piece. the next part is by encouraging students to meet outside class hours to do research to support their ideas. this step is followed by the students working in class to outline, plan, and write the first draft. teachers may provide suggestions on the outline. after this, students are to submit the first draft and returned with comments and suggestions. students then work on the second draft based on the comments and suggestions and receive a grade. this cycle may continue with students assigned to do different roles, so they can explore other roles. while collaborative writing is useful for students, not all students are willingly involved in the activities. storch (2011) maintains that many students had persistently been reluctant to engage in collaborative writing. students did not show positive attitude, which might have been caused by their personal experience on doing collaboration with their peer. on the other hand, storch (2011) also points out that students with low level second language proficiency may not get the advantages of collaborative work if they are not 87 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 paired with students with a higher level of language proficiency. also, storch (2011) suggests that collaborative writing activities need to be monitored to ensure the activities work effectively. methodology this study is a part of a bigger study that required students to work collaboratively. various activities, such as painting, reading, and discussions were also performed to these groups to create a positive learning environment that engaged students. individual story writing activities were conducted prior to the collaborative writing ones to provide scaffoldings to familiarize students with the upcoming activities. the collaborative writing activities were conducted for one meeting as a part of series of other activities. two groups with a total of 64 freshmen enrolled in a course were involved in this research. the course syllabus showed that the course was to teach argumentative writings. the data obtained were mainly based on the teacher/researcher’s observation during this particular activity on students’ interaction with their group members. during the observation activities, the teacher’s role was, among others, to remind the students to follow the time frame and to provide further information when necessary. another set of data was also collected through students’ reflection, which were submitted at the end of the semester as a part of course assessment. the tasks the students were first divided into several groups of four or three students. students were then asked to make a piece of artwork, which was painting in groups with free topics. they were allowed to discuss the concept of their painting prior to the painting activity or to paint on the paper right away and discuss the concept of the writing while painting. this discussion was intended to establish a learning environment for the students to contribute providing ideas for later activities, which was collaborative writing. after painting, students were instructed to write a story based on the painting they created; thus, the painting was actually an idea generator for students to construct a story. on a piece of paper, each member of the groups took turn to write a painting-based story. the second student would continue the story from the first member; the third member would do the same as his counterpart. at the end of the meeting, the pieces of writing that students’ produced were displayed on the wall along side with the painting. findings observation based on the observation, most students seemed to enjoy the writing activities. some groups could really work together to create a piece of writing. each member took turns to write on a piece of paper. during the collaborative writing activities, some interesting issues emerged: time management. the duration of the whole meeting was 200 minutes each. although some of the instructions were clearly given in the previous meeting, e.g. how much time for painting and collaborative writing, students spent more time in the painting activities. this might have indicated that students enjoyed the activity because they had not done a similar activity. as a 88 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 result of the extended painting time, the allocated time for the collaborative writing was not sufficient for students. some groups appeared to be rushing when the time of the course meeting was over, which led to some students did not receive equal amount of opportunity to express their ideas in writing. students’ interdependence. students were randomly selected to form a group consisting of four to five people. the particular selection process was performed to avoid students to choose their counterparts who had a similar level of english proficiency. in addition, the selection process was intended to create a more supportive learning environment for students with a lower level of english proficiency. based on the observation, some groups worked well in developing the story. these groups, regardless their diverse levels of english proficiency, were successful to support each member to write up their stories. from their piece of writing, their story was coherent although some grammatical errors were found. at the end of the activity, these groups were able to produce relatively coherent stories based on their paintings. the other groups seemed to be not as successful as their peers. while they were able to produce a number pieces of writing based on their paintings, the writings were produced by one member of each groups only. they, however, distributed the jobs equally among each member although the jobs were not necessarily related to collaborative writing. for example, as the task on that day was not particularly on performing collaborative writing, some groups decided to distribute the responsibilities between painting and writing. thus, those who had a higher level of english command were selected to do the writing, and the rest of the groups were to do the painting. types of writing used. during the activity, it was observed that free writing was quite challenging for the students. this might have been caused by the one of the course objectives that required students to be able to demonstrate their ability to write argumentative essays. apparently, when the students were instructed to do free writing to express their ideas, many of them chose to write a piece of narrative writing, which was taught in the previous semester. during the activities, some students explicitly expressed their opinion to the teacher that writing a narrative was quite challenging because it had a different concept of that of argumentative writing, which was agreed by some other students. some students stated that, in argumentative writing, they were required to have an introductory paragraph, to support their ideas with evidence, and to write a concluding paragraph. meanwhile, narrative writing did not necessarily require introductory and concluding paragraphs. this type of writing, as students claimed, was quite challenging for them because they had accustomed to write argumentative essays regardless of they. reflections in the reflection, most students focused on their enjoyment of doing the painting, and paid very little attention on the collaborative writing activity. they stated that their creative thinking was evoked because they were instructed to create a story based on the painting they made. although it was a free writing, the ideas to write the story were not completely free because their ideas 89 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 were limited by the painting. based on the reflection, most students stated that they enjoyed the painting and writing activities. some of students indicated that they did not expect that their writing ideas actually came from their paintings. with regard to the collaborative writing activity, most of them wrote that they did not mind writing in groups. however, one student explicitly stated that she was actually frustrated with her group because the other members were slow in writing and too carried away with chatting and painting. she ended up writing the whole story by herself. discussion unlike a study conducted by khatib and meihami (2015) in which they had experimental and control groups and compared the results of the writings of the students of the two groups, this study did not attempt to compare the writings of collaborative and non-collaborative writing activities. this study focused on students’ reaction on collaborative writing activity. the collaborative writing conducted in the study was only conducted in one meeting with a little help from the other activity, which was painting. the painting activity was intended to help students generate ideas by discussing the concept of writing they intended to produce. the discussion was to create a learning environment for the students, as suggested by vygotsky (1978), before they executed their action. the discussion was also used to ensure to focus students’ attention on the story they wanted to create although the story might change when they finished their painting. the study implies that efl teachers need to ensure that the collaborative writing activities are equally distributed among the members of the groups. thus, each member of the group bears the same amount of responsibility for the group’s success. alternatively, setting up small groups, e.g. pairs, would be easier for teachers to monitor students. small groups will also allow students to contribute in the collaboration, such as working on the accuracy of the writing. another implication of this study is that providing specific themes may be helpful for students to create a story, rather than instructed students to choose the topic. khatib and meihami (2015) asked their students to write a piece of writing using the topic they provided each week, which might have helped their students in the experimental group to succeed. providing topics for students can help students to narrow down their ideas and focus their attention on the given topic. the topics are not necessarily to be academic related because students may find difficulties to develop the topics. topics with which students are familiar will become a great contribution to students’ success. conclusion collaborative writing may have been popular in many learning contexts. many efl teachers may have instructed their students to write an academic paper, bulletin boards, or many other kinds of pieces of writings. the uniqueness of this collaborative writing activity was that the collaboration was conducted on the spot and students were encouraged to work closely with one another. through the teacher’s observation, students involved in this activity seemed to enjoy the collaborative writing activity. however, not all 90 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 students were able to work collaboratively in terms of writing. many students depended on the members of the groups due to the level of english proficiency. the reflection also showed that one student felt frustrated when her group members gave up the writing work to her. on the other side, her frustration might have been caused by her not being able to work collaboratively with students who had lower levels of english proficiency. references bitchner, j., young, s., & cameron, d. (2005). the effect of different types of corrective feedback on esl student writing. journal of second language writing, 14, 191-205. elola, i., & oskoz, a. (2010). collaborative writing: forstering foreign language and writing conventions development. language learning and technology, 14 (3), 51-71. hodges, g. c. (2002). learning through collaborative writing. literacy, 36 (1), 4-10. khatib, m., & meihami, h. (2015). languaging and writing skills: the effect of collaborative writing on efl students’ writing performance. advances in language and literary studies, 6 (1), 203-211. lantolf, j., & thorne, s. l. (2007). sociocultural theory and second language learning. in b. van patten, & j. williams, theories in second language acquisition (pp. 201-224). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. lo, j., & hyland, f. (2007). enhancing students’ engagement and motivation in writing: the case of primary students in hong kong. journal of second language writing, 16, 219-237. mulligan, c., & garofalo, r. (2011). a collaborative writing approach: methodology and student assessment. the language teacher, 35 (3), 5-10. nation, i. (2009). how large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? canadian modern language review, 63 (1), 59-92. rollinson, p. (2004). experiences and perceptions in an esl academic writing peer response group. estudios ingleses de la universidad complutense, 12, 79-108. speck, b. w. (2002). facilitatin students’ collaborative writing. sf: jossey-bass. storch, n. (2005). collaborative writing: product, process, and students’ reflections. journal of second language writing, 14 (153-173). storch, n. (2011). collaborative writing in l2 contexts: processes, outcomes, and future directions. annual review of applied linguistics, 31, 275-288. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2 july 2017 abstract this paper describes adult acquisition of l2 english diphthongs among javanese learners of english. the objectives of this study are concerned with whether vowels are more or less diphthongal by measuring the change of first formant (f1) and speech duration to examine the influence of javanese (l1) phonetic system on the acquisition of english as a second language. the acoustical analysis was conducted by comparing the formant frequencies and duration of l2 with the corresponding diphthongs by native speakers of english (ne).the purposewas to test the hypothesis that difficulty in acquiring an l2 contrastive category is related to the role in the l1 of the phonetic feature upon which the l2 category is based. although f1 values of l2 differed in the start point of closing diphthongs, there was only one closing diphthong /qš/ produced by l2 which was statistically different from l1 based on the f1 changes. surprisingly, the diphthong /tj/ showedan increase f1 value instead of decrease which means that the javanese production was more open. the result in duration showed that there were crucial differences in diphthongal duration produced by javanese learners of english. javanese tended to lengthen the diphthongal words. keywords: diphthong, experimental phonetics, second language acquisition introduction in english as second language (esl)teaching, learners of english particularly adult learners, frequently make mistakes even failure in producing native like pronunciation because their l1 highly influences l2 production. admittedly, as a speaker of a language gets older, mother tongue interference cannot simply be closing diphthongs among javanese learners of english rudha widagsa go t h i s m ast er o f a r ts in lin g u is tic s fr om gad jah m ada u n iv er sity, i n don esia. he c u rr en tly wor ks at fac u lty of teac h er tr ain in g an d edu cation, un iv ersity of pgri yogyakar ta (upy), i n don esia. his researc h in terests are second lan guage acquisition, secon d language ph on et ic s , ap pli ed l in g u ist ic s an d te ac h i n g en glish as a foreign langu age. 1-10 2 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 dislodged. adults tend to stabilize their language learning at a certain stage. ellis (1994, p.09) stated that learner speech was ‘structurally organized’ in the sense that it constituted a system in its own right. this process called fossilization; when a sound in l2 consistently replaced with a sound which is phonetically close to l1. thus, the speech production in l2 is different from the similar speech produced by a native speaker. selinker (1972) also noted that relatively few adult learners reach native-speaker competence. contrastive analysis hypothesis (cah) proposed by lado (1957, p.2) was also based on the assumption that people who comes into contact with a foreign language will find some features of it quite easy and others extremely difficult. those elements that are similar to their native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult. likewise, javanese learners of english frequently have difficulties with uncommon english vowel system because there are dissimilarities in articulating vowel sounds of these two sound systems. in l2 learning, the level of difficulty experienced by the learner will be directly related to the degree of linguistic difference between l1 and l2. difficulties will manifest themselves in errors; the greater the difficulty, the more frequent the errors (ellis, 1994, p.308). similarly, the difference between english and javanese vowel system could be a barrier for javanese learners of english who want to sound more native-like. javanese and english have vast differences in vowel system particularly diphthongs. javanese phonology includes 8 vowel phonemes: 6 phonemes and 2 allophonic pairs (uhlenbeck, 1963). an indonesian linguist, marsono (1999, pp.55-58), reported 10 vowels (including allophonic variants) and 5 diphthongs in javanese. english, on the other hand, has a large number of diphthongal sounds which consist of a movement or glide from one vowel to another. one of the most common pronunciation mistakes that result in a learner of english having a “foreign” accent is the production of pure vowels where a diphthong should be pronounced (roach, 1998, p.18). each vowel including diphthong has a unique structure of formant frequency which indicates the quality of the vowel. formants have long been known as suited parameters for describing vowel production due to its correlation with traditional articulatory transcription of vowel (hawkins & midgley, 2005). the relationship between fl and f2 determines the acoustic quality of the vocoid articulations.the longer the cavity, the lower fl will be; the shorter it is, the higher fl will be. this correlates with tongue-height; the pharyngeal tube continues into the mouth and is narrowed in varying degrees by the movement up and down of the tongue. similarly, f2 correlates with the length of the oral cavity in terms of frontness and backness of the tongue body. the longer the front cavity, the lower f2 will be (= back vowels); the shorter it is, the higher f2 will be (= front vowels)(lodge, 2009, pp. 190-199). thus, formant frequencies can be used to measure the accuracy of vowel production. nevertheless, in indonesia, english pronunciation instruction mainly focuses on audio-lingual approach such as minimal pair drills and articulatory descriptions. correction and analysis of students’ production generally depends on the teachers’ listening judgment. in fact, one of the accurate ways to discern the differences would be based on acoustic analysis. therefore, this research attempts to investigate 3 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 l2 production in english pronunciation especially diphthongs by examining the acoustic difference between l2 diphthongs and native speakers (ne) diphthongs. this study investigates pronunciation of l2 diphthongs and attempts to answer two questions (1) to what extent is the pronunciation of l2 diphthongs different from the corresponding diphthong in ne? (2) is there any difference in speech duration between l2 and ne. previous studies the previous studies on l2 speech production in indonesia have scarcely been done and mainly based on auditory judgment and experience of teachers or researchers in teaching practice.many scholars have described the characteristics of english pronunciation produced by javanese learners. nonetheless, studies about javanese learners of english particularly in acoustical phonetics have rarely been conducted by javanese or indonesian linguists. in indonesia, studies about non-native pronunciation are mainly based on phonological interpretation such as minimal pairs and listening judgment. there are only few researches related to the study. perwitasari (2015) writes about vowel durations in english as a second language among javanese learners. she finds that javanese learners of english seemed unaware of long and short duration of english vowels. another indonesian researcher, widagsa (2015) found that indonesian learners of english are strongly influenced by their mother tongue. indonesian learners of english make a good impression only when the vowels in english are similar to indonesian. it is proven by formant frequencies which are in common. in singapore, deterding (2007) conducted a research related to speech production measuring singaporean english (se) diphthongs. he outlined the dis tinc tive cha ract eris tics amo ng t he singaporean speakers of english compared with rp. he found that singaporean speakers are less diphthongal than the corresponding vowels in standard british english. the use of a relatively monophthongal realization of the diphthongs by singaporeans might be regarded as a distinctive characteristic of the local speech. different results came from tsukada (2008) who found that the production of english diphthongs by thai learners of english were much closer to ne. further, their production of the diphthongs might have been related to a large number of diphthongs in the thai vowel inventory, which might have encouraged its speakers to substitute existing l1 categories for the english diphthongs rather than forming authenticnew phonetic categories. according to the previous explanation, in indonesia, research related to acoustical phonetics especially in diphthongs of english as a second language have rarely been done. english diphthong of javanese learners is an interesting topic to study for researchers. thus, it can be said that this research is relatively new and needs to be conducted. this research will give novel contribution to elt and other second language learning in indonesia particularly in local language interference such as javanese. english closing diphthongs most varieties of english have several diphthongs. the most obvious diphthongs are the vowels of choice, mouth and price in most standard varieties of english. these diphthongs start with open vowels and then rise to close vowels, gener4 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 ally in the area of [i] or [u]. these are called closing diphthongs for this reason. diphthongs are transcribed by the start and end points. for example, the vowel of choice is transcribed in rp as [ti]: it starts with [t] and ends with [i]. ogden (2009, pp.70-71) reports eight diphthongs in british english rp and divides in two main types; rp closing diphthongs and rp centering diphthongs. figure 1: closing diphthongs javanese diphthongs javanese, one of the most widely spoken languages in indonesia, is a mother tongue of more than 75 million people (crystal, 1997; edi, et al., 2007). it is spoken mainly in central java and east java. javanese includes 8 vowel phonemes: 6 phonemes and 2 additional allophonic pairs [e] [å] and [o] [t]. more recent studies confirm that javanese vowels are grouped into 6 phonemes, including 4 allophonic pairs [i] [i], [u] [š], [e] [å], and [o] [t]. the allophones of each vowel frequently occur in closed syllables. the standard javanese of central java is typically characterized as having six vowel phonemes. in the six vowels system, which appears to characterize the speech of our consultants, [å] and [t] are in complementary distribution with [e] and [o], respectively. related to diphthongal vowels, marsono (1999, pp. 54-58) claimed that javanese has at least 5 diphthongs, one rising diphthong [ui] as in the words uijo ‘extremely green’, cuilik ‘very small’, uireng ‘totaly black’ and the others are falling diphthongs. figure 2: rising diphthong in javanese figure 3: falling diphthongs in javanese marsono mentioned four falling diphthongs, they are: 1) falling low open front [ua] as in muarem ‘very satisfied’, uadoh ‘far away’, uanteng‘very calm’. 2) falling low open front [u[] as in ngueyel ‘stubborn’ 3) falling low open back [ut] as in luara ‘really painful’ duawa ‘very long’ (4) falling low open central [uy] as in guedhe ‘enermous’ luemu ‘very fat’ however, these diphthongs only exist in east java 5 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 and some of north east part of central java. the diphthongization in east java is only used to exaggerate something. method subjects this experimental research involves five female subjects who were native speakers of javanese aged 17-23. they used mainly javanese in daily communication and lived in yogyakarta. in addition, they had never been to english speaking countries. the subjects were all students of english department of universitas pgri yogyakarta (pbi-upy) and all subjects had been studying english for at least 3 years. to ease the training process, the subjects were informed that the recording of their voice would be used for educational and experimental purposes. the audio data of english native speakers were taken from text-to-speech softwares. stimuli all subjects produced a set of target words. the target words comprised eight diphthongal words such as pay, five, home, now, join, near, hair, pure which were inserted in a carrier sentence”i say (diphthongal words) again”. during the recording, subjects repeated the sentence twice. the particular fillers or lexical sets were chosen to distract speakers’ attention from the experimental wordsin order to encourage natural pronunciation. recording procedure before the recording process began, first, each subject completed a consent form, a briefquestionna ire, whi ch p rovi ded inf orma tion abo ut thesubjects’ native language and second language background. second, subjects received a short introduction monologue which contained words simulated for the recording. in order to get accustomed to the target stimuli, they were given time to read and practice. subjects were familiarized with the experiment and the procedures of recording. each subject took a seat in front of a computer screen with active mode recording tools (audio recorders, and microphone). once the stimuli appeared on the screen, subjects started to produce the sentences. the stimuli are presented in random order. speech production were recorded in a sound-attenuated room and stored on a computer. audio recording is treated confidentially and used for acoustic analysis. last, the recorded speech sounds were annotated and segmented. the recordings were made with asus x200ma notebook and a microphone placed at the distance of about 10 cm from the subjects’ mouths. the subjects were recorded one by one in order to ease the analysis. this process took place in the language laboratory of universitas pgri yogyakarta. acoustic measuremment closing diphthongs are sounds which the vowel quality changes from relatively open position to a more closing position during the course of the vowel (deterding, 2007). as the vowel quality is becoming less open, the f1 at the start point is expected to be different from the end point. the decrease of f1 would be an indication of how diphthongal the sounds are. the recordings were analyzed using praat 5.3.51. the software allows some features such as tracing the formant frequencies, choosing time point, and drawing waveform and spectrogram display. 6 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 statistical analysis to measure a difference between the production of l2 diphthongs and l1 english, this research conducted statistical analysis. an independent t-test for the groups was applied to test whether frequencies and speech duration was significantly different between groups. results and discussion formant frequencies diphthongs are the monosyllabic vowels which have two discernibly different points, one at the start and one at the end. therefore, the soundwave data from the respondents are carefully analysed by defining the two target points. the first target is the starting point (vowel start) and the second is the ending point (vowel end). in measuring diphthongs, the vowel quality of vowel starts and vowel ends must be measured then both vowel qualities will be plotted in a vowel chart in order to figure out the movement of the vowels. the complete result of the the acoustic measurement of l2 and l1 english closing diphthongs is shown in the appendix. table 1 describes the mean of formant frequencies of english closing diphthongs and duration by javanese learners and table 2 shows the mean of formant frequencies and duration of l1 english closing diphthongs based on the start points, several of the english closing diphthongs produced by javanese learners of english were nearly identical to ne in regard to vowel height. to ease the comparison, the numerical data are plotted to bar chart. the following bar chart illustrates the comparison of f1 value of english l2 and ne. figure 4 demonstrates the start points of f1 while figure 5 shows the end point fo f1. table 1: the formant frequencies and duration of l2 symbol mean f1 start (hz) f1 end (hz) f2 start (hz) f2 end (hz) duration (second) eɪ 621,8 552,8 1374,4 2331 0,32394 ʌɪ 838,4 592,8 1138,8 1483,2 0,26866 əʊ 598 577,4 1119,2 987,6 0,3082 ɑʊ 793,8 539,2 1469,6 1093,4 0,35274 ɔɪ 600 490,6 1748 1946,4 0,3926 table 2: the formant frequencies and duration of l1 symbol mean f1 start (hz) f1 end (hz) f2 start (hz) f2 end (hz) duration (second) eɪ 542,6 421 2228,2 2318 0,22104 ʌɪ 890,4 802 1500,6 2006,4 0,28364 əʊ 629,6 445,4 1284,8 1175,6 0,2707 ɑʊ 663,6 626,6 1597,8 1222 0,2567 ɔɪ 403 503,2 1536,8 2305 0,27942 7 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 figure 4:comaparison of f1 starts of ne and english l2. figure 5: comparation off1 ends of ne and english l2. it can easily be noticed from the previous tables and figures that the most similar result emerged in the pronunciation of /yš/(f1 start ne 629,6 hz and f1 start english l2 598 hz). on the other hand, the most distinctive diphthong produced by english l2 was /tj/ (f1 start ne 403 hz and f1 start english l2 600 hz). unlike the start points, the average f1 value of diphthong /tj/ was close to the ne production (f1 end english l2 490,6 hz and f1 end ne 503,2 hz). even so, the most disparate f1 end value was œj with 592,8 hz for english l2 and 802 hz for ne. to observe the decrease and increase of f1 value of english l2, the changes of f1 are presented in the following chart. figure 6: f1 changes of english l2 figure 6 demonstrates the decrease and increase of f1 value in closing diphthongs. the decreasing values are shown by the left bars. the right bar indicates the increase of f1 value. it can easily be spotted that there is a right bar for the sound /tj/ which indicates the significant difference among the diphthongal productions. the f1 value in the sound /tj/ surprisingly increased instead of decreasing. it simply puts that english l2 tends to widely open the mouth at the end of the diphthong when they pronounced the sound /tj/. statistical result closing diphthongs in english are /ej/,/œj/,/ yš/,/qš/,tj/ and expected to have decrease in f1. in general, the english closing diphthongs produced by english l2 were pronounced near ne in regard to the vowel height. in addition, the statistical analysis also confirms similar result. the following table shows the statistcal analysis employed in this experiment. table 2. indicates that there is only one diphthong produced by l2 which is statistically different from l1. the result of the measurement of / qš/is higher( [t(8)=1, 995], [mean= -254,6], [sd=212,232]) than t table which is 1.86. 8 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 table 3: f1 change of l1 and l2 words group mean sd df t eɪ l2 -69 125,3 8 0,878 l1 -121,6 47,56 ʌɪ l2 -245,6 87,331 8 1,212 l1 -88,4 276,517 əʊ l2 -20,6 202,311 8 1,163 l1 -184,2 240,86 ɑʊ l2 -254,6 120,13 8 1,995 l1 -37 212,232 ɔɪ l2 -109,4 76,4087 8 -2,501 l1 100,2 171,111 *t tabel = 1.86 vowel chart in this case, since quadrilateral vowel chart requires the frequency of both formants (f1 and f2), the f2 is used to plot the numerical data bark scale. thus, the numerical data are then plotted in a vowel chart (bark scale) to figure out how diphthongal they are.the following figure is the bark scale of average formant changes by respondents in producing english closing diphtongs. figure 7: the average of l2 formant changes of each english closing diphthong in bark scale. the greendots indicate the starting points of diphthongs and the yellow square dots represent the ending points of the diphthongs. it can clearly be seen that there are variations among the diphthongal sounds. it can clearly be seen in figure 5 that the diphthong /tj/ was produced differently. the arrow points at down left side of the graph. it means that the end point of the diphthong was pronounced as low vowel with half open mouth. table 3 statistical measurement of diphthongal duration words group mean sd df t eɪ l2 0,323 0,082 8 2,468 l1 0,211 0,041 ʌɪ l2 0,268 0,049 8 0,305 l1 0,283 0,098 əʊ l2 0,308 0,101 8 0,735 l1 0,27 0,052 ɑʊ l2 0,352 0,06 8 2,553 l1 0,256 0,058 ɔɪ l2 0,392 0,069 8 3,51 l1 0,279 0,018 *t tabel = 1.86 duration in this research, the duration was only measured in the diphthongal words. the statistical analysis of l1 and l2 duration in producing diphthongal words are served in the following table. table 2. shows that there are significant difference in l2 duration. the differences are in the / ej/, /qš/ and /tj/. it clearly indicates that l2 has longer duration in pronuncing diphthongal words than l1. the following figure demonstrates the difference. figure 8. duration of l1 and l2 9 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 figure 9 shows that l2 tend to lengthen the duration particularly in /ej/, /qš/ and /tj/. however, there was only one diphthong which was pronounced shorter than native speakers of english; the diphthong /œj /. conclusion javanese learners of english do not have references to the set of diphthongs attributed to their first language phonetic features. javanese are predicted to produce english diphthongs differently compared to native speakers of english. there are several findings which can be drawn based on the results. admittedly, english closing diphthongs produced by l2 were not statistically different from l1, the different was only on the production of / qš/. it should be noted that there is a difference in the change of f1 values of the sound/tj/. the differences answer the research question that the production of english diphthong by javanese learners of english was different from the corresponding sounds produced by english native speakers. the other answered question was duration.it shows that there are significant differences in diphthongal duration produced by javanese learners of english. they tend to lengthen the diphthongal words, three main findings stand out. to put differently, the results of this measurement particulartly in english closing diphthongs and the duration, support the hypothesis’ prediction that the l2 failure in producing l2 vowels is related to the absence of diphthongal sound as a contrastive feature in l1. javanese does not include diphthongs in its phonological system. it proves that the absence of those features in l2 can be a barrier for learners to study the language. the measurement results highlight a potential learning problem for javanese learners of english. they are heavily influenced by their mother tongue. this research is only a preliminary study which still requires further research related to acoustic features of english vowels and consonants produced by non-nativespeakers particularly indonesian speakers or indonesian regional language speakers. in this paper, i only report data of male respondents. age is known to be an important factor of phonetic variation, aged-related would also be interesting topic for future research. hopefully, this research would be worthwhile for language teaching in indonesia. acknowledgement the author would like to thank the directorate general of higher education, indonesian ministry of research, technology and higher education through kopertis v, who in partnership with universitas pgri yogyakarta funded this article. any of the opinions, findings, statements and conclusions expressed in this article are solely the responsibilities of the author and do not necessarily expose those of the kopertis v. references baker, a & goldstein, s. (2001). pronunciation pairs: an introduction to sound of english. cambridge: cambridge university press. crystal, d. (2008). a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. malden: blackwell publishing. crystal, d. (1997). the cambridge of encyclopedia of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. deterding, d. & hvitfeldt, r. (1994). the features of singapore english pronunciation/: implications for teachers, 15(1). 10 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 deterding, d. (2007). “the vowels of the different ethnic groups in singapore” in english in southeast asia: literacies, literatures and varieties. david prescott, andy kirkpatrick, isabel martin and azirahhashim (eds.), newcastle, uk: cambridge scholars press, 2007, pp. 2–29. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second languae acquisition. oxford: oxford university press hawkins, s., & midgley, (2005).formant frequencies of rp monophthongs in four age groups of speakers. journal of the international phonetic association journal of the international phonetic association journal of the international phonetic association, 35(35), 183–199. http://doi.org/ 10.1017/s0025100305002124 kreidler, charles w. (2004). the pronunciation of english: a course book. second edition. victoria: blackwell publishing. ladefoged, p. (2001). a course in phonetics, 4th edn. texas: harcourt. lado, r. & fries, c.c. (1957). english pronunciation. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. ladefoged, p. (2001). a course in phonetics, 4th edn. texas: harcourt. lodge, k. (2009). a critical introduction to phonetics. new york: continuum international publishing group. marsono. (1999). fonetik. yogyakarta: gadjahmada university press odgen, r. (2009). an introduction to english phonetics. edinburgh university press. perwitasari, a., klamer, m., witteman, j., schiller, n. o. (2015). vowel duration in english as a second language among javanese learners. in the scottish consortium for icphs 2015 (ed.), proceedings of the 18th international congress of phonetic sciences. glasgow, uk: the university of glasgow. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/ rg.2.1.1752.5520. roach, p. (2009). english phonetics and phonology: a practical course. cambridge: cambridge university press. selinker, l. (1972). interlanguage. international review of applied linguistics, 10, 209-231. subroto, e., dwihardjo, m., and setiawan, b. (2007). “model pelestarian dan pengembangan ke mamp uanb erba hasa jaw a krama di kalangan generasi muda wilayah surakarta dan sekitarnya”. laporan hasil penelitian tim pascasarjana. tsukada, k. (2008). john benjamins publishing c o m p a n y . h t t p : / / d o i . o r g / 1 0 . 1 0 7 5 / eww.29.2.05tsu uhlenbeck, e.m. (1963). review of beginning javanese, by eleanor c. home. lingua, 12:6986 widagsa, r. (2015). acoustic analysis of english vowel forma nt f requenci es produced byindonesian native speakers. proceedings of the 2nd international language and language teaching conference. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma. 625-633. http://doi.org/ pengantar juni 2016 abstract various types of oral assessments such as interviews, presentations and group discussions have commonly been applied at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (eed umy) to measure students’ speaking ability. this research aims to identify both advantages and disadvantages found in the oral assessments applied at eed umy based on students’ perspectives. the data were collected using in-depth interviews to six eed umy students who had taken speaking classes for two semesters. they were interviewed to explore their perception on the advantages and disadvantages of the oral assessments they had taken. the findings of this research show that the participants perceived that the oral assessments motivated the students to speak, provided direct feedback, improved students’ speaking ability, developed students’ communication skills, increased students’ self-confidence, and enabled students to share ideas. on the other hand, in addition to insufficient time allocation, the participants also revealed that increased nervousness frequently occurred during oral assessments. keywords: oral assessments, speaking, advantages, disadvantages introduction an assessment plays an important role in education. nitko and brookhart (2011, p.498) define an assessment as “the process for obtaining information that is used to make decisions about students, curricula and programs and educational policy”. in the process of teaching and learning, an assessment provides information about student achievement as it is used as a method to evaluate the students’ comprehension and understanding. through the assessment, students demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have learned. in this way, teachers can evaluate the students’ progress in learning, observe the students’ academic strengths and weaknesses, and evaluate teaching materials and methods impleoral assessments at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta maryam sorohiti graduated from english depar tment, faculty of letters, gadjah mada university in 1994 for her undergraduate degree. she accomplished her master’s degree in tesl at international islamic university malaysia in 2005. since 2010, she has been teaching at english education depar tment of faculty of language education, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakar ta. she can be reached at maryamsorohiti@umy.ac.id 39-48 40 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 mented. by using assessments, teachers can also check if teaching objectives have been met. therefore, an assessment provides important information that can be used as a basis for educational decisions. of the various types of assessment, oral assessment is frequently used in english language classes. according to baturay, tokmak, dogusoy, and daloglu (2011), oral assessment is often carried out to look for students’ ability to produce words and phrases by evaluating students’ fulfilment of a variety of tasks such as asking and answering questions about themselves, doing role-plays, making up mini dialogues, defining or talking about some pictures, or talking about given themes. (p.60) thus, oral assessment as a tool to measure students’ speaking ability can be done in various forms. in addition, oral assessment encourages students to be confident and active to communicate with their peers and their teachers. huxman, campbell, and westwood (2012) state that oral assessment functions as a means to develop students’ oral communication skills. therefore, students may benefit from oral assessment to demonstrate and improve their knowledge and understanding of their communication skills. english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (edd umy) has so far applied oral assessments in the process of teaching and learning.the oral assessments such as interviews, presentations and group discussions applied at this department can bring some effects on the student performance. apart from its positive effects, such as developing communication skills, oral assessment also presents some problems in its implementation. because students are those who are directly affected by the implementation of oral assessment, it is important to see their perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of oral assessment so that the necessary improvements to enable them to perform well in the assessment can be taken. this study aims to investigate the students’ points of view on oral assessment carried out in eed umy in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. oral assessment oral assessment, also known as oral examination or test, is one of the exams that are fully correlated with students’ speaking skills. thus, it refers to the assessment of student learning done in a way of spoken words (joughin, 2010). similarly, iafc (2011) suggests that oral assessment is used to determine students’ verbal response when assessing students’ mastery of knowledge, skills, and abilities. consequently, students must be able to combine their knowledge and production of words; thus, this will result in students’ better speaking ability. joughin (2003) emphasizes that oral assessment is a method to measure students’ knowledge. furthermore, joughin (2003) asserts that there are four categories of learning to be assessed in oral assessment, i.e., knowledge and understanding, problem solving and applications, interpersonal competence, and personal attributes. in the category of knowledge and understanding, oral assessment allows teachers to check their students’ understanding of facts, concepts, principles and procedures underlying the professional practice by the response. in the category of problem solving and applications, oral assessment allows teachers to not only ask students questions 41 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 related to knowledge, but also observe their students to apply the knowledge to real situations. the next category proposed by joughin (2003) is interpersonal competence. in this category, generic or transferable skills, including communication and interview skills in the context of professional situations, are suitable for measurements through oral assessment. the last category is personal attributes which are often claimed to be used to measure personal qualities such as alertness, reaction to stress, adaptability, selfawareness and self-confidence. based on the categories of oral assessment, it can be concluded that during the time of the assessment, students must be able to demonstrate all of the four categories of learning. therefore, teachers will be able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each student to improve the quality of student learning. advantages and disadvantages of oral assessments as a way to measure students’ abilities, oral assessment has advantages and disadvantages. briggs, woodfield, martin and swatton (2008) state that oral assessment can increase students’ motivation in learning, which in turn, will increase student competence. this view is also supported by williams and williams (2011) who suggest that motivation is the most important factor that teachers can aim to improve learning. in this case, when oral assessment is carried out to measure students’ ability, it is hoped the students get motivated to study more diligently to prepare their assessments. therefore, it can be said that oral assessments can increase student motivation in learning. the next advantage is that the quality of student learning can be improved. joughin (2010) explains that students tend to prepare as best as they can to avoid a blank in front of the examiner or their peers. as a result, students will be prepared prior to the assessment. they will practice their ability to speak more and more inside or outside of their classes in order to achieve the required ability to speak well. students will concentrate on assessment materials and how they will perform in the assessment. as a result, students’ knowledge and skills, especially in conversation or communication skill, will get improved. it is in line with huxham et al. (2012) that oral assessment can develop oral communication skills of students. in addition, gent, johnston, and prosser (1999) find that oral exams are as one of powerful ways to assess understanding and encourage critical thinking. another proposition comes from purwanto (2013) which shows some of the advantages of oral assessment. first, oral assessment is carried out by a direct interaction that allows teachers to assess students’ knowledge and understanding. second, if students do not have a clear understanding of the questions, the teacher can change the question so that students can understand it. third, teachers can ask students to tell more details about their answers so the teacher will know which part of the material that the students understand or do not understand well. fourth, the assessment is appropriate to measure students’ understanding, including the ability to read and memorization skills on a particular subject. fifth, oral assessment evaluates certain skills, such as english speaking. with this assess42 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 ment, teachers can also know the obstacles that the students have when facing the assessment. finally, after completing the assessment, students know their scores, and simultaneously teachers can tell what area the students need to improve. therefore, oral assessment allows a detailed and comprehensive investigation to find students’ accurate understanding, comprehension, ability, and problems during the assessment. in addition to its advantages, wisker (2004) states that the oral assessment may cause some students to feel under pressure because they are required to think quickly. they should be able to organize their ideas in a short period of time. the feeling may get worse when these students have a low level of confidence in their speaking skills. personal traits, such as social anxiety and shyness, may significantly contribute to the success of students in oral assessment because those who have these personalities would rather do the assessment in different ways, e.g., in writing. in addition to this, wisker (2004) also shows that when doing oral assessment, some teachers tend to draw conclusions too quickly before students fully answer the questions. for example, some teachers give some students a lower grade because they take a little longer to complete the tasks assigned. often, some teachers interrupt students that perform oral assessment and give them different tasks. last but not least, in terms of the disadvantages, oral assessment is time consuming and quite challenging to manage (joughin, 2010; alamri & yanbu, 2010; purwanto, 2013; davis & karunathilake, 2005). teachers will generally perform oral assessment to the students one by one, which will take a lot of teaching time, especially in classes with large numbers of students. teachers should also be able to customize the questions immediately suitable for each student as well as to ensure a comfortable environment to obtain an accurate level of knowledge and ability of the students during the time of the assessment. method this study used a qualitative research design. according to creswell (2012), qualitative methods explore issues and develop a detailed understanding of the central phenomenon. six eed umy students were selected to be the participants based on their availability and willingness to participate in this study. they had learned for six semesters; so, they had experienced a variety of oral assesments. pseudonyms were used to address the participants’ names. to collect data, in-depth interviews were conducted, consisting of open-ended questions. the interviews were conducted using bahasa indonesia to make the participants comfortable and to prevent misunderstandings. during the interviews, all conversations were recorded using a voice recorder. to analyse the data, the results of the interview were then transcribed and coded into the open, axial and selective coding. coding is the process to make out of the text data, divide the data into a text or image segment, and label the segment with codes (creswell, 2012). findings the advantages of the oral assessment in the class. the data shows that the advantages concerned with strengths, positive perception, and impacts. oral assessment increased students’ motivation. 43 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 the participants stated that the oral assessment motivated them to improve their speaking skills for oral assessment provided an opportunity to talk more in class using english. one participant stated that she and her friends were more motivated to learn to speak correctly and properly so that they could get good grades in the assessment. the other two participants also confirmed that the oral assessment motivated them not only to speak but also to learn english more. oral assessment provided direct feedback. the participants stated that they received a direct feedback from their teachers after they performed oral assessment in class and this made them happy. two of the participants admitted that they got an immediate response from the teachers during oral assessment. one of the participants revealed that feedback was beneficial for students. this could be a reflection in the assessment particularly in identifying errors so that they could revise them. to conclude, the participants perceived that feedback referred to reflection after they did an assessment, and was important to give to the students as it could improve their mistakes. oral assessment improved students’ speaking ability. the participants answered that the oral assessment could improve their speaking skills. one participant frankly considered oral assessment as a way to practice speaking, which, in turn, would improve her speaking skills and knowledge of english language. all participants said their speaking ability improved when their teachers often gave oral assessment. the participants believed that oral assessment was good and useful because they encouraged students to speak. the students were required to practice speaking, so their speaking skills increased. oral assessment developed students’ communication skills. in the interview, the participants said that, because of the oral assessment, they could develop their communication skills, shared knowledge, and received a better understanding of what other people said during class assessments. one participant explained that oral assessment helped her learn how to develop their knowledge and mind-set. additionally, the other participant stated that she could develop her mind-set and understanding, which caused her better ability to explain the material in the oral assessment. oral assessment increased the students’ self-confidence. one of the participants said that the oral assessment trained her to be confident. when she was accustomed to oral assessment, her nervous feeling when speaking in public was becoming less. similarly, another participant also revealed that oral assessment helped boost her confidence. oral assessment enabled the students to share ideas. this research also found that the oral assessment done in the classroom gave the students ideas to talk. most participants felt that the oral assessment could be used to share ideas or opinions, especially during the assessment. meanwhile, one of the participants said that the oral assessment was a challenge for her because she had to provide answers or ideas in a very short time. another participant said that her ability in oral assessment was great, seen from her fluency when giving opinions and her good scores in oral assessments. the participants agreed that the oral assessment made the students able to share their ideas. they said that if there was no oral assessment, this condition would cause some students 44 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 to be discouraged to speak. the disadvantages of the oral assessments the participants perceived that the allocation of time for the oral assessment was limited and they felt nervous when having to speak in front of their teachers and their peers. the students’ two negative points of view were then categorized into the disadvantages of the oral assessments in this research. oral assessment provided insufficient time allocation. some participants stated that the time given for the oral assessments was so little that they could not convey their ideas properly. more time allocation, according to participants, would give them opportunities to elaborate their answers and meet the teachers’ expectations. oral assessment made students feel nervous. the last finding was on the negative side of the oral assessment based on the perceptions of students, ie, to be nervous during the assessment. most participants said that they felt nervous when performing oral assessment. one participant claimed nervous because she did not have enough preparation, such as vocabulary. she was confused and panicked to answer the questions given by her teacher. another participant explained that, as she was very nervous during oral assessment, her attention during the assessment was affected. discussion the participants mentioned their perception of the advantages and disadvantages of oral assessment. there were six advantages of oral assessment found in this research. the first finding was that the oral assessment motivated students to speak. the students had been motivated by the presence of oral assessment. it was consistent with black and william (1998) cited in briggs et al. (2008) that said that oral assessment provided an understanding of how assessment affected students’ motivation. in this research, the assessments made the students become motivated to speak and improve their speaking competence. in addition, some participants felt that motivation was important to help them practice speaking in class. in other words, the oral assessment the students had to face made them study harder and as a result, they would be better prepared. therefore, teachers can provide support and motivation to their students in the learning process that will improve the quality of learning as suggested by williams and williams (2011) that motivation is the most important factor to improve learning. the second finding was about the feedback from the teachers to the students. basically, the students hoped that they received feedback from their teachers after they performed an assessment in the classroom. regarding this research, providing feedback was a good way for teachers after providing oral assessments for feedback could help the students identify their mistakes. from the perspective of the participants, they got feedback when they performed an oral assessment. the feedback at the eed umy consisted of a reflection of the students when they performed activities in the classroom. feedback could become an input for the students to be better in oral assessment. therefore, the students were expected to be able to recognize their mistakes, e.g., the wrong pronunciation, and so on. thus, in this research, feedback was one of the important elements to consider for communi45 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 cation between teachers and students to succeed or fail. the third finding showed that the oral assessments improved the students’ speaking ability. since oral assessment was considered a direct interaction between the teacher and the students, the students were required to be well prepared so that they could answer the questions in the assessments quickly and correctly. the participants experienced that direct interactions required immediate answering; thus, this moment could train them to improve their speaking ability. therefore, by giving an oral assessment, the teachers had already given their students an opportunity to practice their english speaking skills and simultaneously the students got assessed directly in the class. the participants percieved that the oral assessment improved their speaking skills. this finding was in line with what purwanto (2013) had found in which oral assessment was used as a direct assessment of the students’ knowledge and comprehension, because the assessment was conducted in direct interactions. the students could improve their ability and it was in accordance with tomei (1998) who argued that oral assessment helped improve students’ participation in the class by examining whether the student failed or passed the assessment determined by conversational skills. in this research, the assessment could improve the students’ speaking ability because the teacher trained them to practice speaking in the class. in addition, the oral assessment encouraged the students to be confident to develop their communication skills. the fourth finding was that the oral assessment developed the students’ communication skills. communication in the class is important for students to convey messages. good communication happens when students use their own words, so that it makes the students understand and develop their communication skills. according to joughin (1998) as cited in huxmam et al, (2012), the advantage of oral assessment is to prevent plagiarism. in this research, the students had to explain the topics given in their own understanding using their own words, leading them to an improvement in their communication skills. this statement was supported by huxama et al. (2012) that oral assessment was to develop students’ oral communication skills. the fifth finding revealed that the oral assessment increased the students’ self-confidence. this was relevant with the statement stated by joughin (2003) that oral assessment can be used to measure personal qualities, such as alertness, reaction to stress, adaptability, self-awareness, and self-confidence. according to the findings of this research, the oral assessments could increase the students’ self-confidence. as a result, the students were braver to deliver their thoughts and opinions in english and this condition led to an improved english speaking skill as the students dared to practice speaking in english without fear although they had to speak in front of public. in addition, confidence was one of the strengths of the oral assessment in this research. the last finding was that the oral assessment gave ideas in speaking. the participants said that they could share their ideas when they did an oral assessment in the class. the students could use their mind-set when they communicated with other people. this finding supported gent, johnston, and prosser (1999) that an oral exami46 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 nation is as a powerful way to measure understanding and encourage critical thinking. based on the findings of the research, there were two disadvantages of the oral assessments in this research. the first, the time for the oral assessments was provided less than enough. in the oral assessment, the students had to answer the questions posed by the teacher spontaneously in a short time while the students needed longer time to think before answering the questions. according to wisker (2004), students feel the pressure to think quickly when managing their idea in a short period of time. the time in the oral assessment in this research was considered too short; thus, it made the students feel difficult to do the assessments. in this research, the students could not manage the time given by the teacher because the time was too short so that they could not concentrate or focus on answering the questions. the second disadvantage was the oral assessments made the students feel nervous, thus losing concentration to answer the questions given by the teacher. this was also supported by purwanto (2013) that nervousness might disturb the fluency of the answer when the question was given. based on the finding, the participants could not answer the questions because they panicked since they did not have enough preparations, such as vocabularies. in addition, the students who disliked the oral assessments would have some problems since they would likely face the assessments nervously. in fact, in general, teachers can actually help students practice speaking in the class to overcome nervousness. joughin (2010) classifies the categories of oral assessments into four points, and these were found in this research, i.e., knowledge and understanding, problem solving and application, interpersonal competence, and personal attributes. the personal attributes included in the oral assessments in this research were that the oral assessments motivated the students, improved the students’ self-confidence, provided the students less time when doing them, made the students feel nervous, and enabled the students to get feedback. this was in conformity with joughin (2003) who stated that personal attributes were often claimed to be used to measure personal qualities such as alertness, reaction to stress, adaptability, self-awareness and self-confidence. therefore, personal attributes could be said as the condition of the class and person’s mood during an assessment. personal attributes could be positive and negative, according to students’ characteristics in the oral assessments, such as confidence, nervousness, and so on. the category on knowledge and understanding included the oral assessments as a means to improve the students’ speaking ability and give ideas in speaking. joughin (2003) argued that an oral assessment allows for probing students’ understanding of facts, concept, principles and procedure that underlie professional practice through response. in this research, the participants said that the teacher used different questions to measure the students’ knowledge. this was supported by purwanto (2013) who stated that questions are not always the same to every person in test, such as the number of questions and the level of difficulty. in the oral assessments in this research, the teachers assessed the students’ ability through the students’ responses. usually, the teachers observed the students’ 47 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 understanding when they explained the material given. the category about problem and application included the oral assessments to develop the students’ communication skills as the assessments also provoked the students to have ideas to speak during the assessments. according to joughin (2003), an oral assessment enables teachers to ask students questions in which the assessment is not only focused on knowledge itself, but also focused on the application of the knowledge to the real situation. therefore, oral assessments should not focus merely on students’ knowledge, but consider also students’ understanding during the oral assessment, whether the students understand the materials given by the teacher or not. the category of oral assessment about interpersonal skills included the oral assessment to develop the students’ communication skills. generic or transferable skills, including communication and interview skills in the context of professional situations, are well suited to measurement through oral assessment (joughin, 2003). therefore, interpersonal skills are used to communicate and interact with others. in this research, the oral assessments involved direct communication so that the students tried their best to speak in the class well. conclusion as teachers have the opportunity to decide the most suitable assessment model for their students, teachers can base their choice on the consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of assessments. in terms of advantages and disadvantages, the oral assesment implemented at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta brought about a variety of students’ perspectives. it was perceived that oral assessment offers several advantages to students, such as improving students’ communication skills and confidence. these positive perspectives of the students can be the points to be maintained and developed in implementing oral assessment. therefore, students can take the maximum benefits from the implementation of oral assessment. meanwhile, more attention should be paid to the insufficient time allocation to speak and the nervousness the students felt during the assessments as perceived to be negative sides of the oral assessments at eed umy. these two disadvantages should be minimized, so that the drawbacks during the oral assessments can be anticipated and prevented. thus, by implementing oral assessment, it is expected that the purpose of using oral assessment as a type of assessments to provide the best result of the measurement of students’ ability can be achieved. references al-amri, m. n., & yanbu. (2010). direct spoken english testing is still a real challenge to be worth bothering about. english langauge teaching, 3 (1), 113-117. baturay, m. h., tokmak, h. s., dogusoy, b., & daloglu, a. (2011). the impact of task type on oral performance of english language preparatory school students. h.u. journal of education, 41, 60-69. briggs, m., woodfield, a., martin, c., & swatton, p. (2008). assessment for learning and teaching in primary school (2 ed.). united king48 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 dom: learning matters ltd. creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research : planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4 ed.). boston: pearson education, inc. davis, m. h., & karunathilake, i. (2005). the place of the oral examination in today’s assessment systems. medical teacher, 27 (4), 294-297. dorman, j. (ed.). (2001). oral language assessment in the foreign language class (planning, conducting, managing). north caroline state : eric. gent, i., johston, b., & prosser, p. (1999). thinking on your feet in undergraduate computer science: a constructivist developing and assessing critical thinking approach. teaching in higher education, 512-522. huxman, m., campbell, f., & westwood, j. (2012). oral versus written assessment: a test of student performance and atitudes. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 37 (1), 125-136. iafc. (2011). fire service intructor: principles and practice. canada: jones and bartlett publisher. joughin, g. (2003). oral assessment from the learner’s perspective: the experience of oral assessment in post-compulsory education. thesis. joughin, g. (2010). a short guide to oral assessment. university of wollongong, 1-23. nakamura, y., & valens, m. (2001). teaching and testing oral communication skills. journal of humanities and natural sciences, n111, 43-53. nitko, a.j., & brookhart, s.m. (2012). educational assessment of students. new jersey: prentice hall nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. purwanto, n. (2013). prinsip-prinsip dan teknik evaluasi pengajaran (18 ed.). bandung: pt. remaja rosdakarya. richard, j. c. (2008). teaching listening and speaking: from theory to practice. cambridge: cambridge press university. tomei, j. (1998). oral profieciency test in the english speaking sourse in hokkaido university. journal of higher education, hokkaido university (3), 162-166. williams, k. c., & williams, c. c. (2011). five key ingredients for improving student motivation. research in higher education journal, 11, 123. wisker, g. (2004). developing and assessing students’ oral skills. birmingham: staff education and developments association. pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 learning english has always been identical with the duty of students in the context of teaching and learning in indonesian schools. students have become the objects for teachers to maintain their career in teaching without considering whether or not they enjoy the teachers’ teaching style or are happy with the teachers’ english skills. in addition, students are the ones who are always asked to improve their english skills while actually english teachers also need to advance their skills. in this case, developing the standard of teaching and learning can be through improving the quality of teachers (raihani & sumintono, 2010). puthut ardianto 25-33 abstract introduction “i couldn’t play in it, but i loved it.”: teachers’ views on participating in english drama performances is currently a lecturer at the english language educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in english language teaching from sarjanawiyata tamansiswa university. his research interests are in drama in educa�on, phone�cs and phonology, and experien�al learning. this study is an attempt to explore the teachers’ views on their participation in the english drama performance (edp). employing a qualitative approach, this study was conducted by selecting three english teachers from three different types of education, who have been taking part in the edp for a minimum of two performances. data were collected through a one-on-one interview with three participants. the finding revealed that the teachers, at first were doubtful in participating in the edp; however, after many rehearsals, they found enjoyment. in addition to their feelings, the teachers expressed their likes and dislikes in participating in the edp. they also mentioned about the effect of their participation in the edp towards their english skills. the study found that by participating in the edp, the teachers could express several english language functions, enhance their pronunciation skill, practice communication skill, ease reading, and improve vocabulary. in addition to the effect on their english skills, their participation in the edp contributes to the way they teach english to their students. keywords: drama in education, english drama performance, teachers’ view volume 1, no. 2, july 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning 26 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 ironically, english teachers in indonesia have recently been burdened with more administrative work on top of their hectic teaching schedules. with this, it can be difficult for english teachers to have time to improve their own english proficiency skills because of their own work obligations. in fact, in the 2013 curriculum document, english teachers are obliged to prepare syllabi, lesson plans, semester programs, annual programs, daily assessments of both soft skills and hard skills, design test items and their analysis. this phenomenon has forced english teachers to stay longer at school. according to an informal interview conducted by the researcher with some english teachers in yogyakarta, they admitted that they had to do extra work to fulfill the need of teaching in the new curriculum. on the other hand, there are several english teachers who are still willing to improve their english skills by participating in some professional development forums regardless of their heavy work schedule. in one of the english teachers organizations, one program that has been done to help develop teachers’ competence is the production and performance of english drama. this english drama performance (edp) was initially played by all english teachers who belong to that particular organization. these english teachers were taken from all five districts in the yogyakarta province and the performance has always been done in english, in a playback styled performance. the stories in these dramas have always reflected indonesian folktale stories. in participating in the english drama performance, not all teachers were willing to get involved. most of them said that they were not confident and could not act in the drama performance. it is in line with dodson (2000), who argued that, “teachers who were not trained to teach communicatively may shy away from drama” (p. 133). moreover, they had to sacrifice their time to do the script reading, rehearsal, and recording before the performance. in addition, previous studies about english drama have always focused on researching students’, pre-service teachers’ perspectives or the benefits of drama for students. ozdemir & cakmak (2008) conducted a research on the effect of drama education on prospective teachers’ creativity. another study was done by lee (2007), who selected secondary school students as his respondents to reveal their perception of learning english through drama. however, few studies have discussed from the teachers’ point of view. that is why this research is conducted to explore the teachers’ views in participating in english drama performances in terms of their feelings and the effects of their participation toward their english skill improvement. literature review in this research, the focus is on the teachers’ participation in edp and it is based on the theory of teachers professional development teachers professional development from the background of this research, it was mentioned that there are some teachers who are enthusiastic in joining professional development organizations in addition to their tight teaching schedules at school. why does this matter? did the teachers not already learn english in college? these two questions may irritate some teachers, however some admitted that they had already taken part in professional development activities such as 27 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 joining seminars, conferences, and workshops. however, there are times when professional development does not always happen in a formal way, sometimes occurring in situations like discussions with other teachers from different schools, doing a research, and independent reading (mizell, 2010). in addition, kennedy (1999) mentioned that teachers joining the professional development have been accustomed to have many tasks in one go and they could find balance among those many challenges. teachers need to do professional development since it can benefit them “by learning in the setting where they can apply what they learn” (mizell, 2010, p. 8). however, many experts have mentioned many kinds of professional development activities such as sher and o’reilly (2009) as cited in kennedy (2016) compared “programs that focused on subject matter with those that focused on pedagogy” (p. 946). while blank and de las alas (2009) in kennedy (2016) found more effective programs like in follow-up steps in teachers’ schools, active learning methods, collective participation, and substantive attention to how students learn specific content. the program mentioned earlier can later be related to what the teachers in this research participated such as in the english drama performance. teachers who became the cast in this performance did activities which were not a part of their daily responsibility. they spare their time to develop their skills related to role-play. therefore, this activity can be considered as a part of their professional development. drama in education a number of studies have shown the benefits of drama in education, especially in english classes. thomson and evan (as cited in yin, 2015), argued that drama is a great medium to enhance language skills, initiating social interaction, and group participation. while balaisis (2002) stated that drama is a process of learning, which involves thinking and feeling. in addition, baldwin and fleming (2003) said that drama activities can create genuine contexts for language and reasons to communicate. sam (1990) concluded that drama “helps to extend, retain and reinforce vocabulary and sentence structure through role-play and communicative games” (p. 86). from those studies that have been conducted previously, it was clear that drama provides many benefits for the players in terms of developing their communicative language skills, providing a space to learn english through its context, and interacting with colleagues. methodology this study is a follow up study from a recent study conducted at one of the english education departments in yogyakarta where the researcher was part of the authors. although the drama performance was conducted annually, teachers’ participation and interest have been constantly shown in this program. three english teachers were involved in this study and all their names are in pseudonyms. the first one was mrs. sinta, a junior high school english teacher, who has taken part twice in the edp. the second participant was mrs. delima, a vocational high school english teacher, who has participated three times in the edp, and the last one was mrs. putri, a senior high school english teacher, who has played a role three times in the edp. the data obtained was mainly based on a one-on-one interview using indonesian language to ease the participants to express their views. 28 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 each interview session lasted for twenty five to thirty minutes. the interviews were also recorded and transcribed. in addition, to help supplement the data, an observation during the rehearsal times’ interaction with the participants was also taken into consideration. the rehearsal was done more than ten times for each of the performances. in every rehearsal, the researcher was there to act as the director of the performance. thus, he knew each of the roles in the edp well. the english drama performance the english drama performance was firstly performed in 2012. since then, it had performed every year at the national or international conference under the supervision of the teachers’ organization. in each of the productions, indonesian folktales were brought up as the theme of the performance. the procedure in implementing the edp was started by writing the script, doing the casting, reading the script, recording, rehearsing, and performing. findings and discussion this study aims to reveal the teachers’ feelings about their participation in edp and discovering how their participation affects their english skills based on their view point. the detailed explanation on the findings is presented below. teachers’ feeling about their participation in edp this section discusses the general feelings experienced by the teachers during their participation in the edp. in addition, it explores their likes and dislikes towards their participation in the edp. all of the findings were written based on the result of the interview with three participants. the result of the interview and observation during the interaction with the participants in the edp revealed that teachers’ feelings about their participation in the edp were various. at first, teachers were in doubt since they did not have any background in drama. they also felt worried and they thought they could not do it. “when i first played in it, i was not sure about what i was doing since i did not really understand, i didn’t feel i could do it”, mrs. putri explained. a similar thought was also shared by mrs. sinta. she felt that when doing the script reading, she was also surprised as well as frightened. “in the script reading session, which happened to be the first meeting of the rehearsal, to me it was surprising and frightening.” it turned out, it was her first time playing the role and when she received the script, she had no idea how to act it out or sing it. however, after all the rehearsals were completed, a contrasting feeling was admitted by mrs. putri. there was one situation where she felt she was eager to perform. “when i wear the costume, i feel energized”, mrs. putri said. moreover, the teachers’ feelings were getting more excited after receiving all the applauses from the audience. this feeling was expressed by all participants. “i am not going to say anything but that i was contented. i guess, that word has represented all my feelings in this edp participation”, mrs. shinta uttered. last but not least, mrs. putri and mr. delima portrayed their participation in the edp as a travelling experience. “indeed, i experienced a beautiful life journey since my first participation in 2012”, mrs. putri said. while mrs. delima 29 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 mentioned, “what i feel about my participation in this edp was like a soul recreation”. this finding is in line with lee’s (2007) statement about degree of comforting in participating the edp. according to what he found, “more students seemed to feel uncomfortable at the beginning, but they got used to performing after a few times” (p. 37). this is what the teachers actually experienced. when they admitted that they could not act in the play, it was just a matter of time. it was obvious that all of them at first possessed uncomfortable feeling, yet, when they had done practices, they were in tune with their roles and finally they could enjoy it. what teachers like about their participation in edp. from the interview transcription, it was shown that the teachers found their participation in the edp as gaining new experiences since it was completely different from their daily routines, which is teaching. it was said by mrs. putri, “what i like from this is because i gain new experiences which i don’t get it as a teacher.” while the other teacher stated that she liked the way she had to create chemistry with the other role. “when we talk about acting, i enjoy my part when i have to get to know other people to build chemistry so that there is a connection among us”, mrs. shinta uttered. in the same vein, mrs. delima supported her statement by saying that she loved the togetherness in participating in the edp. this finding supports sandi’s (2017) recent research, who mentioned that participation in english drama could build togetherness. in addition, she also revealed in her research that participating in the edp means gaining new experiences. it was also shown during the interaction with the participants that they were enthusiastic in attending the rehearsals. even though one of the participants’ house was located far from the city and it took nearly one hour to get to the rehearsal’s venue, every time she arrived, she looked excited meeting the other members of the cast. another research conducted by lee (2007) also revealed that the different setting in the drama has created a relaxing environment. this can be described from a teacher’s daily routines at school. they are planning, teaching, and evaluating. in addition, all of these activities demand the teachers to be the so-called director in the classroom. however, when they participated in the edp, they rehearsed, danced, and performed on a stage, which give them a real different setting. what teachers dislike about their participation in edp. not only did teachers enjoy the participation in the edp, they also experienced negative feelings especially about the other members being undisciplined. this was strongly mentioned by all of the participants that they did not like it when the other actors or actresses did not turn up in the rehearsal. “i am sorry to say that i don’t feel comfortable if the others are not disciplined”, said mrs. shinta. in line with her, mrs. delima also stated that, “when they actually had confirmed to attend the rehearsal, but it turned out they cancelled last minute, it really bothered me”. meanwhile, mrs. putri expressed her dislike by stating that, “it indeed needs a sacrifice especially in time management”. discipline problem was also revealed by lee (2007) in his research, however, the problem was not related to time management, but it was on the students being undisciplined during the preparation time. 30 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 these students were playing and relying their work on the capable students. in the edp, there were actors and actresses who became the main ones, while the others were supporting ones. sometimes, the supporting actors or actresses relied themselves on the main ones. they were not really serious in playing the roles since they would not become the focus of the performance. teachers’ views about the effect of their participation in edp towards english skills in participating the edp, the english teachers have admitted that it has affected their english skills. from the interview, it was shown that their participation has helped them practice several language functions, enhance their pronunciation skills, practice communication skills, ease reading, improve their vocabulary, and convey meaning through songs. participating in the edp helped me express several language functions. language functions in speaking are important to learn because in speaking, people use the language functions to communicate, such as in the context of agreeing and disagreeing, expressing sympathy, and expressing likes and dislikes to name a few. not only for students, teachers also need to master the language functions in order to be able to transfer them to their students. from the interview analysis, it revealed that the teachers’ participation in edp helped them express the language functions. it was mentioned by mrs. putri, “this time is about speaking from the heart, i try to express what the script is, so that the language functions work.” she added, “the same words but different expression, for example, the phrase ‘i told you’. does it attempt to show anger or advice?” when the speaker emphasized the stress on the word ‘told’, supported by his mad facial expression, it shows that he is angry. on the other hand, when it used the falling intonation, it can mean an advice. this finding also supported mahoney (1997), who claimed that drama performance provides participants an adequate space for self-actualization. maslow (1943) mentioned that self-actualization “refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially” (p. 382). in the edp, the teachers can express their potential that they are hesitant to actualize it in the classroom. one example is when teachers teach the language functions for disagreement. in the edp, the teachers can act while saying the disagreement freely. this is also in line with mahoney (1997), who argued that fluency of expression in drama creates opportunities for conversational use of language, which promotes fluency of expression. for instance, while teachers are practicing a play, they are encouraged to repeat words, phrases and sentences several times. by so doing, they become fluent in using such expressions. this was also shown in the process of the recording. each of the cast did many repetitions on certain phrases or expressions to create a good audio. participating in the edp helped me enhance pronunciation skill. in the edp, pronunciation has become one of the most crucial aspects in determining the success of the performance. through one of the processes in the drama production, called recording, the skill of pronunciation was really proven. therefore, the three participants admitted that their participation in the edp has improved their pronunciation skill. “during the recording, i am questioning myself, ‘did i pronounce it correct 31 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 ly?’, ‘how is the stress in this word?’, and even though the javanese accent appeared, at least other people understood”, said mrs. putri. in addition, mrs. shinta stated that in the recording, there was a consideration on where to give the stress on certain words; therefore, it was not just about pronouncing the words, but also about making the words meaningful. in the same vein, mrs. delima uttered, “i think intonation is necessary, in this edp, i got to apply it naturally since it supports how we use the language”. in the edp, the participants agreed that they are encouraged to pronounce the english words correctly since it was recorded and was going to be played in public. this is in line with what chukueggu (2012) proposed about the benefits of drama using a term “authentic language use: through the use of drama, students engage in authentic language use. it becomes a means of practicing real-life language in the classroom. drama puts a language into context and gives the students experience in real life situations” (p. 3). in short, the teachers who act in the edp are practicing to use the english language in a real context such as the implementation of pronouncing the english words using the correct intonation and stress. participating in the edp helped me practice communication skills. when taking part in the english drama performance, it seemed that teachers sharpened their communication skills. not only the content in communication, but teachers also practice how to communicate with other casts as well as the audience. mrs. putri strongly emphasized that, “to me, communication is more than only applying to the language, how i communicate the language to the interlocutor and audience is important to make them understand.” this finding supports lee (2007), who stated that participating in an english drama facilitates communication and collaboration skills development. this finding is also in line with the claim of kempe and holroyd (2003) about drama as an effective method to assist participants to become practical communicator. it was true that when performing on the stage, actors and actresses are not just acting, yet it is more like conveying message. to do so, it requires an effective communication skill. participating in the edp helped me ease reading. from the interview, it was shown that when the teacher participated in english drama performance, their english skill, especially reading skill is maintained. “frankly speaking, i am 100% convinced that after participating in the edp, reading english stories, poems, and song lyrics seemed easier”, mrs. putri uttered. this finding was in line with the statement of dodson (2000), who argued that by getting participants to read the script, it means studying the literature as well as reading it out loud. baldwin and fleming (as cited in lee, 2007) believed that through text engagement, participants in edp can enrich the critical awareness of the literacy concept. participating in the edp helped me improve my vocabulary. taking part in the english drama performance means dealing with the script reading. in the script of the edp, there were several songs that were translated from indonesian to english. from the interview result, the teachers confirmed that through their participation in the edp, they could 32 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 improve their vocabulary. it is said by mrs. shinta, “to me, my participation in this edp contributes to the improvement of my vocabulary, especially the idea of having song lyrics translated from indonesian to english and it doesn’t change the meaning. from that, i understand the message.” however, when the teacher was asked to give examples of what vocabulary she gained, she failed to mention it, yet, she confirmed that she could understand the message of the story from the translated lyrics. this finding then leads to a conclusion that message in a story can be conveyed if they are put in a context. this supports lee’s (2007) statement, “when a teacher brings in a particular scenario, certain words and expressions take on a new meaning in context” (p. 14). in addition, taking part in the edp has forced the teachers to listen to the recording as well as reading the script over and over again. this results to the memorization of utterances in the script, especially those which were put in songs. conclusion regarding the teachers’ views of their participation in the edp, it was revealed that overall, teachers felt positive about it. things that they liked most when joining the edp was the togetherness and the new experiences they gained. however, on top of what they liked in the edp, there was one situation that made the teachers uncomfortable, namely, the undisciplined members. most of the teachers felt bothered with some of the actors and actresses who did not come on the rehearsal or were late to arrive at the rehearsal venue. meanwhile, the effect of the teachers’ participation on the edp towards their english skills were various. they admitted that it helped them express language functions, enhance their pronunciation skill, practice their communication skills, ease reading, and improve their vocabulary. the teachers generally found their participation in the edp was beneficial, especially to help them provide the space to practice their english skills. implication the positive feelings and the advantages gained by the teachers towards their participation in the edp can be an example of best practices for other teachers to do the same thing. the teachers participating in the edp can also use their lived-experience to improvise the way they teach english in a real context. in addition, they can better explain to the students about narrative texts since the teachers were involved in the play. regarding the teaching materials, the teachers can adopt and adapt the scenario to teach english through role-playing. researcher’s personal reflection in this research, i am as the researcher is also an instrument since i wrote the scenario of the edp, i directed the play, and i acted as one of the actors in the play. therefore, i myself did experience like what the other teachers have mentioned on the findings. one example regarding the effect of participating the edp toward my vocabulary improvement was when i wrote one scenario, and i did not use the correct diction in the scenario, the language advisor corrected it and it stays in my memory forever. such vocabulary were ‘who on earth are you?’, and ‘long live the king and family’. at first i did not understand the english version until the language advisor 33 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 mcorrected my scenario. another part was in the pronunciation astery. i admitted i had to look up a dictionary before the recording process. i had to make sure the words were correctly pronounced, for example the difference between ‘prince’ and ‘princess’. references balaisis, j. (2002). the challenge of teaching "in role". applied theater researcher, 3(3), 1-7. chukueggu, c. o. c. (2012). the use of drama and dramatic activities in english language teaching. the crab: journal of theatre and media arts, 1, 151-150. dodson, s. l. (2000). faqs: learning languagee through drama. texas papers in foreign language education, 5(52), 129-141. kennedy, m. m. (2016). how does professional development improve teaching? review of educational research, 4(86), 945-980. kerekes, j., & king, k. p. (2010). the king's carpet: drama play in teacher education. international journal of instruction, 3(1), 39-60. lee, h. t (2007). students' perception of learning english through drama: a case study in a hong kong class (master's thesis). the university of hong kong, hong kong. madonna, s. (2009). drama is like reversing everything: intervention reserach as teacher profesional development. research in drama education, 14(2), 225-243. mizell, h. (2010). why professional development matters. oxford: learning forward narang, a. (2015). exploring attitute of pupils and teachers towards the use of drama activities in teaching of social sciences at elementary level. international journal of reseacrh in humanities arts and literature, 3(4), 49-60. ozdemir, s.m. (2008). the effect of drama education on prospective teachers' creativity. international journal of instruction, 1(1), 13-30 ozmen, k. s. (2011). acting and teacher education: the being model for identity development. turqish online journal of qualitative inquiry, 2(2), 36-49. park, h.-o. (2013). adapting classroom materials using process drama strategies. foreign language education, 20(4), 91-120. raihani & sumintono, b. (2010). teacher education in indonesia: development and challenges. atrapos edition, (1), 181-197 rew, s., & moon, y.(2013). the effects of using drama on the learning target expressions for primary school students. the journal of asia tefl, 10(4), 215-239. tekin, c. (2014). the views and suggestion of social studies teacher about the implementation of drama method. academia journal, 9(15), 523-530. ting, k.-y. (2013). reflection on a teacher-in-role approach in the classrrom. asian social science, 9(15), 1-7. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 269 article history: submitted: 10 may 2022 reviewed: 10 june 2022 edited: 23 july 2022 article accepted: 26 july 2022 bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes for efl in pesantren-based university aries fachriza1*), naajihah mafruudloh2, dinar dipta1, diska fatima virgiyanti1,eka indah nuraini1, eta lica hanan nadifa1 1department of english language education, faculty of tarbiyah universitas darussalam gontor 2department of hospital administration, health faculty, universitas muhammadiyah lamongan *)corresponding author’s email: aries.fachriza@unida.gontor.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14668 abstract receiving information begins with listening. efl learners at universities should master listening for academic purposes with appropriate strategies. this article examined the strength of the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for the academic purpose of the third-semester female students in the department of english language education, the university of darussalam gontor, which is a pesantren -based university. this research utilized a quasi-experimental with one group pretest-posttest design. the participants involved 14 who were regarded in english language teaching. they were tested by pre-and post-treatment listening for academic purposes. the data were analyzed by paired sample t-test. the results showed a significant inequality between the mean score of the pre-test and post-test. the mean score of the post-test of learners was improved than theirs in the pre-test. thus, the female learners in this research achieved well in promoting teaching listening for academic purposes after being treated using a bottom-up strategy. keywords: academic purposes; bottom-up; efl; listening; pesantren-based university ================================================================================== introduction learning strategies play a pivotal role in delivering material to students. they are a set of devices used by educators to achieve control overthrown the learning process (jenny x. montañohttps://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 mailto:aries.fachriza@unida.gontor.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14668 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14668&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 270 gonzález, 2017). in addition, the precise learning strategies for efl have become the main factor in assisting students in enrolling in foreign language acquisition (oxford, 2003). accordingly, educators need to create an effective and innovative learning environment to support the efl learners in gaining their learning goals. utilizing the effective strategy can be considered a triumph in teaching listening. the perspective of the english teacher also influences the accomplishment in teaching listening. english language instructors believe that the main goal of teaching listening in the classroom is to train the students to comprehend the meaning of the spoken language. it is also believed that delivering material listening concerns the specific skills to enhance listening (wang, 2010). those statements reinforce that explicit proficiency, such grasp the meaning in spoken activity, is the main core of teaching listening, especially on listening academic purposes this study focused on teaching listening for academic purposes to female students in the department of english language education, the university of darussalam gontor, considered a pesantren -based university. the students struggled when they had to comprehend the content or main idea of audio recording in listening for academic purposes because the students had a shortcoming of experience and strategy in understanding listening activities. moreover, they were also abortive in listening exercises and tests. in addition, the target of the exam results of listening for academic purposes was still far from expectation, whereas listening skill is crucial for the efl learner at the university level. accordingly, the urgency of appropriate strategy to assist them in understanding the content of audio recording in listening activities was considered essential. some learners did not gain a specific goal during the listening comprehension process because some did not know how to apply learning strategies during the listening activities. they argued that they had difficulties gaining meaning due to the recording speed and mishearing. according to the previous study, students also commented on challenges in knowing words in the speakers’ styles (graham, 2006). accordingly, a bottom-up strategy was assumed as an appropriate teaching approach to deliver listening material for the efl learner at the university level. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 271 for these reasons, this study exposed the strength of the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes to 14 female students at the university of darussalam gontor indonesia. the classroom was a standard for the efl learner, especially in the language lab. this condition is appropriate with the regulation for the post-secondary teaching of english for foreign language, which recommends no more than 20 students (philips & ahrenhoester, 2018). the female students of english language education at the university of darussalam gontor had several characteristics. they implemented independent learning in some subjects. they were assumed to have much prior knowledge to aid their learning activities. in addition, pesantren is a kind of educational institution that has organized an effective learning environment dealing with language proficiency. the pesantren environment helps to support students’ language capability and attracts the learners to practice english more. they can speak english as their daily language for their daily communication (umam, 2014). this study also explored the factors influencing the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes. accordingly, the result contributed to a new experience for the female learners to acquire strategy in teaching listening. in detail, the main purpose of this discussion is highlighted in one problem; do female learners of english education better accomplish listening for academic purposes by implementing the bottom-up strategy? literature review listening skills this study reviews current issues in teaching listening for academic purposes because the listening skill is commonly investigated as the most arduous or impressive. listening skills are also neglected, with much less time devoted to instruction than other language skills (al-nafisah, 2019). accordingly, it needs a more exceptional approach so that listening is considered easy by the learner, especially for efl learners. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 272 listening is a skill in language proficiency that can directly affect other skills and be affected by several other strategies or techniques. listening competency is essential for communicating with others (wang, 2010). the term listening comprehension is defined as the process of understanding speech in a first or second language. this skill is crucial in foreign language learning because the key to learning a language is to receive language input (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016). the study of listening comprehension processes in second language learning. listening is the ability to understand the information that listeners hear. nunan (2001) stated that listening requires a learner to receive and understand information. furthermore, naizhoa & robin (2009) stated that in the broadest sense, listening is a process of receiving what the speaker says, constructing meaning then comprehending all spoken activity. buck (2001) argued that listening comprehension is also the process of constructing meaning heard. listening comprehension activities typically address many listening functions, including recognition, orientation, comprehension of main ideas, understanding and recall of details (richard & schmidt, 2002). furthermore, all definition of listening skill relates to the level of listening mastery, such as listening for academic purposes, which can be a special subject at the university level. listening for academic purposes listening is a cognitive skill that works automatically for a person to process what they hear efficiently. learners develop meaning by connecting information from sources or audio with experiences (vandergrift & goh, 2012). in addition, listening comprehension significantly benefits students’ academic achievements (jeon, 2007). these statements are completely appropriate for the learner at the university level because they are required to have a good academic ability university students are assumed to have a high level of learning. they are expected to understand all aspects of science in the academic field. for efl learners, listening for academic purposes is designed to train learners to understand academic lectures (macdonald et al., 2000). in addition, academic listening skill is necessary for english for academic purposes (eap) for https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 273 university-level students (rahimirad & moini, 2015). they not only focus on one academic subject but are enforced to comprehend general or specific discussion in another academic field. the material of english subjects at the university level is structured to understand academic aspects. chou (2015) stated that listening for academic purposes is to comprehend all aspects they learn in class. thus, the efl learners can respond to the main idea they hear in the audio recording. besides, the listening skills required in a strictly academic field are those needed for listening to all courses (mcerlain & carande, 1999). bottom-up strategy in teaching listening listeners use bottom-up when they use linguistic knowledge to understand the text, topic, or audio meaning. according to richard (2008), bottom-up refers to input as the basis for understanding the message. in addition, brown (2000) stated that in the bottom-up process, the listener gains understanding following an order that is available from sounds to word grammatical relations to linguistic meaning. a bottom-up strategy can help the learner to understand the linguistics element. this strategy is often discussed in receptive skills such as listening and reading as a process to reinforce critical thinking for successful listening comprehension (kartikabayu, 2020). bottom-up processing is decoding the sounds one hears linearly, from the smallest meaningful units to complex texts. the bottom-up strategy trains the learner to gain the meaning of audio text from general to specific meaning. learners construct the assumption and experiences by starting to comprehend the conversation in audio. (al-nafisah, 2019). learners utilized keywords from the sound in audio to arrange the content of what they listened to (hedge, 2000). the output of this process was developing the understanding that the listener focuses on the selected pieces of audio text, then tries to connect with their experiences (karimi et al., 2019). hence, a bottom-up strategy is like studying details to fulfill the aims. a bottom-up strategy is also used by learners when they rely on specific components of the second language for aural comprehension. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 274 brown (2004) said the bottom-up focus on sentences, word stress, and the grammatical formula of spoken language. a bottom-up strategy is also used by learners when they rely on specific components of the second language for aural comprehension. it involves building meaning from the sound heard. sounds are changed into words, grammatical relationships, and upward until the meaning is created. in short, sound units connected to form words, phrases, utterances, and finally, complete meaningful contents. in other words, it needs the right sequence process to accomplish comprehension in listening. vargas and gonzález (2009) stated three steps in using a bottom-up strategy in teaching listening. recognizing the vocabulary, providing paper to take a note and playing audio. it was better if the teacher played the audio more than once because the bottom-up strategy is like studying details to fulfill the aims. then, they studied the influence of listening activity when utilizing a bottom-up strategy. in this study, they observed eight graders of high school in pereira. the study revealed that the learner accomplished the listening goal when employing a bottomup strategy due to most of the students gained the learning target on listening exercises. method this research employed a quantitative research design. this design was used in the study as its purpose is to explain the real phenomenon through collecting quantitative data analyzed using a mathematically based method. statistical data analyses were implemented to analyze the research finding. the core of the experimental research is “a test under controlled conditions that is made to demonstrate unknown truth the validity of a prediction” (muijs, 2004, p. 13). research design this experimental study showed the liaison between two or more variables by examining those variables using a certain analysis technique. this study employed a quasi-experimental design. it is the experimental kind that examines a hypothesis of several indicators. it is also assumed that gaining the objectives should be measured by a pre-specified set of indicators (white & sabarwal, 2014). the experiment design employs–group-pretest-posttest. the design https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 275 measures the result of the pre-test and post-test in one group. it is expected that the experiment design answered the contribution of the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes. table 1 describes the design of the study. table 1. study design o1 x o2 explanations: o1 = pretest x = treatment o2=posttest moreover, this study employed an alternative hypothesis as a research result. the alternative hypothesis (ha) in this research found that the participants accomplished the goal when they implemented the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes. accordingly, the bottom-up strategy contributed some beneficial inputs for the students of the english education department in obtaining listening for academic purposes. instrument to gain information and data, the researchers used tests and worksheets. the worksheets were used as a strategy to examine the pupils’ achievement for academic purposes. they were also used to determine the student’s understanding of listening activities. the aim was to assure the validity of the data. accordingly, the main measurement of this study was a test. the study focused on measuring students’ experiences in comprehending audio text, including the student’s ability to understand the component of listening activities, which was also defined as a retelling test. a retelling test may determine students’ abilities to master this skill (brown, 2004). therefore, it utilized a suitable indicator of test based on the focus of the research. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 276 data collection technique in collecting the data, an achievement test was employed where a test is defined as a set of stimuli presented to an individual to find responses based on which a numerical score may be assigned (ary et al., 2010). pre-test and post-test designs were used to distinguish groups and to measure changes resulting from the treatments than to equal one or more control groups who did not receive the treatment (dimitrov & rumrill, 2003). at the beginning of the teaching activities, a pre-test was used for the students to attain the data of the scores before being given any treatment. whereas, after the treatment, a post-test was conducted. the results were then calculated, analyzed, and compared. data analysis the data was measured using a statistical calculation to determine the differences between the pre-test and post-test results. the data was measured to know the differences in scores between the pre-test and post-test by the statistical calculation. in this study, data analysis was conducted using a normality test in the first analysis through kolmogorov-smirnov. if the data was normal, the t-test could be analyzed by paired sample test. however, if the data was not normal, the data could be analyzed by the wilcoxon signed rank test. the steps of the analysis are explained as follows: (1)determining hypothesis. ha: there is a difference between learners on pre and post-test learners in acquiring listening for academic purposes through a bottom-up strategy. ho: there is no difference between students on pre-test and post-test in acquiring listening for academic purposes through bottom-up strategy. (2) determining significance number. this analysis used two-tailed significance. the researcher took a significant number of 5 % and took the risk of rejecting the true hypothesis for 5% (0,05). (3) determining t number and t table. after determining the significance number, it continued by determining the t number and t table. the distribution of t table on α = 5%: 2 = 2.5 % (2 -tailed) with degree of freedom (df) n2. it could be continued by analyzing the criterion of examining. (4) the criterion of examining and interpretation. ha is accepted if t values are more than t table (t values > t table). in contrast, ha is rejected if the t value is less than the t table (t values < t table). on the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 277 other hand, ha is accepted if the p value is less than p-valuable < 0.05) or ha is rejected if the p value is more than 5 % (p-value > 0.05). this study also used observation to support the findings and acquire reliable data because the researcher could observe, evaluate, draw conclusions and comment on interactions and relations during the class (ciesielska et al., 2018). the observation showed that two factors had contributed to the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes for the female students at the university of darussalam gontor. findings after knowing the students’ condition, a normality test was conducted. this test was required to analyze the character of the data by analyzing the students’ pre-test and post-test scores. kolmogorov-smirnov analyzed the sample to calculate the research problem’s answer and the post-test analysis score. as specified in the beginning part of the study, the research question was, “do female students of the english language education better accomplish listening for academic purposes by implementing the bottom-up strategy? then, the research question answered that the english department’s female students had accomplished well in employing listening for academic purposes by using a bottom-up strategy. it can be proven by statistical analysis shown by kolmogorov-smirnov test and paired sample t-test or wilcoxon rank test formula. table 2. one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test pretest posttest n 14 14 normal parametersa,b mean 69,29 79,29 std. deviation 8,957 7,810 most extreme differences absolute ,183 ,179 positive ,183 ,178 negative -,173 -,179 test statistic ,183 ,179 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) ,200c,d ,200c,d https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 278 this table analyzes students’ listening for academic purposes. the analysis was started by calculating the data normality with a one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test. if the result is normal, the t-test can be analyzed by paired sample t-test. if the data is not normal, the t-test can be analyzed using the wilcoxon sign rank formula. table 2 shows that the mean value of the pre-test is 69.29 while 79.29 for the post-test with the significant ( 2-tailed) value was 0,200. the pre-test and post-test distribution values were normal because the significant value of 0.200 is more than 0.05. furthermore, the next data analysis should be calculated through paired sample t-test. the analysis is described in tables 3 and 4. table 3. paired sample t-test statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 pre-test 69,29 14 8,957 2,394 post-test 79,29 14 7,810 2,087 table 4. paired sample t-test paired differences t df sig. (2-tailed) mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pair 1 pretest posttest 10,00 0 5,547 1,482 -13,203 -6,797 6,74 5 13 ,000 this analysis used two-tailed significances. it took a significant number of 5 %, meaning it took a risk to reject the true hypothesis by 5% (0.05). table 3 reveals that the t value on equal variance assumed is -6,745. then, the distribution of the t table is 0.695. probably value or significant 2-tailed was 0,000. according to this analysis, the alternative hypothesis (ha) was accepted, and the null hypothesis (h0) was rejected due to t value was less https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 279 than 5 % (0.000 < 0. 05). there was an inequality in students’ scores between the pre and posttest in achieving listening for academic purposes through bottom-up strategy. discussions following the analysis result, this study showed the effectiveness of the bottom-up strategy in enhancing students’ comprehension of listening for academic purposes. the bottom-up strategy was impressively implemented to enforce students’ listening skills. nonetheless, no studies have previously analyzed its strength in listening for academic purposes on female students at the university of darussalam gontor. in addition, the data analysis found a significant difference between listening for academic purposes of the students in pre-test and post-test after utilizing the bottom-up strategy. this strategy served the students attain an understanding of the listening aspect. the lecturer provided the appropriate technique for how to give understanding from audio recording into written form in 14 meetings in the classroom. the teaching procedures implemented by the english lecturer of the department of english language education in conveying material were based on the condition of the students. the lecturer employed teaching procedures on the bottom-up strategy, such as procedures advised by siegel, j., & siegel, a. (2013). the first was counting words. in this activity, the lecturer read the text on the material. students listened to the lectures’ voices. then, the lecturer repeated the sentences slowly and counted the words. this activity will recognize various aspects of connected speech. the second was identifying lexical differences. the lecturer selected the sentences from the materials. the pure sentence was marked as “sentence 1,” and the variation was marked as “sentence 2”. the lecturer read both sentences, and students identified any lexical differences. this activity will effectively review any grammar lesson covered in class by varying other linguistic aspects. the third was the prediction of syntactic. the lecturer distinguished the materials. students listened to one or two words at a time. the lecturer asked the students to predict the next word. the fourth was headlining connecting speech. lecturer used material content, pointed out common sets of connected speech, and then listened to the audio while students https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 280 worked on cloze test. the last was short transcriptions. the lecturer explained the contents of the material. afterward, the lecturer shared the answer and headlined the content of the discourse. by utilizing these procedures, the researcher believed that the female students accomplished better in comprehending material in listening for academic purposes moreover, the females’ cognition has influenced the effectiveness of these teaching activities. most of these students have good prior knowledge to support their listening skills because the lecturer accommodated the material related to islamic topics such as islamic education, islamic history, islamic economics, islamic law (sharia) and politics in islam. the students were so familiar with those islamic terms that the students were obvious to recognize the term, phonemes, words and sentences. this strategy was also appropriate for teaching english in a pesantren environment. this argument is suitable that the material of efl in pesantren (pesantren-based university) should be contributed for the knowledge base on the pesantren views (fahrudin, 2012). furthermore, the department of english language education, the university of darussalam gontor, has consistently tried to provide teaching materials based on islamic teachings. secondly, the availability of learning devices such as sound and the classroom atmosphere also contributed to the success of listening activities in this classroom. the sound produced from the audio recording was quite clear so that they could achieve the main idea easily, then the students were trained to develop meaning from the sound in recording form. furthermore, the female students were motivated to learn listening classes when the lecture implemented a bottomup strategy during the teaching and learning activity. hasriyanti’s study (2016) reinforced the achievement of this listening activity. it found that the result revealed that the result of the t-test is higher than the t value. in other words, there is significant inequality between the pre and post-test. utilizing the bottom-up strategy enhanced students’ listening activity. in addition, siegel, j. and siegel, a. (2013) also investigated the effects of using a bottom-up strategy in teaching listening. the project was divided into five meetings. there were counting words, identifying lexical differences, syntactic predicting, highlighting https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 281 connected speech, listening and filling in the blanks and short transcriptions. the experiment result showed a significant increase in students’ listening achievement. conclusion and implication based on the findings, the fulfillment of the bottom-up strategy benefited the students in listening for academic purposes revealed by the pre-test and post-test activity scores. the mean scores for the post-test were higher than the pre-test score. the components contributed to the employment of the bottom-up strategy in teaching listening for academic purposes for the female class of the university of darussalam gontor. first, the teaching procedures that the lecturer implemented in conveying material were orderly. the steps applied started from counting words and identifying lexical differences, syntactic predicting, highlighting connecting speech and ending with short transcriptions to aid the students in understanding the listening comprehension material. secondly, good prior knowledge also assisted the students in gaining the material provided by the lecturer. additionally, the material with islamic nuances also strengthened the students’ ability to comprehend listening material because they lived in an islamic dormitory (pesantren). thirdly, the availability of learning facilities was a determining factor in the female class’s listening activities. as the findings suggested, this study found significant results in answering the problem statement in this experimental study. the assumption of a bottom-up strategy would effectively equip and promote students’ listening skills for academic purposes accepted. the null hypothesis was therefore rejected. this finding aligned with the bottom-up, which was more effective in helping students improve their listening comprehension skills and could give confidence to them to face english language assessments (oh et al., 2021). accordingly, the female students of the english department of the university of darussalam gontor accomplished better in employing listening for academic purposes by using a bottom-up strategy. references al-nafisah, k. i. (2019). issues and strategies in improving listening comprehension in a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 282 classroom. international journal of linguistics, 11(3), 93. https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v11i3.14614 ary, d., jacobs, j., l, sorensen, c., & razawieh, a. (2010). introduction to research in education (8th edition ed.). wadsworth cangage learning. brown, d. (2004). language assessment principles and classroom practices. pearson education.inc. brown, h. d. (2000). teaching by principle. cambridge university press. brown, h. d. (2004). language testing book: principles and classroom practice. book, 314. buck, g. (2001). assessing listening. cambridge university press. chou, m. h. (2015). the influence of topics on listening strategy use for english for academic purposes. english language teaching, 8(2), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n2p44 ciesielska, m., boström, k. w., & öhlander, m. (2018). observation method. in research gate. researchgate. dimitrov, d., & rumrill, p. (2003). pretest-posttest designs and measurement of change. speaking of research,4(5). fahrudin, d. (2012). english language teaching in pesantren institutions in indonesia: from colonial to global perspectives. proceeding of the 4th international conference on indonesian studies: “unity, diversity, and future. gilakjani, a. p., & sabouri, n. b. (2016). learners ’ listening comprehension difficulties in english language learning: a literature review. english language teaching, 9(6), 123–133. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n6p123 graham, s. (2006). listening comprehension : the students’ perspectives. an international journal of educational technology and applied linguistics, 34, 165–182. hasriyanti, c. m. (2016). developing listening skill through bottom-up strategy. research in english education, 1(2), 121–128. hedge. (2000). teaching and learning in the language classroom (first edit). oxford press, university. jenny x. montaño-gonzález. (2017). learning strategies in second language acquisition. uschina foreign language, 15(8). https://doi.org/10.17265/1539-8080/2017.08.001 jeon, j. (2007). a study of listening comprehension of academic lectures within the constructionhttps://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 283 integration model (doctoral dissertation). ohio state university. karimi, f., chalak, a., & biria, r. (2019). pedagogical utility of pre-listening activities for improving iranian elementary efl learners’ listening comprehension. international journal of instruction, 12(1), 1127–1140. https://doi.org/10.29333/iji.2019.12172a kartikabayu, o. (2020). using bottom-up strategy in improving listening comprehension. elts (english language teaching society), 1, 1–12. macdonald, m., badger, r., & white, g. (2000). the real thing?: authenticity and academic listening. english for specific purposes, 19(3), 253–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/s08894906(98)00028-3 mcerlain, t., & carande, r. (1999). the nature of listening: the need for listening in english for academic purposes. ibérica: magazine of the european association of languages for specific purposes, 1, 77–81. muijs, d. (2004). doing quantitative research in education with spss. sage publications ltd. naizhoa, g & robin, w. (2009). an investigation of factor influencing english listening comprehension and possible measure for improvement. nunan, d. (2001). n). practical english language teaching (international edition)o title. mc grew hill. oh, c. m., matrikulasi, k., & sembilan, n. (2021). bottom-up, top-down and interactive processing in listening bottom-up, top-down and interactive processing in. december 2020. oxford, r. l. (2003). language learning styles and strategies : an overview. learning, 1–25. philips, c., & ahrenhoester, g. (2018). class size and first-year writing exploring the effects on pedagogy and student perception of writing process. teaching english in the two year college, 46(1). https://www.proquest.com/docview/2136865289?pqorigsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true rahimirad, m., & moini, m. r. (2015). the challenges of listening to academic lectures for eap learners and the impact of metacognition on academic lecture listening comprehension. sage open, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015590609 richard, j.c & schmidt, r. (2002). no titlelongman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistic. pearson education limited. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 284 richard, j. c. (2008). teaching listening and speaking from theory to practice. : cambridge university press. siegel, j., & siegel, a. (2013). empirical and attitudinal effects of bottom-up listening activities in the l2 classroom. elt world online.com, 5, 1–25. umam, c. (2014). maintaining islamic values in english language teaching in indonesian pesantrens. didaktika religia, 2(1), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.30762/didaktika.v2i1.139 vandergrift, l., & goh, c. c. m. (2012). teaching and learning second language listening. routledge. vargas, v. o., & gonzález, d. m. (2009). applying bottom-up listening strategies to eighth grade in a public high school. wang, y. (2010). to give control to learners or not? a comparative study of two ways of teaching listening. english language teaching, 3(2), 162–174. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n2p162 white, h., & sabarwal, s. (2014). quasi-experimental design and methods ( vol 8). united nations children’s fund (unicef). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 285 article history: submitted: 12 may 2022 reviewed: 7 june 2022 edited: 14 july 2022 article accepted: 28 july 2022 children’s literature and its relevance for character formation and developments isaac friday emmanuel adekunle ajasin university, akungba akoko, nigeria author email: fraizisaac@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14676 abstract the prominence of literature to children and their being is colossal. literature, to some, is a path to knowledge; to others, a means of empowerment. despite its roles, it is disheartening that little or no attention is paid to the content of children’s literature. how relevant are these texts to the children? how far are they dated? does it empower or inform them? the questions above provided the impetus for this study. this study explores children’s literature and its implication for character formation and development. a descriptive research design was adopted for the study. through a simple and random sampling, forty-three pupils and 20 principals were selected in ondo, ondo state, nigeria. the instrument for the study was: the children’s literature questionnaire (clq). three research questions were raised, and a null hypothesis was tested. data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the study revealed that literary texts recommended for pupils were few [x=2.02]; head teachers chose literary texts that appealed to them [x=3.4]; recommended literary texts did not project the struggle of the readers [x=1.9]. the study indicated significant differences in the head teachers’ responses based on selected texts. the study recommended that keen attention should be paid to children’s literature. literary texts for children should be censored before filling them on shelves. keywords: children literature; sustainable development; ideologies; pupils; 21st-century ideologies ============================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14676 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14676&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 286 introduction a nation’s future and legacy depend on the young generation, often regarded as tomorrow’s leaders. children are the future; therefore should be invested on as a resource with an expected return on investment (muller, 2017). odejide (1986) once said, “africans accentuated the transmission of social and cultural values through oral traditions such as lullaby, play, songs, riddles and stories to the young ones” (p. xi). the purpose of this transmission, as ayodeji (2008) rightly put it, “is to ensure continuity of the community and its development by entrenching those values, characters and attitudes that enhance productivity, honesty, diligence, positive interpersonal relations and consequently an egalitarian society” (p. 319). these socio-cultural values have been rehashed and artistically presented in prints termed literature in the modern epoch. literature is an artistic-cum-imaginative writing that focuses on a people’s various historical experiences and cultural heritage. it enables readers to know more about other people’s cultures and history across the globe. hence, various continents or regions have various kinds of literature, such as american, caribbean, african, etc. a critical point to note is that all kinds of literature in the world owe their faith to orality for the simple reason that speaking predates writing. like all other literature, african literature has its root and origin in oral traditions and values. for continuity, these traditions and values are well preserved and transmitted to the evolving generation at the malleable ages, given that the infantile and adolescence phases are critical developmental stages for socio-cultural socialization in every society. literature is an ideological tool; its values go beyond entertainment. according to norton and norton (2010), literature improves peoples’ attitudes toward their culture and others, which are essential for social and personal growth. through literature, children could cultivate noble relationships with people and develop healthy social contact. since all texts embody power relationships and represent ideologies at play, so by being given access to ideas that matter and authors who write with authenticity and integrity, children are prompted to understand different viewpoints and form opinions on challenging issues (simpson & cremin, 2022). nwobodo and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 287 ozofor (2018), while examining the potency of the teaching of literature in schools, opined that literature contributes to the formation of responsible, successful, and caring individuals. they continued that intimating children with literature could bring about transformation, which involves total or complete change, usually from an objectionable state of affairs to a desirable one. transformation transcends the functions of providing infrastructures like roads, hospitals, schools or industries to involve the total change of a person from illiteracy to illness or illiteracy to education. however, essential values grow with time and change from generation to generation because each age has its particular point of concern and way of envisioning and apprehending the world. therefore, the literature of each age is ruled by specific philosophies such that the view or the perception of one age differs from the other. dada (1999) outlined some criteria for the selection of the content of a curriculum. they include: (1) the validity and significance of the content and how it contributes to a thinking process, (2) the appropriateness of the contents to the pupils’ needs and interests, (3) relevance to social needs and; (4) learnability. the recommended literary texts for children must project the present-day thinking process in that specific discourse. in light of this background, therefore, it is difficult to set a clear boundary between literary works meant for children and those intended for adults. stakić (2014) mentioned that if aesthetics and internal cognitive value as guiding lenses are adopted, the essential differences between children’s literature and adult literature almost will not exist. to him, a young adult, through the action of the protagonist in a literary text, will reveal stupidity, naivety, vanity, flattery, and insincerity that are overtly projected in a work of art, while an adult reader would be refreshed to think some of the problems of modern man and the contemporary and petty alienated society; fashion and reliance on other people’s thoughts and tastes to fit in the environment at any cost, fear and human weakness to express their own opinion and personality amongst others. stakić (2014) cited hans christian andersen’s fairy tale. according to him, children, adults and philosophers read this piece, and each of them reveals, in addition to the aesthetic gratification, certain semantic strata that are the subject of deliberations. nevertheless, as schneider (2016) proposed, children’s literature conjures images of baby books, predictable plots, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 288 and basic illustrations. better still be equated with artless, pointless stories in classroom, the ones with contrived vocabulary built around particular reading levels or the purified stories, stripped of real life in order to pass the scrutiny of state textbook selection committees and school boards. part of the problem is coming up with a clear-cut classification of literature, whether kids or adults because issues revolving around developmental stages are slippery; even literature itself is elastic and intractable. nonetheless, for this study, children’s literature (kid literature) is categorized as any material written and produced for the information or entertainment of children and young adults. it comprises all non-fiction, literary and artistic genres and physical formats (library of congress collection, 2008). stakić (2014) defines children’s literature as any “literary works written for children who are yet to enter adulthood” (p. 243). thus, children’s literature is solely produced for children’s gratifications and therefore, their interests and fantasies should be brought to the fore when proposing literary texts to them; their backgrounds and their inexhaustible illusions should be considered without neglecting the aesthetic tastes and the social sensibilities the texts set to relay. today, children’s texts contain deliberate pigeon-holes and ideologies that may send wrong messages to the children’s readers on public bookshelves. the onus of scrutinizing literary texts before filing them for children’s consumption lies on the government, parents, and schools. therefore, teachers, parents and society should be able to differentiate between quality and mediocre literature. these safeguards children’s accessibility to the best of the texts and embolden essential values that do not leave their developmental domains. as observed, over time, so many irrational ideologies are being swept under literary texts today. if the nigerian educational goal of raising citizens who would: (1) contribute to national development through high-level relevant manpower; (2) develop and inculcate proper values for the survival of the individual and society; (3) develop the intellectual capacity of individuals to understand and appreciate their local and external environment; (4) acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable individuals to be self-reliant and useful members of society; (5) promote and encourage scholarship and community service; (6) forge and cement national unity; and (7) promote national and international understanding and interaction, must be achieved, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 289 archaic ideologies bolstering directly or indirectly that “women’s education ends in the kitchen”; women are nurses; males are doctors, sexism, patriarchal system etc. in children literary texts must be edited to conform to the current thinking in the area of knowledge in consideration. besides, recommended literary texts must meet pupils’ needs and interests, be relevant to their social needs, and teach them moral values. these thoughts align with jack zippes, as cited in ayodeji (2008), who maintained that children books should intend to extract a clear and interesting images of a period and address an issue to the children truthfully. with this in mind, it would be wrong for the government, head teachers and teachers to recommend literary texts that inspire 18th-century ideologies to 21st-century pupils. the earlier stated seven lofty education goals in nigeria can only be actualized when the right knowledge and values are communicated to the pupils by paying close attention to the kind of texts they consume. through literary texts, children are exposed to their environment (njemanze, 2010) and that of others. lending credence to john locke’s tabula rasa’s postulation, children at early developmental ages look up to older people in society; characters in literary texts for the right living. if provided with the right models and situations – tenderness, kindness, tolerance, loveliness, compassion, confidence, affection, insight and other social values, there is a greater probability that they will learn correct behavior and if otherwise, society would continue to decry upsurge of juvenile delinquency, social anomalies among her evolving leaders of tomorrow. against this background, this study examined children’s literature and its implications for character formation and development. research questions the following research questions will guide the study. (1) to what degree were pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria, exposed to literary texts? (2) what are the bases for selecting the literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria? (3) of what relevance are the recommended literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria? (4) what is the implication of children’s literature on pupils’ character formation and development? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 290 research hypothesis h01: there will be no significant relationship between head-teachers’ responses on the bases of selected literary texts based on school types. method a descriptive research design of the survey type was adopted for the study. the population for the study comprised all the primary school pupils and head teachers in ondo state, nigeria. through a simple random sampling, forty-three (43) primary school pupils in akure south, akoko north and akoko south local government were selected for the study. twenty-six (26) primary school pupils were drawn from private schools and seventeen (17) from public schools, respectively. the instrument for the study was a self-structured questionnaire entitled: children’s literature and sustainable development questionnaire (clsdq). the instrument had three parts: the first section sought basic information from the pupils; the subsequent sections sought information regarding children’s literature. items on children’s literature are based on a 4-point rating scale. before administering, the instrument was tested on five (5) primary school pupils in ado in ekiti state to determine its reliability. the results r0.79 showed that the instrument was reliable. the research questions were answered using descriptive statistics of mean and sd, while a t-test was used to test the hypothesis. results the analysis is presented in sections. section one is the analysis of research questions; section two is on testing the null research hypothesis, while section three is the discussion of findings. table 1. frequency distribution showing pupils’ gender frequency valid percent valid male 17 39.5 female 26 60.5 total 43 100.0 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 291 table 1 showing pupils’ gender revealed that 39.5% were male respondents, while 60.5% were female. table 2. frequency distribution showing school types frequency valid percent valid private 26 60.5 public 17 39.5 total 43 100.0 table 2 showed that 60.5% of the sampled respondents attended private schools, while 39.5% attended public primary schools. analysis of research questions research question 1: to what degree were pupils in primary schools in ondo state exposed to literary texts? table 3. the degree to which primary school pupils in ondo state are exposed to literary texts s/n n minimum maximum mean std. deviation decision 1 how many literary texts did your teacher recommend? 43 1.00 4.00 2.0233 .88609 low 2 how many do you have? 43 1.00 2.00 1.4186 .49917 v. low 3 my teacher mandated i buy the literary texts 43 1.00 4.00 2.5116 1.05497 high 4 i pay for my literary texts as i pay for my school fees 43 1.00 4.00 2.8372 .81446 v. high 5 every pupil in my school has the recommended literary texts for the term 43 1.00 4.00 2.1140 .66389 low https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 292 valid n (listwise) 43 table 3 shows the degree to which the sampled schools placed prominence on children’s literature. this study set a mean value of 2.5 as a benchmark for decision-making. the mean value of 2.5 and above indicates a high degree, while the mean value of 2.4 below indicates a low degree. the first item with the mean value of [2.02] shows that the number of literary texts recommended for pupils is low. as few as those recommended literary texts were, the mean value of [1.41] shows that the number of literary texts possessed by these pupils is very low. furthermore, the result indicated that even the few who could buy the recommended literary texts were forced to buy them. item 3 and 4 show that the teacher mandated them [mean: 2.5] to buy the literary texts by summing it up with their tuition fees [mean: 2.8]. item 5 reveals a low number of pupils with the recommended literary texts [m: 2.11]. research question two: what are the bases for selecting literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria? table 4. the bases for selecting literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state s/n n minimum maximum mean std. deviation decision 6 i choose whatever literary texts that appeal to me for my pupils 20 1.00 3.00 3.4500 .82558 v. high 7 i consider the background of my pupils when selecting literary texts for them 20 2.00 4.00 1.2000 .83351 v. low 8 i place attention on the length of the texts before choosing it 20 1.00 3.00 2.5500 .68633 high 9 i consider the text readability when choosing literary texts for my pupils 20 2.00 4.00 2.1000 .64072 low 10 i patronize street authors, sometimes 20 1.00 3.00 2.5500 .68633 high 11 i adhere to what is recommended by the ministry of education 20 1.00 3.00 2.4000 .82717 low valid n (listwise) 20 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 293 having considered the degree to which schools in ondo place prominence on children’s literature, this aspect sought to know the bases for selecting literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state. the first item on the table with the mean of [3.4] shows that the head teachers of the sampled schools chose literary texts based on what appealed to them. the result also indicates that several head teachers did not consider the background of their pupils when selecting literary texts. more so, head teachers did not consider the readability of the texts before making choices on pupils’ behalf [2.1], probably, because they patronized street authors sometimes [2.5]. on whether they adhered to what was recommended by the ministry of education, the mean value of [2.4] reveals that half the sampled head teachers adhered to the government’s recommendation of literary texts while others did not. research question three: what relevance are the recommended literary texts for pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria? table 5. the perceptions of pupils on the relevance of the school-recommended literary texts for their daily life sn n minimum maximum mean std. deviatio n decision 12 the recommended texts speak my mind 43 3.00 4.00 2.1651 .50468 low 13 the content of the recommended literary texts reveals my inner struggle 43 2.00 4.00 1.9163 .85103 low 14 the stories in the text are close to my background 43 1.00 4.00 2.1163 .87856 low 15 the content of the literary texts reveals my day-to-day life 43 1.00 4.00 2.1072 .81446 low 16 the literary texts are interesting and engage me to read beyond class 43 1.00 4.00 1.8791 .88171 low valid n (listwise) 43 table 5 shows pupils’ perceptions of the relevance of the school-recommended literary texts for daily living. item 12, with the mean value of [2.16], shows that recommended texts do not https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 294 speak the mind of the pupils. similarly, item 13 [1.9] indicates that the contents of the recommended literary texts do not project the inner struggle of the readers (pupils) and are not connected to their background. the study reveals that the extent to which the stories in the recommended texts reveal their day-to-day life is low [2.10]. little wonder they further revealed literary texts are not interesting to them and do not engage them beyond classes [mean: 1.8]. research question four: what is the implication of children’s literature on pupils’ character formation and societal development? it would not be out of context to start this discussion on the note that literature of “art for art sake,” which belongs to formalism, a school of literary criticism and theory, does not apply to pupils, especially those in primary/nursery schools. in formalism, readers are only interested in the forms, not the contents. at the developmental stages of growth, a child reader is interested in the contents and not the structure of the literary texts. a literary text, for the pupil at this stage, is like a manual to live life rightfully. the main objective of literature in 21st century is to provide opportunities for students, as arafik (2017) pointed out, is to develop their potentials as competent communicator in multicontext, multiculture and multimedia environment by empowering their multiintelligence. be that as it may, literature mirrors society, it encompasses varying moments of crisis and several degrees of moral decisions taken by characters that pupils have come to see as models (norton & norton, 2010). characters in literary texts inspire pupils so much that their imprints are repressed unconsciously in the readers. during the formative years, children are malleable and can be developed into caring, friendly, loving and accommodating people. however, as they transition from the pre-operational stage to the operational stage of cognitive development, according to jean piaget, they become less selfish, suggesting that children focus on themselves at their earlier stage. with this in mind, therefore, literary texts that teach empathy, love and caring must be intentionally introduced to them. by so doing, good characters would be formed in them, and society would be livable. the sole role of schools, therefore, is to guide children to the range of good children’s literature which is available. this implies that teachers and other stakeholders need to have a broad knowledge of different texts and also need to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 295 develop strategies for enabling children to share their recommendations (waugh, neaum & waugh, 2017). testing of hypothesis h01: there will be no significant difference in head teachers’ responses on the bases of selected literary texts based on school types table 6 indicates that school type has significant influence on the bases for texts selection [t(145)= -4.422, p < .05]. public school head teachers solely depend on the recommended literary texts by the ministry of education (m=3.05; sd= 0.943) when compared to their counterparts (m=2.38; sd=0.851) who recommend literary texts that appeal to their emotions. the result implied a significant difference in head teachers’ responses to selected literary texts based on school types, and the formulated null hypothesis 2 was rejected. table 6. independent t-test showing the difference in the mean rating of head teachers’ responses on the bases of selected literary texts based on school types school types n mean sd df t p private schools 10 2.38 .851 145 -4.422 .005 public schools 10 3.05 .943 discussion the degree to which primary school pupils in ondo state were exposed to literary texts showed that the number of texts recommended for pupils was low. the findings indicated that the number of literary texts possessed by these pupils was none. even the few pupils with the literary texts were forced to buy them out of their volition. this result showed that nigerians trivialized issues around texts recommended for their children. these findings align with nwobodo and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 296 ozofor (2018), who found out in their study that children’s literature was minimally utilized in nigerian primary schools. in the same vein, the findings substantiate that of mohammad (2013), whose study indicated that the non-availability of literary teaching materials, and non-teaching of literature in many primary and secondary schools in nigeria, amongst others, are factors militating against harnessing the benefits of children’s literature for nigeria’s national development. the study also found that head teachers in ondo state, nigeria, particularly private school teachers, chose literary texts based on what appeals to them and not their pupils. this selection was done without considering the background of their pupils, and the readability of the texts was not given any attention. many head teachers patronized street authors because of the monetary gain they amass following that transaction. more worryingly, a significant number of the sampled head teachers did not know the ideologies foregrounded in the texts recommended for their pupils, given that no language use is ideologically neutral. more so, results on the relevance of the literary texts to pupils in primary schools in ondo state, nigeria, showed that recommended texts did not speak the minds of the sampled respondents. in other words, the texts did not project the pupils’ inner struggles and did not connect to their backgrounds in any way. this result is in dissonance with the findings of ayodeji (2008), who found out that the sampled literary texts were directly related to the children; therefore, they could easily relate the experiences embedded in the texts to their lives. conclusion so far, children’s literature has a potential role in sustainable development in nigeria. however, the findings of this study indicated that children’s literature was confronted with many problems. the study showed that schools were no longer conscious of the issues surrounding children’s literary texts. this study found that the number of literary texts recommended for pupils was low, and only a few pupils had it. the results showed that the few with the recommended literary texts were forced to buy them. the study also discovered that majority of the head teachers of the sampled schools chose literary texts based on what appeals to them without considering the background of the pupils. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 297 overall, the prominence placed on reading and the possession of literary texts was low, and this is largely responsible for the waning of reading culture among pupils. the study further revealed that even the recommended texts did not speak to the pupils’ minds nor project the readers’ inner struggle (pupils). more so, the study indicated the extent to which the stories in the recommended texts affected the day-to-day life of the pupils. therefore, literary texts were of no interest to them and did not engage them beyond classes. hence, writers of children’s kinds of literature should be encouraged to foreground issues bothering self-development, acquisition of soft skills, and creativity in the texts. recommendations one of the ways through which our cherished socio-cultural heritage can be sustained is by transmitting them to the evolving generation. one of the ways to do this is by exposing them to literary texts that espouse those values since literature is a manifestation of the culture that produces it (thomure, kreidieh & baroudi, 2020). therefore, critical attention should be paid to children’s literature. literature is a world encrypted on pages; it speaks to the soul of men. therefore, literary texts proposed for children must be subjected to society’s affective, cognitive and spiritual lenses producing it for its worthwhileness. only through this can we guarantee that antiquated and invalid ideologies are not foregrounded in the literary texts children consume. pupil’s backgrounds and interests should be considered when proposing literary texts to them. children’s literature should be appropriate for their age and integrate their interests and struggles. a child reader would be interested in reading literary texts that portray his fears and how he can conquer them rather than reading some science fiction that he may not understand. also, children’s literature should present the current realities of the immediate society and not some alien western cultures. even if there is a cause to introduce the pupils to western culture or environment, it must be “carefully” done such that the literary texts broaden the horizon of the child reader and, simultaneously, teach our values, sentiments and consciousness. writers of children’s literature should be encouraged to foreground issues on selfdevelopment, acquisition of soft skills and creativity in their literary texts. through this, the right values and knowledge would be repressed in the subconscious minds of the pupils. therefore, as https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 298 they journey in life, these repressed values would positively influence their decisions at every point of their life. governments and educational stakeholders should be fully involved in the production and propositions of children’s literary texts. as students of culture and society, governments and educational stakeholders must strive toward finding out the essential values of particular concern in the current age and carefully integrate those philosophies and models in the recommended literary texts. in so doing, children would, through reading these literary texts, imbibe good behaviors and characters that society desires. references arafik m., (2017). the implementation of children’s literature instruction in elementary school, journal of advances in economics, business and management research, volume 45. retrieved from: https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/25882374.pdf ayodeji, i. (2008). children’s literature and cultural literacy in nigeria: a critical appraisal. in topical issues in literacy, language and development in nigeria, international development in africa committee & reading association of nigeria, isbn: 978-2915-53-x dada, a., (1999). the teacher and the curriculum, tejama general enterprise, ibadan library of congress collections (2008), collections policy statement index. mohammad, a. y. (2013). harnessing children’s literature for nigeria’s transformation agenda. ipedr, 68 (24), 140-144. muller i., (2017): children’s literature and comdev, faculty of culture and society, malmo university. retrieved on the 24th/09/2022 from https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:1481030/fulltext01.pdf njemanze, q. u. (2010). the challenges of globalization and the use of children’s literature in achieving cultural literacy in nigeria. studies in literature and language, 1(4), 49-55. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/25882374.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1481030/fulltext01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1481030/fulltext01.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 299 norton, d., & norton, s. (2010). through the eyes of a child: an introduction to children’s literature (8th ed.). boston, ma: prentice-hall. nwobodo, d. & ozofor, n. (2018). directing and making viability children’s literature for nigeria’s national transformation, international journal of innovative research and knowledge, volume-3 issue-5 odejide, a. (1986). visions of contemporary society in nigerian children realistic fiction, phd thesis, university of ibadan, nigeria. schneider, j. j. (2016). what is children's literature? in the inside, outside, and upside downs of children's literature: from poets and pop-ups to princesses and porridge (p. 9-27). http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/9780977674411.ch2 simpson, a. & cremin, t. m. (2022). responsible reading: children’s literature and social justice. journal of education sciences. retrieved from: https://mdpires.com/d_attachment/education/education-12-00264/article_deploy/education-1200264-v2.pdf?version=1649734250 stakić, m. (2014). specifics of children’s literature in the context of genre classification, mediterranean journal of social sciences, vol. 5, no. 19 thomure, h., kreidieh, s., & baroudi, s. (2020). arabic children’s literature: glitzy production, disciplinary content. issues in educational research, 30(1). retrieved from https://www.iier.org.au/iier30/taha-thomure.pdf waugh, d., neaum s., & waugh, r. (2017). children’s literature in primary schools. sage publication ltd, london. retrieved from: https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upmassets/77162_book_item_77162.pdf https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/9780977674411.ch2 https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/education/education-12-00264/article_deploy/education-12-00264-v2.pdf?version=1649734250 https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/education/education-12-00264/article_deploy/education-12-00264-v2.pdf?version=1649734250 https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/education/education-12-00264/article_deploy/education-12-00264-v2.pdf?version=1649734250 https://www.iier.org.au/iier30/taha-thomure.pdf https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/77162_book_item_77162.pdf https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/77162_book_item_77162.pdf pengantar juni 2016 abstract there is more freedom nowadays for workers to move across border. one of the promising opportunities is to become an overseas nurse. however, to become an overseas nurse, one needs a certain level of language skills; thus, it is important to embed english, as the world’s lingua franca, in the nursing science course. when the students of the nursing department master the english, they will be able to engage in a communication with others within the international scope. it is very important to prepare them with standard, error-free english to prepare them entering the global market. this research tries to figure out the students’ language proficiency by viewing their grammatical errors especially in the s-v agreement. the data were taken from the composition written by nursing department students, which were then analyzed using the concordance program, namely scp 4.05. using the seven pronouns (i, we, you, they, he, she, it) as the key words, the sentence contexts were examined. then, the sentences that contain errors were taken and categorized. from this research, there are 5 kinds of students’ problems reflected in the errors. they are: 1) sentence without verb, 2) errors in the use of be and stem, 3) inflectional –s for the third singular person, 4) modals, and 5) auxiliary verb. keywords: error analysis, written composition, students introduction the advancement of technology and transportation along with the global policies, such as asean economic community (aec) or european union, makes it possible for a person to work in another country easily. consequently, there is a need for lingua franca because of the mingling of different person with different nationalities needs one language to communicate to each other to conduct the business (www.ncsbn.org). one of the most widely known and used language is english. therefore learning english becomes very important nowadays, and at the same times becomes the rich source to do a research on it. the phenomenon of language produce by the learners already attract attention since error analysis in composition written by nursing department students of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta noor qomaria agustina was born in jogjakarta, and she graduated from the english education department universitas negeri yogyakarta and graduate program of english language studies universitas sanata dharma yogyakarta. now she is the head of language training center and lecturer at english education department universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. 61-72 62 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 many time ago and “has long tradition” (sridhar in ellis, 1985, p.51). the purpose of error analysis has moved from merely checking the errors and linguistics classification to more pedagogic one, to provide information on the teaching materials and remedy (ellis, 1985). fauziati (2011) support ellis view in her writing that error analysis function is broadened to view the learning process by analyzing the language produced by the learners. one way to understand english proficiency is by looking at the errors made by the learners because they are part of the learning. according to fauziati (2011, p.26), some experts believe that current literatures view errors not just as deviations but rather as a source for studying the process/ strategies used by the learner in learning the tl. they are evidence about the nature of the process and of the rules used by the learner at a certain stage in learning course. therefore, if we want to study the learners’ il system, we should find clues to the systems by analyzing the errors they make. the term tl here is the target language; it is the language that is learned by the learner. il is the interlanguage or the language produce by the learner which is not yet the similar to the target language and it has its own characteristics (richard and schmidt, 2002). hence, it is very interesting to analyze the errors made by the students to understand their competence in using the language. analyzing the written text is easier because it is the tangible evidence that can be studied over and over. therefore, the writer chooses to study the composition made by the nursing department students of umy. based on the writer’s experiences in teaching them, they still had difficulties in accomplishing the minimum requirement of writing a sentence, such as subject-verb agreement. some examples of the sentences are as follow: she afraid with her boy friend. they are become piece worker. she agree to do it. they not yet married. sentence may have correlation in many different ways called “sentences relatedness” (fromkin, blair, & collins, 2000, p. 129) and the relationship between subject and verb in a sentence is called agreement or “subject-verb (s-v) agreement” (fromkin, et al, 2000, p. 136). s-v agreement is a basic ability to make an intelligible sentence. the students’ acquisition on the rules of this s-v agreement can be used as an indication of the student language competency on the understanding of the basic sentence. richards and schmidt (2002, p. 184) state that “errors have been studied to discover the process learners make use of in learning and using a language”. this research will figure out the student’s language ability viewed from the ability to perform correct s-v agreement in their sentences. the aim of doing the error analysis is to provide information on the difficulties students have in learning english to help teachers or institution to design program (richards & schimdt, 2002). to find out the errors in the s-v agreement, the subject pronoun (i, we, you, they, he, she, it) in the students’ compositions were used as the key words in the concordance program to limit the sentences. the focus of the analysis was in the agreement between the subject and verb in those selected sentences. the results of the analysis can be used to investigate the pattern of 63 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 s-v agreement and the problems commonly faced by the students in composing a good and eligible sentence. thus the research question will be: (a) do the sentences used by the students in their composition meet the requirement of the s-v agreement? and (b) what kind of errors in the subject-verb agreement that the sentences commonly have? literature review error analysis to define errors in language learning, one should also understand interlanguage because both are interrelated. errors are defined as the norm deviation or faulty in using the target language from the result of “incomplete learning” (ellis, 2003, p. 260; richards & schimdt, 2002). when the errors occur in the language as the learners produce the target language, the specific language is made by them. this kind of language produce by the learners is called interlanguage. brown in hourani (2008) defines interlanguage as the language produced by the learners which is different from their mother tongue and the target language. mitchell and myles (2004, p. 137) support the argument by stating that …interlanguage…involved a major shift away from viewing learner language as a defective version of the target language, or as a mixture of first and second language…viewing it as an organic system with its own internal structure. thus, interlanguage is the language produced by the language learner that has not been complete yet and contain errors. the language is also different from both the native language and the target language. below are the examples of the interlanguage: 1) *my name is gilang cikal romadhan, i am school at sma 7 jakarta. 2) *i love biology but i love not subject language french. 3) *i have a sister, she age 19 years old and she study at university esa unggul. 4) *i like sport because with sport we can healthy and strongly. (fauziati, 2011, p. 26) error analysis is a methodology or study to investigate learners’ errors when they learn a target language. the errors made by the learners in their language production can be the result of their learning process or the product of the language learning instructions made by the teachers. therefore, the error analysis can be used to figure out the learner’s learning process and portrait the language competence mastered by the learners. the language mastery can be treated as the input to emphasize on how to teach learners, and as a basis to prepare the material. indeed, the error analysis has the pedagogical application or implication in language teaching (corder in ellis, 2003). to study the errors, it is important to know the differences between errors and mistakes as well as the classification of errors. errors are the result of the imperfect learning where the learners do not master the language completely yet. meanwhile, mistakes lay on the inability to perform the language correctly not because they lack of competence. mistakes occur because the factors that influence the performance, e.g. slip of the tongue, carelessness, or fatigue (richards & schimdt, 2002). the classification of errors will be explained in the next paragraph. 64 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 the classification of errors fall into “vocabulary (lexical errors), pronunciation (phonological errors), grammar (syntactic errors), misunderstanding of a speaker’s intention or meaning (interpretive errors), production of the wrong communicative effect, e.g. through the faulty use of a speech act or one of the rules of speaking (pragmatic errors)” (richards & schimdt, 2002, p. 184). another category is called “a surface strategy taxonomy of errors” (dulay et al in ellis, 2003, p.56). the surface strategy taxonomy of errors is one way to describe errors “that focus only on observable, surface features of errors, as a basis for subsequent explanation” (ellis, 2003, p. 54). the term surface structure comes from transformational grammar “to denote the actual syntactic realization in a language of an utterance” (poole, 1999, p.195). chomsky defines the surface structure as the structure which is obvious in the surface to contrast it with the deep or abstract structure (aitchison, 2003). therefore the surface strategy taxonomy of errors tries to describe the errors based on the linguistics categories as mentioned in table above (ellis, 2003). besides the categories, there are some steps or procedures in conducting the error analysis. corder in ellis (2003) and gass and selinker (2001) propose almost the same steps. there are similarities of both steps from step one to three and there are variation starting from steps four and five. the first step is the determining the data or what is so called language corpus that can be written or oral data along with its size. the second is the error identification, which may refer to the category or type of errors that is chosen, such as grammar (syntactic errors) or vocabulary (lexical errors). the third is to classify the errors based on the grammatical description, e.g., subject-verb agreement, verb form, etc. for steps four and five, gass and selinker (2001) use analysis of source and remediation while corder in ellis (2003) promotes explanation of errors and evaluation of errors. for this research, the writer took step four belong to corder in ellis (2003) namely explanation of errors as the last step because the aim if this research is to explain the errors made by the nursing students. form versus meaning it is obvious that the form of language determine the meaning. syntax rules are needed to table 1: a surface strategy taxonomy of errors source: dulay et al in ellis, 2003, p.56) 65 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 construct phrases and sentences out of morphemes as well as words, and the sequences of part of speech in a sentence must be meaningful and make sense. once the requirement of putting the part of speech in the right order is obtained, the sentence is well formed or grammatically correct (fromkin et.al, 2000). hogue (2003) argues that a sentence can also be defined as a group of words that has a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. by this, it means that if grammar rules are too carelessly violated, communication may suffer. it is what hogue (2003) says as having a complete thought. in addition, harmer (2001) states that the grammar of a language is the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in that language. through the sentences, the meaning is conveyed or the communication takes place. therefore, correct grammar is needed to produce an eligible sentence. it can be summed up here that the form and the meaning are closely interrelated. the evidence of how form can affect the meaning can be seen from the active passive sentence making. the different position of subject and verb will influence the doer and the sentence meaning can be totally different. to perform a language or to put the language into the actual use, the system of language need to be acquired. by obtaining the grammatical or syntactic rules, the sentences produced will be in line with the language system; thus, the sentences will make sense and be understood. ungrammatical sentence will lead to the disturbance of communication. as the result, the message is failed to be conveyed. it is in line with ellis (2003, p. 707) who states that analyzing learners’ language should also concern with the “correctness” and “appropriateness” where the former involves “rules of usage” or grammar and the latter involves “rules of language use” or communicative message. minimum requirement of s-v agreement. this research tries to find out learners’ problems in using s-v agreement as the minimum requirement, which shows the language ability of the users. however, if the learners have not yet been able to write correctly the minimum requirement, it means that teaching learning process should solve this problem first before moving on to more complex materials. this is in line with one of the functions of error analysis proposed by richards and schimdt (2002) to provide information on the problems the learners encounter during their learning language to determine the ‘pedagogically relevant materials’ (gass & selinker, 2001, p. 65) in conducting an error analysis, it is very important to determine the identification and classification of errors whether it is grammatical or vocabulary errors and to classify the errors (gass & selinker, 2001). in this article, the correlation between subject and verb is used to classify the errors. thus, it is important to know the different forms and types of verbs and any part that correlate with the verb such as auxiliary verb, inflectional –s, modals and stem. to begin with, verbs can be classified into linking verb and action verb or transitive and intransitive. the component of the verb is the auxiliary verb and the stem. according to shiach (1995) there are several points to avoid the errors 66 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 when using the verb. the first is that verbs have to agree with the subject of the sentence or the part of sentence. the form of verbs varies according to who or what is carrying out the action, expressing the feeling or ‘being’. next, the two main factors that affect the form of the verb are the person or subject whether it is the first, second, or the third person, and also the plurality, whether the person or subject is plural or singular. hogue (2003) also states that verbs must agree with their subject in number (singular or plural) and person (i, we, you, they, and so on). a singular subject (one person or thing) has a singular verb. on the other hand, a plural subject (two or more people or subject) has a plural verb. another aspect to be considered is the tenses of the sentence, whether it is in the past, present or future. a pronoun such as ‘each, anyone, everybody, etc.’ takes a singular verb. collective noun as they mean a single group, usually take a singular verb. research method in line with the steps proposed by corder in ellis (2003) and gass and selinker (2001) that are presented in the previous section, below are the steps: 1. determining the data or what is so called language corpus 2. identifying the errors 3. classifying the errors 4. explaining the errors first, the corpus data should be determined. the data were collected from nursing students’ compositions consisting of 56 soft-files or compositions. the compositions were typed in the computer. the compositions were the final written assignment and the students could choose some topics provided by the teachers. the assignments made by the students were submitted in the form of the soft copy as part of the marking. the writer did not tell the participants that their works would be used for research because the interest to do research rose when the writer read carefully the compositions and there was no time to meet the participants again to ask their permission to use their work. the data then were entered in the concordance program, and the results showed that there were 1482 sentences with 22.853 words. this data then was shortlisted using the key words to make further analysis and to limit the investigation within the subject-verb agreement. the key words were the seven pronouns, namely i, we, you, they, he, she, and it. after each key word was sorted, then the sentences were identified using the grammatical features involving the subjectverb agreement, such as verb form, auxiliary verb, and modals. the next step was to classify the errors which resulted in the types of s-v agreement errors found in the composition written by nursing department students. the writer used concordance software namely simple concordance program (scp) 4.05. concordance program is software used to search word queries in the linguistic corpus (www.tuchemnitz.de). the corpus serves as the database, and the concordance program provides help to search and to sort words in the database. since this research tries to find the subject-verb agreement focusing on the verb from, auxiliary verb and modals, the pronouns of i, we, you, they, he, she, and it were chosen as the key words 67 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 to see the agreement between the subjects and the verbs. after the sentences were sorted based on the key words, then the sentences were analyzed based on the types of errors that commonly occur in them. the concordance program was able to shortlist the sentences using a certain keyword(s); but, the program cannot classify the sentence errors. the writer was the one who did the analysis to identify and classify the errors. findings after the corpus data were put in the scp 4.05, they were shortlisted using the keywords consisting of six pronouns. the writer then identified and classified the findings based on the relation between the subject and verb. the findings showed some problems with subject-verb agreement that the writer noticed. the problems were divided into several categories: a) sentence with no verb, b) problems with modals which is not followed by stem, c) problems with the auxiliary verbs, d) problems with the inflectional –s for the third singular person, and e) problems with be + stem or just s+v-ing without be. sentence without verb they sad if we sad they happy he healty an freesh she/he still young than us, she always angry and very blazedshe afraid with her boy friend it curious if there i sure that she is we free for express we lazy to walk again we similar other people to stop if we happy when and you difficult to call him they difficult to get job you while togetherwe beside our dearif they usually with it if they still at school,they for that small body to take limit he the lord that he the only child. it less in nutrient compositioni the activites that contribute often and they time to use in the outside housethey always health also they still kids. she/he more adult thinking than usthey table 2: samples of sentences without verbs 68 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 permission to aslan for if we often consumption fast foodwe consumption they always attention their diets they you often consumption of fast the table reveals that most participants had problems with the use of ‘be’ and its variations. after a subject, there should be ‘be’ form if it is followed by adjective, adverb, and noun. for example “she always angry”, “we beside our dear”, and “they still kids”. they were also still confused about word formations since they used noun derivations for the verb. for example “they permission to aslan”, or “we often consumption fast food” problems with be + stem and s+v-ing without ‘be’ table 3: samples of sentences with be + stem and s+v-ing without be. unlike the previous issue, ‘be’ and its variations were used excessively here for stems do not need the form of ‘be’, for example “i’m continue study”. however when the students did not use ‘be’, they wrote v-ing instead of just stem, for example “we including in good peoples”. if the sentences were intended to be in continuous tense, they lacked form ‘be’, e.g., “we falling in love”. problems with the inflectional –s for the third singular person table 4: samples of sentences with problems with the inflectional –s for the third singular person subjects. the next problem found was the problem with the inflectional –s. suppose that the sentences were in the simple present tense with the third singular person meaning that the sentences should use verbs with inflectional –s, such as “he like” or “she agree to do it”. it was obvious that it was not because of carelessness or mistyped because it occurred quite frequently. problems with modals modals must be followed by stem and no preposition whatsoever. however, the data showed that most participants used ‘to+stem’ after modals, e.g., “we must to protect beauty”. the other problem was that they used past verb after modals probably because it was intended to be past tense, but instead of changing the modal into past, they change the verb, for example “we can found many advantages”. in addition, the students also had problems with modals followed 69 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 by adjective and noun. they also tended to use noun formation as verb, for example “so we can conclusion that…” table 5: samples of sentences with problems with modals problems with auxiliary verb do you ever goes to mountain rangeif you ever goes you most don’t you be afraid if are you even heard about genotipe z are you agree about news avian influenza are you like freesh air?/ would do you fell ? to you how is important become healthyhad you imagined a bad incident struck make we doesn’t pleasant in theremake we doesn’t free to move, after that will they not worry sick because in love we not only find passionthat we not must see anything to we not struck they are not know negatives they not yet marriedbut they not think about they not want if they not want if their they haven’t capabilityshe is not endure life in city this section shows that the participants did not have adequate knowledge about how to make a negative and affirmative sentence. this part represents the students’ problem in using the auxiliary verb. they were still confused about using auxiliary, such as ‘form be’, do, does, and modal. the sample sentences are “do you ever goes to mountain range?”, “are you agree about…”, “we not must see anything” and “we doesn’t pleasant in there”. table 6: samples of sentences with problems with auxiliary verb discussion the results of the research show that the students’ english was still very much influenced by their bahasa indonesia. in bahasa indonesia, a sentence can still be understood even though there is no verb in it, for example: dia mahasiswa yang baik. or dia adalah mahasiswa yang baik. dia tuhan yang maha pemurah. or dia adalah tuhan yang maha pemurah. both sentences above have the same meaning and are grammatically correct. however, when the principles in bahasa indonesia are put in english, the sentences become grammatically incorrect. the fact can be seen in category a) sentence without verb. subjects in the example below are followed by adjectives without linking verb ‘be’. 70 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 we can quiet and relax we will quiet they sad if we sad we beside our dear he the lord that we consumption the other problems were the problems concerning with the verb. verbs in bahasa indonesia do not require as many changes as in english. in english, many aspects can change the verbs of the sentence, such as time, plurality of the subjects, as well as negation and question. the auxiliary verbs make english more complicated. the students might have not mastered all those complexity yet, but they must write in english, so they mixed up their bahasa indonesia system with english. the results of the sentences made by the students whose learning is incomplete because they still made errors in writing their language and still mixed up the system in bahasa indonesia to write sentences in english are below: make we doesn’t free to move they not want if their that we not must see anything they not worry sick because the students usually used dictionary to help them in learning english. it seems that they often used the words in dictionary as is. it was probably the reasons why the students used modal+to infinitive since the dictionary used ‘to’ to signal that the word following it was a verb. the examples below show the results of the data: we must to protect beauty > kita harus melindungi kecantikan we can to less our smoking so > kita dapat mengurangi rokok jadi… we will to vomit, dizzy > kita akan muntah, pusing the other reason for the students’ problems in creating eligible sentences is probably from the english teaching learning process used in indonesia. the process of teaching and learning is elaborated in the curriculum. when the curriculum change, the teaching learning process will be also different and this condition will affect the result of the learning that can be viewed from the errors made by the students (ellis, 2003; sawalmeh, 2013). it is common knowledge that the indonesian curriculum is changed quite often. the curriculum usually follows principles from a certain approach. one of the approaches implemented in indonesia was the communicative language teaching. in communicative language teaching, one of the principles is that grammar is acquired subconsciously through the use of language during the learning process (richards & rodgers, 2001). krashen in griffith and parr (2001) argues that languages cannot be learned, but can only be acquired through natural communication. for that reason, grammar might have been taught inductively so it is likely that the students did not master the grammar well. ellis (2003) writes that general source of errors is the “induced errors”, which occurs “when the learners are led to make errors by the nature of the instruction they have received (p. 60)”. the influence of bahasa indonesia should be avoided when using english since bahasa indonesia has different language system from english. even tough using mother tongue language system to produce target language is part of learning, but the process should be eliminated gradually. during the process of learning a language, the students have interlanguage and interference 71 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 error which means “the use of elements from one language while speaking another” (richarad in ellis, 2003, p. 60). during the process of learning, if students, especially nursing department students, still have the native language influence surely that their language, especially the written one, will be hard to understand because it is unintelligible for the other. to overcome the problems, it is very important that there should be a paradigm shift from bahasa indonesia to english so that the students will be aware of the differences and later are able to use english system and syntactic rules when they use it. conclusions and recommendation in conclusion, in this globalized era the mastery of foreign language especially english is very important to prepare the students to face the challenge in the workplace and to give them better bargaining position. one way to know the students’ mastery is by analyzing the errors that they made during the learning. this information can be used as the basis to determine the learning materials suitable for them. the aim of this research is to know the students language competence by viewing the errors they made in their sentence viewed from the s-v agreement. there are 5 types of errors that the students made; first is sentence without verb, second is errors in the use of be and stem, third is inflectional –s for the third singular person, then modals and finally auxiliary verb. this research is preliminary one. many parts of speech still need to be analyzed. researchers who want to conduct a similar research may analyze the other grammatical points as the basis to conduct the error analysis. as the influence of bahasa indonesia is quite obvious here, there is also an open opportunity to study the influence of first language on the second or foreign language using this method. it is likely that teachers or curriculum makers should adjust with the students’ ability in english. it is important to know the level of students’ english proficiency and the goals that students should reach so that teachers and institutions as the curriculum makers can decide the best intervention for the students. the teaching should be conducted from the easy level before moving on to more complex features. it is important to make sure that the students master the basic english first so that the students will learn language that is in line with their competency and pace. when the teacher acknowledges the students’ level, it seems that the teacher can give a higher language skills to promote the learning. references aitchison, j. (2003). teach yourself: linguistics. 6th ed. chicago: mcgraw-hill company ellis, r. (2003). the study of second language acquisition. new york: oxford university press fauziati, e. (2011). interlanguage and error fossilization: a study of indonesian students learning english as a foreign language. conaplin journal: indonesian journal of applied linguistics. i (1). fromkin, f., blair, b., & collins. p. (2000). an introduction to linguistics, 4th ed. london: harcourt publisher. gass, s.m., & selinkker, l. (2001). second language acquisition: an introductory course. 2nd ed. london: lawrence erlbaum associates 72 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 griffith, c., & parr, j.m. (2001). languagelearning strategies: theory and perception. elt journal 55/july 3rd, 2001: 247-254 harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching. 3rd ed. essex: pearson education limited. hogue, a. (2003). the essential of english: a writer’s handbook. new york: pearson education, inc. hourani, t. m. y. (2008). an analysis of the common grammatical errors in the english writing made by 3rd secondary male students in the eastern coast of the uae. a dissertation submitted to the institute of education of the british university in dubai. hull, m. (2004). changing the paradigm for medical english language teaching. paper presented at the 2004 international symposium of english for medical purposes, xi’an, china. retrieved from: www.usingenglish.com, page last modified: 14 september 2006. mitchell, r., & myles, f. (2004). second language learning. 2nd ed. london: hodder arnold poole, s. c. (1999). an introduction to linguistics. new york: palgrave richards, j. c., & schmidt, r. (2002). longman: dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. 3rd ed. essex: pearson education limited richards, j.c., & rodgers, t. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. 2nd ed. cambridge: cambridge university press. sawalmeh, m. h. m. (2013). error analysis of written english essays: the case of students of the preparatory year program in saudi arabia. english for specific purposes world. 40 (14). retrieved from: http://www.esp-world.info. shiach, d. (1995). basic grammar. london: john murray ltd. software: simple concordance program (scp) 4.0. copyright (c) 1997-2003 alan reed. www.business-english-training.com/nurse, retrieved 23 september 2006 www.ncsbn.org., retrieved 23 september 2006 https://www.tuchemnitz.de/phil/english/ sections/linguist/independent/ kursmaterialien/language_computers/ programs.htm. retrieved: 9 april 2016 at 3.35 pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 83 article history: submitted: 29 november 2022 reviewed: 17 january 2023 edited: 30 january 2023 article accepted: 4 march 2023 derivational suffixes in reading texts of higher educational english textbook nurliana institut agama islam negeri palangka raya, indonesia author email: nurliana@iain-palangkaraya.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16979 abstract this research aims to analyze the types of derivational suffixes used in reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this research employed qualitative research, specifically content analysis, as the research design. the data involved derivational suffixes found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies, used by the alqur’an and tafsir sciences study program students at iain palangka raya. the data collected were analyzed systematically. this research indicated four types of derivational suffixes in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook: nominal, adjectival, adverbial, and verbal. nominal suffixes were the most frequently used derivational suffixes in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. the research findings implied that the types of derivational suffixes frequently occurring in higher educational english textbook reading texts should be emphasized more in teaching reading comprehension. keywords: derivational suffixes; english textbook; higher education =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 mailto:nurliana@iain-palangkaraya.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16979 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16979&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2023-01-31 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 84 introduction language is a means of communication in any field of life. communication is important in delivering a message that can be shared with many people. the way of communication is in spoken language (utterances) or written language (texts) (dewi et al., 2020). according to volkmar (2013), written language is the written form of communication, including reading and writing. written language requires basic language abilities. these basic language abilities include phonological processing, vocabulary, and syntax. reading comprehension is one of the skills in learning english. however, reading comprehension is not easy for efl students. to identify the meaning of unknown words in reading texts, efl students need to learn about affixation. affixation is truly important to understanding the content of english reading texts. without a good understanding of affixation, efl students will have difficulties understanding the content of the reading texts since affixes will affect the meaning of sentences in the reading texts (sugiarto, 2015). furthermore, the teaching of affixation will improve their reading comprehension due to the increase in students’ vocabulary knowledge (kuo & anderson, 2006). one of the affixation types is called derivational suffixes. derivational suffixes are the most common affixes that change the class and meaning of words (tarigan & stevani, 2020). the knowledge of derivational suffixes can make a richer comparison to reading ability development (singson et al., 2000). considering the importance of derivational suffixes to understanding the meaning of the words in reading texts of the english textbook, the researcher conducted research that focused on morphological analysis of derivational suffixes in reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. the higher educational english textbook analyzed was english for islamic studies, published in 2013. this textbook was used by the al-qur’an and tafsir sciences study program students at iain palangka raya. some previous relevant research analyzed the types of derivational suffixes in reading texts of english textbooks. aminah et al. (2021) analyzed the basic types and functions of derivational suffixes in reading texts of a senior high school english textbook published by the ministry of education and culture, revised edition 2017. this research showed that the types of derivational suffixes found in the reading texts of the senior high school english textbook published by the ministry of education and culture, revised edition 2017, were nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 85 adjectival suffixes, and adverbial suffixes. the nominal suffix –ing as a noun marker was the most frequently used in the reading texts of the english textbook. derivational suffixes were used to create new words in the following patterns: nominal suffixes to create nouns, verbal suffixes to create verbs, adjectival suffixes to create adjectives, and adverbial suffixes to create adverbs. furthermore, narulita et al. (2017) analyzed the types of derivational suffixes found in the reading texts of the english textbook for the tenth grade of senior high school students. this research indicated that the types of derivational suffixes found were nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, adjectival suffixes, and adverbial suffixes. the nominal suffix –ion/–tion as a noun marker was the most frequently used in the reading texts of the english textbook. furthermore, oktriyani (2022) analyzed the types of derivational suffixes found in the english textbook of the senior high school entitled pathway to english. this research indicated three derivational suffixes: nominal, adjectival, and adverbial. adjectival suffixes were mostly found in the english textbook. all of the previous relevant research analyzed the types of derivational suffixes in the reading texts of the senior high school english textbook. unfortunately, no reports have been published regarding the types of derivational suffixes in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. therefore, to fill this gap, this research analyzed the types of derivational suffixes in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. literature review english suffixes suffixes are letters or groups of letters added at the end of words or roots. suffixes serve to form new words or functions. moreover, suffixes contribute to changing the meanings of the roots into some other related meanings (lieber, 2009). there are two types of suffixes, inflectional suffixes and derivational suffixes. the first type is called inflectional suffixes. inflectional suffixes are added at the end of words or roots and give grammatical variation without changing the class of the words or meanings drastically (tend to be predictable). the second type is called derivational suffixes. derivational suffixes are added at the end of words or roots that determine parts of speech. the new words are generated through derivation, where the meanings will differ from the previous words or roots (handoko, 2019). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 86 derivational suffixes according to plag (2002), there are four types of english derivational suffixes: nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, adjectival suffixes, and adverbial suffixes. nominal suffixes nominal suffixes derive nouns from nouns or nouns from other categories, such as nouns from adjectives and nouns from verbs. these suffixes can denote collective entities or quantities, actions or the results of actions, persons, states, properties, qualities or facts, locations, female humans and animals, containers, processes, events or results of processes, conditions, attitudes, systems of beliefs, and theories. the english derivational suffixes classified as nominal suffixes are –age, –al, –ance/–ence/–ancy/–ency, –ant, –cy/–ce, –dom, –ee, –eer, –er/–or, –(e)ry, –ess, –ful, – hood, –an/–ian/–ean, –ing, –ion/–ation, –ism, –ist, –ity, –ment, –ness, and –ship. verbal suffixes verbal suffixes are employed to derive verbs from other categories, mostly verbs from adjectives and verbs from nouns. these suffixes can express various concepts, such as ornative ‘provide with x,’ resultive ‘make into x,’ causative ‘make (more) x,’ locative ‘put into x,’ inchoative ‘become x,’ and similative ‘act like x.’ the english derivational suffixes classified as verbal are –ate, –en, –ify, and –ize. adjectival suffixes adjectival suffixes derive adjectives from adjectives or other categories, mostly adjectives from nouns. these suffixes can express the meanings of ‘capable of being xed,’ ‘liable or disposed to x,’ ‘being characterized by x,’ ‘having x,’ ‘in the manner or style of x,’ ‘of the character of x,’ ‘like x,’ and ‘without x.’ the english derivational suffixes classified as adjectival suffixes are – able, –al, –ary, –ed, –esque, –ful, –ish, –ive, –less, –ly, and –ous. adverbial suffixes adverbial suffixes derive adverbs from adverbs or other categories, mostly adjectives and adverbs from nouns. these suffixes can express the meanings of ‘in the manner or style of x’ and ‘like x.’ the english derivational suffixes classified as adverbial suffixes are –ly and –wise. reading comprehension https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 87 reading comprehension is constructing meaning for information in a written text. in the process, readers build emotions from the meaning of the text by using the text format and their knowledge of what already exists in this world. reading comprehension is further enhanced as one of the english skills (hock et al., 2015). clarke et al. (2013) stated that one of the factors that could affect students’ reading comprehension was interpreting the words. in this case, students’ knowledge about interpreting individual words relates to their skills to understand a related text. students’ skills in describing words could measure interpreting words. derivational suffixes and teaching of reading comprehension knowledge of derivational suffixes is correlated with teaching reading comprehension. the research by tyler and nagy (1985) indicated that knowledge and use of derivational morphology correlated with reading ability. moreover, the research by amirjalili and jabbari (2018) indicated that reading comprehension correlated with aspects of derivational morphology. furthermore, singson et al. (2000) stated that the knowledge of derivational suffixes could make a richer comparison to reading ability development. there were indications that the production of derived forms was related to the ability to read english texts. method research design this research was descriptive–qualitative with content analysis. the material to be analyzed was reading texts containing derivational suffixes in the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies. content analysis was used in this research since it was used for organizing and eliciting meaning from textual data collected from the reading texts. mayring (2014) defined content analysis as a technique to analyze the data with a rule that guides the research process. subject and object of research https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 88 the subject of this research was 15 reading texts from the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies, published in 2013. the object of this research was derivational suffixes found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. data source and data collection this research data were taken from 15 reading texts from the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies, published in 2013. this textbook consists of 217 pages and is divided into 15 chapters. the data of this research was in the form of derivational suffixes found in those 15 reading texts of this textbook. the reasoning behind the choice of this textbook was that it was used by the students of the al-qur’an and tafsir sciences study program at iain palangka raya instrument the primary instrument in this research was the researcher herself, through reading 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies repeatedly and thoroughly. moreover, the secondary instrument in this research was a document. data analysis the model of data analysis procedure suggested by miles and huberman (1994) was employed to analyze the data of this research. figure 1. miles & huberman’s analysis model (1994) data collection data reduction data display conclusion drawing & verifying https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 89 in data collection, document analysis was employed to collect the data. the data collected was in the form of derivational suffixes found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. the relevant data was selected, simplified, and organized in data reduction. the raw data relevant to this research was selected and classified based on the types of derivational suffixes. in other words, the relevant data was included, while the irrelevant data was excluded. in data display, the data was displayed in the form of a table and description regarding the types of derivational suffixes found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook as the result of the data reduction systematically written, which could be understood and reasonable. all the data relevant to this research were concluded and verified. the result of conclusion drawing & verifying was the final data of a short description regarding the types of derivational suffixes found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. after collecting and analyzing the data, the findings were compared with the relevant theories. the trustworthiness was done by rechecking and matching the analysis to the relevant theories. findings based on the analysis of derivational suffixes, 114 words used derivational suffixes divided into four types of derivational suffixes, such as nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, adjectival suffixes, and adverbial suffixes. the types of derivational suffixes are based on the result of observation presented in table 1. table 1. types of derivational suffixes type of derivational suffix derivational suffix word frequency rank nominal suffixes –age pilgrimage 1 –ance/–ence obedience, patience, excellence, difference, guidance, arrogance, 10 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 90 type of derivational suffix derivational suffix word frequency rank acceptance, performance, importance, ignorance –ant servant 1 –er/–or worshipper, taker, follower, believer, leader, healer, reciter, winner, prayer, thinker, creator, moderator 12 –hood brotherhood 1 –ing teaching, feeling, suffering 3 –ion/–ation relation, migration, action, companion, protection, creation, delegation, determination, suggestion, appreciation, education, inauguration, intention, translation, contemplation, companion, revelation, civilization, provocation, recitation, permission, purification 22 –ity curiosity, majority, difficulty, security, responsibility, equality, honesty 7 –ment development, judgment, retirement, harassment, argument, payment, encouragement 7 –ness darkness, happiness, illness, trustworthiness, sacredness 5 69 1 verbal suffixes –en shorten 1 –ize actualize 1 2 4 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 91 table 1 clearly shows the types of derivational suffixes in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. there were 114 words using derivational suffixes, which were divided into four types of derivational suffixes. those were nominal suffixes found in 69 words; adjectival suffixes found in 24 words; adverbial suffixes found in 19 words; and verbal suffixes found in 2 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. furthermore, the most frequent type of derivational suffix found in the reading texts of the type of derivational suffix derivational suffix word frequency rank adjectival suffixes –able honourable, miserable, preferable, knowledgeable 4 –al physical, universal, transcendental, traditional, financial, personal, educational 7 –ful powerful, successful, wonderful, merciful, truthful, peaceful, useful 7 –ous gracious, religious 2 –ic economic 1 –ive/–ative comprehensive, normative, descriptive 3 24 2 adverbial sufffixes –ly favourably, fully, exactly, properly, slowly, quietly, publicly, pleasantly, namely, regularly, particularly, financially, physically, continuously, practically, finally, clearly, correctly, completely 19 19 3 total 114 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 92 higher educational english textbook was nominal suffixes, which consisted of the following suffixes: –age, –ance/–ence, –ant, –er/–or, –hood, –ing, –ion/–ation, –ity, –ment, and –ness. discussions based on the data displayed in table 1, derivational suffixes were used in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. nominal suffixes nominal suffixes were the most frequent derivational suffix found in higher educational english textbook reading texts. nominal suffixes were found in 69 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook, which consisted of the following suffixes: –age, –ance/–ence, –ant, –er/–or, –hood, –ing, –ion/–ation, –ity, –ment, and –ness. the explanation was as follows. suffix –age. the nominal suffix –age was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in the word pilgrimage. the base of that word was pilgrim (noun). this suffix was employed to derive a noun from a noun. the nominal suffix –age derives nouns that express ‘activities or results of activities’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ance/–ence. the nominal suffix –ance/–ence was found in 10 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in obedience, patience, excellence, difference, guidance, arrogance, acceptance, performance, importance, and ignorance. the bases of those words were obedient (adjective), patient (adjective), excellent (adjective), different (adjective), guide (verb), arrogant (adjective), accept (verb), perform (verb), important (adjective), and ignore (verb). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from adjectives and nouns from verbs. the nominal suffix –ance/–ence can denote ‘actions’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ant. the nominal suffix –ant was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in the word servant. the base of that word was serve (verb). this suffix was employed to derive the noun from the verb. the nominal suffix –ant forms count nouns referring to persons (plag, 2002). suffix –er/–or. the nominal suffix –er/–or was found in 12 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in worshipper, taker, follower, believer, leader, healer, reciter, winner, prayer, unbeliever, thinker, creator, and moderator. the bases of https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 93 those words were worship (verb), take (verb), follow (verb), believe (verb), lead (verb), heal (verb), recite (verb), win (verb), pray (verb), think (verb), create (verb), and moderate (verb). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from the verb. the nominal suffix –er/–or is the one most generally used for forming nouns denoting a person performing the action or the corresponding verb (agent nouns) (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –hood. the nominal suffix –hood was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in the word brotherhood. the base of that word was brother (noun). this suffix was employed to derive a noun from a noun. brotherhood means not ‘the state of being brother’ but rather ‘secret or semi-secret society’ (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –ing. the nominal suffix –ing was found in 3 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in teaching, feeling, and suffering. the bases were words teach (verb), feel (verb), and suffer (verb). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from verbs. the nominal suffix –ing denotes ‘processes or results.’ this suffix is somewhat peculiar among derivational suffixes in that it is primarily used as a verbal inflectional suffix forming present participles (plag, 2002). suffix –ion/–ation. the nominal suffix –ion/–ation was found in 22 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in relation, migration, action, companion, protection, creation, delegation, determination, suggestion, appreciation, education, inauguration, intention, translation, contemplation, companion, revelation, civilization, provocation, recitation, permission, and purification. the bases of those words included relate (verb), migrate (verb), act (verb), company (verb), protect (verb), create (verb), delegate (verb), determine (verb), suggest (verb), appreciate (verb), educate (verb), inaugurate (verb), intent (verb), translate (verb), contemplate (verb), and company (verb), reveal (verb), civilize (verb), provoke (verb), recite (verb), permit (verb), and purify (verb). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from verbs. the nominal suffix –ion/–ation forms abstract nouns meaning basically ‘activity or result of xing’ (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –ity. the nominal suffix –ity was found in 7 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in curiosity, majority, difficulty, security, responsibility, equality, and honesty. the bases of the words were curious (adjective), major (adjective), difficult (adjective), secure (adjective), responsible (adjective), equal (adjective), and honest (noun). this https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 94 suffix was employed to derive nouns from adjectives and nouns from nouns. the nominal suffix –ity means ‘property of being x,’ where x is the base adjective (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –ment. the nominal suffix –ment was found in 7 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in development, judgment, retirement, harassment, argument, payment, and encouragement. the bases of those words were develop (verb), judge (verb), retire (verb), harass (verb), argue (verb), pay (verb), and encourage (verb). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from verbs. the nominal suffix –ment forms abstract nouns, meaning basically ‘activity or result of xing’ (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –ness. the nominal suffix –ness was found in 5 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in darkness, happiness, illness, trustworthiness, and sacredness. the bases of those words were dark (adjective), happy (adjective), ill (adjective), trustworthy (adjective), and sacred (adjective). this suffix was employed to derive nouns from adjectives. the suffix –ness means ‘property of being x,’ where x is the base adjective. the nominal suffix –ness is the most widely applicable, and nouns formed with it are not lexical items (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). adjectival suffixes the second type of derivational suffix found in the higher educational english textbook reading texts was adjectival suffixes. adjectival suffixes were found in 24 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook, which consisted of the following suffixes: –able, –al, –ful, –ous, –ic, and –-ive/–ative. the explanation was as follows. suffix –able. the adjectival suffix –able was found in 4 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in honourable, invisible, miserable, preferable, and familiar words. the bases of those words were honour (noun), misery (noun), prefer (verb), and knowledge (noun). this suffix was employed to derive adjectives from nouns and adjectives from the verb—the adjectival suffix –able means ‘capable of being x’ (plag, 2002). suffix –al. the adjectival suffix –al was found in 7 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in physical, universal, transcendental, traditional, financial, personal, and educational. the bases of those words were physics (noun), universe (noun), transcendent (adjective), tradition (noun), finance (noun), person (noun), and education (noun). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 95 this suffix was employed to derive adjectives from nouns and adjectives from the adjective. the adjectival suffix –al means ‘result of an action’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ful. the adjectival suffix –ful was found in 7 words of the higher educational english textbook reading texts. this suffix was found in words powerful, successful, wonderful, merciful, truthful, peaceful, and useful. the bases of those words were power (noun), success (noun), wonder (verb), mercy (noun), truth (noun), peace (noun), and use (noun). this suffix was employed to derive adjectives from nouns and adjectives from the verb. the adjectival suffix –ful means ‘having x’ or ‘being characterized by x’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ous. the adjectival suffix –ous was found in 2 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in words gracious and religious. the bases of those words were grace (noun) and religion (noun). this suffix was employed to derive adjectives from nouns. the adjectival suffix –ous means ‘processing x’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ic. the adjectival suffix –ic was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in economic. the base of that word was economy (noun). this suffix was employed to derive the adjective from the noun. the adjectival suffix –ic means ‘related to art or science’ (plag, 2002). suffix –ive/–ative. the adjectival suffix –ive/–ative was found in 3 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in words comprehensive, normative, and descriptive. the bases of those words were comprehend (verb), norma (noun), and describe (verb). the adjectival suffix –ive/–ative creates adjectives mostly from latinate verbs and bound roots (plag, 2002). adverbial suffixes the third type of derivational suffix found in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook was adverbial suffixes. adverbial suffixes were found in 19 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook that consisted of the suffix –ly. this suffix was found in words favourably, fully, exactly, properly, scientifically, slowly, quietly, publicly, pleasantly, namely, regularly, particularly, financially, physically, continuously, practically, finally, clearly, correctly, and completely. the bases of those words were favourable (adjective), full (adjective), exact (adjective), proper (adjective), slow (adjective), quiet (adjective), public (noun), pleasant (adjective), name (noun), regular (adjective), particular (adjective), financial (adjective), physical (adjective), continuous https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 96 (adjective), practical (adjective), final (adjective), clear (adjective), correct (adjective), and complete (verb). this suffix was employed to derive adverbs from adjectives, adverbs from nouns, and adverbs from verbs. the adverbial suffix –ive/–ative conveys the notion of ‘in the manner of x’ or ‘like an x’ (plag, 2002). verbal suffixes the verbal suffix was the last derivational suffix found in the higher educational english textbook reading texts. verbal suffixes were found in 2 words of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook, which consisted of the verbal suffix –en and the verbal suffix --ize. the explanation is as follows. suffix –en. the verbal suffix –en was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in the word shorten. the base of that word was short (adjective). this suffix was employed to derive the verb from the adjective. however, the verbal suffix –en usually occurs without the prefix and does so quite widely (e.g., tighten, loosen, stiffen, weaken, widen, redden, deepen, and toughen). these verbs have either an intransitive meaning, ‘become x, or a transitive one, ‘cause to become x’ (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). suffix –ize. the verbal suffix –ize was found in one word of the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook. this suffix was found in the word actualize. the base of that word was actual (adjective). this suffix was employed to derive the verb from the adjective. the verbal suffix –ize can derive verbs from adjectival bases (carstairs-mccarthy, 2002). based on the research findings, the researcher found that derivational suffixes can express various meanings based on the context of the reading text. derivational suffixes are useful for the students to comprehend the reading texts. in this case, the students can predict the meaning of the words based on the context of reading texts by looking at the bases of the words used in the reading texts. aminah et al. (2021) stated that relating to the words containing derivational suffixes, derivational suffixes are truly useful for the students to comprehend the words in reading texts. suppose the students know the pattern of the rule. in that case, the lexical category of the words can be easily recognized by looking at the derivational suffixes used, and the words’ meaning can be predicted by looking at the bases of the words. the student’s understanding of derivational suffixes can improve their vocabulary mastery, influencing their comprehension of the reading texts. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 97 conclusion and implication four derivational suffixes were found in 15 reading texts of the higher educational english textbook english for islamic studies. those types were nominal suffixes, adjectival suffixes, adverbial suffixes, and verbal suffixes. the type of derivational suffixes most frequently found was nominal suffixes, which consisted of the following suffixes: –age, –ance/–ence, –ant, –er/–or, –hood, –ing, –ion/–ation, –ity, –ment, and –ness. each suffix conveyed a meaning. all of these data belong to the class–changing process since the morphological process of derivation has changed the class category of the bases. the function of derivational suffixes was to create new words by adding the suffixes at the end of the bases according to the following patterns: nominal suffixes were used to create new words belonging to noun category, adjectival suffixes were used to create new words belonging to an adjective category, adverbial suffixes were used to create new words belonging to adverb category, and verbal suffixes were used to create new words belonging to verb category. the research findings imply that the types of derivational suffixes frequently occurring in the reading texts of the higher educational english textbook should be emphasized more in teaching reading comprehension at the higher educational level. the student’s understanding of derivational suffixes can improve their vocabulary mastery, influencing their comprehension of the reading texts. future research may contribute by analyzing inflectional suffixes found in reading texts of the higher educational english textbook to enrich the comprehension of english suffixes. references aminah et al. (2021). an analysis of derivational suffixes found in reading texts of english textbook. jurnal kreatif online (jko), 9(2), 72-83. retrieved from http://jurnal.fkip.untad.ac.id/index.php/jko. amirjalili, f. & jabbari, a.a. (2018). the impact of morphological awareness and reading comprehension of efl learners, cogent education, 5(1), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2018.1523975. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 http://jurnal.fkip.untad.ac.id/index.php/jko http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2018.1523975 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 98 carstairs-mccarthy, a. (2002). an introduction to english morphology. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. clarke, p. j., truelove, e., hulme, c., & snowling, m. j. (2013). developing reading comprehension. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118606711. dewi, o. c., indrayani, l. m., & soemantri, y. s. (2020). the morpho-phonemic processes in indonesian advertisement’s slogans. celtic: a journal of culture, english language teaching, literature and linguistics, 7(2), 151-162. https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v7i2.12106. handoko, m.d. (2019). english morphology. lampung: cv iqro. hock, m. f., brasseur-hock, i. f., & deshler, d. d. (2015). reading comprehension instruction for middle and high school students in english language arts: research and evidencebased practices. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14735-2_5. kuo, l., & anderson, r.c. (2006). morphological awareness and learning to read: a crosslanguage perspective. educational psychologist, 41(3), 161-180. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4103_3. lieber, rochelle. (2009). introducing morphology. new york: new york university press mayring, p. (2014). qualitative content analysis. theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. klagenfurt. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-395173 miles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook. (2 nd ed). london: sage publications ltd. narulita, s., latifah, e., & kartanegara, u. k. (2017). an analysis on derivational suffixes in reading text of english textbook for tenth grade students of senior high school. intelegensia : jurnal pendidikan dan pembelajaran, 2(1), 33–44. retrieved from https://intelegensia.web.id/index.php/intelegensia/article/view/71. oktriyani, n. (2022). an analysis of derivational suffixes found in english textbook of tenth grade at sma negeri 1 rengat barat entitled pathway to english. (thesis, universitas islam riau). retrieved from https://repository.uir.ac.id/13850/1/186310641.pdf. plag, i. (2002). word formation in english. cambridge: cambridge university press. singson, m., mahony, d., & mann, v. (2000). reading and writing, 12(3/4), 219–252. doi:10.1023/a:1008196330239 (2000). the relation between reading ability and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v7i2.12106 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4103_3 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-395173 https://repository.uir.ac.id/13850/1/186310641.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 99 morphological skills: evidence from derivational suffixes. an interdisciplinary journal, 12, 219–252. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1008196330239. sugiarto, a. (2015). types of affixation found in reading texts of english textbooks for the first grade of senior high schoold in tulungagung [skripsi]. iain tulungagung. http://repo.uinsatu.ac.id/2919/ tarigan, k. e., & stevani, m. (2020). teaching vocabulary acquisition through derivational suffixes of smp santo petrus medan in the academic year 2017/2018. budapest international research and critics in linguistics and education (birle) journal, 3(2), 999–1012. https://doi.org/10.33258/birle.v3i2.1028. tyler, a., & nagy, w. e. (1985). the role of derivational suffixes in sentence comprehension. technical report no. 357. volkmar, f. r. (2013). encyclopedia of autism spectrum disorders. new york: springer, new york. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1008196330239 https://doi.org/10.33258/birle.v3i2.1028 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 61 article history: submitted: 16 december 2021 reviewed: 17 december 2021 edited: 21 december 2021 article accepted: 27 january 2022 exploring online learning tools used by efl teachers during the covid-19 pandemic mariska intan sari*), aura amalia putri universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia *) corresponding author email: mariska.intan@umy.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13407 abstract covid-19 pandemic has affected many sectors of human life, including the educational sector. this situation has forced the government to impose the school-from-home policy for all levels of education in indonesia since march 2020. teachers need to be aware of this change and adapt to the situation in this situation. media use in learning matters since the learning process is switched to online learning. thus, this paper aims to explore the online learning tools utilized by efl teachers and efl teachers’ consideration in choosing online learning tools during the covid-19 pandemic. this research employed a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews with five efl teachers from five different state senior high schools in yogyakarta special region, indonesia, who have taught english for at least two years and have used online learning tools during the covid19 pandemic. this research found six types of online learning tools used by the efl teachers: learning management systems, assessment tools, chat and messages, video learning and sharing platform, content maker, and video conferencing tools. moreover, concerning the teachers’ considerations in utilizing these online learning tools, they explained that they should be easy to use, accessible, cost-effective, attractive, and lightweight. other teachers could also use these considerations to choose the online learning tools utilized in their teaching and learning processes. keywords: efl teachers; online learning tools; efl teachers’ consideration =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:mariska.intan@umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13407 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13407&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 62 introduction background of the research in the industrial revolution 4.0 era, online learning is not new. it grows fast, which can be seen from the rapidly growing online learning platforms such as edx, udemy, and coursera, offering free access to some online courses. also, some schools, universities, and other educational institutions worldwide have applied blended learning, a combination of offline and online meetings for the teaching and learning process. however, not all schools, universities, and other educational institutions have applied online learning, be it fully online learning or blended or hybrid learning, before the covid-19 pandemic, especially in indonesia. then, the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, including indonesia, and urged the indonesian government to impose some policies to avoid spreading the virus. this virus has affected many sectors of public life, including the educational sector. according to unesco (2020), due to the covid-19 pandemic, most governments temporarily closed the educational sector to minimize the spread of the covid-19 virus. both students and teachers are affected in teaching and learning processes in that the teaching and learning process must be switched from offline mode to online mode. the indonesian government issued a study from home policies for all education levels in the middle of march 2020 to support the government’s social distancing policies (ministry of education and culture, 2020). thus, all the teaching and learning processes have been conducted online afterward. this condition causes teachers to have to adapt to this new online environment. online learning can be done with the help of technology. one form of technology used is online learning tools such as learning management systems, social networking tools, and web 2.0 tools. gunawan et al. (2019) stated that online learning tools like learning management systems (lms) could help maximize online learning because they can provide convenience for students. moreover, the efl teachers must also be aware that they must adjust their teaching methods and technique for online teaching. also, they need to be aware if they need to utilize online learning platforms in teaching and learning processes. however, in implementing online learning, some problems are faced by efl teachers in a state senior high school in yogyakarta. based on an informal interview with one of the efl teachers at a state senior high school in yogyakarta, the efl teachers reported the problem they https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 63 faced during the covid-19 pandemic. especially at the pandemic's beginning, the teaching and learning process did not run effectively because both the teachers and the students had not yet been familiar with online learning tools. thus, the efl teachers must struggle to find the best online learning tools which can suit both the teachers’ and students’ needs. now that the online teaching and learning mode has been conducted for about a year, the researchers are interested in conducting a study entitled exploring the online learning tools used by efl teachers during the covid-19 pandemic. this research aims to explore the online learning tools used by the efl teachers during the teaching and learning process in the covid-19 pandemic and the considerations these efl teachers have in choosing these online learning tools. the past studies on the english learning tools and teaching during the covid19 pandemic have been plenteous. the study from gunawan et al. (2020) entitled variations of models and learning platforms for prospective teachers during the covid-19 pandemic period was conducted to find online learning tools used in online learning and how the teachers use those online tools in learning. in addition, hamat and embi (2010) showed that the constructivism theory could also be used in designing online learning. the role of constructivism theory here is to guide communication and collaboration tools. thus, this research focuses more to efl teachers’ online tools and their considerations in choosing online learning tools during pandemic. additionally, the researcher chooses efl school teachers because the researcher believes that students’ characteristics at school and university are different. therefore, the approach and the treatment during online learning using online learning tools might also be different. donche and petegem (2010) explained that the students in high school are unlike students at the university level; therefore, the learning strategies will also be different. furthermore, secondary school students do not need sophisticated learning strategies like those higher education students. therefore, this research aims at scrutinizing the online learning tools used by the efl teachers at the secondary level. the research questions are formulated as follows: 1. what are the efl teachers’ online learning tools? 2. what are the efl teachers' considerations in choosing online learning tools? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 64 literature review online learning tools due to the covid-19 pandemic, all schools have switched to online learning. online learning is defined as learning that can implement synchronous and asynchronous using various tools such as smartphones and laptops with internet access (dhawan, 2020). afterward, teachers can use online learning tools that suit their individual needs in implementing online learning during the pandemic. eady and lockyer (2013) stated that tools are the sources to support the teaching and learning process. according to eady and lockyer (2013), some examples of tools are communication tools such as word-processing, presentation and publishing software, webpage authoring tools, email, and online discussion forum. also, there are collaborative learning tools such as wikis, blogs, and classroom webpages. then to support students in writing skills, they can use a spelling checker and enhance their vocabulary by using thesaurus. the tools that the efl teachers use help the students in learning by giving the students chance to create, manipulate, and exchange information with others through computer devices or another computer network. additionally, the tools help the students learn and can ease the teacher in online learning. according to reimers et al. (2020), a tool is defined as an instrument to assist teachers in managing their teaching and learning. for instance, communication tools, learning management systems, or other tools that teachers, parents, or students can create or access educational content. therefore, by seeing the explanation above, online learning tools can be concluded as a tool that can help the teachers in online learning by using different devices (e.g., laptop and smartphone) with internet access. the purpose is to help students make and utilize their learning and share information. there are many types of online learning tools. atmojo and nugroho (2020) have categorized them into eight categories. there are learning management systems, chat and messages, video learning and sharing, video conferencing tools, assessment tools, content maker tools, online learning providers. learning management system tools can be used in the teaching and learning process during the covid-19 pandemic, namely, moodle, google classroom, and google meet. then, chat, and messaging tools are used during this pandemic, such as line, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 65 whatsapp, and telegram. not only that, for assessment tools, there are platforms that can be used, namely google forms and quizlet. moreover, video and sharing tools, like youtube, can be used in the teaching and learning process. hence, there are many ways to conduct online learning tools during the covid-19 pandemic. efl teachers’ consideration in choosing the online learning tools, the efl teachers consider several things to choose suitable online learning tools in the teaching and learning process. gunawan et al. (2020) stated that lecturers’ most widely used online platforms are whatsapp because lecturers and students have this application on their smartphones. besides, many students claimed that they like using whatsapp because whatsapp can be used everywhere and anytime. gunawan et al. (2020) had a similar result with a study from atmojo and nugroho (2020). efl teachers stated that they used google classroom because of its practicality and it did not spend much internet quota to get a stable internet connection. these studies concluded that the teachers or lecturers chose online learning tools because of their accessibility. the next one is the online learning tools easy to use. the study from gunawan et al. (2020), another online learning tool, was chosen by lecturers because of its easiness. the lecturers stated that using google classroom or lms makes it easier for them to manage the class, to create creative and innovative learning. ventayen et al. (2018) stated that google classroom is highly recommended because it was easy to operate this tool. this tool has exclusive features that fulfill lecturers’ and students’ needs. this explanation shows that if the lecturers or the teachers consider the easiness of choosing online learning tools. then, online learning tools that the teacher uses should not be expensive for the students. the online learning tool should not consume much data for the students. the tool should consume fewer data. atmojo and nugroho (2020) found that efl teachers chose google classroom as one of the tools in online learning because this tool does not spend much internet data to get a stable connection. lastly, the online learning tools should be interesting. the online learning tool should be interesting for the students, meaning that the online learning should cover all aspects, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 66 including audio, video, or animation. according to almurashi (2016), students enjoy watching youtube because it covers audio and video. therefore, students feel happy and enjoy during the session. previous studies this part of the research includes reviewing related studies to the research topic. the first related previous study is from gunawan et al. (2020) with variations of models and learning platforms for prospective teachers during the covid-19 pandemic period. this research used a descriptive qualitative design. it was conducted at lptk mataram and involved participants who were 212 lecturers. the method used to survey and focus group discussion (fgd). the survey was conducted to obtain information on the implementation of online learning. meanwhile, the focus group discussion (fgd) is to seek other information from the lecturer. the study describes the variation of models and platforms used in online learning for prospective teachers during the social distancing period. the study showed that the lectures used online learning tools such as whatsapp, email, and lms (learning management system) and challenges in online meetings. the second study discusses constructivism in the design of online learning tools from hamat and embi (2010). the methodology of this research used a qualitative approach by analyzing selected documents (journal articles), and the researchers analyzed constructivism mentioned in online learning. then, this study aims to serve a concept of the principle of constructivism to online learning. next, this research’s findings showed that constructivism is mainly used for online learning tools and the activities related to communication and collaboration. the result reported that the constructivism theory was used to design online learning. here, constructivism guided online communication, collaboration, and personal construction of knowledge and constructivism. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 67 method this research applied a qualitative research approach and descriptive qualitative design. according to lambert and lambert (2012), a qualitative descriptive research design is acceptable among other qualitative designs (e.g., phenomenological, grounded theory, and ethnography). the qualitative descriptive design is also functional when the researchers want to know events, who, what was involved, and where the event took place. in addition, according to merriam (1998), the findings of qualitative descriptive design can provide more description from individual experience. therefore, this research design is suitable to answer the research question. the participants of this research were five efl teachers from five different state senior high schools in yogyakarta. these participants were selected based on the criteria that the researchers have set. the fundamental reasons for selecting the participants were that all participants used online learning tools during the covid-19 pandemic, and efl teachers have taught english for at least two years. the researchers used pseudonyms to refer to the participants to protect their identity. they are belle, aurora, elsa, cinderella, and aladdin. belle has taught english for sixteen years, elsa for nine years, aurora for six years, cinderella for nine years, and they all have used online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. finally, aladdin has taught english for twelve years. he is also the head of the english society at school. he also used online learning tools since the pandemic hit indonesia. therefore, since the participants have taught english for more than two years and actively used online learning tools during the covid-19 pandemic, the researchers believed that all participants could answer the interview questions in detail and elaboratively. then, the researchers used a semi-structured interview as the type of interview. a semistructured interview involves a set of open-ended questions that can acquire in-depth information and allow a spontaneous response from the participants (ryan et al., 2009). in conducting the interview, the researchers used bahasa indonesia since bahasa indonesia is the mother tongue of both participants and interviewees. hence, using bahasa indonesia can avoid misunderstandings between them. also, the interviewees can better express themselves using their mother tongue so that researchers can obtain rich data from them. the interview sessions lasted around 40-50 minutes for each participant. the interview was recorded using a recorder https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 68 in the interviewers’ mobile phones to ensure no data loss from the interview sessions. in this research, the researchers also did note-taking to write essential points to help the researchers create follow-up questions for the participants to enrich the data. in maintaining the credibility of the research, the researchers did member checking to ensure that the data obtained from the interviews that have been transcribed are based on the participants’ statements. the researchers returned the result of the transcription to the participants to be reviewed. as mentioned by creswell and creswell (2018), to examine the credibility of qualitative findings, the researcher is taking back the final report or specific description or themes to the interviewee to check whether the findings are valid or not. the researchers also conducted member checking. the purpose of the member checking was to make sure that there were no apparent mistakes when doing transcription (gibbs, 2007, as cited in creswell and creswell, 2018). second, the researchers compared the data and code and wrote memos about the codes and their definitions. afterward, the researchers did an intercoder agreement. in this intercoder agreement, the researchers found other researchers to ensure this research has a reliable result (gibbs, 2007, as cited in creswell & creswell, 2018). findings online learning tools regarding online learning tools that the teachers employed in the teaching and learning process during the covid-19 pandemic, they claimed that they used some online learning tools. out of eight categories based on atmojo and nugroho (2020), the researchers found six online learning tools that the teachers used in this research. these tools are learning management systems, chat and message tools, assessment tools, video conferencing tools, video streaming, sharing tools, and content maker tools. the following categories are explained as follow: learning management systems. the first finding is learning management systems. there are two different tools used by efl teachers, namely google classroom and moodle. in this pandemic, the efl teachers explained that if they need online learning tools which could be used to assist them in teaching the student. belle and aurora chose google classroom, while cinderella and aladdin chose moodle. belle said, “during the pandemic, i used google https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 69 classroom to support the learning process instead of zoom.” aurora thought that the most online learning tool used during a pandemic was google classroom. “i used google classroom,” she stated. however, aladdin explained, “i used moodle because the school has provided it.” then, cinderella also used moodle because the school has provided it. “at first, i used another tool, but since school has its policy, so i followed the rules,” she explained. the participants agreed that lms during pandemics could ease them to teach during the covid19 pandemic. assessment tools. efl teachers also used online learning tools like google form to help them assess the students. using assessment tools, they claimed that it helped them distribute the assessment to the students. belle, aurora, and elsa used this tool while the other participants used different assessment tools. cinderella and aladdin only used lms since lms also could be a platform to provide an assessment. belle, aurora, and elsa had the same thought for the assessment tools. they said, “for the assessment tools, i used google form.” they further claimed that if the students had no complaints about the tools, belle, aurora, and elsa still used google form as an assessment tool from the beginning of the pandemic. meanwhile, aladdin and cinderella agreed if lms also could facilitate them to provide the assessment. they just put the assignments, assessments, or quizzes in the lms then the students would do on the lms. they claimed, “for the activities, we used lms only. ms.” video conferencing tools. another finding of online learning tools is the video conferencing tool. included in this category are google meet, microsoft teams, and zoom. belle, aladdin, and cinderella believed that using video conferencing tools will help the teacher in the teaching and learning process in the pandemic era. however, each participant used different video conferencing tools. this research found that belle used google meet, cinderella used microsoft teams, and aladdin used zoom. even though they used different online learning tools, they all agreed if video conferencing tools were used to facilitate an online, face-to-face meeting. also, they used video conferencing tools to obey the school policy to have an online meeting. “i rarely have conference meetings with my students, but somehow i used google meet,” said belle. while cinderella said, “my school provides teams’ account to the students. that is why i used microsoft teams during a pandemic.” then, aladdin said, “since my school has subscribed to zoom, that is why i used zoom. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 70 chat and message tools. the subsequent finding is chat and messages tools. the chat and messages tool used in this research was whatsapp. all participants used whatsapp to teach and learn during the covid-19 pandemic. belle, cinderella, aladdin, elsa, and aurora have the same thought in this finding. they used whatsapp because the students used whatsapp to communicate. “because our students commonly use whatsapp,” they said. they further explained that whatsapp helped them distribute the information, materials, link, and quizzes. video streaming and sharing tools. another finding is video sharing and learning. one of the video streaming and sharing tool is youtube. youtube is a widely used tool by the participants. through this platform, belle, aladdin, cinderella, elsa, and aurora could share their video learning from youtube or upload the video they have made to youtube and the link shared to their students. they stated, “i chose youtube because i think youtube provides many videos learning. also, i can share my video there.” content maker tools. the last online learning tool is content maker tools. there are powtoon and screen o matic. aladdin and belle also used content maker tools to support them in making material content. for instance, aladdin made an english video using screen o matic, and aurora used powtoon to make animation slides so that the students did not feel bored with the visual. aladdin mentioned, “i used screen o matic to make video learning.” while aurora stated, “sometimes, i used powtoon to make presentation slides. it gave a more visual content.” efl teacher’s consideration besides mentioning the online learning tools used by the efl teachers, the efl teachers also explained the consideration in choosing the online learning tools. the detail of the considerations are as follows: easy-to-use. the first consideration that the teachers used in choosing the online learning tools are that the tools should be easy to use. efl teachers claimed that the tools could quickly check the students’ assignments, develop the assignment, and monitor the students when they are absent and doing their assignments. moreover, belle and aurora said that using online learning tools is easy to manage and user-friendly. they further explained that to join the google classroom. the students click the link provided by the efl teacher and find the materials, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 71 youtube’s link, and quizzes there. elsa claimed, “using online learning tools during pandemic makes it easier for me to teach because it is effortless.” aurora explained by using the lms. she did not get any confusion. this view is similar to belle’s, who stated, “in choosing online learning tools during a pandemic, the tools should be considered as adaptable. the reason why is because we should provide the students with the tools without burdening them.” she also added, “google form makes it easy for me to develop the assignment.” also, elsa has the same views. she stated, “google forms make it easier for me to check the answer when i give assignments.” accessible. the second consideration that teachers use in choosing the tool should be accessible. the consideration is that during covid-19, not all the students can access the material on time with the schedule. for instance, the signal makes the students have difficulty accessing the material on time. moreover, belle, aladdin, and aurora claimed the tools also could be used to store all materials, assessments, and assignments centralized. so, this is also a consideration. students can open it anytime if they cannot access it on schedule. aladdin said, “the material is already on the e-learning so that the students can access it anytime, like in the morning, afternoon, and evening.” while aurora said, “based on my experience, they do not do it right away. so, if the students miss it, they can still check it on google classroom.” belle also said, “yes, it is accessible for the students.” therefore, the efl teachers found that the online learning tools should be flexible for the students to still learn without time limitations. also, the tool should be easy to use by the students. they claimed that it would make the students easy to access. the online learning tool used by the efl teachers was whatsapp. whatsapp is well-known among the students compared to other tools such as telegram and line. belle claimed, “everyone used it. so, it is easy for students to access too.” then aurora also stated, “the reason why i used whatsapp is that all students used this tool. so, i am looking for something that can be accessed by students too.” therefore, the efl teachers found that the online learning tools should be accessible to learn without time limitations. cost-effective. another consideration is that the tools that the teachers use should be cost-effective. efl teachers mentioned that they should consider internet data since not all students can purchase internet data for an online school. therefore, in this finding, the efl teachers used google classroom and whatsapp groups to conduct online learning during the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 72 covid-19 pandemic. aurora stated, “google classroom consumes less internet quota than using another tool such as zoom.” belle also stated, “but compared to zoom, google classroom is cost-effective. then, while using zoom, also buffering when you do not have much quota.” the views are similar with elsa, she said, “also, it turned out that when i contacted students and asked them to join, it was difficult because from that point of view, the signal was not there, and the quota was also limited. so, it is a problem. therefore, instead of students not taking classes well, i would rather choose an alternative that is indeed a low budget that did not put pressure on them and can invite them to take part in learning.” she found that using the cost-effective online learning tools could help them conduct online learning more effectively than using online learning tools that consume much quota, but the students rarely join. interesting. one of the considerations that the teachers used to choose the tools they will use is interesting. it means that the tool provides more pictures, animation, video, and audio. so that students will be more engaged in learning. this research found that youtube is one of the online learning tools chosen by efl teachers to provide visual learning. the consideration is so that the students will not get bored. elsa said, “students will be more engaged in learning because the media is interesting.” aladdin and elsa also mentioned, “actually, this tool is for variation. suppose the video involves all aspects, including visual and audio. if it is text only, then it will be boring.” lightweight. moreover, the last consideration is that the tool used must be lightweight. it means the media must have a small megabyte size because if the size of the tool used is too large, such as one hundred megabytes, this will hinder the material creation process. it happens because the laptop used by the efl teacher is not adequate. elsa mentioned, “to present the material, i used powtoon, ms. it could also be powerpoint 2019, but because it is heavy and my device is not too adequate, so, i just used powtoon.” https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 73 discussions the findings implied that efl teachers are aware of during covid-19 pandemic need to use online learning tools. these tools can help and support them in conducting online learning. reimers et al. (2020) stated that tools could help teachers manage their learning. the efl teachers used some online learning tools for their classes. the online learning tools include learning management systems, chat and messages, assessment tools, video conferencing tools, video streaming and sharing, and content maker. these online learning tools are similar to the study conducted by atmojo and nugroho (2020). they found eight categories. meanwhile, there are only six categories that efl teachers use in these findings. the following finding is efl teachers’ consideration. the first reason is that these online learning tools are easy to operate. the tool does not make the efl teacher feel confused when using it. the online learning tools found google classroom, lms, screen-o-matic, and google form user-friendly. this was supported by the result from a study by gunawan et al. (2020) showing that lectures used google classroom and lms because they were easy to manage. the lecturers mentioned that the tools eased them to manage their classroom. this is also in line with the study from ventayen et al. (2018), implying that google classroom was easy to operate and was recommended for the teachers. ventayen et al. (2018) further mentioned that this tool provided complex features that supported lecturers' and students' needs. in conclusion, english teachers chose online learning tools that were easy to use during the pandemic. the second consideration is accessible. the efl teachers claimed that the tool should be accessible for the students. they mentioned that not all students are in the same situation to check their learning immediately. so, the efl teachers used the tools that would give them flexibility. besides, the efl teachers chose the tool used by the students not to burden them and give them flexibility. gunawan et al. (2020) stated that lecturers’ most widely used online platform is whatsapp because lecturers and students have this application installed on their smartphones. besides that, many students claimed that they like using whatsapp because whatsapp can be used everywhere and anytime. in this study, the teachers or lecturers choose https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 74 specific online learning tools because of their accessibility. it helps them conduct the class because it can be conducted anywhere and anytime. the third consideration is cost-effective. the efl teachers claimed that many students told them they could not purchase much internet quota. therefore, the efl teachers chose google classroom because it was cost-effective. atmojo and nugroho (2020) stated that efl teachers chose google classroom because it consumes less internet data. the fourth finding is intriguing. the efl teachers claimed they needed to provide learning media during the pandemic that encouraged them to teach and learn. therefore, one of the online learning tools that efl teachers chose is youtube and powtoon. almurashi (2016) mentioned that students are interested in watching youtube because it provides video and audio aspects. the last consideration is lightweight. since the teaching and learning process is conducted online, the online learning tools should be lightweight. conclusion and implication online learning tools can be defined as media that help teachers in the teaching and learning process by utilizing devices with internet access. the purposes of this research were to explore the online learning tools used by efl teachers along with their consideration. the design of this research was descriptive qualitative. the instrument of this research was an interview to gather the data. the research was conducted in five different state senior high schools in yogyakarta with five efl teachers; four females and one male. the participants’ names were changed into pseudonyms to keep their confidence and privacy. this research is to investigate online learning tools and their consideration. regarding findings, online learning tools used by each efl teacher can be different. this research uses learning management systems, chat and messages, assessment tools, video streaming and sharing, video conferencing tools, and content maker tools. the efl teachers explained that using online learning tools during the covid-19 pandemic helped them maximize online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the efl teachers’ consideration in choosing the online learning tool is easy-to-use, accessible, cost-effective, attractive, and lightweight. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 75 references almurashi, w. a. (2016). the effective use of youtube videos for teaching english language in classroom as supplementary material at taibah in university in alula. international journal of english language and linguistic research, 4(3), 32-47. atmojo, a. e. p., & nugroho, a. (2020). efl classes must go online! teaching activities and challenges during the covid-19 pandemic in indonesia. register journal, 3(1), 49-76. https://doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v13i1.49-76 creswell, j.w., & creswell, j.d. (2018). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approach. fifth edition. los angles: sage. ch.9, qualitative method, 179211. dhawan, s. (2020). online learning: a panacea in the time of covid-19 crisis. journal of educational technology system, 49(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239520934018. donche, v., & petegem, p. v. (2010). the relationship between entry characteristics, learning style and academic achievement of college freshmen. in m. e. poulsen (eds.), higher education: teaching, internationalizations and students issues (pp. 2-12). nova science publisher, inc. eady, m. j., & lockyer, l. (2013). tools for learning: technology and teaching strategies. the queensland university of australia. gunawan., suranti, n. m. y., & fathorni. (2020). variations of model and learning platforms from prospective teachers during the covid-19 pandemic period. indonesian journal of teachers education, 1(2), 61-70. retrieved from https://journal.publicationcenter.com/index.php/ijte/article/view/95 hamat, a., & embi, m., a. (2010). constructivism in the design of online learning tools. european journal of educational students, 2(3), 237-246. lambert, v.a., & lambert, c.e. (2012). descriptive research: an acceptable design. pacific rim international journal of nursing research, 16(4), 255256. merriam, s.b. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: birjossey-bass publishers. ministry of education and culture. (2020, march 24). mendikbud terbitkan se tentang pelaksanaan pendidikan dalam masa darurat covid-19 [minister of education and culture issued a circular letter on the implementation of education during the emergency period of covid-19]. ministry of education and culture. https://www.kemdikbud.go.id/main/blog/2020/03/mendikbud-terbitkan-se-tentang pelaksanaan-pendidikandalam-masa-darurat-covid19 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v13i1.49-76 https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239520934018 https://journal.publication-center.com/index.php/ijte/article/view/95 https://journal.publication-center.com/index.php/ijte/article/view/95 https://www.kemdikbud.go.id/main/blog/2020/03/mendikbud-terbitkan-se-tentang%20pelaksanaan-pendidikan-%20dalam-masa-darurat-covid19 https://www.kemdikbud.go.id/main/blog/2020/03/mendikbud-terbitkan-se-tentang%20pelaksanaan-pendidikan-%20dalam-masa-darurat-covid19 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 76 reimers, f., schleicher, a., saavedra, j., & tuominen, s. (2020). supporting the continuation of teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. oecd. https://www.oecd.org/education/supporting-thecontinuation-of-teaching-and-learningduring-thecovid-19-pandemic.pdf. ryan, f., coughlan, m., & cronin. p. (2009). interviewing and qualitative research: the oneto-one interview. international journal of therapy and rehabilitation, 16(6), 309-314. https://doi.org/10.12968/ijtr.2009.16.6.42433 unesco. (2020, may 25). education: from disruption to recovery. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse. ventayen, r. j. m., estira, k. l. a., de guzman, m. j., cabaluna, c. m., & espinosa, n. n. (2018). usability evaluation of google classroom: basis for the adaptation of gsuite elearning platform. asia pacific journal of education, arts, and sciences, 5(1), 47-51. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://www.oecd.org/education/supporting-the-%20continuation-of-teaching-and-learning-during-the-%20covid-19-pandemic.pdf https://www.oecd.org/education/supporting-the-%20continuation-of-teaching-and-learning-during-the-%20covid-19-pandemic.pdf https://doi.org/10.12968/ijtr.2009.16.6.42433 https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse pengantar juni 2016 abstract literature-based approach (lba) is popularly used in reading. in implementing the approach, teachers use literary works to be read by students. the literary works that the students read to get the language input are commonly authentic which means that by reading the texts, students can identify a model of language and several aspects of language such as expression, vocabulary, grammar, and culture and how to use them in a real context. realizing the importance of input, a teacher in a university in indonesia implemented this approach in a reading class for freshmen. this research which belongs to descriptive qualitative research put attention on investigating what the students perceived toward the implementation of the lba to assist them in vocabulary building. the data were collected by interviewing five students who were chosen because it was their first time reading an english language novel and they were the top six students in terms of vocabulary scores. to interview the participants who are presented using pseudonym, a semi guided interview guideline was used as an instrument. the research results show that students were anxious joining this class at the beginning. however, after some meetings and reading several pages, they started to enjoy reading the novel because the novel was interesting and entertaining. in addition, the topic was closely related to their daily life. after getting new words, one of participants wrote them on paper and stuck it on her room wall. four other students wrote the words on a notebook as a vocabulary journal. besides by doing those things to help them recall the words, the students also used them in retelling quizzes for writing and in daily conversation with mates for speaking. introduction literature-based approach (lba) is one of ways in using authentic materials. tomlinson (2008) puts authenticity as one of requirements for good instructional materials. he states that with authentic materials, students get more opportunities to know the target language because authentic materials provide original expressions and vocabulary used in the countries where english is used literature-based learning to build students’ vocabulary evi puspitasari took her undergraduate degree in universitas negeri yogyakar ta (uny) for english education program. she graduated from english language studies program at universitas sanata dharma (usd), yogyakar ta. she is interested in material development and evaluation, teaching methodology, and teachers’ cognition. she is now teaching in english education depar tment, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakar ta (umy). 49-60 50 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 as a daily language. using authentic materials, this approach is usually done using texts; thus, reading becomes the main skill that will be focused on. in applying literature-based approach, literary works such as poetry, short stories, plays, and novels are the ultimate instrument (norland & pruett-said, 2006). through those authentic works, teachers do not only develop students’ language skills or cognitive skills as things to learn, but also work on students’ emotion skills or affective skills. in indonesia, english teachers commonly use text types to build students’ vocabulary through reading. instead of using literary works, text types such as narrative, procedure, recount, descriptive, or expository are more preferred in reading classes. in fact, the texts may not always be presented in one unity of story, and many times, they do not have relation from one to the other. consequently, language inputs are not thoroughly given. it will likely make students confused in taking language models provided. in addition, for university students, they have got similar text types since they were school students. it can hinder their vocabulary development. also, they may be bored of getting those materials in their university level. in relation to vocabulary building, students usually open dictionary to help them know the meaning of unfamiliar words got when reading texts. however, teachers rarely provide following activities to assist students to improve their vocabulary. so, the students do not have sufficient opportunities to use the vocabulary productively. hence, after they finish reading the texts, they may not remember new vocabulary they have just learned. from the elaboration above, it can be seen that lba can be an interesting idea to help students improve their vocabulary. it will become a new color to assist students in vocabulary building in indonesian contexts. for the following activities, students are encouraged using words they have learned in contexts. to know their response toward the implementation of lba to improve their vocabulary, the researcher conducted this research. literature review literature-based approach literature-based approach (lba) is a real presentation to prove that literature and language cannot be separated. language is used to compose literature. in point of fact, works of literature provide sources that shows the applications of language (violetta-irene, 2015). that is why this approach is implemented largely in language classrooms to teach not only language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking, but also language areas such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. lba offers some students benefits. those benefits deals with what literature provides for students who are learning a new language. using this approach, students will obtain knowledge about language, arts, and cultures. first, students have opportunities to see model of language used authentically. that is in line with hiþmanoðlu (2005) and norland and pruett-said (2006). they state that literary works are originally written to express what the writers feel and think, unlike texts written on purpose with vocabulary and grammar intentionally to develop a particular language skill. so, in applying the language, literary works are more natural and rich than 51 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 designed texts, which are good as language input for the students. second, students will be given the demonstration of arts while learning english. not only literature shows students the application of language, it also demonstrates arts to the students. it can affect how students feel about the language learning process. using art in language teaching, teachers can do more than working on students’ cognitive aspects, like the language skills and language areas such as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. teachers can also develop students’ affective skills (violetta-irene, 2015). by touching their affective skills, students will be more motivated in reading (norland and pruettsaid, 2006). third, lba provide students with cultural knowledge. people do not need to go to a particular country to know its cultural values. literary works are a brilliant way to know that. it is also stated by hiþmanoðlu (2005) who emphasizes that every literary work introduces culture through characters that come from different places and backgrounds which bring their culture learned. for example, in the work such as novels, short stories, or plays, the characters are described with setting of time, setting of place, social background, and situation happening around them. when reading the story, students will be invited to know the story and understand cultures introduced in the texts. for instance, two characters are involved in conversation in which they talk about a certain topic using specific expression. from the communication happens, students are encouraged to consider why it takes place and why the expressions are used. it is one of the ways for students to be able to comprehend the culture introduced in the story which is usually embedded with the language used. however, the lba also has weaknesses. the first weakness of this approach is derived from its authenticity. because the material used is authentic and not simplified, it will be quite hard for beginners. norland and pruett-said (2006) maintain that the approach is sufficiently effective for students from the intermediate to advanced level, but it does not work similarly for beginners. in other words, the language presented in the texts is commonly beyond the ability of elementary level students. consequently, students will likely feel hard to understand the text and it can be hindrance to their reading motivation. another weakness of lba is that some vocabulary is presented in a different way from what students know. it happens because within this approach, the words sometimes are used informally which may be new for students. the words usually used in a context or based on culture that they do not know. norland and pruett-said (2006) state that for beginners, predicting the meaning of expressions or words that are used based on a culture or a context that they are not familiar with is quite frustrating. the other weakness of this approach is regarding to the gap of values and cultures from the literary works and those that students hold. students may come from different areas with their diverse values and cultures. vice versa, literary works are also written by bringing cultures and thoughts that the author want to introduce to the readers. if students as readers find that cultures implanted in the texts are not in line with their personal beliefs, they will lose their enthusiasm to read the texts (norland & pruett-said, 2006). 52 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 novel as a reading material novels are one of literary works that can be employed as a reading material. being used as a reading material, hiþmanoðlu (2005) mentions three benefits of using novels to students. first, presented with minimum illustration and more written description, students are demanded to imagine all things in the story such as the plot, setting, and movement that the characters in novels make. it challenges students’ ability of fantasizing and imagining. second, related to the content, novels are written with various conflicts, which are good to develop students’ affective skills. through the conflicts, students are able to identify emotions of each character and then they learn the way the characters deal with the problems so that they can do the same thing when they are in the same position. briefly, students can also absorb wisdoms and values presented in the story. third, novels have more storyboards than short stories. the storyboards told through written verbal description provide more language input. after absorbing the language input by reading and processing what they have learned, students are finally confident to practice the language through speaking or writing. it means that getting more input empowers students to perform the language (folse, 2004). in choosing the novel for english instruction, teachers need to be selective by considering some points. the novel used should have an interesting, entertaining, and motivating theme (hiþmanoðlu, 2005). things related to students’ personal life are a brilliant idea to attract their interest. hiþmanoðlu (2005) also points out that chosen novels should have contents appropriate for students’ emotional and cognitive level. so, students’ emotional and mental growth will be stable and not be distracted by an external factor from inappropriate books they read. the last consideration is related to level of difficulty. if teachers want to use novels as a reading material, they should ensure that the material is not too hard for students. the difficulty level of the novels for english instruction can be defined from the vocabulary they used. nation (2006) states that a good reading text should contain around 95% to 98% of known words and unfamiliar vocabulary to be learned by students is not more than 5% to 2%. it is also in line with input hypothesis by krashen (2003) which highlights that input should contain structure a bit beyond students’ current level of competence. paying attention to those two experts, it can be concluded that input is designed or selected to make students feel at ease in understanding the input without neglecting a portion of new vocabulary being learned. in this research, a young adult novel was chosen for some reasons. first, the topic of this novel which tells about a boy’s daily life and fun experiences is close to students’ life. second, because of daily life topic, vocabulary used is not extremely academic and difficult for students. that is in line with nation (2006) and krashen (2003). third, the novel is completed with some illustrations for each story which can be effective to scaffold students in understanding the story. vocabulary building in building their vocabulary, students need to improve their knowledge about word meaning. according to kamil and hiebert (2005), to improve their knowledge of words, students are 53 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 not only required to identify the words, but also to know the meaning of words and using them in a real context. in addition, harmer (2007) proposes four aspects of vocabulary mastery that students need to build up. first, the students need to know the definition of the word. second, students are required to know how to use the word in an appropriate level of formality which deal with word choice. third, students need to understand word formation, which is related with the function or part of speech. fourth, students need to know how to use the word in a correct grammatical form. those aspects are not an easy task for them. consequently, efl teachers, as the agent of change in the classroom where the students usually get english exposure, need to motivate them (ahmadi, ismail & abdullah, 2012). besides providing suitable materials, teachers introduce students with techniques to build their vocabulary. one of techniques that are usually introduced by teachers is taking a note when students meet new words. even though it is a conventional way in vocabulary building, schmitt (2000) states that vocabulary notebooks are good to facilitate students in vocabulary learning because it can improve their self-management skills. with vocabulary notebooks, they are trained to know their own goals and needs when meeting some unfamiliar words. another technique is retelling. after getting vocabulary input by reading, students retell the story based on their reading. without being asked to use the vocabulary, students automatically will do since the story they retell or rewrite is the same with the text. even though it is impossible for them to use all words, at least some portions of words learned are employed. in parallel, lee and muncie (2006) highlight that using the words productively in writing is important to make students remember the target vocabulary learned. methodology this research belongs to a descriptive qualitative research and obtained its data by interviewing five students who admitted that it was their first time in reading an english language novel. they were also chosen because they got the highest score on vocabulary from a group consisting of thirty-six students. to interview the participants, a guideline for semi guided interview was used as an instrument (see the appendix). the interview session was conducted using indonesian language for two until three hours through g-chat for 4 participants and whatsapp for one participant. after that, the data transcription from g-chat and whatsapp were copied in to pages of microsoft word application. then, the researcher did member checking by calling the respondents one by one to ensure that the researcher. next, the data were coded using three steps of coding such as open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. after coding, data analysis and discussion were presented based on categories shown below. the tasks in implementing lba in a reading class, two ultimate goals of this instruction were developing students’ attitude in reading and improving their vocabulary size. to achieve the goal, a novel that suits students’ characteristics is selected. for the techniques, the teacher designed a set of activity 54 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 to be done in the classroom. first, the teacher divided the books into some parts consisting of twenty to thirty pages to be read by the students per week outside the class. second, in every meeting, students were put in small groups to have a discussion related to assigned pages they had read. third, they were tested whether they read through a retelling quiz. fourth, a vocabulary quiz was also conducted to help students recognize words that they got from reading which was conducted using a dictation quiz. fifth, the teacher created an activity to help students more understand the story in the novel so that they could relate it to their own real life. findings students’ perception on the novel chosen topic. four students (angga, citra, dita, and erni) agreed that the novel chosen had an interesting topic able to develop their motivation in reading. angga said that the book was interesting to follow. beti stated that at the beginning, they felt intimidated because it was written fully in english and it was originally from an english speaking country. however, as time went by, she finally enjoyed the class after reading some pages and thought that the story in the novel was amusing. like beti, at the first time, citra had negative attitude toward the novel since it was her first time reading an english language novel. however, after reading some pages, she changed her mind. she was more interested in the reading after knowing that the story of the novel chosen was great and entertaining. she stated that after reading three times, she claimed that the story was funny and could make her laugh. then, she felt motivated in reading the book since she was curious what happened with the character in the next pages so that she kept reading the novel and finished it. like the others, dita perceived that the story of the novel was closely related to her own life. it made her interested in reading the novel. she also admitted that she liked the story so much that she could remember most of it even though the class had finished. she added that the novel used was appropriate for low level students because it was completed with illustration and the story was related to students’ daily life. it made students feel at ease in understanding the story. vocabulary. in relation to vocabulary in the novel, all respondents agreed that the novel was a good choice to build their vocabulary mastery. four students (angga, citra, dita and erni) stated the novel helped them know more about word formation in tenses (how to differentiate verb 2 and verb 3). beti and dita confessed that their knowledge of word derivation, like difference and different, suggest and suggestion, announce and announcement, was improved. beti also stated that after reading, her knowledge about words in terms of synonym was also increased. citra and erni added that the novel told about a kid’s daily activities and experiences. the context was able to be found around the students and vocabulary dominantly used in the novel was familiar for them. in effect, they could feel easy in understanding the content. even though some unfamiliar words were still found, it did not make them understand the story any less. culture. besides topic and vocabulary, what made them excited to read the book was new information about culture presented in the novel. 55 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 in relation with culture, dita stated that it was good to read a novel that was originally from america since she learned something new. she was excited to know about thanksgiving that the characters celebrated. students’ perception on activities based on the interviews, five students (angga, beti, citra, dita, and erni) perceived that activities conducted in lba such as vocabulary quizzes, retelling quizzes, group discussion, class discussion, and projects given can motivate them to read the novel and help them increase their vocabulary. even though some of them (beti, citra, and erni) admitted that the vocabulary quiz made them nervous coming to the class. however, they agreed to say that all activities done in lba were successful to assist them building vocabulary. in line with it, angga stated, reading the novel and all activities in literaturebased learning not only enabled them to know the meaning or definition but to know how to use words properly. dita also agreed that activities done were able to increase their understanding about word definition and meaning. vocabulary quizzes. three students (beti, citra and erni) stated that vocabulary quizzes made them feel under pressure. they felt that they were forced to read the novel if they wanted to get a good score. beti stated that at the first time, she was stressed coming to the class because of the vocabulary quiz since she did not read the novel at all. based on her confession, she should have read the book before coming to the class. if she did not read the book, she would not be able to answer vocabulary questions well and got a bad score. she admitted that the quiz made her frustrated. however, she stated that this quiz worked well to help improve her vocabulary mastery. like beti, citra felt the same way. she was anxious coming to the class because she did not read so she was not prepared for the vocabulary quiz. in effect, she was not able to do classroom activities which dominantly tested the students whether they read. having the same feeling like beti and citra, erni stated that at the beginning she could not enjoy the class because she always felt frustrated. she did not prepare or read the novel. so, she worried that she would get a bad score for the vocabulary quiz. even though they experienced an uninteresting thing in doing the vocabulary quiz because of lacking of preparation, they realized that this activity forced them to read. if the teacher did not apply this rule, students might have not read the novel. meanwhile, angga and dita were respondents who did not feel anxious with all classroom activities of lba including vocabulary quiz. they said that reading the novel was interesting and their vocabulary mastery was improving after reading. angga added that classroom activities such as vocabulary quizzes, retelling quizzes, group discussion, even the mid assignment, and the final project were all interesting for him. both of them also agreed that because of the activities done in lba especially vocabulary quiz, they could know the meaning of some unfamiliar words and they could also use the words in a right context accurately. even though three (beti, citra and erni) of them felt frustrated because of this quiz, all of the respondents agreed that this activity was effective to push them to read. vocabulary could also be improved by doing this activity. they also realized 56 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 that because the vocabulary quiz is presented using dictation activity where the students wrote the words what the teacher said using a correct spelling, their word knowledge in terms of pronunciation and spelling was improved. retelling quiz. besides vocabulary quiz, there was also retelling quiz. students perceived that this activity pushed them to read. if they did not read, they would submit a blank paper in this quiz and get a bad score. this activity was also a place where the students could use vocabulary in a context. angga admitted that this quiz and vocabulary quiz were the purpose of why he read the novel. by doing this quiz, he did not only know the definition and meaning of unfamiliar words he found, but he also could use the words in a context. like angga, beti said that she should prepare the quiz well by reading the novel. if she did not read it, she would not be able to retell the story comprehensively in retelling quiz. in parallel, erni stated that this quiz forced her to read. she kept reading the novel not only once but three times or four times to really understand the story so that she could be fluent in retelling the story in the quiz. students’ perception on strategies to build vocabulary using the novel the data from the interviews showed some techniques that students used to improve their vocabulary by reading the novel in lba. after meeting new vocabulary that they were not familiar with, beti, citra, dita and erni usually would ask their friends to know the meaning. while angga and beti explained that they often opened a dictionary to solve the problem, beti and dita found out the meaning from a translation tool in their smartphones. then, angga, beti and citra claimed that they guessed the meaning of the words from the context provided. they also admitted that after getting some new vocabulary, they do techniques to keep the vocabulary. those techniques are taking notes and using the new words. taking notes. students’ effort to remember the words they found was by taking some notes. it could be like a vocabulary journal or annotation written directly on the novel. beti stated that every time she got new words after reading, she noted them on a sticky memo then she stuck it on her room wall. taking note was also citra’s preference to remember new words. she said that she wrote the words on a note book, and she thought that by writing the words, she was able to know how to spell the words correctly. sometimes, she also made annotation directly on the novel by writing the indonesian translation of the words. doing like what citra did, dita and erni usually circled words that she did not know. after that, they looked for the meaning of them and wrote it near the words they circled in the novel. using the new words. besides taking some notes either on the book or directly on the novel, students used another technique to improve their vocabulary they learned from reading. beti, dita and erni said that they used the vocabulary after reading in their retelling quiz. to retell the story they read in certain pages, they tried to use the new words they found as much as they could. beti added that she also used the vocabulary in her writing projects for a mid-assignment which the topic was their dream and a final-assignment which was about their life experience. then, erni and citra also stated that they not only employed 57 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 the words in a writing task, but also used those words in speaking when they chatted with friends from the same department (english education department). citra even still remembered what new words she used in the conversation, such as involved, wrap, klutzy and footstep. dita added that one of the things that made her motivated to read the novel was because it was authentic so that it provided more vocabulary to learn. discussions the results of this research indicate that based on students’ perception, the novel as the learning material and activities done in implementing lba were effective to assist students in vocabulary building. even though at the beginning three students (beti, citra and erni) felt anxious when doing quizzes, they could enjoy it after some meetings. based on the data, they felt anxious and nervous because it was their first time reading a novel in english language. they felt insecure reading an authentic text because of the language barrier. in contrast, two participants (angga and dita) admitted that they did not feel what the three participants felt. it might have been caused by their high level of english proficiency. it is in line with norland and pruett-said (2006) who state that lba works well for students with good english proficiency. for those whose english proficiency is still in a survivor level, lba demands them to work harder in understanding the novel. however, after reading some pages in several meetings, they felt interested for some reasons. first, the novel was considered to be fit for freshmen because the topic was near from their daily life so that some of them might have a similar experience with the characters. in addition, illustration was presented in the novel so that it could help students understand the story. second, in terms vocabulary, since the topic was about daily life, vocabulary used in the novel was not too hard for them. unfamiliar words did not hinder students’ comprehension. it indicated that vocabulary used in the novel was not far from the students’ capacity. it is in parallel with nation (2006) who states that reading materials should contain 95% to 98% familiar words so that students can feel at ease in understanding the content. it is also supported by krashen (2003) with his input hypothesis which states that learners need a comprehensible input in acquiring a new language. comprehensible input itself is defined as an input given to the students should be little beyond their current understanding. from the data, it can be known that the novel was interesting since it was related to their students’ daily life. hiþmanoðlu (2005) was in line with it by saying that reading material is supposed to be interesting and entertaining for students so that they will feel attracted to read more. for the strategies in building vocabulary, when the students found unfamiliar words in reading, they made efforts to understand the meaning. from the data, it could be seen that the students seldom asked to the teachers. they tried to find the meaning by their own. it indicates that lba is good to foster students’ autonomous learning. that is in line with a research result done by nassaji (2003) that lba enables students to learn independently outside the classroom. after getting new words, students did a following activity named retelling quiz. the teacher 58 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 asked students to retell after reading the novel using their own words. usually, in this session, they used the new words learned. this activity was like a trigger for students to use the words in contexts. it is in line with lee and muncie (2006) who highlight that using the words productively in writing is prominent to make students remember the target vocabulary learned well. additionally, outside the class, some of them also used the words for speaking to their mates. so, it is true what folse (2004) and linse and nunan (2005) say that by developing their vocabulary, students can perform the language well. the results imply that in applying lba for efl students, teachers could introduce some short stories as short authentic texts first to provide scaffolding for the students before going on to reading a novel. it is because not all students have read an english language novel. reading novel without giving a prior introduction with a more simple text will make them anxious and nervous joining activities in the classroom. it can demotivate them in reading an english text when they cannot understand what they read and finally get a dissatisfying score for it. after getting sufficient experiences by reading short stories in english language, their confidence might be sufficiently shaped. then, the teacher can give a higher level of literary work like a novel. by doing so, the students will not be stressed reading a novel. it is since if they are given a novel directly without preliminary, they may be anxious. so, they might have a negative perception before doing the task that could discourage them in reading. conclusion lba is a good idea applied for a reading class. however, students need a proper material. an english education department of one university in indonesia implemented the lba using a novel. to encourage the students to read, the teacher supported it with activities such as a vocabulary quiz and retelling quiz. based on the students’ perception, the activities done are effective to push them read and improve their vocabulary even though some students felt frustrated and anxious at the beginning, but finally they admitted that they got benefits from the activities. their frustration and anxiety were mainly caused by their lack of experiences in reading english texts. the feeling might have been caused by their unfamiliarity with a novel in english language. however, after reading several pages, students started to be interested in reading the book. so, it is suggested for teachers who want to implement lba in an efl context where the students are not familiar with an english language novel to start it by giving a simpler literary work like a short story first before using novels. with a short story, students who do not like reading will not be overwhelmed reading the long writing work written in the target language with unfamiliar vocabulary. unlike novels, short stories are simple and short. it is good as preliminary materials before introducing students with novels. in relation to the culture learned from the book, based on the result, students reported that thanksgiving is the only culture introduced in the novel. in fact, there are still other culture values that can be dug more. the teacher is suggested to assist students to explore cultures 59 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 embedded in the language learned from the novel. the culture may be related to the event or taboo and politeness in the country where the setting is explored described in the novel. the conclusion is that teachers in efl contexts may apply the approach to develop their interest in reading and help them build vocabulary. however, they had to know the students characteristics. by knowing their characteristics, teachers are able to know what material and what activities designed to support the process. however, it is strongly emphasized that by using literary work and lba, students can build their vocabulary. references ahmadi, m., ismail, h. & abdullah, m. (2013). the importance of metacognitive reading strategy awareness in reading comprehension. english language teaching, 6(10): 235-244. folse, k. (2004). vocabulary myths: applying second language research to classroom teaching. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching (4th edition). essex: pearson education ltd hiebert, e., & kamil, m. (2005). teaching and learning vocabulary. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. hiþmanoðlu, m. (2005). teaching english through literature. journal of language and linguistic studies, 1(1) 53-66. krashen, s. d. (2003). explorations in language acquisition and use: the taipei lectures. portsmouth, n.h: heinemann. lee, s.h., & muncie, j. (2006). from receptive to productive: improving esl learners’ use of vocabulary in a postreading composition task. tesol quarterly, 40, 295-320. linse, c. t. &nunan, d. (2005). practical english language teaching: young learners. new york: mcgrawhill esl/elt. nassaji, h. (2003). l2 vocabulary learning from context: strategies, knowledge sources, and their relationship with success in l2 lexical inferencing. tesol quarterly, 37, 645-670. nation, p. (2001). learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. norland, d. l., & pruett-said, t. (2006). a kaleidoscope of models and strategies for teaching english to speakers of other languages. westport, conn.: teacher ideas press. schmitt, n. (2000). vocabulary in language teaching. cambridge university press, cambridge. tomlinson, b. (2011). introduction: principles and procedures of materials development. in b. tomlinson (ed.) materials development in language teaching (second edition). cambridge; cambridge university press, pp. 1-34. violetta-irene, k. (2015). the use of literature in the language classroom: methods and aims. international journal of information and education technology, 5 (1), pp. 74-79. 60 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 appendix questions of semi-guided interview used: 1. bagaimana menurut anda tentang kelas reading kemarin? 2. bagaimana menurut anda tentang novel yang di pakai? 3. menurut anda apakah dengan membaca novel di kelas reading yang anda ikuti sekarang ini bisa meningkatkan vocabulary? ini kan pengalaman pertama membaca novel bahasa inggris. bagaimana perasaan anda? apakah anda mengalami kesulitan? kesulitan soal vocab? bagaimana cara anda mengatasi kesulitan tersebut? 4. setelah mendapatkan kosa kata baru, apa yang anda lakukan untuk lebih memahami dan mengingatnya? pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 pengantar juni 2016 abstract materials and methodology play a significant role in a language classroom. these two elements need to be in line with each other to help achieve the shared learning goals. one of the methodologies that have been widely employed, but still not well-permeated among teachers in indonesia is communicative language teaching (clt). however, not many studies on seeing the relationship between methodology and materials have been conducted. to bridge this gap, this study aims to evaluate the clt-ness of the national course book bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1. to conduct the evaluation, a checklist adapted from grant’s and cunningsworth’s was employed as an evaluation tool. the research findings indicate that while the coursebook made a clear attempt to uphold clt, as observed from its learning goals for each chapter and the coursebook introduction, several aspects of the coursebook, such as the tasks and activities, needed to be improved. keywords: materials, evaluation, clt-ness, coursebook introduction materials play a pivotal role in a language classroom. together with teachers and students, learning materials, including coursebooks, could help achieving the learning goals. as stated by allwright (1981 in hutchinson and torres, 1994), the opportunity to learn in the classroom is the result of interaction among learners, teachers and materials. the interaction among learners, teachers and materials is intertwined by the methodology being used. therefore, it is important that the approach underlying the teaching methodology and materials should be in line with each other. this coherence is to ensure that each element of the learning process could support each other in achieving the shared learning goals. evaluating the clt-ness of bahasa inggris untuk sma/ ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1 coursebook for secondary school students in indonesia puput arfiandhani is a lecturer in the depar tment of english education at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakara. she received her master’s degree in tesol from the university of nottingham, uk. prior to star ting her postgraduate study, as a fulbright foreign language teaching assistant, puput assisted indonesian language classes at yale university, u.s. her research interests include language policy, material design, teacher motivation, and teacher possibleself. 26-38 27 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 within the context of indonesia, communicative language teaching (clt) methodology has been implemented in english language classrooms since the implementation of english curriculum 1984 (musthafa, 2001). clt becomes a favorable teaching approach as it focuses on achieving students’ communicative competence. this goal serves the aim of english language teaching (elt) in indonesia, which includes achieving communicative competence, competitive skills and language and cultural understanding (departemen pendidikan nasional, 2006). one of the educational elements that could help succeeding the learning goals is coursebooks. coursebooks could help achieve the stated learning goals. according to tomlinson (2003), learning facilitation includes informing learners about the language, providing experience of the language in use, stimulating language use, and helping learners to discover the language for themselves. therefore, it is important to ensure that the teaching materials, including the coursebooks and the classroom instruction, embody the same teaching and learning principles. in indonesia, to help teachers with the materials and to give a guideline on what to be conveyed, a national coursebook is suggested. more importantly, the suggestion on employing national coursebook is to ensure that every teacher could have access to quality materials. this suggestion is not to impose teachers to use only the national coursebook. teachers could still choose their own preferred coursebook. however, those who consider that the coursebook provided by the government supports their instructional practices could use the coursebook in their classrooms. due to the significance of a coursebook, it is important that the national coursebook should also represent the teaching approach being nationally promoted. to find out whether the coursebook embody the teaching approach suggested, a coursebook evaluation could be conducted. evaluating a coursebook could give an overview on how the lessons will be conducted and whether the rationales fit the classroom context so that necessary material adaptation can be performed. with the introduction of curriculum 2013, a new coursebook, bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/ smk/mak kelas x semester 1 coursebook, is nationally implemented. however, not much research has been conducted. this study aims to evaluate the clt-ness of the coursebook to see whether the nationally mandated material is in line and gives support towards the approach suggested within the english language classroom contexts in indonesia. to achieve this goal, this first section of the paper will review the literature on materials and methods, the reasons to do materials evaluation, evaluation stages and evaluation tools. the context of the learners will then be explained before the discussion and conclusion are presented. literature review materials and methods the use of materials, especially coursebooks, could help teachers implement teaching methods. according to mcgrath (2002), materials could be encouraging and motivating for teachers in the case where a new approach is being introduced or 28 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 where there are many inexperienced teachers. this is especially true if the coursebook in details reflects a certain methodology and provides guidance on how to carry out the lessons based on the new approach (mcgrath, 2002). however, in the case where the materials are too rigidly structured, teachers do not have enough space to tailor the materials to suit their own teaching contexts. as mcgrath (2002) further points out, it could be frustrating for the experienced teachers to have all the methodology explained in details because they do not have any room and flexibility to adapt the materials to fit in the needs of the class. therefore, the coursebooks design should also pay attention on whether the teachers are experienced or inexperienced in which an educational reform is being implemented. one of education reforms in elt that has gained wide popularity in many parts of the world is communicative language teaching (clt). clt, which accommodates the need for meaningful communicativeness within language learning, came in the early 1970. this approach is appealing because it could facilitate the needs for flexibility to suit diverse needs across many contexts. this flexibility is important to help students be able to apply the knowledge they get inside the classrooms into their own life contexts. additionally, clt becomes a more favourable approach because clt design allows the integration of four language skills, which intertwine with each other to achieve communicative competence (richards & rodgers, 2001). along with the growing global practice of clt approach, more materials embody communicative approach to compliment the teaching practices. those who apply clt in their classrooms consider materials as an element that affects the quality of classrooms interaction and language use; this consideration gives materials a primary role of promoting communicative approach (richards & rodgers, 2001). therefore, to achieve communicative aims, within this approach, materials should be able to be adapted accordingly to suit different learning contexts. according to richards and rodgers (2001), there are five principles of clt to be applied into classroom practices: learning by doing, authentic and meaningful communication orientation, focusing on fluency, integrating different language skills in communication, and learning from mistakes as a communicative process. learning by doing in clt, classroom activities should facilitate learners to be actively involved in the learning process so that they get more target language exposure by practicing it. for instance, to teach students about an argumentative text, instead of spending the whole lesson hours to explain about the text, teachers also need to get students to practice making an argumentative text. in the field of second language acquisition, munoz’s (2011) study on 159 college students in spain shows that there is a positive correlation between language exposure and their language proficiency. therefore, exposing learners to language use could positively contribute towards their language mastery. authentic and meaningful communication orientation authenticity and meaningfulness are two 29 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 fundamental elements for effective learning mastery. even more, along with the widespread use of communicative approach, teachers have made more efforts to simulate life situation in the classrooms (guariento and morley, 2001). furthermore, along with the rise of clt (buendgenskosten, 2014), the concept of authenticity has drawn various interpretations. according to clavel-arroitia and fuster-márquez (2014), for some, the scope of authenticity includes texts and materials used in class, while some others also refer to tasks assigned to students. as stated in buendgens-kosten (2014), authenticity refers to the realness and genuineness of real life situation in texts or tasks either in the language used, contexts presented or the students’ responses expected to be drawn. meanwhile, as stated in brandl (2007), activity meaningfulness is what allows the information to be retained and the learning process to be taken place. authenticity and meaningfulness can happen when the practices facilitate genuine real life communicative needs in the classrooms. to ensure meaningful communication to take place, while the activities should reflect genuine real-life communication purposes, the activity selection should also pay attention to learners’ language proficiency. focusing on fluency clt also focuses on fostering fluency in language learning. according to richards (2006), fluency is defined as the ability to perform natural language use in communication. further, he explains that fluency could be achieved by facilitating learners to perform meaning negotiation, to avoid communication breakdown, to correct misunderstanding, and to communicate their ideas. integrating different language skills in communication one of the most common misconceptions of clt is that the methodology emphasizes more on speaking and writing practice, whilst, all four competences: reading, writing, listening and speaking should actually receive equal focus (spada, 2007). therefore, while oral communication should be practiced a lot, activities like reading that allows intent communication between the authors and the readers should also be promoted. the integration of different language skills in the classroom could help to prepare students to communicate in real life situations where one skill in isolations rarely happens. for example, when interacting with other people, the listening skill to catch what the interlocutor mentions is as important as the speaking skills needed to respond and participate in the conversation. therefore, to prepare the students to survive the real life communication, different language skills integration in the teaching methodology should be included. learning from mistakes as a creative process rather than seen as indications of lacks of cognitive skills, errors and mistakes are considered as a sign of learners’ affective situation. in the field of educational psychology, macintyre and gardner (1994 in dornyei, 2010) observed the performance of 71 students of french with and without camera. the research result indicated that some students’ lack of classroom 30 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 involvement, rather than showing a sign of cognitive deficit, relates more to learners’ anxiety. this finding supports the clt principle that making errors when learning language is a positive sign for a learning process to occur. therefore, errors and mistakes should be expected to happen as a normal part of the learning process, which are not to be looked down. these five clt principles should be reflected into the learning process to be able achieve the communicative competence. therefore, all elements of a learning process, including the materials and methodology should reflect these principles. in short, a coherent approach that is represented both in the materials, including the coursebooks, and the teaching approach could contribute positively towards achieving learners’ communicative competence. why should we evaluate materials? there are several reasons to evaluate materials. evaluation could help reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of a program, or in this case the materials, so that this reflection could improve the program. according to mcgrath (2002), materials evaluation is important for teachers, so that they could understand the strength and weaknesses of the materials and therefore, could select which coursebook suits their classroom contexts better. for example, a coursebook which emphasizes on the potential resources in tourism areas might serve the needs of schools in tourism areas better, in comparison to coursebook which emphasizes on daily activities. additionally, the understanding on the coursebooks’ strengths and weaknesses, could be used to inform book publishers on what to improve. additionally, it could also inform teachers about what to do more in the classrooms and about what to adjust. furthermore, the outcome of the evaluation process could help teachers make better decisions regarding to classroom instructions. teachers’ skills and strategies in evaluating and adapting teaching materials to specific teaching contexts are especially important because they do not always have the authority to select their own materials. even when the higher authorities, e.g. ministry of education officials or course organizers require teachers to use a specific coursebook, the process of evaluating materials could give teachers insights into how the materials are principally organized so that they can adapt the materials accordingly into their teaching practices (mcdonough and shaw, 1993). similarly, when coursebooks do not sufficiently meet the learning goals or address learners’ needs, material evaluation and adaptation can bridge the gap (mcgrath, 2002). evaluation stages cunningsworth (1995) suggests three types of materials evaluation depending on the aims of the evaluation: pre-use evaluation, in-use evaluation, and post-use evaluation. within pre-use evaluation, materials are evaluated based on their potential performance. this type of evaluation is used for selecting which coursebook to be used. pre-use evaluation is usually conducted when the materials has not been widely used yet. it is used to evaluate the potential strengths and weaknesses, so that the weaknesses could be improved before the materials are widely used. meanwhile, as the name suggests, in-use evaluation is conducted towards materials that are being in use 31 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 and are still being monitored by the authority, e.g. ministry of education and course organizers, to determine whether it could achieve the learning goals when being used in real teaching contexts. lastly, post-use evaluation refers to material evaluation that is conducted after a certain period of time to identify materials’ strength and weaknesses, and thus making it the most reliable evaluation. as currently, the current curriculum, curriculum 2013 is still being reviewed, the inuse evaluation stage is going to be used in this study. evaluation tools mcgrath (2002) states that a part from linguistic and cultural features, coursebooks should offer methodological support for teachers, so that less experienced teachers can learn how to apply the intended methodology or do experiment with other teaching methodologies. hence, coursebooks play an important role to help teachers implementing any educational reform, including a new approach. with regard to evaluating materials, mcgrath (2002) mentions that there are three methods to evaluate materials: the impressionistic, the checklist, and the in-depth methods. the impressionistic method refers to evaluating the materials at first glance without further structure and investigation. within this method, no evaluation tools such as guidelines or checklists are needed. the evaluation is done through scanning the book at glance. meanwhile, in-depth methods refer to materials evaluation that involves the educational actors’ (e.g. teachers and students) perceptions on their experiences when using the coursebooks. the third method, is the checklist method. checklists are often used because they are systematic, cost effective, in a convenient format, and explicit (mcgrath, 2002). some adaptation and adjustment of the checklists can be made to fit in the needs of a particular context (mcgrath, 2002). however, as mentioned by tomlinson (2003), one of the principal problems with checklists is that it often generates general judgment about the materials as opposed to in depth and systematic investigation of the contents. therefore, checklist adaptation should be made carefully in order to avoid leading to a general judgment about the materials. in this study, a checklist is used as the evaluation tool to figure out the strength and weaknesses of the coursebook. the indonesian context since mid 2013,the ministry of education and culture started the piloting of curriculum 2013. this curriculum emphasizes on nurturing learners’ autonomy. that being said, the curriculum encourages students-centred learning. in the context of english language teaching (elt), students centred learning is promoted and permeated in clt. in short, in elt classrooms, clt is in support of curriculum 2013. along with the implementation of curriculum 2013, indonesia started to use a new coursebook, bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/ smk/mak kelas x semester 1. as a national coursebook, the textbook was designed based on the national syllabus. the goals of elt instructions in indonesia include communicative competence, competitive skills, and language and cultural understanding (departemen pendidikan nasional, 2006), which can be seen since from 32 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 the competence standards (can-do statements) stated in the coursebook. there are many challenges that teachers face to utilize teaching materials in a more communicative way. firstly, most english teachers in grade 10 in most indonesian public schools base their english lesson with the same book regardless where they live in indonesia, which have diverse cultural, social, and economic contexts. this implies that coursebook contents should give teachers flexibility to tailor the lesson to suit their students’ diverse needs. additionally, most teachers might not have experienced clt when they were students. according to unesco institute for statistics’ report (2006 in secondary education regional information base: country profile – indonesia, 2010), almost 50% of upper secondary teachers were 30-39 years old in 2006. this means when these teachers were in secondary schools between 1980s and early 1990s, clt has not been widely promoted and practiced in indonesia. this lack of experience with clt when they were students signifies a need for coursebook which could help teachers implement the approach. another challenge is that most english teachers in indonesia may not receive sufficient training to implement the new coursebook due to the lack of resources and the geographical situation. teacher trainings conducted to facilitate new educational reforms may not be able to include all english teachers. therefore, only one english teacher from each province was selected to join the training to implement the coursebook, and they are expected to disseminate the knowledge to other english teachers in their areas. the training may unlikely ensure that all teachers, especially in underprivileged areas, could equally gain necessary skills for being critical in using and adapting the coursebook their needs. this problem of teacher training ineffectiveness is also reflected on choi and lee’s (2008) survey on current trends and issues in english language education in asia which mentions that the common problems in indonesia among others are the lack of proper resources and materials and the lack of qualified teachers. seeing these challenges, it could be concluded that within indonesian teaching contexts, many english teachers might be unfamiliar with the clt. therefore, it is essential to look at whether the coursebook reflects the particular approach. research methodology in order to evaluate the clt-ness of bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1, the framework used in this research is the principles of clt proposed by richards and rodgers (2001) mentioned previously. the last point (e) will not be included into the evaluation tool because handling learners’ errors and mistakes is contingent upon classroom situation, which is unobservable from coursebooks. those four principles underlie the evaluation tool design of this research. the evaluation tool used was the checklist developed by cunningsworth (1995) and grant (1991 in dewi & saukah, 2013). other than complementing each other, these checklists use open-ended question format that gives more room to evaluate more comprehensively and elaboratively. the questions on the checklists were then grouped based on the principles of clt. the final result of the checklist used in this study to evaluate the 33 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 materials can be seen in apendix a. findings and discussion the findings of the study indicate that the coursebook, bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/ smk/mak kelas x semester 1, indicated clear references to clt. firstly, the references to clt are observable in the preface of the coursebook. as stated in its preface, the book aims to foster communicative ability. this aim indicated the coursebook commitment to achieve the similar goal of clt fostering communicative competence (richards & rodgers, 2001). secondly, the reference to clt was also reflected in its syllabus organization. the syllabus organization, which could be observed from the table of contents of the book, showed that seven out of nine chapters named after the linguistic functions to be achieved. this indicated that the coursebook was structured based on functional syllabus., instead of grammar or vocabulary. for example, the theme of seven chapters out of the nine included talking about self, complimenting and showing care, expressing intention, congratulating others, describing people, describing historical places, and giving announcements. however, in two chapters, the goals were less functional. for example, the chapter 6 is visiting ecotourism places and the chapter 7 is visiting niagara falls. these goals were less functional because they do not indicate any language function to be achieved. it could be suggested that the name of the chapters could be adjusted to indicate the communicative goals by revising them, for example, into: describing ecotourism places and describing tourism places. the reference of the place, niagara falls, could be adjusted into indonesian contexts by choosing a tourism place with which learners were more familiar. in addition, the learning goals stated in the beginning of each chapter made a reference to communicativeness and real life usage. for example, the learning goals stated for chapter five of the coursebook, ‘describing people,’ presented can-do statements such as students can 1. show their seriousness in learning about simple descriptive texts about people; 2. show their attention, confidence, and responsibility when applying simple descriptive texts in their real life; 3. identify social functions, text structure, and linguistic components in simple descriptive texts about people; 4. respond meaningfully simple descriptive texts about people, both written or spoken; 5. compose simple descriptive texts about people both written and spoken. seeing these references that the coursebook made to clt, it would be interesting to see whether the coursebook contents also shows commitment to clt. the detailed applications of clt in its content is presented below learning by doing within this principle, learners should be facilitated with opportunities to practice the target language in communication (richards and rodgers, 2001). in many efl contexts, including indonesia, most english classes provide the main source of exposure for learners to practice the language. therefore, the activities in coursebooks play a pivotal role in allocating how much time 34 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 and exposure of english learners may receive in the classrooms. while guided activities like completing sentences or fill in the gaps might be helpful for learners to practice the language, the number of these guided activities could have been reduced and replaced with activities that gave more freedom for learners to practice the target language based on their needs and actual contexts. for example, in chapter 3 expressing intent, task 2 required students to fill in an incomplete dialogue about planning a trip, could have been replaced with arranging students’ personal trip.. for example, rather than instructing the students to continue the dialogues about two fictional characters’ plan on vacation, the task could have been changed into asking students to work with one or two people and talk about things to do together for the upcoming weekend, as well as write down their conversation. in conclusion, more activities stated in the coursebook could have been improved to provide more meaningful and less controlled for the learners to encourage learners’ active and creative participation in the learning process. authentic and meaningful communication orientation authenticity and meaningfulness are important ingredients to create a communicative language learning process. brandl (2008) asserts that meaningfulness is what allows the information to be retained and the learning process to be taken place. therefore, as an important element of language learning, as mentioned in tomlinson (2003), materials should reflect the reality of language use and help learners to learn in a way that is similar to the circumstances in which they will have to use the language. the coursebook showed authentic and meaningful communication in its activities to the extent that the language activities covered not only classroom situations but also contexts outside of the classrooms, including technologyrelated communication, e.g. sending email and making phone calls. however, some topics and contents might fit students with a higher level of economic background, but not necessarily with students living in more remote areas with less supported learning environment. for example, in chapter 1, students were asked to respond to an email which referred to befriending a friend from abroad. students from underprivileged areas might find it challenging to relate to some of the coursebook’s contents like email, some electronic devices, and travelling abroad. authenticity and meaningfulness take place when activities facilitate genuine real life communicative needs of the students. thus, the activities of the coursebook, which were nationally applied in most english classes, should have also paid attention to diverse learning contexts. in short, while the coursebook significantly shows authentic and meaningful communication orientation, some of the contents might not be suitable for all contexts. focusing on fluency according to richards (2006), fluency is defined as the ability to perform natural language use in communication. this could be achieved by facilitating learners to perform meaning negotiation, to avoid communication breakdown, to correct misunderstanding, and to communicate 35 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 their intent, in addition to demonstrate grammatical accuracy. it is important that coursebooks provide activities that encourage students to also focus on their fluency and not be restrained by merely grammatical or vocabulary accuracy. the finding showed that in terms of this principle, the coursebook provided many activities that required students to practice their english. for example, one of the tasks on chapter 2 was for students to give compliments based on given situations. this kind of activity provided students a chance to focus on their fluency when practicing the language. however, some activities following the section of ‘grammar review’ lacked correlation with the grammatical structure being explained previously. the materials in ‘grammar review’ in each chapter could have been better linked with the next activities. some of the practices for the grammar learned included fill-in-the-blanks, which were not communicative, let alone focusing on students’ fluency. while these activities may be helpful to strengthen students’ certain grammatical knowledge, this activity will not be found in real lie communication. as a result, students missed the opportunity to practice their language in a communicative way. for example, in chapter 3 on describing historical places, after vocabulary enhancement part, students were asked to name the things on the pictures. this activity could have been modified to focus more on fluency. rather than completing and recalling vocabulary, students could have been asked to describe the pictures, so that vocabulary recalling could also take place in a more communicative practice. integrating different language skills in communication in terms of language skills integration, the coursebook discussed in this study encouraged learners to practice the language through interactions through its ‘think-pair-share’ activities. to encourage learners’ interaction, many activities placed reading as the input of knowledge, and the task that followed was merely recalling the information from the reading. this information recalling was not a communicative activity. in addition, in this particular coursebook, language skills were learned individually and were not integrated with other skills. in the case where students are working with their peers, ‘writing skill’ were not integrated with other skills. for example, writing skills could have been integrated with reading, in which students could have bee asked to continue a story that they had just read. in conclusion, the coursebook, bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1, has demonstrated attempts at bringing clt-ness into english class, which became its strengths. first of all, the coursebook showed a strong explicit reference to clt. this reference was shown in the preface and learning goals. secondly, a strong focus on authentic and meaningful communicative orientation can also be found in the coursebook. additionally, many activities to encourage students to practice english were also available. for example, in chapter 6, students would speak about tourism places in their hometown. however, several aspects can be done to improve the clt-ness of the coursebook. the first aspect to be improved is that various socioeconomics contexts that surround indone36 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 sian students should be taken into account. some of the coursebook contents tended to be unsuitable for students from underprivileged economic background. because of this, some students may find it hard to relate the materials. therefore, the contents of the coursebook should be also about teachers of both privileged and underprivileged background as well students from urban and rural areas. second of all, activities that promote skills integration as opposed to practice one skill in isolation should be encouraged. in addition, listening skills were not offered by this coursebook although this skill is tested in the national exam. listening activities are also an essential aspect to achieve the language competence. considering these areas of weaknesses, improvement to better demonstrate clt-ness in the coursebook should be made. this coursebook improvement is especially essential in the context of indonesia, where classrooms, which include the use of coursebook, play a pivotal role in providing learners with language exposure. more importantly, because, as cited in dardjowidjojo (2000 in kirkpatrick, 2007), many english teachers in indonesia may not receive adequate preparation in implementing any educational reforms in indonesia, referencing their classroom practice to the coursebook which embodies clt will better help teachers to foster communicative competence. conclusion to sum up, while bahasa inggris untuk sma/ ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1 to some extent reflects the clt-ness and shows attempts to fulfill the need for communicative approach within indonesian elt contexts, a lot more improvements are needed as the current coursebook does not sufficiently embody clt. these improvements include the adjustment of themes and choices of situations to better suit broader socioeconomic backgrounds, the authentic and meaningful orientation, and the integration of different language skills. therefore, the clt-ness of the coursebook should also be improved to help teacher better practice clt as well as adapting the coursebook to suit their teaching contexts. references buendgens-kosten, j. (2014). authenticity. elt journal, 68(4), 457-459. brandl, k. (2007). communicative language teaching in action: putting principles to work. new jersey: prentice hall. choi, y. h., & lee, h. w. (2008). current trends and issues in english language education in asia. the journal of asia tefl, 5(2), 134. clavel-arroitia, b., & fuster-márquez, m. (2014). the authenticity of real texts in advanced english language textbooks. elt journal, 68(2), 124-134. cunningsworth, a. (1995). choosing your coursebook. oxford: macmillan heinemann. departemen pendidikan nasional. (2006). peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional no. 23 tahun 2006 tentang standar kompetensi lulusan satuan pendidikan dasar dan menengah. dewi, r. r., & saukah, a. (2013). the communicativeness of english in focus for grade viii of junior high school. undergraduate thesis. malang: state university of malang. 37 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 dörnyei, z. (2010). the relationship between language aptitude and language learning motivation: individual differences from a dynamic systems perspective. continuum companion to second language acquisition, 247267. guariento, w., & morley, j. (2001). text and task authenticity in the efl classroom. elt journal, 55(4), 347-353. hutchinson, t., & torres, e. (1994). the textbook as agent of change. elt journal, 48(4), 315-328. kanter, c.l.s. (2013). the communicative language teaching method in a korean english elementary textbook. a capstone project: hamline university, minnesota. kirkpatrick, a. (2007). teaching english across cultures. what do english language teachers need to know to know how to teach english. ea journal 23(2), 20-36. mcdonough, j., & shaw, c. (1993). materials and methods in elt. oxford: blackwell. mcgrath, i. (2002). materials evaluation and design for language teaching. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. musthafa. b. (2001). communicative language teaching in indonesia: issues of theoretical assumptions and challenges in classroom practice. journal of southeast asian education. 2 (2), 296-308. richards, j. c. (2006). communicative language teaching today. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (2001). approaches and methods in language teaching. new york: cambridge university press. savignon, s. j. (1991). communicative language teaching: state of the art. tesol quarterly, 25(2), 261-278. sheldon, l. e. (1988). evaluating elt textbooks and materials. elt journal, 42(4), 237-246. spada, n. (2007). communicative language teaching. in international handbook of english language teaching (pp. 271-288). new york: springer. tomlinson, b. (ed.). (2003). developing materials for language teaching. london: continuum. unesco bangkok. (2010). secondary education regional information base: country profileindonesia. williams, d. (1983). developing criteria for textbook evaluation. elt journal, 37(3), 251255. 38 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 appendix 1 – clt-ness checklist based on cunningsworth and grant within richards and rodgers’s principles of clt framework clt-ness checklist a.) communicative claims does the course book claim to be communicative in its aim? are specific communicative aims or objectives indicated, either generally, or in connection with individual units? is the syllabus of the coursebook primarily communicative (e.g.: by using communicative activities, functions, etc. as its primary units)? is there reference to communicative methodology? b.) learning by doing they emphasize the communicative functions of language – the job people do using the language – not just the forms. they emphasize skills in using the language, not just the forms of language, and they are therefore activity based. c.) authentic and meaningful communication orientation if communicative activities are used as learning material, are they real, in terms of real world, or realistic, i.e. communicative in the classroom situation only? do realistic activities promote the learning of communicative skills and strategies which are transferable to real-life communication? both content and methods reflect the authentic language of everyday life. d.) focusing on fluency they emphasize fluency, not just accuracy. e.) integrating different language skills in communication they usually have a good balance among the four language skills, but may emphasize listening and speaking more than a traditional textbook does. they encourage work in groups and pairs, and therefore make heavier demands on teachers’ organizational abilities. *) sentences in italics are from grant’s checklist and the rest are from cunningsworth’s checklist. pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 160 article history: submitted: 16 april 2022 reviewed: 12 july 2022 edited: 15 july 2022 article accepted: 28 july 2022 the strategies in learning english listening skills used by the eighth-graders mery eka wahyuni, nina inayati *) universitas muhammadiyah malang, indonesia *)corresponding author email: nina@umm.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14504 abstract listening is a receptive skill that plays a crucial role in learning english because it is a language modality used in direct conversation. this study determined the strategies used by the eighth-graders in english listening lessons and their reasoning. this study implemented a mixed-method approach and was carried out in a private junior high school in probolinggo, involving 62 students. to collect the data, the researchers employed surveys and interviews to determine the types of student learning strategies in listening lessons and the reasons for using these strategies. the survey data were analyzed quantitatively using weighted means, while the qualitative data from the interview were thematically analyzed. the findings indicated that the most used strategies were metacognitive (x=3.77), cognitive (x=3.69), and social-affective (x=3.40). next, students’ reasons for using the metacognitive strategies would understand the topic, think about the learning process, and evaluate evaluations that help them do the listening test. students could understand the meaning of the topics they hear, make students focus on learning objectives, and know the progress of learning applied. by knowing students' learning strategies and their reasons, teachers can be more creative in choosing the proper learning methods because they know students' character and what they need. keywords: english as a foreign language (efl); listening; listening strategy; learning strategy =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14504 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14504&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 161 introduction listening is a receptive skill that plays a crucial role in english learning because it is a basic mode of conversation found in both direct and indirect conversations (hanifa, 2014). before students can respond to teachers in the teaching-learning process, they should first hear to collect information and concepts. listening is also about understanding the speaker's ideas, information, or lead. according to nawangsasi (2015), listening has three advantages for language learning activities. first, it can give examples of pronouncing a word correctly and adequately. second, students can learn speed, stress, accents, and intonation. third, it allows students to learn grammar indirectly. according to the current indonesian curriculum, one of the language skills that students must master is listening. students are expected to have good abilities to respond verbally in a transactional and interpersonal manner. of the four language skills, listening strategies are often used in communication. according to amir (2018), learning strategies can help english students master this skill independently, individually and in groups. indirectly, the method for listening and the ability to use it can help students to improve language learning abilities and achievement. however, many teachers still struggle to implement innovative listening strategies for students in the learning process because they lack an understanding of the importance of explaining the steps (hence the strategy) before listening activities begin. often, the teacher only gives orders to listen to an audio text and answer questions so that students only focus on what is given. past research has identified learning strategies in listening skill instruction in secondary schools. for example, muhammad et al. (2013) studied the techniques used by senior high school students in bandar lampung, while rini (2017) discussed students' listening comprehension difficulties and strategies used by students in the intermediate listening class using the qualitative method. another researcher, bao (2017), investigated the listening strategies used by mongolian teachers and students in higher education contexts. furthermore, lewier and nendissa (2020) also studied students' listening strategies at the english education study program of pattimura university, ambon. although previous studies have covered listening strategies used in teaching and learning english listening skills, limited studies were conducted at the secondary school level, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 162 especially focusing on the 8th grader's strategy use and reasoning, which is important since the understanding could help teachers better design specific listening activities for secondary school level and improve students’ learning experience and outcomes. in addition, secondary school students could benefit from the study by knowing the strategies and their features to make better decisions about which strategies to use. literature review this section mainly focuses on literature related to english language teaching and learning, listening strategies, and learning english listening skills by the eighth graders. english language teaching and learning english is one of the most important foreign languages taught in indonesian schools. according to aufa (2018), there are three main functions of teaching english in indonesia: 1) as a means of international communication, 2) as a tool to help indonesians thrive in the global world, 3) as an instrument in utilizing modern science and technology for development. language learning is long and complex. learning is obtaining or gaining knowledge about a subject or skill through experiential learning or instruction (brown, 2000). ihwanudin (2012) stated that language learning is a step in which students can explore all their abilities to act, feel, and think. learning another language is not an instant process. it needs regular practice to succeed. in other words, learning a new language requires a long process to see the results. language learning aims to use the language, respond in all situations, and read and write the language being studied. therefore, student learning efforts are essential to success (özer, 2020). different from learning, teaching is a process of coaching and facilitating learning. desmita (2009) defined teaching as an activity in organizing students and providing relevant facilities to support effective learning. needless to say, that teaching is always connected to learning. the teacher's understanding of learning determines his knowledge of teaching. according to nurfitrianah & faridatul (2013), teaching aims to provide lessons to someone (students) by providing instructions that allow them to experience a series of events. teaching is essentially a process, namely managing and organizing the environment around students so https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 163 they can use them and grow by carrying out the learning activities. in addition, effective teaching media and activities are crucial for the success of the instruction process, such as using games to increase student's engagement and motivation in language learning (inayati & waloyo, 2022). teaching english is an activity to manage students and provide language learning facilities so that the language learning process is well structured and executed. according to aqli (2013), english language teachers focus on what is being taught (goal) and how to teach (methods/strategies) to achieve proficiency or achievement in all english skills and components such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar which is also the case in learning listening skills, where the teacher and schools’ facilities support the spirit of mastering students’ english listening skills. cai et al. (2018) explained that listening skill learning is one of the primary sources of expanding students' knowledge, including resources inside and outside the classroom. listening is essential in understanding and responding to information explained and informed in direct communication among people. listening is an active process in which the listener can interpret the information described by hearing (nunan, 2003). active interpretation of the verbally spoken words is necessary for understanding listening in english. in learning to listen, two-way communication is needed, not just one-way, because of teaching listening skills. according to wang (2020), it is about developing listening comprehension skills in a language class. therefore, listening comprehension is important, especially in verbal and oral communication. strategies in teaching listening listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension of listening input. listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the information (mayasari, 2011). in addition, listening strategies are included in language learning strategies, seen as procedures, techniques, or activities that students deliberately carry out to improve learning, processing, and producing memory about linguistic and schematic knowledge (chamot, 2005). the process of how the listener processes the input https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 164 requires a strategy to avoid misunderstandings so that the information or messages provided can be received and responded to well. according to siegel (2015), listening strategy is the way students can synchronize understanding related to listening. in other words, listening strategies are used to improve listening comprehension (field, 2003). therefore, all listening strategies have benefits related to success in understanding listening. listening strategies can also be interpreted as patterns of learning activities that the teacher chooses and uses contextually, according to students, school conditions, the surrounding environment, and formulated specific learning objectives (syahputra, 2006). the strategies in learning, including listening skills, are generally divided into three main categories: cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective (brown, 2000). first, cognitive strategy is more limited to the specific learning task and involves more direct manipulation of the material. cognitive strategies are related to the thinking ability of students in processing teaching and learning materials. second, metacognitive strategy is a term used in information processing theory to indicate an "executive" function that involves planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring one's comprehension production, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. in other words, metacognitive strategies concern tactics or how students handle and manage learning material. finally, the socio-affective strategies involve socio-mediating and interacting with others in learning activities. social strategy is related to the cooperation of students with peers in achieving learning goals. these strategies can be used for processing, storage, retrieval, and the use of newly learned language (nurhidayati et al., 2020). the three strategies above are indirect in that they focus on students so that the teacher only becomes a facilitator, and students can decide and have the opportunity to be more involved in learning. according to glogger et al. (2012), students who use a variety of strategies are more successful than students who use only one strategy. also, according to keezhatta (2020), using several strategies greatly influences learning outcomes. in other words, there is a positive influence between using learning strategies and learning outcomes. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 165 previous research on strategies in learning english listening skill in most indonesian schools, english for secondary school students still revolves around understanding and repetition, especially in listening subjects. with regards to strategies for learning listening skills in english language teaching contexts, previous research has been conducted. for example, muhammad et al. (2013) studied the techniques used by senior high school students in bandar lampung, involving 32 english language learners. the research found that 17 students used cognitive strategies, eight metacognitive strategies, and seven social strategies. in another study, rini (2017) discussed students' listening comprehension difficulties and strategies used by students in the intermediate listening class. this study aims to determine the factors or problems in english listening and the strategies to overcome these difficulties. using the qualitative method, they found that the listening comprehension issues faced by the students’ included vocabulary, speaking speed, accent, pronunciation, class condition, concentration, and motivation. in addition, the strategy used was varying the media employed as a learning tool. next, bao (2017) investigated the listening strategies used by teachers and strategies used by students involving 174 non-english majors and 35 english teachers in inner mongolian university, china. it aimed to discover how students use listening strategies and the suggestions regarding their use. furthermore, lewier & nendissa (2020) also observed students' listening strategies at the english education study program of pattimura university, ambon. this study involved 60 students of the english study program to investigate the implementation of various strategies carried out by efl students. the results showed that most students applied social/affective strategies (76.6%) and metacognitive strategies (46.6%). specific studies about listening strategies conducted on secondary school students are still scarce. one of the studies was conducted by olaya (2009). in his research on listening strategies for eighth-graders in pereira, colombia, they were not widely used for eighth-grade students, so their understanding of listening in english was lacking. the teachers who taught there only listened based on their writing on the board, and students followed it. audio recordings, podcasts, etc., had not been done. this issue may also be found in several schools in indonesia. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 166 in another research related to english language learning strategies used by eighth-grade junior high school students in bandung by amir (2018), students tended to ask for more verification if they did not understand and asked to repeat what was said if it was still unclear. students also used other strategies to understand the meaning discussed by asking others to repeat their words. some listened to keywords and tried to understand all the words without translating them. considering the scarcity of studies about listening strategies used by secondary school students in english as a foreign language teaching and learning contexts, this study aims to contribute by filling the literature gap. method in this research, the researchers decided to use a mixed methods design. according to tashakkori and creswell (2007), a mixed method is a research design with philosophical assumptions guiding the direction and investigation methods. it focuses on collecting, analyzing, and blending quantitative and qualitative data in a series of studies. if combined, they will provide a better understanding of the research problem than either approach alone to obtain information about the service and influence of listening strategies used by the understudied. the subjects of this study were eighth-grade students of a muhammadiyah junior high school in probolinggo, which consisted of 62 students. they were chosen because the eighth graders could adapt better than the seventh graders and were generally less timeintensive than the ninth-graders who had to prepare for final exams. this study used a survey with a closed questionnaire. the questionnaire contained 24 statements about the listening strategies used and 9 statements about the reasons for using the strategies. the survey was distributed directly to all eighth-grade students, and all 62 students completed it. next, in the interview session, six students were selected for the interview session three boys and three girls. each class was represented by one student with the highest and one with the lowest scores. the content of the questions in the interview was an outline of the questionnaire. the procedure of the data collection in this research can be summarized in the following steps. first, the researchers created a questionnaire based on brown's (2000) theory https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 167 of language learning strategies as the theoretical framework for developing the questionnaire items. as noted in the literature review section, there are three language learning strategies; cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective. in the questionnaire, each strategy was represented by 8 statements detailing the strategy used and 3 statements representing the reasons for using strategy in learning english listening skills. as such, the questionnaire was expected to describe the facts and opinions experienced by the participants well. second, the researchers conducted an interview session by inviting six respondents. the teacher concerned selected the six participants based on the highest and lowest scores, and the number of male participants was equal to the number of female students. interviews were conducted in person by inviting six representatives in turn. each interview session takes 5-7 minutes. the researchers also recorded the process during the interview, so those interview transcripts were obtained as data. once all the data were obtained, they were analyzed using the following procedure. first, the survey was given as a questionnaire with a likert scale of 1-5 in frequency; 1 means never to 5 means always. the resulting data were analyzed using the weight means, and the scale table can be seen as follows. table 1. interval scale listening strategy category interval scale always 4.6 – 5 often 4 – 4.5 sometimes 3 – 3.5 seldom 2 – 2.5 never 1 – 1.5 furthermore, the interview results were analyzed thematically based on the research questions, namely, the types of listening strategies used by students and the reasons students used these strategies. findings this section presents data analysis related to listening strategies and the reasons for using these strategies. the listening strategies used by the eighth graders https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 168 in general, strategies for learning listening skills most frequently used by the eighthgraders were metacognitive strategies (x = 3.77), followed by cognitive strategies (x = 3.69) and finally socio-affective strategies (x = 3.40). in the survey, the respondents were asked to indicate the frequency of using specific listening strategies using a 5-point likert scale of (5) always, (4) often, (3) sometimes, (2) seldom, and (1) never. table 2 displays the data analysis regarding metacognitive strategies based on the respondents. table 2. metacognitive strategies metacognitive strategies mean understanding every word 4.26 thinking of easy steps 4.15 evaluating deficiencies 4.13 paying attention to the emphasis of the tone 3.71 repeating new words 3.71 repeating listening material 3.53 taking detailed notes 3.37 searching literature 3.37 grand mean 3.77 as noted in table 1, the overall mean for all metacognitive strategies is 3.77, which means that students often used those strategies in general. to be more detailed, the metacognitive strategies most often used by the students were understanding every word they heard from the audio texts they listened to (x=4.26), thinking of easy steps in doing the listening tasks (x=4.15) and evaluating the deficiencies or weaknesses of their listening skills to improve it (x=4.13). while for the least used metacognitive strategies were searching literature or reading books related to listening skills and taking detailed notes of their listening skill learning activities (x=3.37), both of which fall into the category of ‘sometimes’. analysis of the interview data suggests what students did in more detail when using metacognitive strategies, as shown in the following excerpt. "i've used this strategy like making easy steps to listening to help me learn listening better, scheduling, repeating the vocabulary, and evaluating them after i finished learning." student 6 next, the student respondents' second most frequently used strategies in learning english listening skills are cognitive strategies (x=3.69). more specifically, the students' cognitive strategies most often used were listening to the materials used in class (x=4.05), https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 169 meaning that they often repeated the audio materials used in listening activities for further learning. then, they also reported frequent use of finding the meaning of complex vocabulary (x=3.94) to understand the topic. as for the least used cognitive strategies, the data analysis suggested that they sometimes made mindmaps for the content of the audio texts they listened to (x=3.19) and wrote the words that they were not familiar with (x=3.40). table 3 presents the complete data analysis results regarding the students' cognitive strategies. table 3. cognitive strategies cognitive strategies mean listening to the material used in class 4.05 find the meaning of complex vocabulary 3.94 guessing the meaning of vocabulary 3.87 looking for the main idea for the topic 3.84 analyzing topics 3.61 taking notes while listening 3.50 writing vocabulary that you don't know 3.40 making mind maps 3.19 grand mean 3.69 analysis of the interview data shows a better description of the cognitive strategies used by the students in learning english listening skills, below are the excerpts. "i choose the cognitive one because with the second one, finding the meaning of the words that are new to me, i can understand faster and get better results (score) at school." student 3 finally, the socio-affective strategies obtained a grand mean of 3.40, putting it in the category of ‘sometimes’ in general. however, the respondents also reported frequent use of a few of the socio-affective strategies, such as making themselves comfortable in learning (x=4.03), asking the teachers if they found difficulties (x=3.90), and discussing with their classmates (x=3.81). while for most socio-affective strategies, students reported occasional use, the least were practicing english listening skills by watching english channels (x=2.74) and watching movies in english (x=2.94). table 4 displays the complete data analysis of the socioaffective strategies used by the students in learning english listening skills. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 170 table 4. socio-affective strategies socio-affective strategies mean making yourself comfortable 4.03 asking the teacher if there are difficulties 3.90 discussing with friends 3.81 practicing by listening to songs 3.53 ability to improve outside of school hours 3.37 clarifying the teacher 2.95 practicing by watching movies 2.94 practicing by watching english channels 2.74 grand mean 3.40 deeper information about how students used socio-affective strategies was found in the interview data. below are the excerpts. "i like the socio-affective strategies because it is easier to understand by discussing and exchanging information with friends." student 4 reasons students use listening strategies the data about the reasons for choosing certain strategies in learning english listening skills by eighth-graders were also obtained from surveys and interviews. the questionnaire for the reasons used a 4-point likert scale of strongly agree (4), agree (3), disagrees (2), and strongly disagree (1). in general, the survey data analysis shows consistent alignment with the strategies used in the way that the highest grand mean belongs to the metacognitive strategies (x=3.27), followed by cognitive strategies (x=3.10), and socio-affective strategies (x=3.08). however, the students reported feeling facilitated by using all of the strategies, which is indicated by agreement to all of the items of reasons. table 5 presents a detailed analysis of the reasons for the strategy used by the students. next, analysis of the interview data added better insights into the detail of their reasons for using certain strategies. for example, a student reported in the interview that the metacognitive strategy improved his listening skills by implementing several steps such as regular practice to evaluate himself. "metacognitive strategy, because it makes me consistent in studying with a regular schedule of self-evaluation so that my english skills can improve." student 6 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 171 table 5. reasons for strategy use statement mean metacognitive: because, my listening skills improved by taking notes on important things. 3.29 my listening skill improves if i schedule practice regularly 3.29 i can evaluate my ability by recording the results of each listening lesson. 3.24 grand mean 3.27 cognitive: because, i can outline the content of the conversation that is heard by knowing the main topic. 3.16 the material is easier to understand by taking important notes while listening. 3.15 i can add new vocabulary that makes me understand the topic's content while listening. 3.02 grand mean 3.10 socio-affective: because, i can outline the content of the conversation that is heard by knowing the main topic. 3.16 the material is easier to understand by taking important notes while listening. 3.15 i can add new vocabulary that makes me understand the topic's content while listening. 3.02 grand mean 3.10 then, two students commented on their reasons for using cognitive strategies, stating that it made it easier for them to understand what they learned in school when listening to english audio texts. in addition, with this strategy, they reported quicker understanding. "with cognitive strategies, i feel easier to understand. it’s clearer because it follows the books and materials we learn at school." student 2 "i choose the cognitive one because with the second one, finding the meaning of the words that are new to me, i can understand faster and get better results (score) at school." student 3 finally, about the socio-affective strategies, the students reported that it helped the most when they found difficulties in finding a solution through discussion with classmates. "i like the third one (socio-affective strategies) because when discussing with friends, it is much easier to understand listening." student 1 "i choose socio-affective strategies because when studying together with friends, it is much easier to understand listening, and it improves listening more outside of school hours." student 5 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 172 discussions the data analysis results in the finding section suggested salient trends worth further discussion. first, this study found that eights grade students mostly used metacognitive strategies, followed by cognitive and socio-affective strategies in learning english listening skills. this finding differs from muhammad et al. (2013). they found that the eleven-grade students mostly chose cognitive strategies, followed by metacognitive and socio-affective strategies in learning english listening skills. this difference showed that although they were only three years different in age, their cognitive preferences were generally different, understanding teachers need to consider when designing effective listening instruction strategies. second, this study found that eight-graders preferred metacognitive strategies to learn english listening skills. metacognition facilitates comprehension and allows learners some control and independence (vandergrift, 2005). according to rochmawati and sukma (2004), metacognitive strategies help learners appropriately plan, organize, and calibrate their intellectual abilities. they also found three steps of applying metacognitive strategies that students in learning to listen often used. first, understanding the vocabulary heard, in learning, listening, understanding, and vocabulary make students understand the meaning of what is being heard. second, thinking about or planning easy steps in learning to listen allows students to focus more on learning objectives in listening. third, evaluating the learning outcomes makes students more aware of their learning progress and performance. these factors may explain why metacognitive strategies were found more favored by the students in this study. next, the eight-graders in this study frequently used cognitive strategies, a problemsolving strategy used by students to deal with learning tasks and facilitate knowledge acquisition (lewier & nendissa, 2020). students usually used this strategy to find out the meaning of words and tried to guess the definition based on the context of their listening topic. the students seemed to combine metacognitive and cognitive strategies in learning english listening skills. this finding indicated their commitment to study by themselves first, before finally, when they were stuck, they sought assistance from others by using socioaffective strategies. as explained in gilakjani and sabouri (2016), listeners use socio-affective https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 173 to cooperate with others to find out their understanding and fears. socio-cognitive is also one factor that influences the choice of personal actions and administrations in attempting to do assignments (fathi et al., 2020). in other words, the socio-affective strategy is used mainly because of the situation or condition while studying, as it is closely related to students’ psychological factors when interacting with classmates and teachers. the significant reason for using listening strategies is based on the survey of the students determined to apply them in learning to listen. important notes help understand any context. furthermore, students also agreed that they could improve their listening skills by providing regular practice. indirectly students are trained to get used to learning continuously, even for a short time. also, with scheduled exercises, students can evaluate learning outcomes based on each record of their progress in learning. regular and detailed steps in strategy procedures and audiovisual aids make learning more effective and efficient (salasiah et al., 2018). students also agreed that when learning to listen, they could more easily understand the topic by knowing the main topic sentence, so students in listening remained focused. there were also benefits when students added important notes. students also increased their vocabulary to make it easier to learn to listen. on the other hand, socializing is essential in listening because students can exchange information and work with good friends during and outside school hours. according to nurhidayati et al. (2020), through discussion activities, students become more active and collaborate to solve problems during the listening process. listening to music and watching movies and songs can also improve listening skills. conclusion in general, the strategies commonly used by the eighth-graders in this study are, in order of frequency, metacognitive strategies (x=3.77), cognitive strategies (x=3.69), and socioaffective strategies (x=3.40). the metacognitive strategy used was the three strategic steps in learning: understanding vocabulary, planning easy steps in learning to listen, and evaluating what has been learned. the reason for choosing these strategies is to make important notes on important vocabulary, the need for regular practice to improve abilities, and to evaluate the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 174 learning outcomes. in addition, in cognitive strategies, they used cognitive measures such as knowing the meaning of words and translating word for word while listening. the reasons mentioned for these strategies were that it was more feasible for students to understand the topic by knowing the main sentence, it helped improve vocabulary by understanding the meaning, and it made them more focused when listening. finally, in the socio-affective strategies, they related the listening activity to other social activities that involve interaction with friends to exchange ideas. as for the reasons for choosing these strategies, it was so that they could socialize with friends to exchange information, work together to improve their listening skills, and enhance their skills by listening to music, watching movies, and other english audio exposure. this study may be limited in terms of the methods, such as the lack of rigorous check on the questionnaire reliability and validity and the limited number of respondents involved. therefore, future researchers who would like to study the same area could aim to conduct more rigorous methods involving systematic questionnaire validity and reliability tests. in addition, future studies in the area can aim to have more respondents so that the results can be more widely generalized. besides, they could use experimental design to investigate the effects of different strategies on the students’ listening skills improvement. references amir, m. (2018). language learning strategies used by junior high school efl learners. language and language teaching journal, 21(1), 94–103. aqli. j. (2013). the practice of english language teaching and learning in sekolah buin batu pt. newmont nusa tenggara, west sumbawa, ntb province. e-journal postgraduate program ganesha university of education english education study program, 1(3), 3. aufa, m. m. (2018). english language teaching and learning for young learners at sd it cahaya bangsa mijen-semarang. 113411028, 72. http://eprints.walisongo.ac.id/8366/1/muhammad muzakki aufa %28113411028%29.pdf bao, x. (2017). a study on listening strategies instructed by teachers and strategies used by students. international journal of english linguistics, 7(2), 186. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 175 https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v7n2p186 brown, h. d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching. tesol quarterly, 14. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586319 cai, j., tian, y., wang, h., & du, h. (2018). design and implementation of karaoke system based on android platform. 2017 3rd ieee international conference on computer and communications, iccc 2017, 2018-janua(7), 2517–2521. https://doi.org/10.1109/compcomm.2017.8322989 chamot, a. u. (2005). language learning strategy instruction: current issues and research. annual review of applied linguistics, 25(may), 112–130. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190505000061 desmita, d. (2009). psikologi perkembangan peserta didik (1st ed.). pt remaja rosdakarya. fathi, j., derakhshan, a., & torabi, s. (2020). the effect of listening strategy instruction on second language listening anxiety and self-efficacy of iranian efl learners. sage open, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020933878 field, j. (2003). promoting perception: lexical segmentation in second language listening. elt journal, 57(4), 325–334. gilakjani, a. p., & sabouri, n. b. (2016). learners’ listening comprehension difficulties in english language learning: a literature review. english language teaching, 9(6), 123. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n6p123 glogger, i., schwonke, r., holzäpfel, l., nückles, m., & renkl, a. (2012). learning strategies assessed by journal writing: prediction of learning outcomes by quantity, quality, and combinations of learning strategies. journal of educational psychology, 104(2), 452–468. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026683 hanifa, r. (2014). improving the students’ listening skills of the 8th grade students of smpn 1 ngemplak through scaffolding principles (undergraduate thesis, uny), 172. ihwanudin, m. (2012). the types of students’ responses to the english teaching and learning process by using multimedia in grade x of sma 2 kebumen in the academic year of 2009/2010 (undergraduate thesis, universitas negeri yogyakarta). inayati, n., & waloyo, a. a. (2022). the influence of quizziz online gamification on learning engagement and outcomes in online english language teaching. journal on english as a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 176 foreign language, 12(2), 249-271. https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v12i2.3546 keezhatta, m. s. (2020). the effect of language learning strategies on learners‟ achievement and attitude. international journal of psychosocial rehabilitation, 24(4), 7066–7083. https://doi.org/10.37200/ijpr/v24i4/pr2020521 lewier, c. a., & nendissa, p. (2020). listening strategies of students at english education study program of pattimura university ambon; implication for teaching listening. jurnal tahuri, 17(2), 96–110. https://doi.org/10.30598/tahurivol17issue2page96-110 mayasari, a. (2011). learning strategies in listening used by the first year students of sman 1 mojolaban in 2010/2011 academic year (undergraduate thesis, ums). muhammad, f., sinaga, t., & sukirlan, m. (2013). identifying types of learning strategies in listening at second grade of man 1. journal of chemical information and modeling, 53(9), 1689–1699. https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8113/44/8/085201 nawangsasi, e. (2015). developing listening materials for the eighth-grade students of smpn 14 yogyakarta based on 2013 curriculum (undergraduate thesis, universitas negeri yogyakarta), 1–364. https://eprints.uny.ac.id/23679/1/esthi nawangsasi (10202241041).pdf nunan, d. (2003). practical english language teaching. new york : mc graw hill (vol. 57, issue 3). nurfitrianah & faridatul. (2013). media proyeksi dan multi penggunaannya. journal of chemical information and modeling, 53(9), 1689–1699. nurhidayati, irhamni, & ainin, m. (2020). learning strategy patterns in developing skills for listening of arabic speech. kne social sciences, 2020, 223–236. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v4i4.6486 olaya, v. (2009). applying bottom-up listening strategies to eighth grade in a public high school. core.uk, 6, 1–57. özer, s. (2020). foreign language learning effort levels of students in english for specific purposes. journal of language and linguistic studies, 16(3), 1352–1367. https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.803772 rini, a. l. (2017). revealing students ’ listening comprehension difficulties and strategies in intermediate listening class revealing students ’ listening comprehension difficulties and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 177 strategies. course hero, 104. rochmawati, l., & sukma, m. m. (2004). penerapan strategi pembelajaran metakognitif untuk meningkatkan pemahaman mendengarkan. politeknik penerbangan surabaya, 2004(2002), 352. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbdv.200490137/abstract salasiah, yunus, m., & khairil. (2018). teacher’s voice on metacognitive strategy based instruction using audio visual aids for listening. journal of education and learning (edulearn), 12(1), 69–73. https://doi.org/10.11591/edulearn.v12i1.6712 siegel, j. (2015). exploring listening strategy instruction through action research. exploring listening strategy instruction through action research, 1–259. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137521903 syahputra, i. (2006). strategy of english learning to improve students’ language skill. kutubkanah: jurnal penelitian sosial keagamaan, 17(1), 127–145. tashakkori, a., & creswell, j. w. (2007). editorial: exploring the nature of research questions in mixed methods research. in journal of mixed methods research (vol. 1, issue 3, pp. 207– 211). https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689807302814 vandergrift, l. (2005). relationships among motivation orientations, metacognitive awareness and proficiency in l2 listening. applied linguistics, 26(1), 70–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amh039 wang, z. (2020). teaching listening comprehension. learning & education, 9(3), 62. https://doi.org/10.18282/l-e.v9i3.1576 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 maryam sorohiti 30-41 abstract the challenges and positive effects in implementing strategies in teaching tenses graduated from english departmeny, faculty of le�ers, dadjah mada university in 1994 for her undergraduate degree. she accomplished her master’s degree in tesl at interna�onal islamic university malaysia in 2005. since 2010, she has been teaching at english educa�on department of faculty of language educa�on, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she can be reached at maryamsorohi�@umy.ac.id. milla farrihatul ahna was born in jepara in 1995. she received her bachelor degree in english language educa�on of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia on july 2017. she was an academic staff at the interna�onal program of government affairs and administra�on, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she had par�cipated in the interna�onal seminar on development studies 2018 in malaysia, presen�ng her research en�tled “development studies: students’ par�cipa�on in the use of edmodo in learning pla�orm”. she is now self-employed. her research interests involve grammar, teaching strategy, development studies, and teaching policy. implementing certain strategies in teaching tenses often brings certain challenges as well as positive effects. this research aimed to explore the challenges faced by english teachers and the positive effects they experienced in implementing strategies they chose in teaching tenses based on teachers’ perception. this qualitative research was conducted at a language training center (ltc) of a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. interviews were administered to three female and one male english teachers with two to seven years of teaching experience to explore their experiences in implementing strategies in teaching tenses. the findings revealed that technical problems, unsuccessful responses, time constrain for preparing the strategies and proper material selection were the challenges the teachers faced in implementing the strategies. meanwhile, the increased students’ motivation, improved students’ attitude and understanding towards tenses, accomplished teachers as well as student’s awareness of the importance of tenses were claimed as the positive effects of implementing the strategies in teaching tenses. keywords: tenses, teaching strategies, teaching challenges, positive effects journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 1, january 2018 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 31 lack of various teachers’ strategies in teaching tenses may lead to the lack of students’ mastery of tenses. according to vijaya and viswananth (2010), when teachers do not apply appropriate ways to facilitate students in learning tenses, the students will likely get confused to use proper tenses and mix up the tenses in the wrong way. their confusion is potential to fail them to master tenses. therefore, a certain strategy to make students understand tenses better is needed in teaching tenses. iskandarwassid and sunendar (2009) stated that a strategy is a useful way used by teachers to facilitate students in teaching process and ease the teachers to develop students’ competence in learning process. they further explained that related to teaching tenses, a strategy refers to ways of teaching chosen by a teacher to deliver tenses materials to be meaningful and understandable. they are purposefully selected or determined by teachers to make their students understand the materials. therefore, when teachers are able to determine appropriate strategies in teaching tenses, students will more likely understand the materials better. in implementing certain strategies in teaching tenses, teachers might experience choosing strategies that at first are considered appropriate, but then turn out to be inappropriate ones. the strategies purposefully chosen and planned to facilitate the teaching and learning process might not work effectively as well as efficiently as expected. in other words, english teachers may face various challenges. as an example, ludescher (2006) illustrated that when teachers were explaining the tenses materials by using videos, it was found that not all students were interested in watching the video. this means, when teachers teach tenses using videos, there is a challenge when the students do not pay attention to the videos and care to what the teachers are explaining or reviewing. similarly, when teachers are trying to use more various technologies to teach tenses, instead of driving students’ excitement to learn tenses, using technology is potential to bring problems in the classroom. moreover, there are always students who do not follow the teachers’ instruction (young, 2008). therefore, a careful anticipation of the challenges likely to happen when applying certain strategies in teaching tenses is required. despite the challenges, the implementation of teaching strategies can bring positive effects to both teachers and students. as an example, the implementation of teaching strategy of inquiry-based learning provides advantages to students and teachers (guido, 2017). for students, it promotes a deeper understanding of content, makes learning rewarding and builds initiative and direction. it also benefits teachers as it offers differentiated instruction as well as can be applied in any classrooms regardless of students’ different skill levels. another example can be seen in the implementation of a contextual teaching and learning strategy. according to ovalna (2010), when english teachers use a contextual teaching and learning strategy for teaching tenses, the teaching process is easier for teachers since students will understand the materials more by seeing the context around them directly. at the same time, students also improve their tenses mastery and their understanding of the current tenses issue through relating it to the real context (ovalina, 2010). thus, implementing the strategies in teaching tenses is beneficial for both english teachers and their students. introduction journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 32 since the challenges and the positive effects in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses are closely related, english teachers need to be aware of the possible challenges which lay ahead when they are trying to implement a certain strategy and realize the promising positive effects expected to happen. based on the researchers’ informal observation at a language training centre in a private university in yogyakarta, not all english teachers were aware of particular challenges. in addition, not all english teachers in this ltc realized the positive effects of implementing strategies in teaching tenses. as a teachers’ reflection, the teachers’ perception on the challenges and positive effects in the implementation of tenses teaching strategies needed to be explored. based on the explanations above, the researchers conducted research focusing on the teachers’ perception on the challenges and positive effects the teachers experienced when implementing certain strategies they chose in teaching tenses. understanding the challenges can make teachers anticipate the problems and negative responses that may appear during the implementation, so the teacher can prepare more solutions. meanwhile, realizing the positive effects the teachers experienced during the implementation may motivate them to apply the same strategies in different occasion. therefore, the findings of this research can be used especially by novice teachers in taking some consideration and making decision in their teaching practices literature review teaching method most of teachers think about how to teach their students using the best way to facilitate and succeed the teaching and learning process. a lot of teaching procedures appropriate to students’ need, aims, and students’ learning style are implemented. for example, when the students want to learn tenses well and to write using correct grammar, the teachers may teach them using structural approach. if english teachers want to focus on teaching tenses, they use a structure approach as this approach discusses the grammatical structure or is grammar-based. the structure approach can be suitable for students, since the teachers can facilitate them to focus on learning tenses. based on geyser (2006), a structural approach focuses on “grammatical structures and vocabulary items that will form the primary focus of english language instruction” (p.33). geyser (2006) said that the characteristics of a structural approach are teacher-centered, grammar-based, lots of drill, and controlled and predictable learning. the example of this approach is an “audio-lingual method” (geyser, 2006, p.33). meanwhile, if students want to speak english fluently in daily life, a communicative approach might be the most beneficial approach. geyser (2006) stated that a communicative approach focuses on “meaningful communication to be the primary focus of language instruction” (p.33). also, geyser stated that the characteristics of a communicative approach are “students-centered, communication based, lots of students’ interaction (pairs, groups, whole class), and variable rate of acquisition” (p.33). total physical response (tpr) is an example of a communicative approach. from determining the teaching method used, english teachers might develop the strategy in teaching tenses. . journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 33 strategies in teaching tenses. in applying a teaching method, english teachers implement teaching strategies to make teaching and learning process successful. for example, english teachers can teach tenses using various teaching media, such as texts, songs, poems, stories, games, audios, and videos (hayat, 2011; ludescher, 2006; robertson & acklam, 2000; witchukriangkai, 2011; yassaei, 2012). an illustration of teaching tenses using text can be seen in the classroom in which the teacher gives her/his students texts containing past tense and past progressive tense. the students are asked to identify the grammar rules and the sentence structure in the texts. meanwhile, hayat (2011) and ludescher (2006) said that english teachers can use songs, poems, stories, and games to teach tenses to gain students’ interest. by using songs, poems, stories, and games, the teachers can create classroom activities, such as singing songs, reciting poems, retelling stories, and playing games. those activities are specially designed by the teachers to facilitate their students to learn tenses. the teachers look for the songs, poems, and stories that contain the tenses they are going to teach that day. hayat (2011) stated that the teachers also use games such as scrabble word games that involve the students to indirectly apply the proper tenses. besides, the teachers use audios and videos when teaching tenses (robertson & acklam, 2000 and yassaei, 2012). the students are asked to listen to the audios and to watch the videos. then, they have to analyze the tenses used. in addition, the teachers use technology such as the internet and microsoft office (wang, 2012). teachers present the tenses materials with the support of technology, such as using microsoft power point to deliver the teaching materials. the teachers also use social networking platform like edmodo when holding virtual class. all of those teaching strategies implemented are to make the students understand the materials and to make the teachers deliver the materials more easily. the challenges in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses it is common for english teachers to face challenges in implementing certain strategies in teaching tenses. the challenges faced by the teachers in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses may contribute to the unsuccessful responses. students might not give expected good responses on the teaching strategies (ludescher, 2006; witchukriangkrai, 2011; young, 2008). they might not follow the procedures and pay attention to the teachers. when the teachers teach present tenses using videos or movie clips to get the students’ interest, the teachers expect that the students enjoy the videos and can learn the tenses used in the videos or movie clips, so they can apply the use of tenses into real context. however, there is possibility that some of the students do not pay attention to the videos or movie clips and they talk to other students instead. the next possible challenge can occur when the teachers explain the tenses materials using microsoft power point, some students might not pay attention and might not follow the teachers’ instructions. furthermore, selecting proper materials for preparing the strategies may also become a potential challenge in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses. the teachers are required to consider the content, students’ need, and students’ level when choosing the materials (solak & bayar, 2015). it becomes teachers’ concern to see the content first whether the materials presented for example in the videos or movie clips are appropriate to the students’ level, students’ need, and also the students’ journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 34 background before playing them in the classroom. another potential challenge in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses is that preparing the strategy takes time (ovalina, 2010). in a different time, when the teachers use games for teaching tenses, they have to provide more time to prepare the equipment, search the appropriate tenses materials, and design the concept (hayat, 2011). the positive effects in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses although there are challenges in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses, based on teachers’ perception, the strategies give positive effects to teachers as well as students. ludescher (2006) argued that there is an improvement of students’ motivation and students’ attitude in learning tenses. ludescher added that the students enjoy the class, feel happy, feel interested, and are participative. those reactions occur when the teachers implement the use of selected songs, stories, and poems which are interesting. the procedure involves the students being asked to pay attention to songs, stories, or poems and then analyze the tenses used in those songs, stories, or poems. after that, they are asked to apply the tenses in their own sentences. ludescher further asserted that when the teachers teach tenses using the interesting strategies, such as using songs, stories, and poems specifically chosen based on the students’ favorite, the students will feel unthreatened since the teachers wrap the classroom activities interestingly. in addition, by implementing teaching strategies, students get better understanding of tenses (ovalina, 2010; witchukriangkrai, 2011; xin (2010). in explaining the concept of present tense, for example, the use of pictures will ease the students in understanding the concept. the pictures showing someone’s activity in the morning will help the students in describing the activities using present tense. the pictures help the students understand the context of the tense used. another important thing is that successful strategies in teaching tenses give positive feelings to the teachers in teaching process (ovalina, 2010). the teachers feel that they are successful in their teaching because they see the students understand what they have taught and explained. methodology in conducting the research, the researchers used a qualitative research method. this research was conducted to discover the challenges and the positive effects in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses based on teachers’ perception. this research included the description of the participants’ view through words. the research design was the descriptive qualitative research. through descriptive qualitative research, the researchers explained the findings related to the previous studies. the research was conducted at a language training center (ltc) of a private university in yogyakarta. this language training center was selected because teaching tenses is included in the teaching materials set by the institution. the english teachers in this language centre teach tenses every semester. moreover, in this ltc the teachers teach university students from various majors except english language education major. therefore, the challenges and the positive effects in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses might variously occur. the researchers selected four english teachers of ltc. the criteria to be the participants were that they had experience in teaching tenses at least for two years, so they really knew the context of the chal journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 35 lenges and the positive effects in implementing the strategies. the four participants were three female english teachers and one male english teacher. all of them have experienced in teaching english at ltc for two to seven years. two of the participants teach tenses in the basic level and two of them teach tenses in the intermediate level. the researchers used an interview as the data collection method. before doing the interview, the researchers involved expert judgment to validate the interview guideline as the instrument. based on the expert judgement, there was no significant revison. the points of the interview guideline cover the questions asking the participants what strategies they used in teaching tenses, the challenges faced in implementing the strategies, and the positive effects they experienced when implementing the strategies. the researchers used bahasa indonesia in conducting the interview to prevent misunderstanding. the researchers interviewed the participants face to face. member checking was administered to ensure what was transcribed from the recording was what the participants said during the interview. the result of the member checking was that all participants agreed that the data transcribed were exactly the same as they stated in the interview, meaning there was no manipulation of the data. findings in this part, the researcher provides the findings of the research. in addition, the researcher also presents the discussion supporting the findings of the research. the findings reveal the teachers’ perception on the challenges and positive effects from the implementation of teachers’ strategies in teaching tenses. the strategies in teaching tenses in the teaching and learning process at ltc, all the participants applied certain strategies in teaching tenses. the strategies they used included the use of technology, traditional drills, texts, stories, songs, poems, group work and giving exercises. the first participant mentioned, “i use power point to explain the materials.” the similar answers were also revealed by the other three participants. in addition, participant two mentioned, “sometimes, i use online exercises,” while participant three said, “i once used video from funny english website”. a participant also mentioned, “i applied physical activities (a game).” these applied strategies in teaching tenses were perceived by the participants to have brought both the challenges and positive effects. the challenges in implementing strategies in teaching tenses the first research question was “what are the challenges faced by english teachers when implementing the strategies in teaching tenses?” based on the participants’ experience in teaching tenses, it was revealed that the challenges they faced were related to several conditions. they included technical problem, unsuccessful responses, managing time for preparing the strategies, and selecting the materials. finding 1: technical problem the strategies involving technology used by teachers to support their teaching brought some challenges to the teachers. the source of the challenges came from the laptop and the internet. this challenge was experienced by two participants. the first participant argued, “my laptop suddenly could not work (when i was teaching).” in journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 36 addition, the second participant said, “the students sometimes cannot access the internet.” this challenge sometimes arises although the teachers have already prepared to use computer or the internet. there was a time when the teacher’s laptop was broken while the materials needed were in the laptop. when the teachers showed the movie clip or the video relating to tenses used, the laptop suddenly could not work, so it could offend the teaching process. another challenge was there was no internet connection when needed. the students could not access the internet for online teaching and learning platform. the finding was in line with the brändström’s study. one of brändström’s findings was about disadvantages of using technology in teaching tenses. brändström (2011) claimed that the technical problem was a challenge in using technology, especially when the teachers want to use technology as their strategy in teaching tenses. sometimes, the teachers had lack of internet access. when teachers used the internet to teach students in the class, there was no internet connection. when students were asked to search for materials, they did not have internet connection. moreover, wang (2012) stated that sometimes, english teachers got a problem with their electronic files while they were teaching tenses in the classroom. wang’s statement was proven in the teacher’s experience in this research when the teacher presented the past tenses using microsoft power point, in the middle of presentation the teacher’s laptop could not work and the learning audio played did not work. finding 2: unsuccessful responses ideally, english teachers used strategies to teach tenses in order to succeed their aims and objectives. however, the strategies sometimes did not get successful responses from students. this finding was mentioned by three of four participants. the second participant argued, “sometimes, we do pair work or group work to discuss tenses, but it did not work well because the students were not active or their level of vocabulary acquisition was low.” in addition, the second participant stated, “when i applied physical activities (a game), the class became noisy.” moreover, the fourth participant also mentioned, “when the videos were played, there were some students who still talked to their friends.” from the participants’ statements, the challenge faced by the teachers was that the teacher received unsuccessful responses, such as the students refused to participate in the group discussion; the students did not follow the teachers’ instruction when doing a game; the students did not pay attention either when the teachers showed the learning videos of tenses. according to ludescher (2006), some students were not interested in following the strategies being applied by the teacher; they did not pay attention to the teacher. they preferred to talk to their other friends to pay attention to the teacher’s explanation. those ludescher’s statements were reflected in the findings of this research which revealed the similar situation in which the students did not respond well as expected as seen when the teachers conducted group work, applied a game, and played a video. it showed that the teachers received unsuccessful responses from the students. witchukriangkrai ( 2011) mentioned that the cause of unsuccessful response from students was that there were some low learners who could not follow up other fast learners, so they became demotivated and they were not interested to participate in classroom activities. witchukriangkrai also added that since journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 37 students who were low learners were not able to follow the classroom activity, they distracted the attention. for example, they made the class become noisy and they talked to their other friends. finding 3: time constrain for preparing the strategies when implementing the particular strategies in teaching tenses, the english teachers needed more time for preparation, but sometimes the teachers did not have much time to prepare everything. this challenge was claimed by three of four participants. the third participant admitted, “since i must prepare the tenses materials that are appropriate with different students’ characteristics, it takes time.” in addition, the second participant mentioned, “when using edmodo, it needs much time to prepare, so i sometimes have no time (for preparing).” the fourth participant also had the same statement. she said, “i must spend extra time to look for materials or video that is appropriate with the considerations.” the finding justified that when preparing the strategies to teach tenses the teachers needed much time. ovalina (2010) revealed that teachers required much time for preparation. for example, teachers had to prepare the lesson plan and the materials which were appropriate with different characteristics of students. moreover, according to young (2008), the challenge of using technology was that “many teachers found it hard to find time in their overloaded work schedules to attend courses and to practice the new skill” (p.37). finding 4: considering proper materials the researcher found out that english teachers should consider the context when selecting the materials. it was pointed out by the fourth participant. she stated, “when we use the movie segment clips, we must choose the movie clips carefully whether the content and the tenses materials are appropriate to be used in our university because the (western) movie clips are culturally different from us.” it means that the teachers were required to think about the content of the materials in teaching tenses. moreover, the level of the materials whether it was appropriate with the students as well as the institution became the teachers’ concern in teaching tenses. in other words, it also became the challenge faced by the teacher, since they need to consider the students’ level in addition to the content. this finding was in line with solak and bayar (2015). they gave suggestion that “the materials such as course book, video, and internet should be chosen carefully according to the students’ interest and level” (p.114). this means that teachers must determine whether the materials fitted students’ language level or not because it might be difficult for them. thus, there was a consideration when selecting proper materials and it was challenging. the positive effects in implementing the strategies based on the teachers’ perception, during the implementation of certain strategies in teaching tenses, such as using text, stories, poems, pictures, novels, games, videos/audios, and technology, the teachers and the students got positive effects. in this part, the researcher provided five findings of the positive effects from implementing the strategies. the positive effects were related to students’ motivation, students’ journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 lack of various teachers’ strategies in teaching tenses may lead to the lack of students’ mastery of tenses. according to vijaya and viswananth (2010), when teachers do not apply appropriate ways to facilitate students in learning tenses, the students will likely get confused to use proper tenses and mix up the tenses in the wrong way. their confusion is potential to fail them to master tenses. therefore, a certain strategy to make students understand tenses better is needed in teaching tenses. iskandarwassid and sunendar (2009) stated that a strategy is a useful way used by teachers to facilitate students in teaching process and ease the teachers to develop students’ competence in learning process. they further explained that related to teaching tenses, a strategy refers to ways of teaching chosen by a teacher to deliver tenses materials to be meaningful and understandable. they are purposefully selected or determined by teachers to make their students understand the materials. therefore, when teachers are able to determine appropriate strategies in teaching tenses, students will more likely understand the materials better. in implementing certain strategies in teaching tenses, teachers might experience choosing strategies that at first are considered appropriate, but then turn out to be inappropriate ones. the strategies purposefully chosen and planned to facilitate the teaching and learning process might not work effectively as well as efficiently as expected. in other words, english teachers may face various challenges. as an example, ludescher (2006) illustrated that when teachers were explaining the tenses materials by using videos, it was found that not all students were interested in watching the video. this means, when teachers teach tenses using videos, there is a challenge when the students do not pay attention to the videos and care to what the teachers are explaining or reviewing. similarly, when teachers are trying to use more various technologies to teach tenses, instead of driving students’ excitement to learn tenses, using technology is potential to bring problems in the classroom. moreover, there are always students who do not follow the teachers’ instruction (young, 2008). therefore, a careful anticipation of the challenges likely to happen when applying certain strategies in teaching tenses is required. despite the challenges, the implementation of teaching strategies can bring positive effects to both teachers and students. as an example, the implementation of teaching strategy of inquiry-based learning provides advantages to students and teachers (guido, 2017). for students, it promotes a deeper understanding of content, makes learning rewarding and builds initiative and direction. it also benefits teachers as it offers differentiated instruction as well as can be applied in any classrooms regardless of students’ different skill levels. another example can be seen in the implementation of a contextual teaching and learning strategy. according to ovalna (2010), when english teachers use a contextual teaching and learning strategy for teaching tenses, the teaching process is easier for teachers since students will understand the materials more by seeing the context around them directly. at the same time, students also improve their tenses mastery and their understanding of the current tenses issue through relating it to the real context (ovalina, 2010). thus, implementing the strategies in teaching tenses is beneficial for both english teachers and their students. 38 attitude, students’ understanding, teachers’ self-accomplishment, and significance for students. finding 1: the increase of students’ motivation to learn tenses the finding showed that students’ motivation could increase after the english teachers implemented the strategies in teaching tenses, such as using songs and stories. this effect was highlighted by three of four participants. the second participant argued, “i use songs to introduce the verb form, such as the present and past forms.” further she claimed, “students’ thought about tenses can change, so they do not think that tenses are difficult.” the third participant added, “i use one republic’s songs and john meyer’s songs for teaching tenses. students are happy and excited.” in addition, the fourth participant also mentioned, “if the topic is narrative, i use a story and finally they identify the tenses in the story. students look interested in learning the materials and they can look for what is required from the task easily.” those statements proved that students were being motivated. for example, students did not think that tenses were difficult. students were happy, excited, and interested. the finding showed that the students were being more motivated when the teachers implemented the strategy in teaching tenses. this finding was related to the previous study from ludescher (2006). ludescher found out that implementing strategy in teaching tenses, such as using stories, songs, and poems brought positive effect. as an illustration, students enjoyed when teachers used stories as the teaching strategy to teach tenses. the students were interested in analyzing tenses used in the stories. besides, ludescher also added that using songs was easy for students to memorize and the songs made the students enjoy their learning tenses process. students also did not feel threatened since they enjoyed the learning process and they did what they liked. hence, using stories and songs as one of the strategies in teaching tenses could increase students’ motivation in learning tenses. finding 2: the improvement of students’ attitude toward tenses besides, there was also the improvement of students’ attitude toward tenses. this finding was claimed by three of four participants. the second participant said, “all members of the class can participate in doing a task actively.” the third participant added, “i create a game for students to make them not bored and not sleepy.” moreover, the fourth participant mentioned, “because the strategy used visual things, the strategy makes students easier to look for verb form based on the event.” from the statements, it seemed that students participated actively; students did not feel bored and sleepy; and students wanted to find out verb form through visual media, like videos and pictures. from the finding above, the students had the improvement of attitude after the teacher applied the strategies. the improvement of the attitudes was that the students participated collaboratively with the teacher since they were not bored and sleepy. it was related to ludescher (2006) who asserted useful effect of using strategies in teaching tenses. ludescher stated that the implementation of strategies could encourage all students to participate actively in the classroom. the students were then involved in the whole activities. another study also mentioned that the students felt interested to follow the teaching and learn journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 39 ing tenses because the teachers used visual tools like a picture and a video to teach tense (krčelić & matijević, 2015). finding 3: the improvement of students’ understanding students got better understanding after english teachers taught tenses by implementing the strategies in teaching tenses, such as using texts, pictures, and videos. the four participants encountered the finding. the first participant stated, “students can do self-correction although they are still guided.” moreover, the second participant said, “they can differentiate simple present and present perfect tense.” the third participant added, “using reading text, students might understand the context of tenses and how to use the tenses.” moreover, the fourth participant also mentioned, “the use of a video with subtitle makes them understand the use of the tenses.” it could be concluded that students could use the proper tenses in appropriate context, and they could differentiate between one tense and the other tenses. the finding showed that the strategies created the improvement of the students’ understanding. the improvement of the students’ understanding means that the students’ knowledge about tenses improved. based on the teachers’ perception, they could understand how to use tenses properly by considering the time needed, such as present, past, and future. the finding was related to krčelić and matijević (2015). they highlighted that those visual tools, such as pictures, video, and power point, could be used to give a better understanding of tenses explained. they also mentioned that it helped to lighten the materials. after teaching tenses through using various teaching media, students could use the proper tenses in appropriate context (ludescher, 2006; ovalina, 2010; witchukriangkrai, 2011). finding 4: teachers’ self-accomplishment english teachers also felt the positive effects after implementing the strategies, such as using movie clips, contextual teaching learning, and games. it was stated by three of four participants. the first participant admitted, “when i explained tenses to students and they understood, i felt satisfied or got self-accomplishment.” the third participant also added, “sometimes, from the activities, i find out new ideas, so it improves my teaching development.” moreover, the fourth participant mentioned, “there are many materials that discuss tenses in movie clips, so it is easy for me to teach tenses.” the positive effects were that the teachers felt satisfied, and their teaching development improved. ovalina (2010) argued that the strength of contextual teaching learning strategy was that teachers taught tenses to be easier in achieving the goals of teaching process. that means that the teachers could develop their teaching, because they tried to learn more for preparing the materials or finding new strategies used to teach. finding 5: student’s awareness of the importance of tenses based on the teachers’ point of view, when students could understand how to use tenses correctly, they might use the proper tenses in the daily conversation and it is useful for developing their speaking skill. this finding was highlighted by the first participant. she stated, “if students can use the correct tenses in appropriate context, it will be significant for them.” journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 40 the finding was related to ovalina (2010). ovalina pointed out that students could improve their communication skill and enhance their understanding about current issues that were related to their lives. ludescher also added that using authentic text could show how the item was used in real context. thus, it was significant for the students. conclusion based on the findings, the certain strategies applied by the ltc teachers in teaching tenses brought both the challenges and the positive effects. the challenges in implementing the strategies in teaching tenses were related to technical problem, unsuccessful responses, time constrain for preparing the strategies and proper materials selection. meanwhile, the positive effects were the improvement of students’ motivation, the improvement of students’ attitude toward tenses, the improvement of students’ understanding, teachers’ self-accomplishment, and significance for students. as the findings revealed the challenges dealing with technical problems as well as non-technical problems, the teachers are accordingly required to manage their time wisely to prepare the strategies in teaching tenses especially when using games and using technology. teachers also need to consider students’ need, students’ level, and students’ context when implementing the strategies in teaching tenses, so that the positive effects can be successfully achieved. the teachers’ skills in dealing with the challenges are accordingly needed to gain positive effects deriving from the implementation of teaching tenses. references brändström, c. (2011). using the internet in education-strengths and weaknesses: a qualitative study of teachers’ opinions on the use of the internet planning and instruction. university of gavle, gavle. retrieved from www.diva-portal.org creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. boston: pearson. geyser, j.p. (2006). english to the world: teaching methodology made easy. malaysia: sdn bhd hayat, e. n. (2011). teaching the present perfect tense by using game (find someone who). retrieved from http://repository.uinjkt.ac.id. iskandarwassid & sunendar, d. (2009). strategi pembelajaran bahasa [language teaching strategy]. bandung: pt. remaja rosdakarya. krčelić, p., & matijević, a. s. (2015). a pictures and a thousand words: visual tools in elt. the international language conference, 110-114. retrieved from http://bib.irb.hr. ludescher, f. (2006). how to teach grammar. viktorsberg: international modul. ovalina. (2010). improving students' ability in using the simple past tense through contextual teaching learning. universitas islam negeri syarif, hidayatullah, yogyakarta, indonesia. robertson, c., & acklam, r. (2000). action plan for teachers. london: british broadcasting corporation. solak, e., & bayar, a. (2015). current challenges in english language learning in turkish efl context. participatory educational research (per), 2(1), 106-115. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17275/per.15.09.2.1. journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 41 vijaya, k., & viswanath, l. (2010). the problems of teaching/learning tenses. language in india: strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, 10, 96-101. retrieved from www.languageinindia.com wang, p. (2012). teaching and learning english verb tenses in a taiwanese university. english linguistics research, 1 (1), 18-34. doi:10.5430/elr.v1n1p18. witchukriangkrai, t. (2011). teaching tenses through text and drills: comparison of text sores. language testing in asia , 1(4), 120-143. yassaei, s. (2012). using original video and sound effects to teach english. english teaching forum, (1) 12-16. retrieved from www.eric.ed.gov. young, r. (2008). using technology tools in the public school classroom. university of wisconsin-stout, menomonie, united state of america. retrieved from https://minds.wisconsin.edu. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 19 article history: submitted: 30 october 2022 reviewed: 28 november 2022 edited: 19 january 2023 article accepted: 30 january 2023 afghan english major students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language hazrat usman mashwani1*), abdullah noori2 1sayed jamaluddin afghani university, afghanistan 2kabul university, afghanistan *)corresponding author email: usman.kunar@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/18.196.ftl.v8i1.16680 abstract the term native-like proficiency in english refers to the ability to speak the english language like a native speaker. this study was conducted to investigate afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language at two public universities in afghanistan. the study specifically investigated the attitudes of afghan english major undergraduate students toward the characteristics of a native speaker of the english language, native speakers’ linguistic imperialism, and native-like proficiency in the english language. a mixed research design was used for the study. the quantitative data were descriptively analyzed in terms of frequencies using spss and presented in tables. the qualitative data were thematically analyzed and presented. a total of 113 fourth-year (senior students) voluntarily participated in the study. the findings revealed that perfect pronunciation, fluency, and grammatical accuracy were the defining attributes of native speakers. similarly, students believed that only native speakers have the right to decide the rules or to standardize the english language and that only a native speaker has better english language skills. moreover, the results revealed that afghan english major students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language were highly positive, and they love to speak with a native-like accent. it is hoped that the current study’s findings will help educators and will be a valuable addition to the current mass of data on the subject. keywords: afghan english major undergraduate students; native like proficiency; native speaker =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 mailto:usman.kunar@gmail.com https://doi.org/18.196.ftl.v8i1.16680 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16680&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2023-01-31 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 20 introduction globally, the use and need for the english language are increasing in every walk of life. no one can deny the importance of the english language in education, politics, commerce, economics, and cultural activities. it is the language of communication in many international domains like conferences, scientific publications, banking, trade, advertisements, and audiovisual cultural products (manolescu, 2023; trzeciakowska, 2020). looking at the extensive use of the english language worldwide, some scholars believe that english is no more limited to the culture of its native english-speaking countries and that the native english-speaking countries are the sole owners of the english language (boonsuk & ambele, 2020). at present, english serves more as a lingua franca worldwide, and it is used as a medium of intercultural communication between native and non-native speakers of english. speakers from different parts of the globe speak english with different accents. most scholars believe non-native speakers do not need to speak english like native speakers (baese‐berk et al., 2020). however, it has been the advertising slogan of many english language institutes, english language centers, and private schools that they can provide their students with native-like english language proficiency. it might indicate that achieving native-like proficiency in the english language is the ultimate aim of learning/teaching the english language. the number of people speaking english is more substantial than ever. interestingly, the number of non-native english speakers is far greater than that of native english speakers (trzeciakowska, 2020). non-native speakers constitute 75% of the total english speakers (tauchid et al., 2022). this increase in the number of english language learners and speakers has raised several questions on the part of nativeness value and meaning. similarly, the idea of dividing english language speakers into two categories, native and non-native, has been criticized widely. this split between english language speakers leads to disparity by placing native speakers ahead of non-native speakers and paved the way for the concept of english as an international language (eil) and has resulted in the formation of terms like world englishes to cover the currently available various local and global varieties of the english language. the attitude toward native likeness is still the primary focus of teaching the english language. even though it has been proved by several studies in the field of second language acquisition (sla) that native-like proficiency is difficult to achieve after a critical period (azieb, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 21 2021). the native-like english proficiency is still a standard and a norm for a non-native speaker to achieve. however, this makes non-native english inaccurate and inferior (baese‐berk et al., 2020). it is the truth and a universally accepted reality, especially in afghanistan, where english is taught and learned as a foreign language. the history of the english language in afghanistan is not old, and the country’s learning and teaching of english are recent. there is a significant difference between the english language and the indigenous languages of afghanistan. so, it is quite difficult for afghans to acquire native-like proficiency in the english language. moreover, before 2001, afghans had minimal contact with the english language and had insufficient opportunities to use it. however, the need and importance of the english language grew in afghanistan with the arrival of international communities and organizations after 2001. the arrival and presence of many international communities in the country have necessitated using english as a lingua franca (coleman, 2019). furthermore, the presence of americans in the country has promoted the american accent in the region. afghans highly regard the american accent and believe it to be the correct and original accent. they also consider the non-native accents, including the english accents of the local afghans, as improper and substandard. research problem bearing that students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency have been investigated in various contexts, there is a lack of empirical research on the study in the afghan context. also, previously conducted research studies mainly focus on students’ attitudes toward native-like accents. the current research conducts a more comprehensive research study and looks into students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency, including native-like accent, grammatical competency, characteristics of native speakers, and linguistics imperialism research objectives the current research has three main objectives. the study’s first objective is to investigate afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward the characteristics of native speakers of the english language. similarly, the study’s second objective is to investigate afghan https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 22 english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistics imperialism of native speakers of the english language. finally, the third objective of the study is to investigate afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language. research questions three research questions (rqs) guide this study. the first rq read: what are afghan efl undergraduate students’ attitudes toward the characteristics of native speakers of the english language? the second rq read: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistics imperialism of native speakers of the english language? and the final rq read: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language? literature review native-like proficiency in the english language means that an individual can speak the english language like a native speaker does. so, it is essential to explore the concept of the native speaker, which is the key element of native-like proficiency. the concept of native speaker (ns) for a better understanding of the topic and native-like proficiency in the english language, it is necessary to explore and understand the term native speaker. professor charles hall grandgent of harvard, an american romanist and italian scholar, used the term native speaker in the 19th century. however, leonard bloomfield is considered to have coined the term ‘native speaker’ to refer to someone who speaks the language they have learned for the first time (fleming, 2020; tavarez dacosta & almanzar alvarado, 2020; rivers, 2018). however, this declaration seems too confined. that is, another language that is learned later on can replace the language that has been initially learned. the frequent use of the newly acquired language can dominate the first learned language. so as a result, the language that was first learned no longer remains useful, generative, or creative and so no longer remains the first language (yusuf, 2017). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 23 this situation could happen when someone adopts a child or is resettled by migration at an early age. theoretical linguistics regards the native speaker as the most authoritative figure of their language. native speakers have perfect command of their language, have authority over their grammar, and know their language better (chomsky, 1969; davies, 1991, as cited in vakili & mohammed, 2020). based on this logic, it is the native speaker who is the reliable and influential person in their language. however, this logic has been challenged by nayar (1994), as cited in vakili and mohammed (2020), who disagreed and insisted that native speaker is not “ipso facto knowledge, correct and infallible in their competence” (p. 4). the researcher further challenges the belief that the native speaker “has the power to err without a blemish in his competence” is completely based on the fact that the person is a native speaker, which is entirely irrational and requires reexamination. based on etymology, the word native means a person is labeled “native speaker of a language by place or country of birth” (davies, 1991, p. ix as cited in mersad & senad, 2019) means that the person has learned the language from birth. yet, this is not the strongest case for a native speaker, as in the case of a child migrating to another geographical location or being adopted in childhood. the place of birth can not necessarily benefit that individual, as the person born in a particular area will be a native speaker. the language used by an individual at home may not match the language of the area where the individual lives. similarly, the linguistic environment may change for the adopted child, so using birthplace as the criteria for the native speaker may not help. what does a native speaker know? it is essential to recognize what a native speaker knows compared to a non-native speaker to make the concept of the native speaker more understandable. the studies carried out in the field provide several valuable findings. native speakers can use idiomatic expressions and metaphors properly and use the correct grammatical forms. they also have natural pronunciation and the appropriate vocabulary and are well-conscious of non-verbal cultural features (chambo torres et al., 2022; matthews, 2018). meanwhile, native speakers have the competence of pragmatics of their language and strategic competence. they can employ verbal and nonverbal https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 24 communication skills to cater to conversational breakdowns while exchanging thoughts (abdulrahman & ayyash, 2019). moreover, they never give up and try to comprehend and produce the language. on the other hand, non-native speakers usually avoid such circumstances. in brief, a native speaker has linguistic competence, communicative competence, pragmatic competence, strategic competence, and intuitive knowledge of their language (yusuf, 2017). the ownership of the english language the principal varieties of the english language are american english and british english. there are three circles in the english language, i.e., the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle (khatib & monfared, 2017). these two varieties (american and british) of the english language belong to the inner circle in categorizing the english language (gargesh, 2019). the inner circle comprises the countries where english is the native language (enl), like the united kingdom (uk), the united states of america (usa), new zealand, ireland, anglophone canada, and some parts of the caribbean territories. countries like india, pakistan, bangladesh, malaysia, nigeria, kenya, tanzania, and so forth belong to the outer circle, the second circle of the english language. english is not the native language of the outer circle’s countries. however, english is considerable in their daily communication, and almost english is their second language. the third circle, which comprises countries like russia, china, japan, and most european countries, is called the expanding circle. the english language has no political or historical connection with these countries. in these countries, it is used for international communications, and the status of the english language is considered a foreign language. the countries of the inner circle have control over the english language and the authority to standardize the english language (halliday, 2019). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 25 method research design the study explored the attitudes of afghan english major students toward native-like proficiency in the english language and used a qualitative research design and a questionnaire as the main instrument for data collection. the questionnaire comprised both closed-ended and open-ended questions. having open-ended questions besides closed-ended questions in this study helps researchers to study an issue more authentically, as data from one type of question validates data from the other type (fraenkel et al., 2016). the quantitative, closed-ended items enable the researcher to quantify data and generalize results, whereas the closed-ended items provide in-depth data. so, both questions in the study provide the research with various data collection and analysis techniques that could help cater to the issue more authentically. research setting the current study was conducted at the english departments of two public universities in afghanistan, i.e., kabul university and sayed jamaluddin afghani university. kabul university is the central and largest university in the country, established in 1932 and located in kabul, the capital of the county. sayed jamaluddin afghani university is a new but fast-growing university established in 2010 and located in the kunar province of the country. the two universities were selected because of convenience, as the researchers are currently working in the two universities. sampling overall, 113 students participated in this study. they are fourth-year (senior) undergraduate students in the english department. these students voluntarily participated in the study. research instrument the questionnaire was the main instrument used for this study which had been adopted from a doctoral dissertation by šišić (2016). it had two types of questions, i.e., closed-ended and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 26 open-ended questions. the closed-ended questions provided quantitative data, whereas the openended questions provided qualitative data for the study. the questionnaire contains 15 items in three distinct parts. part one asked questions about the characteristics of native speakers. part 2 asked for information about the linguistics imperialism of native speakers, whereas the last part, i.e., part 3, elicited the respondents’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language. in the meantime, part one consisted of 3 closed-ended questions and 1 open-ended question; part two consisted of 5 closed-ended questions and 1 open-ended question, whereas part three contained 4 closed-ended questions and 1 open-ended question (as shown in appendix 1). each closed-ended item was measured on a five-likert scale. once the data were collected, the quantitative data were descriptively analyzed through spss (version 24) in terms of frequencies and percentages. the data obtained through openended questions were thematically analyzed. findings the results from closed-ended questions rq1: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward the character of native english language speakers? the following responses are regarding the respondents’ attitudes toward the characteristics of native speakers of the english language. the respondents were required to provide information about their attitudes toward the characteristics of native speakers of the english language. the results are shown in table 1. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 27 table 1. the frequency and percentage of items showing attitudes toward the characteristics of a native speaker no alternatives total items strongly disagree slightly disagree disagree slightly agree strongly agree 1 pronunciation is the defining attribute of native speakers. freq. 0 0 0 24 89 113 % 0 0 0 21.2% 78.8% 100 2 fluency is the defining attribute of native speakers. freq. 0 0 0 8 105 113 % 0 0 0 7.1% 92.9% 100 3 grammatical accuracy is the defining attribute of native speakers. freq. 0 0 0 40 73 113 % 0 0 0 35.4% 64.6% 100 table 1 illustrates the respondents’ responses in terms of frequency and percentage concerning respondents’ attitudes toward the characteristics of a native speaker. the results indicate that 24 (21.2%) of the respondents responded slightly agree, and 89 (78.8%) of the respondents responded strongly agree to item 1 (pronunciation is the defining attribute of native speakers). meanwhile, 8(7.1%) of the respondent responded slightly agree with item 2 (fluency is the defining attribute of native speakers whereas 105(92.9%) of the respondent responded strongly agree. concerning item 3 (grammatical accuracy is the defining attribute of native speakers), 40 (35.4%) of the respondents responded slightly agree, whereas 73 (64.6%) of the respondents responded strongly agree. rq2: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistics imperialism of native speakers of the english language? the responses signify afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistic imperialism. the results are shown in table 2. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 28 table 2. afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistic imperialism of native speakers of the english language no alternatives total items strongly disagree slightly disagree disagree slightly agree strongly agree 1 only native speakers can decide the rules/standardized english language. freq. 0 0 0 5 108 113 % 0 0 0 4.4% 95.6% 100 2 the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language. freq. 0 0 31 43 39 113 % 0 0 27.4% 38% 34.6% 100 3 the only acceptable variety of english language is the one used by native speakers. freq. 0 49 53 11 0 113 % 0 43.3% 47% 9.7% 0 100 4 every native speaker has a better mastery of the english language than non-native speakers, notwithstanding the amount of time they have spent learning english. freq. 0 0 2 33 78 113 % 0 0 1.8% 29.2% 69% 100 5 the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language. freq. 0 0 5 18 90 113 % 0 0 4.4% 16% 79.6% 100 table 2 shows that to item 1 (only native speakers have the right to decide the rules/standardized english language), 5 (4.4%) of the respondent responded slightly agree, whereas 108 (95.6%) of the respondent responded strongly agree. concerning item 2 (the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language), 31 (27.4%), 43(38%), and 39(34.6%) of the respondent responded disagree, slightly agree, and strongly agree, respectively. concerning item 3 (the only acceptable variety of english language is the one used by native speakers), 49 (43.3%), 53(47%), and 11(9.7%) respondents responded slightly disagree, disagree, and slightly agree, respectively. as to item 4 (every native speaker has a better mastery of the english language than non-native speakers, notwithstanding the amount of time they had spent learning english), 2 (1.8%), 33 (29.2%) and 78 (69%), respondents responded disagree, slightly agree and strongly agree respectively. finally, to item 5 (the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language), 5 (4.4%), 18 (16%), and 90 (79.6%) respondents responded disagree, slightly agree, and strongly agree, respectively. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 29 rq3: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language? the following responses are about afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language. the respondents were required to provide information regarding their attitudes toward native-like proficiency. the results are shown in table 3. table 3 shows that about item 1 (i want to sound like a native speaker), 113 (100%) of the respondents responded strongly agree. also, in terms of item2 (i want to speak with a native speaker accent), 113 (100%) of the respondents responded strongly agree, while regarding item 3 (i want to emulate native speakers in all linguistic aspects (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency), 113 (100%) respondents responded strongly agree. finally, as to item 4 (i want to sound like a native speaker), 113 (100%) of the respondents responded strongly agree. table 3. afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language no alternatives total items strongly disagree slightly disagree disagree slightly agree strongly agree 1 i want to sound like a native speaker. freq. 0 0 0 0 113 113 % 0 0 0 0 100% 100 2 i want to speak with a native speaker accent. freq. 0 0 0 0 113 113 % 0 0 0 0 100% 100 3 i want to emulate native speakers in all linguistic aspects (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency). freq. 0 0 0 0 113 113 % 0 0 0 0 100% 100 4 i want to sound like a native speaker. freq. 0 0 0 0 113 113 % 0 0 0 0 100% 100 the results from open-ended questions rq1: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward the character of native speakers of the english language? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 30 responding to rq1, based on the results of the data obtained through open-ended questions, two main themes appeared: (1) native speakers have naturally acquired fluency and the best pronunciation of the language and (2) native speakers will never make any mistakes as they have mastered every bit of grammar from the very beginning of their lives. rq2: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistic imperialism of native speakers of the english language? responding to rq2, based on the results of the data obtained through open-ended questions about linguistic imperialism, three main themes appeared: (1) the native speaker has to establish rules and regulations and standardize the language, (2) the english language represents the culture of the group where it is the native language, and (3) compared to nonnative speakers, native speakers have a better mastery of their language. rq3: what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language? referring to rq3, based on the results of the data obtained through open-ended questions about the attitudes toward native-like proficiency, two main themes appeared: (1) afghan english major undergraduate students love to sound native-like and love to speak with the native speaker’s accent, and (2) afghan english major undergraduate students wish to copy native speakers in linguistic aspects like grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency. discussion the study’s main aim is to investigate afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native speakers’ characteristics, native speakers’ linguistic imperialism of the english language, and native-like proficiency at kabul university and sayed jamaluddin afghani university. three research questions were used to explore the subject. they are: (1) what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward the characteristics of native english language speakers? (2) what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward linguistics imperialism of native english language speakers? (3) what are afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 31 the main instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire containing 12 closedended and 3 open-ended questions. the data obtained from closed-ended questions were manually analyzed, whereas the data obtained from open-ended questions were thematically analyzed. findings for the first research question on the characteristics of native speakers of the english language revealed that perfect pronunciation, fluency, and grammatical accuracy are the defining attributes of native speakers. kusumawardani and mardiyani (2018) believed that fluency and grammatical accuracy are among the essential features that characterize native speakers. karakaş (2017) and crowther et al.,. (2015 ) considered fluency and grammatical accuracy as the defining characteristics of native speakers. similarly, findings for the second research question on the linguistics imperialism of native speakers in the english language revealed that the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language. also, native speakers have the right to decide the rules or standardize the english language, and only native speaker has better english language skills than non-native speakers. meija-martinez (2017) explained that linguistic imperialism is a sub-type of cultural imperialism where native speakers are considered exalted compared to non-native speakers. nair et al. (2017) stated that linguistic imperialism is when teachers demand native-like proficiency from esl students. moreover, findings for the third research question on afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language revealed that students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in english are highly positive. they want to speak with a native speaker accent, to emulate native speakers in all linguistic aspects (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency), and wish to sound like a native speaker. brabcová and skarnitzl (2018) conducted a study in the czech republic. they found that most efl czech learners of the english language had positive attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language, and they loved to acquire and use the native-like accent of the english language. similarly, a study by šišić (2016) in croatia found that efl learners had a strong inclination towards attaining native-like proficiency in the english language. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 32 conclusion the current study at two public universities in afghanistan focused on the afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native speakers’ characteristics, linguistic imperialism, and native-like proficiency in the english language. the study found that pronunciation, fluency, and grammatical accuracies are the defining attributes of native speakers, and only native speakers have the right to decide the rules or standardize the english language. that native speaker has a better mastery of the english language than non-native speakers. similarly, the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language; native speakers have the right to decide the rules or standardize the english language, and only native speaker has better english language skills than non-native speakers. moreover, afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in english are very positive. they loved to speak with a native speaker’s accent and sound like a native speaker. also, they want to emulate native speakers in linguistic aspects like grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency. recommendations the study is small-scale research that explores only selected aspects of the subject. therefore, researchers in both efl and esl contexts are invited to conduct further studies on the subject. examining the effects of demographic factors involving gender, age, and year of study would add to the thorough examination of the subject. references abdulrahman, n. c., & ayyash, e. a. s. a. (2019). linguistic competence, communicative competence, and interactional competence. journal of advances in linguistics, 10, 16001616. https://doi.org/10.24297/ijct.v19i0.8505 azieb, s. (2021). the critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition: a review of the literature. international journal of research in humanities and social studies, 8(4), 20-26. doi: https://doi.org/10.22259/2694-6296.0804001 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.24297/ijct.v19i0.8505 https://doi.org/10.22259/2694-6296.0804001 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 33 baese‐berk, m. m., mclaughlin, d. j., & mcgowan, k. b. (2020). perception of non‐native speech. language and linguistics compass, 14(7), e12375. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12375 boonsuk, y., & ambele, e. a. (2020). who ‘owns english’in our changing world? exploring the perception of thai university students in thailand. asian englishes, 22(3), 297-308. https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2019.1669302 brabcová, k., & skarnitzl, r. (2018). foreign or native-like? the attitudes of czech efl learners toward accents of english and their use as pronunciation models. studie z aplikované lingvistiky-studies in applied linguistics, 9(1), 38-50. retrieved from: https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-bcf7063e-b13648f0-9b7c-a8577b26dc53/c/katerina_brabcova___radek_skarnitzl_38-50.pdf chambo torres, j. v., cifuentes cano, m. f., sierra cumpiano, j. g., & hernández pardo, g. v. (2022). the role of intercultural communicative competence in the efl classroom. retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12495/7741 chomsky, n. (1969). “linguistics and philosophy”, in language and philosophy: a symposium, sidney hook, (ed.). new york university press, 51–94 https://doi.org/10.21236/ad0616323 coleman, h. (2019). the condition of english in multilingual afghanistan. london: british council. retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/hywelcoleman/publication/351614071_the_condition_of_english_in_multilingual_afgh anistan_cema/links/60a0db9292851cfdf3382b45/the-condition-of-english-inmultilingual-afghanistan-cema.pdf crowther, d., trofimovich, p., saito, k., & isaacs, t. (2015). second language comprehensibility revisited: investigating the effects of learner background. tesol quarterly, 49(4), 814837. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.203 fleming, d. (2020). problematizing language: english as an international language, the native speaker and deleuze’s use of the notion of becoming. the magic of language: productivity in linguistics and language teaching, 109-120. retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ngfyeaaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa 109&dq=leonard+bloomfield+to+have+first+used+the+term+%e2%80%98native+spe aker%e2%80%99&ots=b4fzorbbs0&sig=t0fzgm5wqzncqp8tpji7vyx5wr4 fraenkel, j. r., wallen, n. e., & hyun, h. h. (2016). how to design and evaluate research in education. mcgraw-hill. gargesh, r. (2019). south asian englishes. the handbook of world englishes, 105-134. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119147282.ch7 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12375 https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2019.1669302 https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-bcf7063e-b136-48f0-9b7c-a8577b26dc53/c/katerina_brabcova___radek_skarnitzl_38-50.pdf https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-bcf7063e-b136-48f0-9b7c-a8577b26dc53/c/katerina_brabcova___radek_skarnitzl_38-50.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12495/7741 https://doi.org/10.21236/ad0616323 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/hywel-coleman/publication/351614071_the_condition_of_english_in_multilingual_afghanistan_cema/links/60a0db9292851cfdf3382b45/the-condition-of-english-in-multilingual-afghanistan-cema.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/hywel-coleman/publication/351614071_the_condition_of_english_in_multilingual_afghanistan_cema/links/60a0db9292851cfdf3382b45/the-condition-of-english-in-multilingual-afghanistan-cema.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/hywel-coleman/publication/351614071_the_condition_of_english_in_multilingual_afghanistan_cema/links/60a0db9292851cfdf3382b45/the-condition-of-english-in-multilingual-afghanistan-cema.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/hywel-coleman/publication/351614071_the_condition_of_english_in_multilingual_afghanistan_cema/links/60a0db9292851cfdf3382b45/the-condition-of-english-in-multilingual-afghanistan-cema.pdf https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.203 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ngfyeaaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa109&dq=leonard+bloomfield+to+have+first+used+the+term+%e2%80%98native+speaker%e2%80%99&ots=b4fzorbbs0&sig=t0fzgm5wqzncqp8tpji7vyx5wr4 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ngfyeaaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa109&dq=leonard+bloomfield+to+have+first+used+the+term+%e2%80%98native+speaker%e2%80%99&ots=b4fzorbbs0&sig=t0fzgm5wqzncqp8tpji7vyx5wr4 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ngfyeaaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa109&dq=leonard+bloomfield+to+have+first+used+the+term+%e2%80%98native+speaker%e2%80%99&ots=b4fzorbbs0&sig=t0fzgm5wqzncqp8tpji7vyx5wr4 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119147282.ch7 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 34 halliday, m. a. (2019). written language, standard language, global language. the handbook of world englishes, 331-348. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119147282.ch19 karakaş, a. (2017). students’ perceptions of ‘good english’ and the underlying ideologies behind their perceptions. journal of language and linguistic studies, 13(2), 487-509. retrieved from: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/jlls/issue/36120/405623 khatib, m., & monfared, a. (2017). exploring english teachers’ attitudes towards pronunciation issues and varieties of english in three circles of world englishes. applied research on english language, 6(2), 213-236. https://doi.org/10.22108/are.2017.21349 kusumawardani, s. a., & mardiyani, e. (2018). the correlation between english grammar competence and speaking fluency. professional journal of english education, 1(6), 724-733. retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/acc1/6c52ae72a642de3f0b2c2e232d5fe7ec6f7c.pdf manolescu, d. (2023). a quick snapshot of the english language. journal of critical studies in language and literature, 4(1), 14-20. https://doi.org/10.46809/jcsll.v4i1.191 matthews, j. (2018). vocabulary for listening: emerging evidence for high and mid-frequency vocabulary knowledge. system, 72, 23-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.10.005 meija-martinez, o. (2017). sociolinguistic legacies in west africa: the politics of linguistic imperialism and resistance in senegal (2017). retrieved from: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=intl-stdtheses mersad, d., & senad, b. (2019). native and non-native efl teachers dichotomy: terminological, competitiveness and employment discrimination. journal of language and education, 5(3 (19), 114-127. retrieved from: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/native-and-non-nativeefl-teachers-dichotomy-terminological-competitiveness-and-employment-discrimination nair, r., krishnasamy, r., & de mello, g. (2017). rethinking the teaching of pronunciation in the esl classroom. the english teacher, 14, 27-40. retrieved from: http://www.journals.melta.org.my/tet/downloads/tet35_01_03.pdf nayar, p. b. (1994). whose english is it? [electronic version]. tesl-ej, 1(1), f-1. retrieved from: https://tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume1/ej01/ej01f1/ rivers, d. j. (2018). the idea of the native speaker. beyond native-speakerism (pp. 15-35). routledge. retrieved from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315643601-2/idea-nativespeaker-damian-rivers https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119147282.ch19 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/jlls/issue/36120/405623 https://doi.org/10.22108/are.2017.21349 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/acc1/6c52ae72a642de3f0b2c2e232d5fe7ec6f7c.pdf https://doi.org/10.46809/jcsll.v4i1.191 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.10.005 https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=intl-std-theses https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=intl-std-theses https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/native-and-non-native-efl-teachers-dichotomy-terminological-competitiveness-and-employment-discrimination https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/native-and-non-native-efl-teachers-dichotomy-terminological-competitiveness-and-employment-discrimination http://www.journals.melta.org.my/tet/downloads/tet35_01_03.pdf https://tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume1/ej01/ej01f1/ https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315643601-2/idea-native-speaker-damian-rivers https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315643601-2/idea-native-speaker-damian-rivers journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 35 šišić, e. (2016). efl learners’ attitudes towards native-like proficiency as an achievement target (doctoral dissertation). retrieved from: http://darhiv.ffzg.unizg.hr/id/eprint/7339 tauchid, a., saleh, m., hartono, r., & mujiyanto, j. (2022). english as an international language (eil) views in indonesia and japan: a survey research. heliyon, 8(10), e10785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10785 tavarez dacosta, p., & almanzar alvarado, v. (2020). spanish language interference in the english learning process for students of the english immersion program by mescyt. online submission. retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed602493.pdf trzeciakowska, j. (2020). non-native english speakers’ attitudes towards polish-accented english. theoria et historia scientiarum, 17, 77-94. https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2020.003 vakili, p., & mohammed, r. (2020). “grammar scares me”: an exploration of american students’ perceptions of grammar learning. international journal of linguistics, literature, and translation, 3(12), 124-135. retrieved from: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3865346 yusuf, f. (2017). english and communication skill with tourist as native speaker based on contextuals learning approach. english and literature journal, 4(2), 85-92. retrieved from: https://journal3.uin-alauddin.ac.id/index.php/elite/article/download/4255/3918 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 http://darhiv.ffzg.unizg.hr/id/eprint/7339 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10785 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed602493.pdf https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2020.003 https://ssrn.com/abstract=3865346 https://journal3.uin-alauddin.ac.id/index.php/elite/article/download/4255/3918 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 36 appendix 1: questionnaire dear respondents, this questionnaire is structured and designed to collect data on afghan english major undergraduate students’ attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language. your responses are crucial for the study, so your genuine response to each questionnaire’s items is kindly requested. your responses are only used for study purposes and will be strictly confidential. thank you very much for your cooperation! note: please, do not hesitate to ask for an explanation in case you face anything unclear while responding. if you agree to be part of this study, please sign below. i agree (signature)……………………………… (date)…………………………… https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 37 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 38 part 1: attitudes toward the characteristics of native speakers of the english language instructions: please tick the box that represents you the most. 1= strongly disagree 2= slightly disagree 3= disagree 4= slightly agree 5= strongly agree no items 1 2 3 4 5 1 pronunciation is the defining attribute of native speakers. 2 fluency is the defining attribute of native speakers. 3 grammatical accuracy is the defining attribute of native speakers. how would you define the characteristics of a native speaker? ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 39 part 2: attitudes toward linguistic imperialism of native speakers of the english language instructions: please tick the box that represents you the most. 1= strongly disagree 2= slightly disagree 3= disagree 4= slightly agree 5= strongly agree how would you define the term linguistic imperialism? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ ________. no. items 1 2 3 4 5 1 only native speakers have the right to decide the rules/standardize the english language. 2 the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language. 3 the only acceptable variety of english language is the one used by native speakers. 4 every native speaker has a better mastery of the english language than non-native speakers, notwithstanding the amount of time they had spent learning english. 5 the english language is inseparable from the culture of the countries where it is a native language. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 40 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 41 part 3: attitudes toward native-like proficiency in the english language instructions: please tick the box that represents you the most. 1= strongly disagree 2= slightly disagree 3= disagree 4= slightly agree 5= strongly agree no. items 1 2 3 4 5 1 i want to sound like a native speaker. 2 i want to speak with a native speaker accent. 3 i want to emulate native speakers in all linguistic aspects (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency). 4 i want to sound like a native speaker. how would you define the term native-like proficiency? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ ________. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 content and language integrated learning (clil) is popular in a foreign language context in institutions where content subjects are taught in english. the aim of clil that should be achieved is not only enabling students to comprehend the subject areas but also facilitating their mastery on the target language. it is commonly used in areas where the students have not mastered the target language yet but they are required to achieve the aim of learning the content of a subject. that is supported by eurydice network (2006) which pointed out that in clil, non-language subjects are not taught in a foreign language but with and through the language. with and through here are used instead of in to highlight that in clil, students are still in evi puspitasari 1-13 abstract introduction classroom activities in content and language integrated learning received her master’s degree in english language studies from universitas sanata dharma (usd). prior to star�ng her master, she had experiences of teaching english to students with different levels of educa�on. her research interests are extensive reading, literature in educa�on and teaching english as a foreign language. she is now teaching in english language educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (umy). content and language integrated learning (clil) is an approach used to teach subjects which focuses on learning a new language and content. in one english teacher training program in indonesia, to achieve the goal of learning where the students master the target language and concepts of pedagogy, classroom activities to accommodate them in the dual-focused process are needed. this research scrutinized activities implemented in the program to achieve the learning goal and discussed the students’ responses toward the activities. by interviewing four third semester students who enrolled in two content subjects in that semester, the data were gained. four classroom activities used were revealed. those were quiz, group presentation, group teaching and classroom discussion. in general, the students responded each activity positively. in addition, suggestions related to how the teachers brings some activities were addressed by the students. keywords: content and language integrated learning, clil, classroom activities, students’ responses volume 1, no. 2, july 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning 2 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 the process of learning both the content and the language. the description above reflects the condition in an english teacher training program in indonesia where english is learned as a foreign language. in that program, based on the curriculum currently applied, the prominent objective is assisting students to be a professional english teacher. to attain the objective, student-teachers who join the program are facilitated and encouraged to improve their pedagogical skill such as the way they teach english to their future students and english language knowledge as a lesson that they teach to their future students. in the process, students are exposed with english sources and use the language in classroom discussion. consequently, they endeavor to understand the materials and elevate their mastery of english. to help the students do the double-focused jobs, i.e., mastering content and the target language, and to assist them to reach the objective of teaching, teachers design several classroom activities. activities significantly affect students’ achievement and motivation in learning. it is in parallel with kuyper, van der werf, and lubbers (2000) who stipulated that learning activities are a strong indicator of a student’s success. in effect, the teachers should choose or design activities for their instruction, including in clil contexts. the explanation above becomes a strong reason to conduct a study that focuses on clil classrooms in an efl context. this research put specific attention to activities implemented in the classrooms in clil. students’ responses toward those activities would also be scrutinized in this research. content and language integrated learning the instruction of content and language integrated learning (clil) is to reach the objective of understanding content and language. brown and bradford (2017) argued that portions for language and content are equal in that classroom. students have to strive to understand the content and at the same time they are required to improve their second language. to reach the aim, the target language used is about 50% of the teaching (eurydice network, 2006). to help students achieve the duality of learning goals in clil, teachers need some strategies. in line with that, coyle, hood and marsh (2010) stipulated that teaching strategies can determine a successful clil practice. several experts suggest strategies for teaching clil. dalton-puffer, huttner, jexenflicker, schindelegger and smit (2008) said that using humor in teaching clil is a thoughtful initiative. a high tension and devastation aroused from students’ double focuses on the language and content can be minimized by the teacher through jokes and humor. besides using humor, interactive and collaborative activities where students can use the language to communicate with others interactively are also suggested in clil. coyle, hood and marsh (2010) said that the manifestation of interactive teaching strategies is through a pair work, group work and project work. when students do something together either in pairs or in groups, they interact with their teammates and exchange ideas to work on a project. through their interaction, they share what they learn from the books, which is surely in the target language for clil classrooms. automatically, they use lexis and expres 3 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 sion from the book in communication. it can build up their cognitive development and language skills. it is why interaction and working together with other students are recommended for clil. another way to conduct clil successfully is by implementing students-centered learning. student-centered learning means that students play a significant role in learning. their role is not only as an active doer of the tasks given but also as consideration for the teachers to decide activities done, materials chosen, and learning speed (collins & o'brien, 2003). when teachers make a decision related to the instruction, they have to pay much attention to the students’ level, need and interest. playing active roles in the classroom provides the students with the chance to use the language in discussions, sharing sessions, and practicing concepts they learn. it is supported by dalton-puffer (2011) who pointed out that student-centered learning is worth implementing in clil contexts because the approach gives students more rooms to comprehend the content and practice the target language. learning activities for clil learning activities are often used in language teaching and learning articles in different terms. with the same concept as things done in the classroom to achieve teaching goals, richards and rodger (2014) put activities under method applied and presents them as the implementation of the method. it means that activities are considered as a set of plans in teaching. nunan (2004) defined activities as a part of task conducted sequentially in which the teacher and students have their own role to achieve a learning goal. in conclusion, learning activities are procedures used to decide learners’ involvement in the activities to reach the teaching and learning objective. in clil, learning activities are done to enhance students’ linguistic and non-linguistic competence. to facilitate improvement on students’ linguistic competence, the activities should encourage the students to use the language. in relation to this, martinez (2011) considered that a classroom is a learning society where the students can learn from people around them. while they are finishing a certain project or task with their friends, they learn both the target language and the content from their friends. that is why cooperative activities are more suggested in learning rather than individual activities. cooperative learning addressed by martinez (2011) can be manifested through group discussions. linh (2016) carried out a study about the implementation of group discussion in clil classroom in vietnam. in that study, the students discuss in a group to answer questions that might be presented in different types of questions such as multiple-choice, matching, or ordering in order to either check students’ comprehension on the content or assess students’ language knowledge, such as sintax or lexis. the other form of cooperative activity in clil discussed comes from aguilar and munoz (2014) by proposing a series that were successfully proven increasing students’ listening and grammar ability. the sequence was commenced by the teacher explaining the materials using power point slides while the students were listening and taking notes. then, the students would have several recommended readings. after reading, they discussed the topic in groups using the second language. after discussion, a case about 4 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 the topic of their assigned readings was given by the teacher and they came back again to the group to find solution to the case. this problem-solving activity is also recommended in clil because based on the framework of clil activities by barbero (2012), it belongs to high order thinking skill activities which can train students to think critically. at the last session, the teacher asked the students to make a poster about their reading with the group and present it in front of their classmates. besides improving students’ listening skill and grammar ability, the activities addressed by munoz (2014) were also able to facilitate students’ comprehension on the content knowledge. in the activities, after reading the assigned materials, the students had a group discussion in different forms such as problem solving and answering conceptual questions from the teacher. in those activities, they talk about the same topic. by talking about the same topic on repeat, the retention of students’ understanding on it will be developed (elizabeth & rao, 2007), which is good for their cognitive development. in doing classroom activities, students need assistance. the assistance and companion can be gained from the teacher and the students. it is since, based on martinez (2011), clil classroom is a medium where students can learn new knowledge from the society people in the classroom. through cooperativeness and sometimes competition with other students, skills and knowledge are trained. meanwhile, in their process of learning, they need guidance which is provided by the teacher. they need a party as a guide to tell them what to do and how to do. in this position, the teacher played a role that brown (2001) said as a facilitator where he manages and provides activities for the students to achieve the goal. besides facilitating the learning process with activities, in learning, students need a teacher to give them feedback. feedback is strongly needed to let the students know their areas to improve. schuitmaker-king (2013) highlighted the importance of corrective feedback in clil setting by saying that feedback from the teacher is fruitfully helpful for the students’ language and cognitive development. it is in parallel with biber, nekrasova and horn (2011), who stated that a teacher will never miss giving students feedback on their writing work if they understand how contributive it is for students’ improvement. they also added that the feedback in clil should cover linguistic and non-linguistic aspects to improve students’ knowledge on content and skills on the language learned. to sum up, interaction in clil learning is significant. through interaction, students are able to absorb new linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge from their friends. in addition, they are also able to practice the language for real communication and exchange their understanding about content knowledge with either their classmates. that is the reason why teachers are encouraged to design and prepare engaging activities that involve students’ interaction; for instance, group discussion and group presentation. in what form the group discussion is implemented depends on the teachers’ creativity as long as the lesson is able to hold students’ attention (berton, 2008). besides designing tasks and preparing activities, the teacher is also encouraged to give feedback on students’ work to facilitate their language and content learning process. 5 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 research type this study belongs to qualitative research. creswell (2012) stated that qualitative research focuses on exploring a phenomenon and investigating people’s mind, feeling, and opinions about the issue. meanwhile, this research put the center on types of activities used by teachers in clil classrooms and scrutinizing students’ reactions and responses toward those activities. classroom activities in a clil context is the phenomenon and how the students respond the activities implemented equals with the opinion toward the issue that creswell addressed. research context this qualitative research was carried out at an english teacher training program in one of universities in indonesia. in this program, students are prepared to be an english teacher. in this institution, the teaching and learning process applies clil. it is because to reach the goal, the students have to enroll courses which are about 70% delivered in english which belongs to the number of english usage in clil (eurydice network, 2006). the rest of that number is general compulsory subjects based on national curriculum of higher education in indonesia and internal curriculum implemented as a specific characteristic of the university. besides the frequency of the target language used in the instruction which indicates that the classroom is clil not cbi, another proof is in the areas the teaching training program focuses on. in this program, the goal is focusing on both pedagogical and english language theories. it means that the students learn the theories of pedagogy as the content subjects with english as a target language that clearly indicates clil implementation rather than cbi (eurydice network, 2006). in this institution, english subject courses that the students have to enroll are divided into four based on students’ level. in the first year, students learn foundation of english skills through skill-based subjects to improve their ability in the target language. after finishing their first year, students obtain theory-based subjects to learn concepts and principles of teaching and learning a foreign language. then, going to the next level, in the third year, students are exposed with research-based subjects to prepare their undergraduate thesis. last, in the fourth year, they work on their undergraduate thesis and take the last course about academic presentation which equips them with skills and knowledge for their thesis defense. in each batch, the class is commonly classified into four groups (group a, b, c, and d). it also happens to theory courses. every theoretical subject was handled by a pair of teachers. group a and b were taught by teacher 1 while group c and d were taught by teacher 2. so, there were four different teachers teaching two content subjects. those teachers have different strategies in teaching content which means they may also implement different activities in their instruction. research participants this research involved second year students in the program, specifically in the third semester. the fundamental reason for choosing students in that semester is that they had their first experience receiving theory-based subjects in the form of clil instruction. four students were selected as participants based on the recommendation received from teachers of theory-based 6 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 subjects in that semester. based on the teachers’ opinion, the students appointed were articulated, that help the researcher get rich data. the most of all, all participants were participative in doing classroom activities. the teachers also said, since they were active and participative, they were assumed to follow complete steps passed through in the activities. hence, the students were able to give information about the activities in details and elaborative responses based on what they experienced. they consisted of one male student and three female students. they were presented using pseudonyms (ana, bimo, cindy and dina) to give them confidentiality. data collection technique after getting information from the teachers, the researcher contacted the participants to make an appointment for an interview. the interview for four students was conducted separately using indonesian language which were the first language of both sides the researcher and students. then, the interview was transcribed and validated through member checking. based on that process, there were no changes on the data collected. findings and discussion quiz the data showed that quiz is one of the activities in the program. it was done by the students individually. four participants also revealed that the quiz was conducted by different teachers in different ways. some teachers used weekly essay and another one used multiple-choice questions. weekly essay was done in every meeting while the multiple-choice test was conducted after four topics discussed. for the essay, the students were given two or three questions based on the assigned chapter and they had to answer them on paper in thirty minutes. dina said that sometimes, it was done after a group discussion, but some other time, it was implemented in the last thirty minutes of the meeting. it was supported by ana who said that the students submitted the work after answering all questions and they would get it back next meeting with written feedback toward their content and structure from the teachers. for the multiple-choice test, bimo said that it took place once in four meetings and there would be one meeting allocated for this quiz only. in this quiz, the students were given twenty multiple choice questions related to four chapters discussed. ana stated that the students usually finished it in twenty or twenty-five minutes. the use of weekly essay and multiple-choice test as an option for clil classrooms has also been discussed in multiple studies. regarding the use of multiple choice questions, linh (2016) stated that that type of exercise is one of common activities besides matching, ordering, mistake finding and group discussion that was designed by vietnamese teachers in their clil classrooms in which some of them focused on the language and some others focused on the content. based on clil conceptual framework and activities classification designed by barbero (2012), multiple choice question is considered as a lower order thinking skill activity while essay writing belongs to higher order thinking skill activities. for what the students say about quizzes both weekly essay and multiple-choice test students responded that weekly essay provided more benefits than multiple-choice test. students felt easier to prepare one chapter rather than four 7 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 chapters for the test. in addition, ana stated that she and her friends felt it was worth it for reading one chapter for essay rather than studying four chapters only for twenty questions of multiple choice test. she added that in the multiple-choice quiz, the questions were not discussed after all so that she did not know the right answer. she argued that the teacher had better discuss the questions and the right answer further so that she and other students could understand the mistakes in the quiz and points to improve in the topics discussed. the data also showed that the students liked doing weekly essay since that activity encouraged them to read. ana admitted, “i like this quiz. because of the quiz, i read. somebody should force us to read.” the statement that showed the quiz was able to boost students’ willingness to read is also in line with dina’s and cindy’s. they agreed that they could not answer the questions in weekly essay without reading. however, that is contrasted by statement given by bimo. he said that he rarely read the book. he just listened to his friends who presented the topic attentively. he may be a person who learn from audio instead of reading texts and prefer listening to reading to get information about the topic. besides giving space to receive and produce the language and providing them with teachers’ feedback, the data also presented some other reasons why some participants responded weekly essay positively as an activity in clil by comparing it to the multiple-choice quiz. they preferred to read one chapter and to do the assessment in an essay form instead of reading four chapters answering twenty questions of a multiple-choice quiz. they thought that twenty points would not be able to accommodate content in four chapters. last but not the least, the students pointed that weekly essay trained them to use their high order of thinking. cindy explained that they were demanded to explain in detail and gave real cases taken from daily life and experience as an instance, which means the students had to connect the concept to real life situation. from the data presented above, it can be concluded that participants supported quiz as an activity that gave them sufficient space to practice the language. however, compared to multiple-choice questions, they were more into weekly essays. even though there was one student stating that he was reluctant to read and he practiced the language by listening to his friends’ presentation, the rest of the participants revealed that the weekly essay was able to increase their enthusiasm to read. their voices are in line with dalton-puffer’s (2011) statement that in clil classroom, students are empowered to practice new knowledge and skills. by practicing, they will internalize the language and content knowledge accurately and able to produce things from what they have learned. in weekly essays in the context of this study, students got some input of the language and content by reading. then, in the classroom, they produced the language and put points that they comprehended through writing. they also revealed that besides improving their language and content knowledge, weekly essay is also beneficial to sharpen their critical thinking skill since they have to relate the concept to their real life. for the language skill and content knowledge improvement, they agreed that the feedback from the teachers played a crucial role. schuitemaker-king (2013) stipulated ithat corrective feedback from the teachers n clil can promote and scaffold students in learning the dichotomy of language 8 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 and content. being in the same side, biber, nekrasova and horn (2011) stated that from the feedback, which is suggested to focus on both content and forms, students are able to recognize their mistakes and points to improve. some questions in weekly essays asked them to find a real example for concepts or promote solution to a problem which can be categorized into high order thinking skill (barbero, 2012). that is in line with thomas (2011), who highlighted that ideal classroom activities for higher education students is one that trains their critical thinking. group presentation the next activity mentioned by the participants is group presentation. working in a group of three or four, the students presented the topic assigned to them. the distribution of the topic and group had been decided by the teacher in the first meeting when the syllabus was given to the students. in one class, this activity was done after group discussion, but in the other, it was implemented in the first turn of the teaching sequence. having done this activity, the group typically received feedback from the teachers. the feedback focused on the students’ body language, language used and slides in their presentation. based on the participants’ statement, one teacher usually helped the presenters answer questions from the audiences when it was needed and completed information which the presenters might miss to share. meanwhile, the other teacher only provided short conclusion without giving further explanation on the topic. from the data, it is known that the students’ response toward the activity is positive. bimo admitted that the presentation helped him gain good comprehension. he rarely read the book since he found a significant number of unfamiliar vocabulary in the book that hindered his willingness to read. alternatively, bimo chose to listen to the presentation rather than reading the handout for weekly quiz. even though getting a good response, some participants noted points to consider about this activity. the participants said that presenters’ lack of preparation and english ability triggered students not to pay much attention to the presenters. ana pointed that if the presenters were well-prepared, the presentation would be easy to follow and understandable. yet, if they lacked preparation, the presentation would be boring because they just read the words on the slides which they just copied and pasted from the book. it made the presentation not communicative. bimo admitted, “i rely on the presentation to understand the material because they [the presenters] had simplified the language when sharing, but if they just read from the book when presenting, that does not help me.” the students preferred this activity because they considered that commonly, the language used by the presenters was not as complicated as the one used in the book. in result, they perceived it an alternative to understand the topic without reading. however, when the presenters did not do preparation such as paraphrasing the line on the book for their slides and using simple sentences when delivering the presentation, it made the presentation not communicative. in consequence, the students would not absorb information 9 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 maximally from the presentation. that is why dalton-puffer (2011) said that because of the tension in clil where the students learn the language and the content at the same time, clil students need activities with communicative and understandable input. in relation to the findings, if the presentation was not communicative, it hindered the students from understanding the content. from the data presented above, it was revealed that bimo and other participants felt helped with the presentation. that is also in line with martinez (2011), who emphasized that clil classroom is a learning society where the students learn from people around them, including their classmates and their teachers. they can learn the language itself and the content area learned. in that classroom, bimo preferred listening to the presentation to reading the book. he and others also stated that the language used by the presenters was simpler than the one used in the book. therefore, bimo here, learned the content from his friends and took benefits of clil classroom as his learning society. the last issue that appeared from the students’ response toward group presentation was the teacher role. ana and bimo mentioned that teacher was the factor to make the presentation effective. when the presenters were confused in answering their friends’ questions, the teacher took the place and helped them. sometimes the teacher also clarified or added some cases or points delivered by the presenters. in this case, the teacher played a role as a facilitator. she let the students practiced and presented the materials and she was ready to give help when the students got stuck in finding a solution. it can decrease students’ dependency in learning and practice student-centered learning, which is strongly suggested in clil practice (marsh, maltjer & hartiala, 2001; dalton-puffer, 2011). in giving that help, the teacher used bilingual (mixed indonesian and english) and some jokes, which created stress-free ambience in the classroom. jokes and humor are constituent in applying clil because it can reduce students’ tension and stress for having dual goals to achieve (dalton-puffer, huttner, jexenflicker, schindelegger & smit, 2008). for being bilingual in class, the teacher might want all students with different proficiency level of english to understand the point. in this case, she understood that it was not easy to learn a new language, which means she tried to put herself in students’ position as a language learner. it was a good strategy to make the students not intimidated by the teacher in the classroom (nikula, 2010). for not feeling unintimidated, they will feel free to ask questions and discuss the content knowledge with the teacher. group teaching besides group presentation, in running the classroom, group teaching was also applied to learn both language and content. in this activity, the students were put in a group of three or four to teach other students. this activity was different from group presentation because the students did not only stand in front and present the assigned chapter. they were required to act as a teacher in about ninety minutes. they had to manage the class and teach other students. dina said that the topic to teach had been distributed by the teacher based on the book used in the first meeting. she added that they could consult to the teacher before the day her group would present to ensure whether their understanding on the book was correct. 10 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 dina added that mostly, the students consulted points to share to others ratherthan the teaching techniques used. dina also informed that in the middle of the activity, the teacher usually raised some issues related to the topic and asked some questions to all students in the class, including the group who taught others. then, the teacher asked them to discuss the issue with their friends and share their thought to the class. the evidence showed interesting students’ responses about group teaching. mostly, students were excited with the activity. that was something new for them. cindy and dina thought that it assisted them to comprehend the material well. dina admitted that when she played a role as a teacher, she was demanded to master the materials. to accomplish that task, they needed to read several times and then shared. it made her understand the material maximally. additionally, before performing, they were allowed to meet the teacher to consult the material. cindy said that before the meeting, she was confused about what to teach. then, she initiated to meet up with the teacher for consultation and she felt enlightened afterwards. she said, “i must do that (consultation). i was afraid, if we did not consult the materials to the teachers, our understanding was not in line with what the book said.” dina agreed with that by stating, “by meeting up with the teacher, i could have holistic understanding, so i knew what i had to teach to myfriends. students’ responses toward this activity are also obtained from their suggestion to this activity. it is true that they like doing this activity. moreover, the teacher assisted them well. however, they perceived that this activity would be more effective if the teacher raised the issues about the topic later after the presenters finished their teaching. dina said that the teacher’s interruption distracted their focus to their friends’ teaching. cindy added that she felt distracted in teaching their friends when the teacher cut a teaching process she did. when the teacher finished discussing the issues, she forgot in which point she had to continue the teaching. regardless suggestion given by the students about the activity, the data showed that this activity is able to engage the students’ attention. the students had great motivation in doing this task. they read and pretended to be a teacher for the classmates. through this activity, the students who acted to be a teacher for the class can practice using the language, which means that the activity provided opportunity for students to practice what they learn. it is in parallel with dalton-puffer (2011) who stated that students in clil classrooms need activities which give them opportunity to practice the target language because practicing is an effective way to elevate their mastery on the language. this activity also provided repetition that is needed by students in learning. first, they read the material on the assigned chapter. after reading, they met up with the teacher to confirm and make sure what they understand from the chapter is correct. then, they presented the material to others. hence, they met the topic on repeat. based on elizabeth and rao (2007), by talking about a certain topic repeteadly, students’ retention toward the concept is developed. students in the class who listen to friends explaining the materials can learn the content from them. besides from the students, a party from whom they learn is a teacher. they learn from teacher through 11 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 consultation conducted before teaching and from the feedback. this condition is the manifestation of the learning society that martinez (2011) addressed, where students can experience the process of learning from people there, both from the teacher and their classmates. group discussion group discussion was one of the activities implemented in the program. the data showed that the content of the discussion was various. ana and bimo pointed, sometimes the teachers gave a real case of how the problems related to the concept learned were applied in their life and asked the students to find a solution. however, some other teachers brought the discussion to review questions in the weekly quiz. they asked the students to share their answers to their group after the weekly essay. then the teachers guided them into classroom discussion by asking one representative of the group to share the result to the class orally. the last topic to discuss in this activity was prominent points in chapters of the book they read. cindy and dina stated that one of the content teachers asked them to make a diagram to summarize the chapter. in doing that, they needed to discuss with teammates to decide what points to be put in the diagram. dina added that sometimes, they were also required to recall previous lessons to complete the mind map. students’ responses toward this activity is positive. after reading the book that they considered the language was too heavy, they needed to check and complete information from friends. bimo said that group discussion helped him since he hardly ever read the book. he got information discussed every meeting from this activity. he added that group discussion created casual atmosphere so that he never felt shy or reluctant to ask his teammates to explain if he had questions. cindy had the same opinion. she said, “i read at home but i need to check whether what i understand is the same as what my friends understand”. dina agreed with those participants. she stated, “for those who have not got the points, this activity helps them a lot. they can ask their friends.” this activity is such a medium where the students exchange their understanding after reading the book. they share their knowledge, ask some questions, and solve problems related to the content learned. it means that this activity provides opportunity for the students to interact with each other. that is in line with what maillat (2010) suggested that a clil classroom needs to be set to gain students’ interaction and communication. in group discussions, they did so. in addition, group discussion is also a student-centered learning activity because the students actively solve the problems in learning by themselves without depending much on the teachers (collins & o’brien, 2003; dalton-puffer, 2011; marsh, maltjer, & hartiala, 2001). the students also issued some suggestions toward the implementation of this activity. dina addressed that she sometimes felt bored of joining group discussions because meeting by meeting, they did the same thing. they discussed and reported. she hoped that the teacher could create a different scheme for this activity, such as doing the discussion outside the class. she also stated, “i got dizzy in understanding the chapters. the vocabulary is difficult and the content is hard to understand.” the statement reflects what they want in learning clil. they seem to need more interesting activity that can 12 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 reduce their stress because of the complicated language and difficult content. they were striving to understand the language and attempting to absorb that the chapters in the book told them about. in result, refreshing and entertaining activities are needed to lessen the pressure and tension in clil which is suggested by dalton-puffer, huttner, jexenflicker, schindelegger and smit (2008). conclusion this study reveals classroom activities that facilitate the students in improving their new language and comprehension on content subjects. not only types of activity implemented, this research also scrutinizes students’ responses toward each of them. the evidence illustrates that quiz, group presentation, group teaching and group discussion are activities applied in dual-focused instruction of the english teacher training program, the place where this research was conducted. students perceived that those activities are able to help them achieve the learning goal that is acquiring the language and theoretical subjects. from the findings and discussion, it can also be concluded that the key factor determining the success of an activity is the teacher. quiz will be a good activity to assist students in learning theories and a target language as far as the teachers choose the right type of quiz. the students show a positive response to the quiz that provides them sufficient opportunity to use the language, such as an essay instead of multiple-choice quiz. similar to quiz, group presentation, group teaching, group discussion become a facilitative tool to gain the english skills and content if the teachers help the students without making them dependent on the teacher’ assistance. teachers can also change classroom ambience in clil, which is usually demanding because of double focused goals to be more interesting and stress free by doing a fun thing such as making jokes while teaching. references aguilar, m. & munoz, c. (2014). the effect of proficiency on clil benefits in engineering students in spain. international journal of applied linguistics, 1, 1-18. barbero, t. (2012). assessment tools and practices in clil. in f. quartapelle (ed.), assessment and evaluation in clil (pp. 38-56). pavia: ibis-como. biber, d., nekrasova, t., & horn, b. (2011). the effectiveness of feedback for l1-english and l2-writing development: a meta-analysis. ets research report. princeton, nj: ets. brown, h., & bradford, a. (2017). emi, clil, & cbi: differing approaches and goals. in p. clements, a. krause & h. brown (eds.), transformation in language education (pp 328-334). tokyo: jalt. cenoz, j. (2015). content-based instruction and content and language integrated learning: the same or different? language, culture and curriculum, 28(1), 8-24. collins, j. w., & o’brien, n. p. (eds.). (2003). greenwood dictionary of education. westport, ct: greenwood. coyle d., hood p., marsh d. (2010). content and language integrated learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. creswell, j. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design. thousand oaks, california: sage publication. dalton-puffer, c. (2011). content-and-language integrated learning: from practice to principles? annual review of applied linguistics, 31, 182-204. 13 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 dalton-puffer, c., huttner, j., jexenflicker, s., schindelegger, v., & smit, u. (2008). content and language integrated learningon osterreichs hoheren technischen lehranstalten: forschungsbericht. vienna, austria: universitat wien & bundesministerium fur unterricht, kultur und kunst elizabeth, m.e.s. & rao, b.d. (2007). methods of teaching english. new delhi: discovery publishing house. eurydice network. (2006). content and language integrated learning (clil) at school in europe. brussels, belgium: european commission. retrieved from http://eacea.ec.europa. eu/education/eurydice/thematic_studies_archives_en.php linh, n. t. t. (2016). reconsidering the first steps of clil implementation in vietnam. european journal of language policy, 8(1), 31-56. maillat, d. (2010). the pragmatics of l2 in clil. in c. dalton-puffer, t. nikula, & u. smit (eds.), language use and language learning in clil (pp. 39–60). amsterdam: john benjamins. marsh, d. & hartiala, a.k. (2001). dimensions of content and language integrated learning. in d. marsh, a. maltjer, & hartiala, a.k. (eds.), profiling european clil classrooms: languages open doors. jyväskylä, findland: university of jyväskylä. martinez, m. r. p. (2011). clil and cooperative learning. encuentro, 109-118. nikula, t. (2010). on effects of clil on a teacher’s language use. in c. dalton-puffer, t. nikula, & u. smit (eds.), language use and language learning in clil classrooms (pp. 105–124). amsterdam: john benjamins. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j.c., & rodgers, t. s., (2014). approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press.’ schuitemaker-king, j. (2013). giving corrective feedback in clil and efl classes. levende talen tijdschrift, 14(2), 3−10. thomas, t. (2011). developing first year students’ critical thinking skills. asian social science, 7, 26-35. academic writing is a kind of writing important in academic field. academic writing is a type of writing that is specifically used for academic purposes (yakhontova, 2003). paper, journal article, thesis, and dissertation are examples of academic writings. they are developed in specific standards and refer to certain formats of writing. academic writings are useful for academic fulfillment, academic development, and self-actualization in academic area (rao, 2007). more specifically, academic writing is important to understand students’ disciplines, support the students’ learning and establish the students’ career. in the process of academic writing, there are some requirements that students should fulfil. in academic writing, the students refer to theories and use logical thinking as requirements to come up with theoretical truth (yakhontova, 2003). the andi wirantaka 34-45 abstract introduction paragraph writing of academic texts in an efl context is currently a teacher in english language educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. he earned his bachelor degree from universitas negeri yogyakarta (uny) and master degree from sanata dharma university. he started his teaching experience in higher educa�on as english instructor in language training center of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. his research interests are vocabulary teaching and learning, academic wri�ng, and instruc�onal development. this study aims to figure out efl students’ experiences in developing paragraphs and difficulties in writing paragraphs of academic texts. this current study was qualitative research which employed interviews as the data collection method. the participants of the study were five students who were writing their research report as a requirement for their undergraduate degree. the study was conducted in one of private universities in yogyakarta, indonesia. the findings of the study showed that in developing paragraphs, the students did brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing. moreover, related to the problems in writing paragraph, the students faced difficulties in english words and word choice, grammar, development of main idea, coherence and cohesiveness, effective sentence, and citation. keywords: paragraph development, paragraph writing, academic text volume 1, no. 2, july 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning 35 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 theories provide the basis of what is believed to be the truth from the previous studies. it is then proven by providing facts from the data gathered and relating them with theories. paragraphs are useful to deliver theories and findings to be discussed to achieve scientific truth. a good paragraph is essential in academic writing. a good paragraph is critical as it helps the readers to understand the content of the writing. coherent paragraph results in sufficient development of main idea reflected by appropriate supporting sentences, which will help readers find the main idea and supporting details of the paragraph. moreover, cohesion among paragraphs is also essential to build a bind among paragraphs. it shows the readers the unity of the paragraph. knowledge of developing a paragraph is very important for students especially in academic writing. they need to make sure that the language used in developing the paragraph is correct, formal, systematic, and suitable with academic nature. moreover, sentences should be arranged in such a way so that it results in good comprehension to the readers. academic features such as citation and writing format are also important to be taken into consideration by the students to meet the academic requirements. although a paragraph only consists of one main idea, the development of a paragraph is sometimes difficult to achieve. writers should consider some aspects of a paragraph to build them into a good paragraph. vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, cohesion, and coherence are among the aspects requiring attention in paragraph writing. the words used in paragraph should be correct and suitable to represent the idea. in addition, the paragraph should fulfill language rules in term of grammar. moreover, authors have to make sure that each sentence is correctly constructed. the last, each sentence in a paragraph should be interconnected to other sentences and each paragraph should also connect to other paragraphs. in writing an academic text, efl students should put more efforts than l1 students. in writing a paragraph, efl students potentially face more challenges than first language (l1) learners (hussen, 2015). both of them may share similar difficulties related to the writing format and mechanic. however, students of english as foreign language face more difficulties in composing academic text than l1 students (yakhontova, 2003). efl students are likely to have more difficulties in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. the objective of this study is to investigate how students develop paragraphs and identify problems in writing paragraphs of academic texts. in efl contexts, academic writing requires the students to use a foreign language, proper academic format and standard, and other paragraph writing requirements. those requirements make efl students have more challenges in academic writing than l1 students, and they potentially make academic writing more difficult to accomplish. literature review writing there are some factors which influence successful writing. kellogg (2001) argued that successful writing depends on the ability of the writer to retrieve and apply relevant procedures, schemas, facts and episodes through working memory. writing requires the writers to follow certain 36 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 rules and procedures to meet the standard of good writing composition. in addition, writing also requires them to consider how the ideas are elaborated and connected one another. in an efl context, writing benefits students in some ways. rao (2007) mentioned the importance of writing in efl context as it motivates students to organize ideas, analyze, criticize and develop the ability to summarize. in addition, it strengthens students’ ability in reflecting, thinking, and learning the language. writing specifically helps the students produce the language by developing and connecting the ideas in writing product. they may analyze, criticize and summarize the topic or theme being discussed. since writing is a productive skill, it makes students to be creative and critical in composing the language. academic writing academic writing simply means writing for academic purposes. academic writing, more specifically undergraduate thesis, is a writing work done by the students in their study accomplishment process. in indonesia, it is the requirement for the undergraduate degree. the students usually get the preparation class for academic writing. it will help them learn about academic writing and how to make it. writing an academic text is not a simple matter, especially for l2 students. many l2 students find it hard to write their academic writing into a proper form (hussen, 2015). hussenstated that more problems occur because of their lack of familiarity with the conventions and expectations of academic writing in english medium universities. moreover, al-khasawneh (2010) stated that courses where students learn academic writing do not successfully prepare students to write academic writing. paragraph development it is essential for students to understand a paragraph before they actually write it. oshima and hogue (2006) stated that paragraph is basic unit of organization in writing group-related sentences which consists of two kinds of sentences: a topic sentence and supportive statements. the number of the supporting sentences of a paragraph is not fixed but they should be sufficient to develop main idea clearly. owl (2009) clarified a paragraph as a group of closely-related sentences which deal with and develop one idea. paragraph has been written to help the readers obtain the piece of information of the writing. paragraph helps the readers comprehend the information within the main idea and relate it to the other paragraphs. mayers (2006) stated that there are three important parts of a paragraph. the first part is introduction. it contains a topic sentence which outlines the main idea of a paragraph to which the rest of the paragraph should be focused. a topic sentence usually occurs in the beginning of the paragraph but it sometimes occurs in other positions such as in the middle or at the end of the paragraph. the second part is the body. it contains supporting sentences which develop the main idea by giving examples, details, and explanations. the third part is conclusion. it occurs at the end of the paragraph. it emphasizes the point of the paragraph to be emphasized by the readers. it usually has the sense of finality. 37 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 there are elements of a paragraph that determine the quality of the paragraph. paragraph should have three main elements to be achieved i.e. unity, coherence and adequate development (nunan in khairy, 2013). the first is unity. it is about oneness of the idea. to have a unity, a paragraph should be developed by only one main idea. the main idea is then developed by sufficient supporting details from at least two or more sentences. a main idea is used to control unity of the paragraph by its topic sentence. in addition, supporting details are used to develop the topic sentence by giving more explanation to it. they have to be sufficient enough to develop the topic sentence in order to give the readers good comprehension of the paragraph. the second element is coherence. it is the connection among sentences within the paragraph. coherence can be achieved by having transitional words and phrases, pronoun reference, repeated key terms and parallelism. boardman and frydenberg (2002) stated that there are many ways to make paragraph coherence. one of the ways is to use linking words. coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, prepositions, and transitions are common types of linking words. they are useful to link sentences to one another. adequate development is the last element of a paragraph to be achieved. a paragraph should be fully developed and it doesn’t leave any significant questions to the readers. an author can ensure the adequate development of the paragraph by providing right level of supporting details, choosing right kind of evidence, and having the right pattern of development. writing a paragraph is the beginning of the writing process which has some procedures to follow. there are some procedures of paragraph writing proposed by hussen (2015)i.e. brainstorming, planning, drafting, revising, and editing. brainstorming. brainstorming is the initial step of paragraph writing. it is idea-collecting technique which functions as the organizer of thinking and idea collector. it is included as pre-writing activity. oshima and hogue (2006) suggested that the more time writers spend on pre-writing activity, the more successful their writings will be. brainstorming can be in the form of list, free writing and mind mapping (zemach& rumisek, 2005). brainstorming enables writers to gather any possible ideas for the paragraph which are then sorted and organized. planning. planning as the second step is done after the writer finishes brainstorming. planning is when the writers outline their ideas and bring them into note form. planning is the procedure after brainstorming is done to select relevant ideas to be developed into paragraph (zemach & rumisek, 2005). planning is useful to organize and classify the ideas gathered in brainstorming. planning helps the writers to establish paragraph unity that will give the readers introductory idea about the main topic of the paragraph (cumming, 2006). it is useful to put the ideas into right order and build the connection between the ideas. drafting. drafting is the third step in writing a paragraph. drafting is the process of writing when the writers write down their ideas on paper focusing on the content, and not mechanism (hussen, 2015).when writing the first draft, students should discover further ideas to be added to the paragraph (cumming, 38 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 2006). it is very hard to have good paragraph in the first writing. there is always draft developed as the first writing. drafting is the initial product of paragraph in which writers can put or add more ideas or even omit some irrelevant ideas. the emphasis of the drafting process is the content so that students do not need to revise the paragraph related to vocabulary and grammar used. revising. the fourth step of paragraph writing is revising. cumming (2006) pointed out that revising is considered as the heart of writing process, the means by which idea emerge and evolve and meanings are clarified. revising means students examine whether ideas are well built and arranged. in this step, students take a closer look on how the sequences of ideas are presented. they should activate their logic to determine how the paragraph is developed. editing. the step when students check and correct the paragraph as the final version is called editing. it can be viewed as the process of correcting the sentence structure, word choice, spelling, punctuation, grammar, capitalization in apiece of writing (hussen,2015). it is the step in which students pay attention to details of the paragraph. the development of ideas is not the concern in this step. it is done after revising process. since academic writing requires systematic development of the arrangements, steps to develop the writing should be carefully done by the author. having different procedures may result in inconsistency and redundancy. paragraph writing problems academic writing in efl context is still challenging for many students. the issue is that it requires students to refer to academic writing system and use second language (l2). hailemariam’s study (2011) found that l2 writers have several problems in writing such as vocabulary selections, punctuation error, generating idea, organizing problems, spelling errors and appropriate grammar usage. in writing an academic text, efl students potentially face some problems. related to the influencing factor of academic writing problems, hailemariam (2011) stated that the possible causes of students’ problems in efl paragraph writing are inadequate exposure of target language, lack of practice, problem in writing apprehension, lack of appropriate feedback, lack of vocabulary, and carelessness. another study by abdulkareem (2013) toward arab students in universiti teknologi malaysia found that the difficulties in developing paragraph include vocabulary, spelling, structure of sentences, and idea development. vocabulary is the most problems faced by the students in developing paragraph followed by spelling, structure of sentences, and idea development. the last study by thananart (2000) examined errors in comparison and contrast paragraphs written by efl university students at chulalongkorn university. the study found that problems in writing paragraph included grammatical structure, transition signals, verb forms, word choice, and spelling. methodology this study is descriptive qualitative research which specifically examined the mentioned, “what i feel about my participation in this edp was like a soul recreation”. this finding is in line with lee’s (2007) statement about degree of comforting in participating the edp. according to what he found, “more students seemed to feel uncomfortable at the beginning, but they got used to performing after a few times” (p. 37). this is what the teachers actually experienced. when they admitted that they could not act in the play, it was just a matter of time. it was obvious that all of them at first possessed uncomfortable feeling, yet, when they had done practices, they were in tune with their roles and finally they could enjoy it. what teachers like about their participation in edp. from the interview transcription, it was shown that the teachers found their participation in the edp as gaining new experiences since it was completely different from their daily routines, which is teaching. it was said by mrs. putri, “what i like from this is because i gain new experiences which i don’t get it as a teacher.” while the other teacher stated that she liked the way she had to create chemistry with the other role. “when we talk about acting, i enjoy my part when i have to get to know other people to build chemistry so that there is a connection among us”, mrs. shinta uttered. in the same vein, mrs. delima supported her statement by saying that she loved the togetherness in participating in the edp. this finding supports sandi’s (2017) recent research, who mentioned that participation in english drama could build togetherness. in addition, she also revealed in her research that participating in the edp means gaining new experiences. it was also shown during the interaction with the participants that they were enthusiastic in attending the rehearsals. even though one of the participants’ house was located far from the city and it took nearly one hour to get to the rehearsal’s venue, every time she arrived, she looked excited meeting the other members of the cast. another research conducted by lee (2007) also revealed that the different setting in the drama has created a relaxing environment. this can be described from a teacher’s daily routines at school. they are planning, teaching, and evaluating. in addition, all of these activities demand the teachers to be the so-called director in the classroom. however, when they participated in the edp, they rehearsed, danced, and performed on a stage, which give them a real different setting. what teachers dislike about their participation in edp. not only did teachers enjoy the participation in the edp, they also experienced negative feelings especially about the other members being undisciplined. this was strongly mentioned by all of the participants that they did not like it when the other actors or actresses did not turn up in the rehearsal. “i am sorry to say that i don’t feel comfortable if the others are not disciplined”, said mrs. shinta. in line with her, mrs. delima also stated that, “when they actually had confirmed to attend the rehearsal, but it turned out they cancelled last minute, it really bothered me”. meanwhile, mrs. putri expressed her dislike by stating that, “it indeed needs a sacrifice especially in time management”. discipline problem was also revealed by lee (2007) in his research, however, the problem was not related to time management, but it was on the students being undisciplined during the preparation time. 39 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 scope of paragraph development of academic writing. it covered how students develop paragraphs and identified problems occurred in the process of paragraph writing. the participants of the study were five students of english education department in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. the participants were writing their undergraduate thesis as a requirement for their undergraduate degree. it is in the form of a research-based report. the study used interview as data collection method. five participants were chosen as research participants, and it was sufficient for researcher to do interviews when additional interviews or participants did not result in identification of new concepts or data were saturated (creswell, 2012). findings and discussion based on the data taken from the interview to students, there are some findings related to how the students develop paragraphs. the findings showed that they did brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing in the process of writing paragraphs. brainstorming as the first step in paragraph development procedure, brainstorming is essential to collect the ideas. there was only one student did brainstorming. the purpose was to gather idea as much as possible. however, the other students begin the paragraph development by composing main idea and it is followed by supporting sentences. “i usually write what i think to be relevant for my paragraph. sometimes it works to develop the idea. it can be anything. it is just like random thought” (p1.1). brainstorming is essential as it allows writers to have numerous ideas for the paragraph. hussen (2015) stated that if writers do not do the brainstorming, the ideas in the paragraph are not rich and sometimes insufficient. drafting the third step is drafting. the main focus of the drafting is the content of the paragraph. all five students did drafting in their paragraph development. they wrote the paragraph based on the main idea by giving supporting sentences. they directly did this by writing on the computer. “my first draft is written in my computer. for me it is easier than to do this on a piece of paper”(p1.2). “what i always do is i write the main idea and supporting sentences on the computer. it is easier for me to do it directly from the computer”(p2.1). “i usually make my first draft in the computer. i just write whatever i want to write”(p3.1). drafting is initial writing product written by students as their first writing. the study found that it became the first procedure of paragraph writing. revising revising is the fourth step after drafting is done. the emphasis of the revising is about the content of the paragraph. in this phase, the findings found that two students did this procedure. they did revising by checking whether the writing is well written in terms of idea development and giving correction to the idea 40 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 development. “soon after i finished the draft, i reread the sentences to make sure that the paragraph makes sense”(p1.3). “sometimes what i write is not good. there is usually confusion about the idea development. that is why i often make revision to the idea development” (p2.2). the finding showed that two students revised their writing in terms of idea development. one student did revising because of his intention to have a good paragraph. he wanted to have a good paragraph; therefore, he reread what he had written. another student did revising because of her awareness that her writing ability was not good. hence, she frequently did revision to her writing. editing the next step is editing. it is the phase where the students edited their sentence structure, word choice, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization. all five students did this in their paragraph development. they did it by themselves, by looking up in the dictionary, asking friends, or hiring a proofreader to help them in editing. the study also found that it was the main concern of their paragraph development. “editing is very important. i usually check the grammar by myself. sometimes, i also ask my friend to check the sentence structure. it is always useful to have second person to read the paragraph”(p1.4). “i am a reckless person. actually, i know the correct form but i always write something wrong in my paragraph. it can be about grammar, punctuation and spelling. sometimes i ask my friends to revise them or i use grammar checker in the computer”(p2.2). “i am a very bad writer. i do not have a good ability in writing. i need someone to edit my paragraph. i always make grammatical mistakes”(p3.2). “honestly i am not good at writing. but i know that grammar is important. i check my writing if it has grammatical mistakes. even though i already checked the grammar, my supervisor still finds many grammatical mistakes in my writing” (p4.2). “well, my concern is on the grammar. i work a lot on the grammar. i always check my grammar”(p5.2). editing is among the last steps in writing a paragraph. the interview uncovered information that editing was the most frequently used procedure that the writers chose. moreover, it was found that students felt inferior about their ability to do editing by the fact that only few of them did self-correction. even though few students did self-correction, it failed as there were still many grammatical mistakes in their writing after they did editing. beside self-correction, other students used other sources, such as grammar checker, friends, and proofreader that helped them in editing the paragraphs. to sum up, the findings showed that in developing paragraphs the students did brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing. related to brainstorming as one of pre-activities in writing done by students, oshima and hogue (2006) suggested that the more time writers spend on pre-writing activity, the more successful their writings will be. it implies that brainstorming helps the students make good paragraphs and be successful in writing. plan ly?’, ‘how is the stress in this word?’, and even though the javanese accent appeared, at least other people understood”, said mrs. putri. in addition, mrs. shinta stated that in the recording, there was a consideration on where to give the stress on certain words; therefore, it was not just about pronouncing the words, but also about making the words meaningful. in the same vein, mrs. delima uttered, “i think intonation is necessary, in this edp, i got to apply it naturally since it supports how we use the language”. in the edp, the participants agreed that they are encouraged to pronounce the english words correctly since it was recorded and was going to be played in public. this is in line with what chukueggu (2012) proposed about the benefits of drama using a term “authentic language use: through the use of drama, students engage in authentic language use. it becomes a means of practicing real-life language in the classroom. drama puts a language into context and gives the students experience in real life situations” (p. 3). in short, the teachers who act in the edp are practicing to use the english language in a real context such as the implementation of pronouncing the english words using the correct intonation and stress. participating in the edp helped me practice communication skills. when taking part in the english drama performance, it seemed that teachers sharpened their communication skills. not only the content in communication, but teachers also practice how to communicate with other casts as well as the audience. mrs. putri strongly emphasized that, “to me, communication is more than only applying to the language, how i communicate the language to the interlocutor and audience is important to make them understand.” this finding supports lee (2007), who stated that participating in an english drama facilitates communication and collaboration skills development. this finding is also in line with the claim of kempe and holroyd (2003) about drama as an effective method to assist participants to become practical communicator. it was true that when performing on the stage, actors and actresses are not just acting, yet it is more like conveying message. to do so, it requires an effective communication skill. participating in the edp helped me ease reading. from the interview, it was shown that when the teacher participated in english drama performance, their english skill, especially reading skill is maintained. “frankly speaking, i am 100% convinced that after participating in the edp, reading english stories, poems, and song lyrics seemed easier”, mrs. putri uttered. this finding was in line with the statement of dodson (2000), who argued that by getting participants to read the script, it means studying the literature as well as reading it out loud. baldwin and fleming (as cited in lee, 2007) believed that through text engagement, participants in edp can enrich the critical awareness of the literacy concept. participating in the edp helped me improve my vocabulary. taking part in the english drama performance means dealing with the script reading. in the script of the edp, there were several songs that were translated from indonesian to english. from the interview result, the teachers confirmed that through their participation in the edp, they could 41 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 ning is essential in the writing process as it helps the writers to establish paragraph unity that will give the readers introductory idea about the main topic of the paragraph (cumming, 2006). as the findings found that the students did not do any planning, their writings will potentially lack paragraph unity. drafting is the process of paragraph writing when the writers write down their ideas on paper focusing on the content, and not mechanism (hussen, 2015). all students did drafting in their paragraph writing process. cumming (2006) suggested that students should add further ideas while making draft. moreover, cumming also pointed out that revising, as the next step, is considered the heart of writing process, the means by which ideas emerge and evolve, and meanings are clarified. two students did revising in writing paragraphs. revising is very important, especially to improve the idea development in paragraph writing. mustaque (2014) stated that it is often found that students may have good knowledge about vocabulary and grammatical aspects (e.g. using the right tenses, collocation, and prepositions) but face problems in writing coherently and re-structuring ideas after evaluating them. the last finding was that the students did editing in developing the paragraph. the purpose of editing process is to check whether the paragraphs already contain good grammar, sentence structure, etc. the next findings are related to the problems experienced by the students in writing the paragraph. from the data taken from the interview, the researcher found that there were some problems occurred. english words and word choice students were unable to express some ideas because they did not know the equivalent words in english. moreover, they were difficult to find appropriate words to express their idea. they stated that it was because of limited vocabulary. “it is always hard for me to express my idea in english. i need to always look up a dictionary to find correct words” (p1.5). “my supervisor often gives me feedback about correct word choice in my writing” (p2.3). “it is easier to write in bahasa indonesia than english. in writing a paragraph i have difficulties to express ideas in english” (p5.3). the finding is in line with other studies (afrin, 2016; haider, 2012; rabab’ah, 2003) which found that the students are unable to express the ideas appropriately in their writings due to their limited vocabulary. they cannot find appropriate and necessary vocabulary to express the ideas. fareed, ashraf, and bilal (2016) also stated that sufficient vocabulary is essential and enable learners to produce language, particularly in writing. in efl context, vocabulary is essential, especially in academic writing as the students need to express their ideas not in their native language. grammar specifically, the problems related to grammar were about sentence structure (syntax), tenses, morphology, and punctuation. four students mentioned problems of incorrect grammar, poor sentence structure, and also a lot of punctuation mistakes. they occurred because of poor grammar knowledge. most of them stated that they did not have good grammar knowledge. 42 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 “grammar is so complicated. i make a lot of mistakes” (p3.3). “from the feedback that i get i know that i have problem with tense and punctuation” (p4.3). “beside vocabulary, grammar is my other weakness. no wonder if i still have problems related to grammar” (p1.6). “my supervisor said that i must improve my grammar knowledge as there are many grammatical mistakes in my undergraduate thesis during the supervision”(p5.4). grammar still becomes one of the main problems in academic writing (connell, 2000; thananart, 2000). ideas will not be effectively conveyed through writing if it contains a lot of grammatical mistakes. the finding is in line with the study by fareed, ashraf, and bilal(2016) which found that grammar is one of the main problems in writing. they suggested that the writers should equip themselves good grammar knowledge to write academic texts. development of the main idea it was very often for the students that they were stuck in writing if they had no idea on how to develop the paragraph. three students uncovered that they found it difficult to develop the main idea. the cause was they did not read much. in addition, they said that they were not creative enough to develop the idea. “the hardest part in writing a paragraph was to start writing. i started writing my first paragraph after i thought for a long time” (p2.6). “writing needs creativity and critical thinking which i am not really good at” (p4.5). “i made many pauses in writing the paragraph. i was stuck on the development of the idea” (p3.4). fareed, ashraf, and bilal (2016) suggested that brainstorming and planning help writers to develop and manage the ideas for the paragraph. in pre-writing, brainstorming is beneficial to stimulate writers to list any ideas in their mind. planning, then, is used by the writers to select and manage the ideas to be developed into a paragraph. coherence and cohesiveness students knew that coherence and cohesiveness were important in a paragraph. however, three students stated that coherence and cohesiveness were still difficult to achieve. it was probably because they did not do brainstorming and planning. they directly did drafting. it made them difficult to control the supporting sentences and they focused only in supporting the main ideas. moreover, it also made the connection among paragraphs insufficient. “to make a good paragraph is not easy. my supervisor suggested me to check whether each sentence is correlated and each paragraph has correlation. that is my weakness” (p2.5). “it is relatively new for me that i need to make paragraph cohesive and coherent beside the grammar”(p3.5). “it is somehow hard for me to make good sentences which contribute to the main idea” (p5.7). 43 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2, july 2016 pineteh’s (2013) study also found that coherence and cohesion are problems in academic writing. too often for the writers to have more than one main idea in a paragraph or the paragraph is not sufficiently developed through its supporting details. coherence is important to bind the main idea to its supporting details (ahmed, 2010). fareed, ashraf, and bilal (2016) suggested that writers can improve the coherence and cohesiveness through planning and systematic paragraph. moreover, the writers should make use cohesive devices to connect the paragraphs. furthermore, bakalis (2003) suggested that writers should consider the connection among paragraph in a text to get the paragraph cohesion. ineffective sentence two students stated a problem about ineffective sentence. ineffective sentence made one paragraph have more than one main idea. moreover, it also made the students write too many irrelevant sentences in a paragraph. it was because they directly wrote what they were thinking while writing the sentences. they did not plan and have systematic steps or outline of the sentences within a paragraph. “as i directly wrote my paragraph in my laptop, too often i forget to ensure that the sentences i wrote were effective” (p1.7) “i wrote too many things. some of them were useless because they were not relevant” (p5.6). ineffective sentences result in redundancy. boardman and frydenberg (2002) suggested that the sentences should be effective to achieve coherence. the sentences should not be too many but should be sufficient to support the main idea. citation as it was an academic writing, citation was one of features in the paragraph writing. two students found it difficult to do proper citation from the theories. it was because they did not really know about how to do the right citation. furthermore, they did not know well about the current academic writing format i.e. american psychology association(apa)format. “apa is the format of my undergraduate thesis. it is another thing that we should learn and i am not good at it” (p.4.4). “i thought i only need to write my undergraduate thesis like another paper. in fact i should consider the format ,i.e. apa, and it is difficult” (p5.5). al-khasawneh (2010) suggested that students can learn how to make academic writing through courses which equip them with the ability to do proper writing and also citation. it can be done by joining pre-requisite class such as educational research which prepare them to conduct research and make academic writing. based on the findings, the problems faced by students in writing paragraphs are related to words, word choice, grammar, development of main idea, coherence, cohesiveness, effective sentence, and citation. the problems of word and word choice, grammar, and the development of main idea are similar to hailemariam’s study (2011) as it found that some of l2 writers’ problems in writing were vocabulary selections, generating idea, and appro 44 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 priate grammar usage. it is also in line with other studies (abdulkareem, 2013; ahmed, 2010) which found that vocabulary and idea development are problems in academic writing. the other problems were problems related to coherence, cohesiveness, and effective sentence. boardman and frydenberg (2002) stated that coherence and cohesiveness are useful to bind the supporting sentences to explain the main ideas as well as to connect one paragraph to other paragraphs. one of the ways to achieve them is by using effective sentences containing conjunctions, cohesive devices and transitional markers. the last problem was related to citation. citation is very important in academic writing as it supports findings or statements with theories. when the students faced problem related to citation, it was caused by lack of knowledge to make a good citation. conclusion the current research is limited to identify how the students develop paragraphs and what difficulties experienced by the students in writing paragraph of academic text. the findings showed that in developing paragraphs, the students did brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing.among all four steps done by the students in developing paragraph, drafting and editing were the most frequent steps done by the students as all of them directly wrote the paragraph and edited the content of the paragraph whereas two of them included brainstorming and revising. dealing with the problems in paragraph writing, the students faced difficulties in english words and word choice, grammar, development of main idea, coherence and cohesiveness, effective sentence, and citation. references abdulkareem, n, m.(2013). an investigation study of academic writing problems faced by arab postgraduate students at universiti teknologi malaysia (utm). theory and practice in language studies, 3 (9), 1552-1557. afrin, s.(2016). writing problems of non-english major undergraduate students in bangladesh: an observation. open journal of social sciences, 4, 104-115 ahmed, a. h. (2010). students' problems with cohesion and coherence in efl essay writing in egypt: different perspectives. literacy information and computer education journal(licej), 1 (4), 211-221. al-khasawneh, f. m. s. (2010). writing for academic purposes: problems faced by arab postgraduate students of the college of business. uum. esp world, 28(9). bakalis, m.(2003). direct teaching of paragraph cohesion. teaching history.110 boardman, c.a. and frydenberg, j. (2008). writing to communicate: paragraph and essays. (3rd.ed.). whiteplains: pearson education, inc. chidambaram, k. (2005). a study on the learning process of english by higher secondary students with special reference to dharmapuri district in tamilnadu. language in india, 5: 161-170. connell, p. (2000). a technique for examining the severity of student errors in communicative english. the english teacher, 3(2): 95-103. creswell, j.w.(2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. boston: pearson. cumming, a.(2006). goals for academic writing: esl students and their instructors. amsterdam: john benjamins. fareed, m., ashraf, a., bilal m.(2016). esl learners’ writing skills: problems, factors, and suggestions. journal of educa45 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 tion and social sciences. 4(2): 1-10 haider, g. (2012). an insight into difficulties faced by pakistani student writers: implications for teaching of writing. journal of educational and social research, 2 (3),17-27. hailemariam, w. (2011). problems students face in writing. aau: ma thesis (unpublished). hussen, m. (2015). assessing students’ paragraph writing problems: the case of bedeno secondary school, grade 10 english in focus. thesis. haramaya university. kellogg, r. t. (2001). long-term working memory in text production. memory & cognition, 29 (1), 43–52. khairy, a(2013). saudi english-major undergraduates' academic writing problems: a taif university perspective. english language teaching; 6 (6). mayers, a.( 2006). composing with confidence – writing effective paragraphs & essays. 7thedition. new york: pearson longman mustaque, s. (2014) writing problems among the tertiary level students in bangladesh: a study in chittagong region. language in india,14, 334 oshima, a and hogue, a.(2006). writing academic english. pearson education: longman pineteh, e. a. (2013). the academic writing challenges of undergraduate students: a south african case study. international journal of higher education, 3 (1), 12. rababah, g. (2003). communication problems facing arab learners of english: a personal perspective. tefl web journal, 2(1), 15-30. rao, z. (2007). training in brainstorming and developing writing skills. elt journal, 61, 100-106. santos, t. (2000). on the future of second language writing: the efl/esl split. journal of second language writing, 9(1), 8-10. tananart, o. (2000). the survey of errors in written work of students learning fundamental english at chulalongkorn university. passa paritasna. 18: 87-101. yakhontova, t. v. (2003). english academic writing: for students and researchers. usa: new york: longman. zemach, d. e and rumisek, l. a. (2005). academic writing: from paragraph to essay. macmillian journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 42 article history: submitted: 12 january 2023 reviewed: 18 january 2023 edited: 30 january 2023 article accepted: 31 january 2023 narratives of two indonesian lecturers about challenges of writing an undergraduate efl thesis yustinus calvin gai mali universitas kristen satya wacana, indonesia author email: yustinus.mali@uksw.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551 abstract the literature has overwhelmingly explained challenges in writing the undergraduate thesis from students’ perspectives. yet, there is a scarcity of research that presents the perspectives of thesis supervisors about the challenges experienced by their efl students and, at the same time, on possible solutions to solve them. this qualitative study presented two english as a foreign language (efl) lecturers’ narratives on challenges efl students experienced when writing their undergraduate thesis and on solutions to deal with those challenges. the research data was collected through a reflective essay written by the lecturers, who then met in an online synchronous meeting to discuss what they wrote in the essay. while the data analysis communicated various things, the students’ challenges in writing their undergraduate thesis were commonly about finding a research topic, writing the literature review, and using various academic vocabulary. in light of the results, possible solutions to solve the challenges, practical recommendations for efl thesis writing and teaching activities, and guiding questions for further research were presented. this study should benefit efl thesis supervisors to reflect on their own experiences, find areas for improvement and enhance their thesis supervisory practices. this study also hopes to benefit efl students who wish to learn practical strategies to progress with their undergraduate thesis. keywords: undergraduate thesis writing; reflections; english writing challenges; english writing strategies. =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 mailto:yustinus.mali@uksw.edu https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2023-01-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 43 introduction english as a foreign language (henceforth called efl) lecturers in universities in indonesia is responsible for supervising undergraduate students in writing a thesis as a partial fulfillment to graduate and obtain their bachelor’s degree. however, this task is not easy because the lecturers always deal with their students’ various academic writing and research-related problems. several studies have researched efl students’ challenges in writing their undergraduate thesis. for example, an undergraduate student at a university in china said that “the thesis-writing experience was painful,” and the student admitted that “it was difficult to find supporting evidence to support topic sentences” (bian & wang, 2016, p. 25). in that situation, wang and yang (2012) stated that efl students might need to build supportive and productive supervisor-student communication. “having a conference is a better way of responding to student writing because teachers usually cannot fully get their ideas expressed through written feedback, and students cannot take much in from written feedback either” (bian & wang, p. 24). in a study of seven taiwan undergraduate students, yeh (2009) found out synthesizing literature is a formidable task as a student said: “synthesizing information is difficult. one source says one thing, and another source says another” (p. 326). in brief, synthesizing means determining similarities, differences, patterns, and themes among articles, creating general conclusions based on those articles, and making connections among ideas (bloomberg & volpe, 2019). the finding was aligned with that of alsied and ibrahim (2017). in their survey on challenges that 42 libyan efl students had when conducting research, the students had difficulties writing the literature review part, especially in justifying and connecting the findings of the previous studies to their current research. “reviewing and critiquing the previous research, creating a research gap, and designing the research methods” (cai, 2013, p. 10) were some other difficulties in writing academically. there are no simple answers to solve these challenges. research by alsied and ibrahim (2017), altinmakas and bayyurt (2019), and bian and wang (2016) similarly found that choosing a research topic is a challenging task for undergraduate students. in horowitz’s (1989) words, “what shall i write about?” (p. 349). this challenge might create a dilemma. on the one hand, most students may be more motivated to work on topics that interest them (yeh, 2009), and the lecturers do not want to spoon-feed their https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 44 advisees with research ideas. the lecturers might also want their students to make writing choices and develop as writers (reynolds & thompson, 2011). however, giving the freedom to choose their topics may lead the students to an “agonizing process of choosing unsuitable topics and then changing them repeatedly for various reasons” (horowitz, p. 349). with all these findings, the thesis is more than just “constructing grammatically acceptable sentences” (bram, 2012, p. 15). the literature explains possible challenges in writing the undergraduate thesis from students’ perspectives. however, there is a scarcity of research that focuses on the views of thesis supervisors on the challenges experienced by their efl students and, at the same time, on possible solutions to solve them. conducting surveys often resulted in statistically related numbers or percentages (as presented in alharbi, 2019; cai, 2013; diasti & mbato, 2020; husin & nurbayani, 2017), which might need more detailed explanations of the challenges and solutions of writing the thesis. alternatively, a more in-depth exploration can be done by reflecting on the lecturers’ years of experience supervising their undergraduate efl students. that reflection or conscious thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it” (farrell & jacobs, 2016, p. 2) might help the thesis supervisors to make more informed decisions about their practice based on what they have reflected. however, with the number of students to supervise in one academic year and other responsibilities of teaching, research, and community services, the lecturers might barely have time to sit down, catch their breath, and reflect on those issues. farrell (2004) pointed out seriously that “if teachers do not take time to reflect on their work, they may become prone to burnout” (p. 8). the tight schedules might put the lecturers in an isolated situation where they do not have support systems (e.g., from other lecturers) to share and talk with one another about their thesis supervisory tasks. gemmel (2003) said that “lecturers who work in isolation resort to familiar methods rather than approaching concerns from a problem-solving perspective” (p. 10), specifically when dealing with the challenges of their undergraduate thesis students. therefore, the lecturers might need to have supportive and “practice-centered” (smith, 2019, p. 2) conversations with someone who can listen (campbell et al., 2004) to each other’s stories and advocate success in supervising the students. with that in mind, this study aims to document those conversations between two efl lecturers, particularly about the following issues: (1) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 45 challenges the students’ experience when writing their undergraduate thesis in english and (2) possible solutions to those challenges. answers to these research questions hopefully help efl thesis supervisors to reflect on their own experiences, find areas for improvement, and enhance their thesis supervisory practices. the paper also hopes to benefit efl students who wish to learn strategies to progress with their undergraduate thesis. in this study, i allow my readers to connect personally with any ideas and thoughts presented in this paper. they are also welcome to have various perspectives in interpreting the supervisors’ narratives presented in this study “as knowledge is “subjective, contextualized, and should be personally experienced” (egbert & sanden, 2020, p. 35). method this study employed a narrative inquiry approach to answering the research questions. the approach looks at how the narratives of the research participants shape and inform their practices (bell, 2002). these narratives also describe and analyze social phenomena as they naturally happen and are experienced in the personal life setting of the research participants (nunan & choi, 2011). moreover, the narrative can be a first-person account or a collaboratively constructed narrative that tells stories about the individual’s experiences and reports the meanings of those experiences (ary et al., 2019). research context the research context was in an undergraduate english language education program at a private university in indonesia (henceforth called edu). in this study, the thesis was written by students who consider english their foreign language, meaning that they use english only in their language classroom but do not use it for daily communication. moreover, the thesis was written in the form of publishable journal articles (i.e., around 5000 words) with the following components: introduction, literature review, method, findings and discussions, conclusions, and references. see egbert and sanden (2015, p.12) for detailed descriptions of each section. typically, the students spend two semesters to be able to complete their thesis. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 46 research participants calesia (pseudonyms), a senior lecturer at edu, was selected to participate. the researcher and the participant trusted each other and could communicate well, listen, and advocate success for each of their supervisory thesis works. with that foundation, they agreed to recall past experiences in supervising their students. table 1. the participants of the study name nationality teaching experiences research areas author indonesian eight years language, literacy, technology, english education calesia indonesian twelve years bilingualism, teaching english for specific purposes (tesp), pragmatics, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication note. previous researchers (e.g., hunter et al., 2014; mali & salsbury, 2022) also involved themselves as the research participants in their study. data collection procedures to help this process, i collected and looked back at their students’ progress report book, their thesis draft, and their written feedback on the draft. then, while reviewing those documents, i wrote down my feelings and thoughts in a reflective essay ranging from 500-700 words. i wrote the essays on google docs (gd) and used the following prompts as our writing guidelines: 1. in supervising students to write their undergraduate thesis (other than grammatical aspects), the three most common challenges that my students experienced were […] 2. to solve those challenges, i offered the students three possible solutions: […] then, on gd, calesia and i read each other’s narratives several times, left, and responded to some comments on interesting phrases or sentences to discuss further. these activities gave them time to reflect on what they did as teachers and their practice (farrell, 2016), specifically when supervising our thesis students. i italicized the comments and responses in the essays. next, i invited calesia to meet synchronously in zoom (https://zoom.us/). the meeting lasted for 40 minutes to discuss the comments written for the essays. in their “reflective dialogue https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 47 about each other’s experiences” (hunter et al., 2014, p. 9), they did not act as “an expert in a special field of academic knowledge, who put right wrongs” (holden, 1997, p. 444) to each other’s experiences. instead, they helped each other to gain insights (rarieya, 2005) and better ways to supervise our thesis students in the future. in this approach, the reflection practice “does not occur in isolation, but in discussion with another practitioner” (walsh & mann, 2015, p. 356). data analysis following hunter et al. (2014), i showed my essay and calesia’s separately and compared them in the end (see the discussions) to present each of our experiences. i then looked for commonalities in the essays about the challenges of writing the thesis and possible solutions to deal with them, which hopefully could also invite readers of this paper “to reflect on the meaning these stories hold for them and as a means of transforming mistakes into wisdom” (puzio et al., 2017, p. 225). findings this section presents the narratives of the research participants about the (1) challenges their students to experience when writing their undergraduate thesis in english and (2) possible solutions to those challenges. author’s story the most common challenge was about finding a research topic. when asked if they had a specific research topic in mind, most of my students came to the class with a broad area of research, such as english speaking or writing. they did not know what to explore more specifically in their thesis. to deal with this challenge, i usually asked them to go to the elt journal (https://academic.oup.com/eltj), which provided concisely written articles about english language teaching and education. they could also find some free articles in the journal. then, i asked my students to try some keywords of their research interests (e.g., writing motivation or speaking challenges) to find two or three articles. after that, i gave them about a week to read the articles they were interested in, see the research questions presented in the articles, and then bring the materials to the thesis consultation time. we discussed the articles together and formulated as many research questions as possible for their study. alternatively, i asked my students to visit my academia.edu https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 48 (https://satyawacanachristianu.academia.edu/yustinuscalvin) and find one or two papers that they were interested in exploring further. then, we could start to discuss my articles and explore possible directions for their research. calesia: it is good that you have your own articles repertoire. author: i use it to encourage my students that if i can write those papers, they should be able to do similar things, even better. the other challenge was related to students’ motivation to write and complete the thesis. in 2016, i had two students who rarely came to the consultation time in my office and reported the progress of their thesis writing. i had no idea where they were and how they were doing with their thesis. reflecting on this experience, i decided to have a weekly face-to-face class meeting with all my thesis students. we usually met on wednesdays from 3.00 to 4.50 p.m., sat together in the class, opened our laptops, and started to write together. i also answered my students’ questions about their thesis and discussed some common issues i found in their thesis drafts. calesia: do you think this helps the students being more motivated to write? author: i feel so because of the presence of other students. they should not feel alone in that process. another challenge was related to using varied academic vocabulary in the thesis. when reading my students’ thesis drafts, i found that they repeatedly used the same verb (e.g., said) to paraphrase ideas or report findings of previous studies. i also read another repeated verb (e.g., conducted) in their method section to explain the research approach and setting of their study (e.g., this study was conducted qualitatively to […]; this study was conducted at the faculty […]). calesia: they lack vocabulary, so they need to learn and read more. moreover, it seems that they have the same pattern for their reports, almost the same sentences for different findings. author: yes, that is a challenging part of the writing process. to deal with this, i usually encouraged my students to download academic journal articles, read, and study how the researchers wrote their papers (e.g., the literature review or method sections). for instance, in al-tamimi and shuib’s (2009, p. 34-35) article, the students could find the following phrases to review the previous research: 1. another study by researcher a attempted to explore […] 2. one of the most relevant studies was that of researcher b, who surveyed […] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 49 3. a more recent study has been carried out by researcher c in the efl context. more specifically, the researcher tried to […] 4. in japan, a related study was undertaken by researcher d who sought to assess [...] with these academic phrases and different ways to express ideas that my students could find in the article, i hoped they could use more varied vocabulary and convey ideas in their thesis more clearly. calesia’s story the first major challenge almost all my students faced was finding a topic. i felt surprised when students came up with broad topics, such as motivation in learning, learning strategies, and technology in teaching. many were confused when i asked them to develop more specific topics. perhaps, they had not read enough research articles. i encouraged them to search the internet and download articles related to their topics of interest. from the campus database, i also provided them with examples of well-written research articles submitted by students from previous years. author: do you have any other criteria for selecting the students? calesia: i also usually use students’ theses published in local journals or (undergraduate) conference proceedings. i gave my students a week to read and asked them to discuss their topic the week after. they typically come up with more specific topics in the discussion session. i then provide some questions to help them further consider the research topics they have in mind: what is your reason for choosing this topic? do you have any experiences related to the topics? why do you think your topic is interesting to study? when my students could answer my questions, they usually became more confident about their research topics. the second major challenge was writing the literature review. i often asked my students to find and read articles from free sources like academia.edu (https://www.academia.edu/) so that they had more ideas about what they would write. however, reading too many articles sometimes overwhelmed some students as they could not decide which ones to put in their literature review. some also took too many ideas from the article and wrote them in their literature review. as a result, they had unorganized extensive literature reviews. therefore, to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 50 help the students organize that part, i usually asked them to rewrite their literature reviews step by step, starting from the definition of terms they use in their research. author: how did you usually do this? calesia: i explained it first in class; then, i asked them to write at home. after a week or two, i asked them to have an individual meeting consultation with me. after i checked their work on defining terms, my students continued writing relevant theories to answer their research questions. i did another check before they could write the last part, such as a short review on a related topic. although this strategy was tiring for me as i needed to spend more time checking every aspect of the review, i found it successful in getting the students to write a better literature review. occasionally, i asked my students to work in a group of three. then, they should read each other’s literature review and give constructive feedback on each other’s work. another common challenge was choosing the appropriate data collection methods. most students were familiar with distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews. my students often said they wanted to use those methods for their thesis. when i explained other methods that could be more suitable for my students in collecting their data (e.g., using focus group discussion, observation, or asking participants to write their experiences), many of them found it challenging. in that situation, i gave them examples from my previous students who collected their data using methods other than doing interviews and distributing questionnaires. then, i explained the data collection steps and encouraged them to try their research instruments with their friends before they started their data collection. author: so, they pilot their instruments to their friends, right? calesia: yes. i believe they can find some parts to improve. some of the students finally dared to try other methods to collect their data, and i found this rewarding. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 51 discussions this study explores the challenges undergraduate students experience in writing their thesis in english and the possible solutions. while the essays communicate various things, i emphasize three commonalities. the first one is about finding a research topic. in our conversations, calesia and i both accept that finding a research topic is the most challenging task for our students. the difficulty of selecting a research topic is also asserted by alsied and ibrahim (2017), altinmakas and bayyurt (2019), and bian and wang (2016). in our online synchronous conversation, asking the students to read our previous publications or previous students’ theses published in local journals or an (undergraduate) conference proceeding might help them find some ideas for their research work. for instance, they might replicate methods of the previous works with the same topic using a different theoretical approach. another possible solution is to ask them to read research papers in academic journals and databases (e.g., google scholar or academia.edu) and note some research questions they can generate from the articles. at some points, if they still find it difficult to find research ideas, we usually guide them to read specific articles that discuss topics in english language teaching and education, such as motivation (e.g., al-tamimi & shuib, 2009), learning attribution (e.g., farid & akhter, 2017), class peer observations (e.g., nguyen & ngo, 2018; vo & nguyen, 2010), or critical friendships (farrell, 2001). the second commonality is about writing a literature review. calesia and i find it difficult to read unorganized and too-long literature reviews as some students do not synthesize their sources. this finding echoes the previous studies by alsied and ibrahim (2017), cai (2013), and yeh (2009). we converse that asking students to read journal articles and study how the researchers write their literature review part might be a possible way to deal with that issue. for example, we like how al-tamimi and shuib (2009) wrote their literature review part. besides using various verbs and sentences in introducing previous studies, the researchers ended their literature review with points that synthesized the findings of the studies that they reviewed. “to sum up, the following may be said about the past studies discussed in this section: all the studies mentioned above reconfirmed the importance of identifying learners’ motivation and attitudes towards the english language [...]” (p. 35). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 52 other solutions would be to ask students to write the literature review, part by part, and provide them with more consultation time so that we can check what they have written. we support bian and wang (2016) that “having a conference is a better way of responding to student writing” (p. 24). regarding edu, most of our students still need a lot of our presence to support their thesis writing. however, we do not want to “taking over with extensive editing and rewriting our students’ work” (reynolds & thompson, 2011, p. 210). another possible solution was asking the students to work in a group and respond to each other’s literature review. could they follow the ideas presented in that part easily? had the students made some synthesis in their literature? was that part too long? did they include too many ideas? were there some parts to delete? we also discussed using a table adapted from li (2009, p. 21) to summarize previous studies (e.g., the information presented in their abstract, method, and conclusion parts). a similar table can be seen in bloomberg and volpe (2019, p. 161). the students can complete the table soon after they finish reading the articles. the table can help them see the literature’s commonalities, differences, and patterns. for instance, i fill in the table 2 using some studies related to class peer observations. table 2. summarizing the previous studies author research goals research methods/ instruments contexts and participants main findings moradkhani (2019) to explore efl teachers’ perceptions of two reflection approaches (e.g., teaching journal and peer observation) submitting five teaching journals and five observation forms followed by focus group interviews two groups of efl teachers (21 teachers in total) at a state university in iran the study highlights the strength of oral reflection approaches over the written ones done individually. nguyen and ngo (2018) to examine how a peermentoring model among pre-service teachers could facilitate their teaching reflection peer observations followed by focus group interviews 32 efl pre-service teachers at a university in vietnam the peer observation activities help the preservice teachers to evaluate their practices. vo and nguyen (2010) to explore the experiences of vietnamese efl teachers in participating in critical friends groups (cfg) the cfg processes were done through class observations and interviews. four beginner teachers (three females and one male) taught the same elementary english course. all the participants found the cfg fruitful for exchanging teaching ideas and learning from one another. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 53 based on table 2, the previous studies conducted in efl settings (moradkhani, 2019; nguyen & ngo, 2018; vo & nguyen, 2010) confirmed the benefits of doing peer observation. the pattern of the previous studies involved participants at the university level. however, we do not know if elementary or junior high school teachers have the same views, which might help to “create a research gap” (cai, 2013, p. 10) in the literature. the last one is about using academic vocabulary. calesia and i have the same thoughts that our students like to use the same verbs, phrases, and sentences repeatedly in their thesis. we believe that the students need to read more published articles to study and borrow some words or phrases presented in those articles. we sometimes provide one or two articles (e.g., al-tamimi and shuib, 2009) for the students and ask them to see vocabulary and phrases that the authors write, for instance, to introduce previous studies or explain the methods of their research. conclusion and practical recommendations to sum up, the challenges that undergraduate students experience in writing their thesis in english are finding a research topic, writing their literature review, and using academic vocabulary in their thesis. then, as the data showed, the lecturers used various solutions to help their students deal with those challenges. based on the results of this study, i would like to give some practical recommendations for thesis students who are writing their english education thesis, thesis supervisors who supervise their students, and the head of study programs in a similar context. first, reading is essential. the more students read articles from various sources, the more research ideas, academic vocabulary, and phrases they can have, and the better parts of their thesis they can write. therefore, in the thesis writing process, the students should not consider reading a burden. instead, they should put their effort into reading activities and view them as healthy nutrients for their thesis writing. in that case, the thesis supervisor can reinforce that message to their students by sharing their reading experiences or strategies to comprehend research articles, specifically when they wrote their undergraduate or master’s thesis. the supervisor may invite some students who progress in their thesis to share their reading experiences. the head of the study program (or the related personnel) should also ensure access to quality academic journals and databases where the students can download and read quality https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 54 articles or research papers for their thesis. there should be no “frequent complaints of the limited library resources” (yeh, 2009, p. 324). second, communicating with the thesis supervisor is crucial. the students should always be in touch with their supervisor to tell any challenges (e.g., finding a topic or writing the literature review) they have in writing their thesis. they should also know their thesis supervisor’s office hours so they can always talk to and have some advice from their supervisor. in that case, thesis supervisors must have regular office hours to meet their students in face-to-face or online synchronous formats. they should not be hands-off with their student’s progress and assume that all the students can autonomously finish their thesis writing without their regular supervision. the thesis supervisors should also be the students’ resource and motivator or someone ready to encourage the students to make as much effort as possible in completing their thesis, “supply information and language where necessary, look at the student’s work as it progresses, and offer advice and suggestions constructively and tactfully” (harmer, 2007, p. 330). that said, the head of a study program can set strict rules to ensure the presence and support of the supervisors to their thesis students. the head of the program can also manage the ratio of thesis students to those supervised by a lecturer in one academic year. with the various challenges in the writing process, it might be difficult for a lecturer to supervise too many students. then, supervising the thesis students should not be an isolated process for the supervisors. therefore, they might think about creating an online synchronous discussion group. they can work in groups of lecturers who listen well to one another, advocate for their work’s success, and provide non-judgmental feedback like a friend (thorgersen, 2014). then, they can meet regularly every month, for instance, through an hour zoom meeting. then, each can share their students’ challenges in writing the thesis and practical solutions to deal with them. by listening to one another attentively without criticizing, i hope the lecturers can “contribute to the growth of the other” (fletcher & ragins, 2007, p. 383), such as in supervising their undergraduate thesis students. to sum up, the writing process of an undergraduate thesis requires efforts from the students and their thesis supervisors and supportive collaboration between them. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 55 my conversations with calesia in this paper have not answered the following questions, which might be areas for further research: do other efl lecturers in different settings have the same views on the challenges and solutions presented in this paper? what are the thesis students’ perspectives on the solutions as presented in this paper (e.g., reading many research articles, studying how the researchers write their literature review or use the methods, using the table to see the patterns in the previous studies, and having a regular thesis consultation time) in helping them write their thesis better? do master’s/ doctorate students experience the same challenges as those presented in this paper? what are they? how can we solve those challenges? references alharbi, m. a. (2019). efl university students’ voice on challenges and solution in learning academic writing. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 8(3), 576–587. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v8i3.15276 alsied, s. m., & ibrahim, n. w. (2017). exploring challenges encountered by efl libyan learners in research teaching and writing. iafor journal of language learning, 3(2), 143–158. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijll.3.2.06 al-tamimi, a., & shuib, m. (2009). motivation and attitudes towards learning english: a study of petroleum engineering undergraduates at hadhramout university of sciences and technology. gema online journal of language studies, 9(2), 29–55. http://journalarticle.ukm.my/2306/ ary, d., jacobs, l. c., irvine, c. k. s., & walker, d. a. (2019). introduction to research in education (10th ed.). cengage. altınmakas, d., & bayyurt, y. (2019). an exploratory study on factors influencing undergraduate students’ academic writing practices in turkey. journal of english for academic purposes, 37, 88–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.11.006 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 56 bell, j. s. (2002). narrative inquiry: more than just telling stories. tesol quarterly, 36(2), 207213. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588331 bian, x., & wang, x. (2016). chinese efl undergraduates’ academic writing: rhetorical difficulties and suggestions. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 6(1), 20–29. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v6i1.2645 bloomberg, l. d., & volpe, m. (2019). completing your qualitative dissertation: a road map from beginning to end (4th ed.). sage publications, inc. bram, b. (2012). learners’ language challenges in writing english. celt: a journal of culture, english language teaching & literature, 12(1), 1–15. http://journal.unika.ac.id/index.php/celt/article/view/1 cai, l. j. (2013). students’ perceptions of academic writing: a needs analysis of eap in china. language education in asia, 4(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/13/v4/i1/a2/cai campbell, a., mcnamara, o., & gilroy, p. (2004). practitioner research and professional development in education. sage publications, inc. diasti, k. s., & mbato, c. l. (2020). exploring undergraduate students’ motivation-regulation strategies in thesis writing. language circle: journal of language and literature, 14(2), 176– 183. https://doi.org/10.15294/lc.v14i2.23450 egbert, j., & sanden, s. (2015). writing education research: guidelines for publishable scholarship. routledge. egbert, j., & sanden, s. (2020). foundations of education research: understanding theoretical components (2nd ed.). routledge. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 57 farid, m. f., & akhter, m. (2017). causal attribution beliefs of success and failure: a perspective from pakistan. bulletin of educational and research, 39(3), 105–115. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1210272.pdf farrell, t. (2001). critical friendships: colleagues helping each other develop. elt journal, 55(4), 368–374. http://www.reflectiveinquiry.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farrelleltj-2001.pdf farrell, t. s. c. (2004). reflective practice in action: 80 reflection breaks for busy teachers. corwin press. farrell, t. s. c. (2016). the practices of encouraging tesol teachers to engage in reflective practice: an appraisal of recent research contributions. language teaching research, 20(2), 223–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168815617335 farrell, t., & jacobs, g. (2016). practicing what we preach: teacher reflection groups on cooperative learning. the electronic journal for english as a second language, 19(4), 1–9. http://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej76/a5.pdf fletcher, j. k., & ragins, b. r. (2007). stone center relational cultural theory: a window on relational mentoring. in b. r. ragins & k. e. kram (eds.), the handbook of mentoring at work: theory research and practice (pp. 373-399). sage publications. gemmel, j. c. (2003). building a professional learning community in pre-service teacher education: peer coaching and video analysis (umi no. 3078685) [doctoral dissertation, university of massachusetts amherst]. proquest dissertations publishing. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching (4th ed.). pearson education limited. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 58 holden, g. (1997). “challenge and support”: the role of the critical friend in continuing professional development. the curriculum journal, 8(3), 441–453. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958517970080307 horowitz, d. (1989). the undergraduate research paper: where research and writing meet. system, 17(3), 347-357 https://doi.org/10.1016/0346-251x(89)90007-9 hunter, c. a., ortloff, d. h., & wagner, w. r. (2014). out of our comfort zones: reflections about teaching qualitative research at a distance. the qualitative report, 19(45), 1–24. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1112&context=tqr husin, m. s., & nurbayani, e. (2017). the ability of indonesian efl learners in writing academic papers. dinamika ilmu, 17(2), 237–250. https://doi.org/10.21093/di.v17i2.725 li, m. (2012). use of wikis in second/ foreign language classes: a literature review. call-ej, 13(1), 17–35. http://callej.org/journal/13-1/li_2012.pdf mali, y. c. g., & salsbury, t. l. (2022). an associate professor and a doctoral student learn from each other: critical friendship. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 19(1), 52–68. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.56040/msaa1914 moradkhani, s. (2019). efl teachers’ perceptions of two reflection approaches. elt journal, 73(1), 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccy030 nguyen, h. t. m., & ngo, n. t. h. (2018). learning to reflect through peer mentoring in a tesol practicum. elt journal, 72(2), 187–198. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx053 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 59 nunan, d., & choi, j. (2011). shifting sands: the evolving story of “voice” in qualitative research. in e. hinkel (ed.), handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (vol.ii) (pp.222-236). routledge. puzio, k., newcomer, s., pratt, k., mcneely, k., jacobs, m., & hooker, s. (2017). creative failures in culturally sustaining pedagogy. language arts, 94(4), 223–233. http://callej.org/journal/13-1/li_2012.pdf rarieya, j. f. a. (2005). reflective dialogue: what’s in it for teachers? a pakistan case. journal of in-service education, 31(2), 313–335. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13674580500200281 reynolds, j. a., & thompson, r. j. (2011). want to improve undergraduate thesis writing? engage students and their faculty readers in scientific peer review. cbe life sciences education, 10(2), 209–215. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.10-10-0127 smith, m. g. (2019). a video-mediated critical friendship reflection framework for esl teacher education. the electronic journal for english as a second language, 23(1), 1–18. thorgersen, c. f. (2014). learning among critical friends in the instrumental setting. national association for music education, 32(2), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/8755123314521032 vo, l. t., & nguyen, h. t. m. (2010). critical friends group for efl teacher professional development. elt journal, 64(2), 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccp025 walsh, s., & mann, s. (2015). doing reflective practice: a data-led way forward. elt journal, 69(4), 351–362. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccv018 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 60 wang, x., & yang, l. (2012). problems and strategies in learning to write a thesis proposal: a study of six m.a. students in a tefl program. chinese journal of applied linguistics, 35(3), 324–341. https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2012-0024 yeh, c. c. (2009). student perceptions of an efl undergraduate research writing project. relc journal, 40(3), 314–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688209343863 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 role-play has been used in the field of english as a foreign language (efl) teaching and learning enormously. it is used in different manners in different context, depending on various factors such as the age of the learners, the goal of the learning, and the skills to be improved. it can be in the form of a performance of a arifah mardiningrum 14-24 abstract introduction the implementation of role-playbased activities: what efl students learned received her undergraduate degree in english educa�on from state university of yogyakarta, and her master’s degree from indiana university of pennsylvania. she has taught in english educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta since 2012. her teaching area includes reading, wri�ng, speaking, presenta�on (public speaking), and second language acquisi�on. her research interest revolves the area of crea�ve and ar�s�c teaching, drama in educa�on, and beliefs. role-play has been utilized in higher education in various fields with varied procedures. its ability to foster language learning and certain soft-skills has been investigated in myriad of studies. the current study investigated five efl students’ views of their learning in role-playbased activities. the study took place in an english language department in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. the data for this qualitative research were taken by in-depth interviews through online video calls. the finding revolves around the four role-play-based activities, namely self-inventory, job-interview questions, presentations, and role-play performances. in the self-inventory activities, participants mostly learned about themselves, where they made a reflection of what can describe who they are. the job-interview questions activity supported participants’ learning the knowledge of the role-play topic. in the presentations, most participants learned interpersonal skills. lastly, the role-play performances fostered the different aspects learned in the prior activities, namely how to present their strengths and weakness in the self-inventory, the questions which might be asked and answered by interviewers and interviewee, and the dos and don’ts of a job interview. the conclusion which can be drawn from the findings is that a careful and well-planned structure of applying role-plays in higher education setting is one of the keys that seems to support students’ learning. keywords: role-play, learning through role-plays, role-play implementation in higher education volume 1, no. 2, july 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning 15 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 short dialogue, planned or impromptu, or a longer performance with lengthy preparation. the reason why role-play is used often in the field of efl might be due to the benefits that it has. role-plays have been found to improve students’ oral communication or speaking skills in english (aliakbari & jamalvandi, 2010; rahimy & safarpour, 2012; shen & suwanthep, 2011), encourage students to speak (kumaran, 2010), reduce the anxiety to speak in english (sağlamel & kayaoğlu, 2013), and improve writing skill (erdogan, 2013), to name a few. in addition, some studies on the use of role-plays in tesol in higher education reveal that role-plays might, among others, facilitate the development of students’ cognitive skills (shapiro & leopold, 2012), self-discovery (crutchfield, 2015), and emotional aptitude (dinapoli, 2009). with these findings, it is plausible to consider the use of role-plays in the process of teaching and learning; and therefore, it is important to keep evaluating its implementation to understand how it supports teaching and learning. the current study is one of the efforts to understand one implementation of role-play from the students’ view, who would eventually be the one benefitting from its implication. in higher education scheme, role-plays have been used in different forms and are usually a part of a set of related activities. the role-play performances are usually the product of these sets of activities. among the many sets of activities, few instances are called critical drama (shapiro & leopold, 2012), creative drama (erdogan, 2013), public reading (crutchfield, 2015), process drama (donnery, 2014), and applied drama (sharp, 2014). all of them incorporate rigorous preparation and various activities before the actual role-play performance. however, there have been lack of studies exploring role-play as a part of a set of activities. most studies mentioned above and in the previous paragraph only looked at a particular aspect as the end result of the activities in relation to what skills the role-play helped develop. this is the gap in which the current study tried to fill. with this study, i aimed at investigating the implementation of role-play-based activities by looking at each part of the overall activities from the students’ view. more specifically, i looked into what the students learned from their involvement in each of them and/or how the activities help them learn the implementation of role-playbased activities in efl in the context of higher education, role-plays might be scarcely seriously regarded. this may be due to the idea that role-play is viewed merely as fun activity, which focuses on ‘play’ that might be seen as not suitable and too superficial for students in higher education (sharp, 2014). therefore, the application of role-plays in this level of education should be approached in a different way from when it is applied for younger learners, and not treated as merely a fun activity. some of the examples of how it is applied in higher education context are discussed in the following review. in an english for academic purpose (eap) subject, saphiro and leopold (2012) used role-play with the approach of critical drama pedagogy, which is the concept of using drama for classroom, where the role-plays should be “cognitively challenging” and “linguistically relevant” (saphiro & leopold, 2012, p.123). the critical drama was done in two classes 16 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 focusing on oral and written communication accordingly. the topics of the role-plays were ‘legal trials’ and ‘scholarly dialogues’. for eight weeks, students had to be involved in the activities specifically prepared to meet the standard of the ten questions mentioned above. the activities included several research activities, analyses, and discussions as the preparation. in the ‘legal trials’, students in the beginning of the course were only given cases, and in the end, their role-play was all based on the preparation that they did based on the given case. meanwhile, the scholarly dialogue was a role-play done before the research to prepare students’ ideas of writing their paper. related to ‘legal trials’, the students in this study suggested that the activities have reached the cognitive and linguistic goals (argumentative and english skills), but one of the topics was rather remote from their preference, so they enjoyed the activities less. in addition, one of the students’ suggestions was referring to the need of more balanced preparation between the research and the role-play performance. meanwhile, concerning the role-play in ‘scholarly dialogue’, students felt that it helped them structure their research paper. another set of activities using role-plays is called creative drama (erdogan, 2013). these activities were conducted in three steps as proposed by adiguzel (as cited in erdogan, 2013). the first step is the preparation-warming up activity, which is aimed to activate the senses and build the group dynamics. the second step is called animation, which focuses on the development of a topic. and the last step is the evaluation-discussion step, where the outcomes of the activities are evaluated. this program was applied for seven weeks, where participants were to write six different genres of narrative. each section followed adiguzel’s three steps. the preparation steps included activities aimed at preparing the students mentally and physically for the upcoming task. the animation step involved some drama techniques such as improvisation and role-plays. the last step, the evaluation step, was conducted in different ways depending on what extent measured in each section. the students stated that these activities were enjoyable and made writing easier for them, and thus, made them like writing more. the creative drama also helped students’ interpersonal skill since they had to work with the other students, although the big number of students involved in one class seemed to be a drawback that the students felt. the next application of role-play was conducted by crutchfield (2015) in a class to investigate the experience of students in a theatrical performance. the role-play performance here is in the form of public reading. to gain the students’ insight on their experience, the students were asked to write course journals, “where they wrote responses to in-class creative writing prompts, reflections on their personal experiences with these prompts, and more free-form expressions of thoughts and feelings, particularly in relation to their experience of the public reading” (crutchfield, 2015, p.4). in the end of the program, students performed a public reading, where they read the scripts they produced during the program in front of audience, which comprised of their peers, faculty members, and the public. therefore, this performance is slightly different from the more common form of dramatic performance which involves movements and props. the students were given two prompts which asked about their feeling prior to and after the performance. the first prompt about their feeling before the 17 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 performance resulted in emotions such as nervousness, excitement, fear, concerns about audience and their upcoming performance. the second prompt concerning students’ feeling after the performance resulted in themes such as pride, pleasure, self-knowledge, ensemble feeling (the feeling of comfort as a part of a group), relief, nervousness, knowledge of performance, and courage. gaining from the data, crutchfield (2015) concluded that the students’ performance experience became a place for a “deep emotional investment” (p.27) and the performance became the place for their “self-discovery and validation” (p.28). of all three examples of how role-play is applied in the classroom in higher education context, each was conducted in a different and specific procedure based on the need and the goal of the class discussed. the students’ gain and experience were also varied. this means that there is not one exact way of applying a role-play based activity for teaching and learning because each way will result in very specific and different experience, which at some points, supports some type of learning. methodology since this qualitative study was conducted to a very specific and particular setting, a case study design was implemented (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011). cohen et al. added that this means that it was conducted by gathering in-depth data, but the result has limited generalizability. the study was conducted in an english language education department of a university in yogyakarta, indonesia. the subject where the role-play-based activities were applied was one of the subjects offered in the first year, where subjects are mainly focused on building students’ language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). since the department is aimed at producing graduates who are not only ready to be english teachers – as its name suggests – but also ready to be entrepreneurs, some subjects are made related to career and business. the subject that became the context is one of those subjects. in this subject, the topic is focused on english listening and speaking skills that are commonly needed in job-interviews and business presentations. there were four students taking part in this study as participants voluntarily. there were one male student and three female students. it was a coincidence that all of them received a high grade for their role-play performance from the teacher. this might influence the way they viewed the implementation of the role-play and how it helped their learning process. the participants are presented in pseudonyms, namely anin, zaki, mariana, and elia. the data were collected through interviews. at the time of data collection, i did not have the access to meet each participant in person. therefore, all interviews were conducted through online video call while being recorded with the participants’ consent. the collected data were coded using what saldaña (2016) called as “values coding”, which is used to code “data that reflect a participant’s values, attitudes, and beliefs, representing his or her perspectives or worldview” (saldaña, 2015, p.131). this suits the aim of this study, which looked into the participants’ views of what they have learned through the role-play based activities. 18 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 concerning my positionality, as one of the teachers working with the students in the setting of this study, and as a person having a particular interest and experience in dramatic plays, i might hold certain bias and subjectivity in analyzing the participants’ perceptions. my teacher-student relationship with the participants might also have influence on the answers they gave to the questions i posed in the interview. therefore, the readers of this paper should take that into account to take the findings cautiously. the implementation of role-playbased activities in the study context before i present the findings of the study, first it is imperative that i give a detailed description of the activities conducted in the context of the study. the role-play-based activities implemented in the current study context is a part of a subject entitled english for career development and focused on listening and speaking skills (ecdls). this subject has its pair, which was called english for career development and focused on reading and writing skills (ecdrw). the first half of the semester (eight weeks), the subjects focused on teaching students about job-interviews. while in ecdrw students learned to prepare documents for a job-interviews, such as application letter, curriculum vitae, and resumé, in ecdls, students learned how to perform or face the job-interview. this is where the role-play-based activities were implemented. the activities consisted of four parts. the first tree parts functioned as the preparatory activities before the actual performances. the first part is called ‘self-inventory’, where students should learn about themselves regarding their strengths and weaknesses, and what they wanted for their career. this activity was aimed at preparing students to choose how they would present themselves in a job interview. the second part was understanding questions that might appear in a job-interview and how to answer them well and follow-up questions that a job applicant might ask in a job-interview. in this second part, students learned and discussed the questions from the material brought by the teacher. this activity also involved a small role-play where half of the students played a role as a company owner and half of them played a role as job seekers. these activities were aimed at giving students insight about the dialogue that might take place in a job interview between an interviewer and interviewee. the third part was students’ group presentation, where students were required to do research about the dos and don’ts of a job-interview and shared what they found in front of their peers. the materials for the presentation were totally from students’ research. teacher’s role in this activity was to give feedbacks and shared her experience as a job-seeker and an interviewer in the past. the activity aimed at understanding knowledge around job interviews which exceeds language skills, such as rules of grooming, body language, and ethical conducts. the last part is the main part, which is the role-play of two job-interviews. this is where the students participated in the role-plays in pairs, in which they played the role as an interviewer and interviewee. previously, each student was required to find a job-vacancy of their choice from any sources (internet, newspaper, magazine, flyers, etc.), and their role-plays would be 19 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 the simulated interviews for this vacancy. the students created their own script and planned their play based on the knowledge they gained during the preparatory activities. the students performed the role-plays with the teacher as the sole audience. this activity was aimed to give the space for the students to apply the knowledge they gained from the previous activities. findings interviewing the participants, i focused on understanding how each part of the role-play-based activities helped them learn and what they learned from it. the findings are presented into four parts, namely, self-inventory, job-interview questions, presentation, and role-play. the part naming is based on the label i use to name each activity. as explained previously, the first three parts are the preparatory activities that would eventually become the base to hold the role-play performance in the form of job-interview simulations. self-inventory this first preparatory activity was set to prepare the character or the role that the students would play in their role-play performance. since job-interview was a topic that the students might face in real life outside the classroom, the role as the interviewee, or job seeker, should reflect the students’ characters in reality. all four participants stated that the activities in self-inventory helped them learn more about themselves, and help them decide how their character should be presented in the role-play performance. anin stated that she learned something new about her weaknesses from her group mate in the small group discussion as a part of the activities in self-inventory. she mentioned her being talkative as her weakness. she mentioned that what she felt as a normal behavior was apparently an annoyance to her classmates. she stated that she was defensive at first, but then learned to accept what her friends said about her and tried to control herself. meanwhile, zaki, mariana, and elia declared that in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, they in fact, had known them before the self-inventory activities. mariana said that the self-inventory activities helped her to be more honest about her weaknesses. in line with this, elia elaborated further that addressing her strengths and weaknesses with her friends and reflecting them for preparing her character for the role-play made her start to think of making self-improvement. she mentioned that she started to think of how to work on her weaknesses and put into practice in her daily life. this thought of starting self-improvement was also shared by zaki and mariana. other than helping the participants learn about themselves, the self-inventory also helped them make the considerations on how to present the character that they played as the interviewee. from these activities, all participants stated that they started to build the character of the interviewee that they would play. they started to think about one part of the scenario, which was, the selling part, in which they should talk about their strengths and weaknesses in a way that could convince an interviewer. job-interview questions after self-inventory, students learned few questions that often appear in a job-interview. this part consisted of listening to 20 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 lectures, watching videos containing the material, and discussions of the possibly best ways of answering those questions, and a short role-play. all participants stated that these activities helped them compose their dialogue in the role-plays. what they learned was rather straightforward. this means that they learned what they were supposed to learn, namely the questions and answers in a job-interview. most of them took for granted what the teacher brought to class because they had no experience in a real job-interview before taking the subject and thus, they immediately took the knowledge shared by the teacher. however, all participants mentioned that they eventually also looked for other resources, namely the internet and their more experienced peers to give them options in composing the dialogue in the role-play and to crosscheck whether a real job-interview had the same questions as the ones learned in class. presentation the presentation that students should give was about the dos and don’ts of a job interview. this activity was independently done by the students in small groups. this means that the teacher did not provide any material prior to the activity. students researched for their materials from any sources available to them. all participants stated that what they found and learned while preparing their materials for the presentation became the consideration in preparing their role-play scenario and dialogues; what to include and what to avoid. since the activity was conducted in groups, what participants learned were mostly related to their interaction with other group members. mariana, for instance, shared that she experienced a struggle because she was in between two strong-headed group mates, who had contrasting ideas. she said that she learned to stay calm and control herself because she had to be the peace maker and the one finding the middle ground. similarly, elia said that she learned to communicate with different types of people, and how to solve problem with that communication, or to make a decision when a group member is someone that she had problems to cope with. concerning working with others, zaki shared that he learned to take responsibility. he shared that one of his group mates did not participate fully in preparing for the presentation. he said that because in the end, the teacher would also look at how the group performed as a team, he felt that he needed to take action to save the group’s face in case his irresponsible mate did not show up in the presentation. therefore, he decided that everyone in the group should understand the whole presentation material and not just their individual part to ensure a good presentation. while the other participants learned how to communicate and work with other students when there were difficult peers in the group, anin, on the other hand, chose to work alone for the material preparation and did not want to bother compromising with her group members. she stated that her group mates only counted on her and did not want to contribute enough for the group. what she learned from this activity is related to what makes a student take a task seriously, viz. grades. she said that when it was time to present in front of the class, her group mates became very responsible and tried their best to perform. she concluded that this was because of the teacher’s policy to grade the student as a 21 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 group and individually. she learned that grades were powerful enough to make students do a task seriously. role-plays performing the role-plays by preparing the dialogue and scenario based on what they learned previously, four participants shared different views of what they learned. anin and mariana mentioned nervousness in the job-interview role-plays. they shared that they felt nervous in the performance. while anin learned that a job-interview is a nerve-wrecking situation, mariana focused more on learning about herself. she found out that she was a nervous person because of the tension that she felt. in addition to what she learned about job-interview tension, anin also learned about herself after feedbacks from her partner. she stated that she likes improvising in her role-plays, which makes her incompletely committed to the prepared dialogue. this resulted in her partner’s struggle. she stated that later, her partner confronted her because of what happened. from then on, she received more feedbacks from other classmates that she needed to focus on the plan. she learned that she had a focus issue, and learned that something, which she thought as harmless, such as improvising, could cost other people. it is clear that anin’s perception of herself is influenced by what her peers said. the role-plays in the context of the study are aimed to give the students a space to practice or implement what they have learned theoretically. this aim seemed to correlate to what mariana, elia, and zaki shared with me. mariana believed that after she had learned the theory, she needed to put it into practice. she said that role-play made her became experienced in a job-interview, even though it was not a real job-interview. for elia, the role-plays helped her recall everything she learned previously, namely the knowledge about job-interview. she stated that the knowledge was stuck with her. she could not forget the things that she learned and what happened in the role-play. in line with this, zaki mentioned that what he learned from the role-play performance is about how many details that he had to pay attention to when facing a job-interview. there were various aspects that he and his partner considered when creating the dialogue and other aspects of the role-play, such as his outfit and his body language. these aspects were the knowledge that they learned during the preparatory activities. thus, it can be summed up that there was a reciprocal benefit, namely, the preparatory activities help zaki performed his role-play, and the role-play help him implement what he learned in the preparatory activities. finally, elia learned that role-plays made everyone actively participate. she argued that in other activities, usually, only certain students stood out. however, role-plays gave the chance to everybody to be actively involved because if he/she is not, it would show clearly in their performance. she stated that many of her friends felt the joy of being recognized by the teacher because of succeeding in their performance. discussions from what i found in this study, i can draw some important points about the role-play based activities. first and for most, a thorough and extensive preparation for a role-play performance seems to 22 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 be the key to what the participants learned and how the role-play-based activities helped them learn. all participants related the quality of their performance to their preparation. erdogan (2013) emphasized that the preparation before the role-play is one of the parts effective in improving the skill aimed to improve. in the current study, each preparatory activity supported the role-play performance and conversely, the role-play performance supports the learning of the knowledge gained in the preparatory activities. this reciprocal benefit can also be found in saphiro and leopold’s (2012) study, where role-play helped students compose their writing, and research conducted prior to role-play supports the role-play performance. in saphiro and leopold’s (2012) study, higher order of thinking, such as analyzing and evaluating cases became one of the aspects paid attention to. this skill also seemed to be fostered in the current study because students were given significant independence to decide and to make their own judgment in preparing and performing their role-plays. another point to take from the finding is that putting the students in a position where they have to work with others can foster learning about themselves and others. all participants shared their issues in working with their peers in one or two of the activities. each of them shared different ways of solving the issues with their peers. they learned to communicate, compromise, and avoid conflicts, such as what mariana did by being the peace-maker between her conflicting group mates. this corroborates to erdogan’s (2013) finding that role-plays help students learn interpersonal skill since they have to work in groups. in addition, having issues with other group members also helps the participants learn about themselves. mercer (2011) argued that external factors such as the experiences of learners with others and the feedback from others might sometimes influence the way the learners view themselves. mercer added that how the influence works also depends on the relationship between the learners and the feedback giver. the way the learner perceives the feedback giver will decide whether the feedback is taken or not. if the learner thinks positively of the feedback giver, he/she possibly considers the feedback. in the case of anin, for example, she might have a positive relationship and positive thought of her peers since she seems to listen to their feedback about her and really thought of how her action affected her peers. another point that i draw from the finding is what the participants learned about teacher’s influence on the students’ performance. anin mentioned the teacher’s grade and elia mentioned the teacher’s recognition as two of the factors that encouraged students to perform well. both participants learned this from their observation on their friends’ attitude. they learned that teachers also play a significant part to influence some students’ willingness to perform well. the conclusion that anin and elia made that the teacher’s grade and teacher’s recognition influence the students’ performance might be a useful reference as a student-teacher. this is in line with sharp’s (2014) argument that drama in efl teacher education has dual functions; it provides students with the opportunity to practice and improve their language skills, while at the same time learn some practical relevance to their future career as a teacher. last but not the least, the important aspect to pay attention to is the theme or topic of the role-play and its relevance to lectures, watching videos containing the material, and discussions of the possibly best ways of answering those questions, and a short role-play. all participants stated that these activities helped them compose their dialogue in the role-plays. what they learned was rather straightforward. this means that they learned what they were supposed to learn, namely the questions and answers in a job-interview. most of them took for granted what the teacher brought to class because they had no experience in a real job-interview before taking the subject and thus, they immediately took the knowledge shared by the teacher. however, all participants mentioned that they eventually also looked for other resources, namely the internet and their more experienced peers to give them options in composing the dialogue in the role-play and to crosscheck whether a real job-interview had the same questions as the ones learned in class. presentation the presentation that students should give was about the dos and don’ts of a job interview. this activity was independently done by the students in small groups. this means that the teacher did not provide any material prior to the activity. students researched for their materials from any sources available to them. all participants stated that what they found and learned while preparing their materials for the presentation became the consideration in preparing their role-play scenario and dialogues; what to include and what to avoid. since the activity was conducted in groups, what participants learned were mostly related to their interaction with other group members. mariana, for instance, shared that she experienced a struggle because she was in between two strong-headed group mates, who had contrasting ideas. she said that she learned to stay calm and control herself because she had to be the peace maker and the one finding the middle ground. similarly, elia said that she learned to communicate with different types of people, and how to solve problem with that communication, or to make a decision when a group member is someone that she had problems to cope with. concerning working with others, zaki shared that he learned to take responsibility. he shared that one of his group mates did not participate fully in preparing for the presentation. he said that because in the end, the teacher would also look at how the group performed as a team, he felt that he needed to take action to save the group’s face in case his irresponsible mate did not show up in the presentation. therefore, he decided that everyone in the group should understand the whole presentation material and not just their individual part to ensure a good presentation. while the other participants learned how to communicate and work with other students when there were difficult peers in the group, anin, on the other hand, chose to work alone for the material preparation and did not want to bother compromising with her group members. she stated that her group mates only counted on her and did not want to contribute enough for the group. what she learned from this activity is related to what makes a student take a task seriously, viz. grades. she said that when it was time to present in front of the class, her group mates became very responsible and tried their best to perform. she concluded that this was because of the teacher’s policy to grade the student as a 23 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 students’ real life. dinapoli (2009) implied that role-plays often lack affective aspects because of lacking dramatic aspects; and therefore, provide less meaningful experience for the students. i would argue, however, that role-plays can still be meaningful for students when the topic played is related closely to their real life. from the beginning of the preparatory activities to the actual performance of the role-play, the center of attention is the students themselves. the character they played was basically themselves in a new identity – a job seeker. the dialogue was also based on how they wanted to approach a role-play based on their own imagination if they were in a real job-interview. all participants stated that at some points, they learned about themselves and the improvement they needed to do apart from what they expected to achieve in the classroom. take for example, how mariana learned to be more honest about herself, or anin’s realization of how her peers viewed her. both seemed to take a meaningful mark in their learning that they saw themselves slightly differently than they used to. conclusion and implication all in all, it can be summarized that the role-play-based activities in the current study became a place where students learned some aspects. in the self-inventory activity, the participants learned about themselves (self-reflection). in the job-interview activity, the participants learned about the possible questions in a job-interview. meanwhile, in the presentation, the participants learned about interpersonal communication and what could make a student took a task seriously. lastly, in the role-plays, participants learned about themselves concerning their interaction with other students. the conclusion which can be drawn from the findings is that a careful and well-planned structure of applying role-plays in higher education setting is one of the keys that seems to support students’ learning. what the students in the current study learned was all fostered through carefully prepared activities, which connect to each other and the ones holding the theme related closely to students’ real life. as concluded previously, a careful and well-planned structure of applying role-plays in higher education setting is one of the keys that seems to shape students’ perception on their learning. students in this level of education is within the time frame that urges them to have independence, confidence, and higher order thinking, which can be promoted through the application of role-play. thus, this should be the consideration when an educator or an institution plans to use this approach in teaching and learning. references aliakbari, m., & jamalvandi, b. (2010). the impact of " role play" on fostering efl learners' speaking ability: a task-based approach. journal of pan-pacific association of applied linguistics, 14(1), 15-29. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7th ed.). london: routledge. crutchfield, j. (2015). creative writing and performance in efl teacher training: a preliminary case study. scenario, 2015(01), 01-34. dinapoli, r. (2009). using dramatic role-play to develop emotional aptitude. international journal of english studies, 9(1), 97-110. donnery, e. (2014). process drama in the japanese university efl classroom: the emigration project. scenario, 2014(01), 36-51. erdogan, t. (2013). the effect of creative drama method on pre-service classroom teachers’ writing skills and attitudes towards writing. australian journal of teacher education, 38(1), 44-61. kumaran, s. r. (2010). benefits and shortcomings of role-play as a speaking activity in english language classrooms. english teacher, 39, 72-93. mercer, s. (2011). towards an understanding of language learner self-concept (vol. 12). london: springer science & business media. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rahimy, r., & safarpour, s. (2012). the effect of using role-play on iranian efl learners’ speaking ability. asian journal of social sciences and humanities, 1(3), 50-59. sağlamel, h., & kayaoğlu, m. n. (2013). creative drama: a possible way to alleviate foreign language anxiety. relc journal, 44(3), 377-394. saldaña, j. (2013). the coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). london: sage. shapiro, s, & leopold, l. (2012). a critical role for role-playing pedagogy. tesl canada journal/revue tesl du canada, 29(2), 120-130. sharp, j. (2015). drama in sprachpraxis at a german university english department: practical solutions to pedagogical challenges. scenario, 2014(01), 19-35 shen, l., & suwanthep, j. (2011). e-learning constructive role plays for efl learners in china's tertiary education. asian efl journal. professional teaching articles, 49, 4-29. 24 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 references aliakbari, m., & jamalvandi, b. (2010). the impact of " role play" on fostering efl learners' speaking ability: a task-based approach. journal of pan-pacific association of applied linguistics, 14(1), 15-29. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7th ed.). london: routledge. crutchfield, j. (2015). creative writing and performance in efl teacher training: a preliminary case study. scenario, 2015(01), 01-34. dinapoli, r. (2009). using dramatic role-play to develop emotional aptitude. international journal of english studies, 9(1), 97-110. donnery, e. (2014). process drama in the japanese university efl classroom: the emigration project. scenario, 2014(01), 36-51. erdogan, t. (2013). the effect of creative drama method on pre-service classroom teachers’ writing skills and attitudes towards writing. australian journal of teacher education, 38(1), 44-61. kumaran, s. r. (2010). benefits and shortcomings of role-play as a speaking activity in english language classrooms. english teacher, 39, 72-93. mercer, s. (2011). towards an understanding of language learner self-concept (vol. 12). london: springer science & business media. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rahimy, r., & safarpour, s. (2012). the effect of using role-play on iranian efl learners’ speaking ability. asian journal of social sciences and humanities, 1(3), 50-59. sağlamel, h., & kayaoğlu, m. n. (2013). creative drama: a possible way to alleviate foreign language anxiety. relc journal, 44(3), 377-394. saldaña, j. (2013). the coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). london: sage. shapiro, s, & leopold, l. (2012). a critical role for role-playing pedagogy. tesl canada journal/revue tesl du canada, 29(2), 120-130. sharp, j. (2015). drama in sprachpraxis at a german university english department: practical solutions to pedagogical challenges. scenario, 2014(01), 19-35 shen, l., & suwanthep, j. (2011). e-learning constructive role plays for efl learners in china's tertiary education. asian efl journal. professional teaching articles, 49, 4-29. learning strategies employed by language learners are currently often researched for their contribution in the second language acquisition. there was a shift in the research and theory of second language teaching from focusing on the mariska intan sari 46-61 abstract introduction cognitive and metacognitive reading strategy use and reading comprehension performance of indonesian efl pre-service teachers earned her bachelor’s degree in english literature focusing on english linguis�cs from yogyakarta state university. she then obtained her master’s degree in applied linguis�cs from ohio university. she has taught at english language educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta since 2012. her research interests are reading, wri�ng, and call. the study aims at identifying the nature of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers. it also aims at finding out the relationship between the reading strategies used and pre-service teachers’ reading comprehension performance. the study employs a quantitative research method using reading test and cognitive and metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire. the results showed that for cognitive reading strategies, highly successful readers (hsr) reported using memory sub-strategy more than less successful readers (lsr) and moderately successful readers (msr), and using comprehension and retrieval sub-strategies less than msr, but more than lsr. for the metacognitive reading strategies, hsr reported using monitoring and evaluating strategies less than msr, but more than lsr, and using planning strategy less than both msr and lsr. the statistical analysis resulted that there is no statistically significant relationship between the cognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance (r values < r-table; 0.049 < 0.181). there is also no significant relationship between the metacognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance (r values < r-table; 0.127 < 0.181). thus, h1 is rejected, meaning that there is no statistically significant correlation between the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the pre-service teacher reading comprehension performance. as for the implications, it is suggested that the teacher provides more exposures and practices to apply reading strategies that help the students to comprehend english texts. keywords: cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, reading comprehension performance volume 1, no. 2, july 2016 journal of foreign language teaching & learning 47 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 teaching methods to focusing on the learning strategies employed by learners (purpura, 1997). this trend shows the importance of knowing the characteristics of learners in acquiring the second language for the success of the second language acquisition. knowing the strategies employed by more successful and less successful learners can be the basis of a lesson or syllabus planning. one of the learning strategies often researched is reading strategy learners used in order to comprehend a text. reading comprehension is very important in all areas of academic learning including in acquiring a language. students need to read books, articles, and other materials in order to master any subject areas that they learn, and they need to have a good reading comprehension to do so whether it is on their first or their second language. if students cannot comprehend their reading materials well, they will not be able to achieve a high academic achievement (iwai, 2009). therefore, it is very important for the students to master reading comprehension. however, efl students often face some challenges in comprehending texts in english. this is because, in reading, students are not only required to understand the direct meaning of the text but also to understand the implied ideas of the text (al-alwan, 2012). they might not be able to comprehend the text because of their lack of vocabulary knowledge and sentence structure, and also their failure to relate the text with its context. one of the ways to help students comprehend texts in english is by employing various strategies in reading. cognitive and metacognitive strategies have been indicated to contribute to helping students face their challenges in comprehending a text. there were several studies conducted on the topic of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the students’ reading comprehension performance. some of these studies examined the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and reading comprehension employing multiple correlation analysis (e.g., naeni & rezaei, 2015; phakiti, 2003; purpura, 1997, 1998). these studies have shown that the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies has a positive relationship to the students’ reading comprehension performance. furthermore, some other studies examined the contribution of the reading strategies on the students’ reading comprehension performance (e.g., al-alwan, 2012; kummin & rahman, 2010; yakupoglu, 2012). however, only a few studies have been conducted within the indonesian context in this area of study. one of the examples was a study conducted by vianty (2007) which investigated reading strategies employed by indonesian learners of english when reading indonesian and english texts, but the research only focused on metacognitive reading strategies. furthermore, the studies were mostly conducted with english as a foreign language (efl) learners as the participants. only a few studies have been conducted with pre-service teachers as the participants. pre-service teachers are students of teacher training and education program, and they are prepared to be teachers upon finishing their study. this research was conducted within the indonesian context with pre-service teachers as the participants. it is expected to provide insights for the teaching of reading strategies for pre-service teachers, especially in indonesian context. 48 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 based on the background and expectation, this research aims to identify the nature of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers. it also aims to find out the relationship between the pre-service teachers use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and their reading comprehension performance, analyzing whether the differences in the use of these reading strategies relate to their performances in a reading comprehension test. the research will be beneficial for the enhancement of the teaching and learning process for reading courses in an efl classroom setting especially in an indonesian context. here are the research questions: 1. what is the nature of cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance? 2. how is the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and the indonesian efl pre-service teachers’ reading comprehension performance? literature review when reading english texts, there are some factors that may affect learners’ understanding of the texts; among others are learners’ target language proficiency and vocabulary, learners’ knowledge of the content, and learners’ use of reading strategies (zare-ee, 2007). he added that reading strategy is one of the important factors in comprehending a text, and readers change the reading strategies they use depending on the texts they read. he defined reading strategies as specific actions that learners do in order to comprehend the texts. these strategies include cognitive and metacognitive strategies. cognitive strategies are direct language learning strategies which can help students process meaning in the target language consciously (kasimi, 2012). these strategies include comprehension, memory, and retrieval strategies (phakiti, 2003). this is in line with o’malley and chamot (in zarra-nezhad, shooshtari, & vahdat, 2015) who stated that cognitive strategies are related to students’ act of comprehending texts by making prediction, translating, summarizing, and guessing meaning from context, and also students’ act of relating their reading to their background knowledge. meanwhile, metacognitive strategies are the strategies that students use to monitor their use of cognitive strategies (zarra-nezhad, shooshtari, & vahdat, 2015). this is in line with zhang and seepho (2013) who stated that metacognitive reading strategies are the strategies that are employed by the readers in order to improve their awareness and control over the reading comprehension and to evaluate it. they include planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies (phakiti, 2003). he further explained that these strategies are usually used when readers face with difficulties because they need to assess the situation and to monitor their comprehension to make their reading effective even though it might make their reading process slower. reading strategies have been found to be closely related to reading comprehension performance as stated by naeni and rezaei (2015). based on some studies conducted in the field of reading, it has been found that there is a statistically significant difference on the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies between students with high reading comprehension performance and those with low reading comprehension performance (naeni and rezaei, 2015; zarra-nezhad, shooshtari, & vahdat, 2015; phakiti, 2003). 49 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 these studies suggested that students with high reading comprehension performance are mostly aware of their use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies, and can apply these strategies appropriately when comprehending english texts. on the other hand, students with low reading comprehension performance might not be aware on their use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and could not apply them appropriately (naeni and rezaei, 2015). one of the studies conducted in this area was a study conducted by phakiti (2003) which examined the nature of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by thai efl learners in an efl reading comprehension test. it also studied the relationship between the strategies used and the reading comprehension performances of the learners and found out how the highly successful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful learners differ in the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. the results of the research showed that the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies had a positive relationship on the learners’ performance in a reading comprehension test. it also showed that highly successful learners significantly use higher metacognitive strategies than the moderately successful ones and that the moderately successful ones have higher metacognitive strategies used than the unsuccessful ones. similarly, naeni and rezaei (2015) also conducted the research on the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive reading strategy use and reading comprehension, but in a different context. they did the research on the iranian learners of english, examining the structural pattern of iranian learners’ use of learning strategies when taking a reading comprehension test and the relationships between the learners’ reading comprehension performance and the cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies that they employed. the research also revealed a strong relationship between the learners’ reading proficiency scores and the strategies that they used when taking the comprehension test. also, it showed a significant difference on the scores of the questionnaire between the more successful readers and the less successful ones showing that the more successful readers used more strategies compared to the less successful ones and that the more successful readers used more metacognitive strategies than the less successful ones. although many studies covered both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies, there are some studies which only focus on metacognitive reading strategies (iway, 2016; zhang and seepho, 2013). iway (2016) compared the use of metacognitive reading strategies of the pre-service teachers at the initial, middle, and final stage of their education program. the results show that there is no significant difference between the scores of metacognitive awareness reading strategy inventory (marsi) at different stages of the program. in contrast, zhang and seepho (2013) found that there was statistically significant correlation between the use of metacognitive reading strategies and the chinese efl reading performance. this study, then, focuses on finding out the nature of both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers. these reading strategies cover comprehension, memory, and retrieval strategies under cognitive strategies, and planning, moni toring, and evaluating strategies under metacognitive strategies. it also aims at finding out the relationship between the 50 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 strategies used and the pre-service teachers reading comprehension performance. the proposed hypothesis is: h1: there is a statistically significant relationship between cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies use and the reading comprehension performance of indonesian efl ore-service teachers. method the research employed a quantitative research approach with correlational research design. the overall population chosen to become the research participants consists of 150 students. however, there were only 132 students showed up during the data collection sessions. then, the total participants for the analysis were 118 since there were 14 participants who did not fill out the questionnaires completely, so the data were excluded from the analysis. these indonesian efl pre-service teachers are 18-20 years old students who were studying at a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. they were, then, on their second year of their bachelor’s degree program when the study was conducted. they have taken basic reading and writing course and academic reading and writing course in their first year, so they should have been familiar with reading strategies since they have learned these strategies in both courses. the participants were then categorized into three categories based on their reading test performance. those who scored 0 to 12 were categorized into less successful readers (lsr), and there were 11 participants were in this category. meanwhile, participants who scored 13 to 25 were categorized into the moderately successful readers (msr), and there were 103 participants were in this category. finally, there were 4 participants who scored 26 to 38, and they were categorized as the highly successful readers (hsr). the research was conducted by administering a reading comprehension test and a questionnaire on cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies to the participants. the reading comprehension test was adopted from a preparation module of a standardized test published by ets (2009). this test consisted of three reading passages and thirty-eight questions. meanwhile, the cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire was modified from the questionnaire developed by phakiti (2003, 2006) which was quite similar to purpura’s (1997). the questionnaire consisted of thirty items in the form of likert scale; thirteen items were for cognitive strategies, and seventeen items were for metacognitive strategies. there were some steps the researcher did to ensure the validity and reliability of the research instruments. for the reading comprehension test, the researcher did not do any measurement to ensure the validity and reliability of the test since the test was taken from a standardized test, and it was assumed that the test was already measured for the validity and reliability, and it has been considered valid and reliable. meanwhile, for the cognitive and metacognitive strategy questionnaire, used in this study, the researcher did a piloting before the questionnaire was distributed to the participants to ensure the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. a validity test was used to check whether the questionnaire really measures what it is supposed to measure. there were two steps of validity test used in this research (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011). the first step was the face validity step, and in ensuring this validity, the researcher chose three students who were not one of the participants of this research to read the questionnaire to make sure that the participants 51 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 would not have any difficulty in understanding the items in the questionnaires when filling them out. the next step in the validity test was items analysis. a reliability test was used to test the level of internal consistency of each item in the cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire for the pilot study, analyzing whether the items measure the same underlying construct for the sample participants. in order to measure that, the correlation coefficient (r value) was compared to the r-table for 118 participants. the items would be regarded valid if the r coefficient is higher than the r-table, which is 0.181. here are the results of validity and reliability tests. for the validity test, the face validity and items analysis tests showed good results. all three students stated that they did not have any difficulty in understanding the thirty items in the questionnaire. meanwhile, for the item analysis, all the thirty items in the questionnaire have correlation coefficients higher than the r-table, 0.181, which means that the items were valid. meanwhile, the reliability test for the questionnaire yielded a good result with the cronbach alpha of .727 for cognitive strategies and .860 for metacognitive strategies. it means that there is an internal consistency of each item in the cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire, and that the items in the questionnaire measure the same underlying construct for the participants since the cronbach alphas for both strategies are in the range between -1.0 to +1.0. also, the reliability indexes are quite high for they are close to +1.0. therefore, the questionnaire is reliable to measure the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies used by the pre-service teachers in this study. table 1 below shows the taxonomy of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies and their reliability indexes. table 1 a taxonomy of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies questionnaire processing sub-categories items reliability 1. cognitive strategies 2. metacognitive strategies comprehension memory retrieval planning monitoring evaluating 2, 3, 6, 7, 14 1, 5, 8, 22 4, 9, 26, 29 10, 11, 19, 20, 23, 27 12, 16, 17, 21, 24, 25 13, 15, 18, 28, 30 .727 .860 52 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 it can also be seen from the table that on the questionnaire, cognitive strategies include comprehension (5 statements), memory (4 statements), and retrieval (4 statements); whereas metacognitive strategies include planning (6 statements), monitoring (6 statements), and evaluating (5 statements). the data were collected during the class time with the permission from the lecturer and also the students. at first, the researcher explained the research, the data collection procedure, the reading comprehension test, and the questionnaire to the participants. afterward, the participants were requested to fill out the consent form, that is, the agreement to participate in the research to ensure that the participants understand the research and its risks. then, with the researcher’s presence in the classroom to answer students’ questions if they have any, the participants did the reading test for sixty minutes followed by filling out the questionnaire for fifteen to twenty minutes afterward. the data obtained were, then, analyzed statistically using descriptive statistics, and pearson product moment correlation (multiple correlation) in order to answer the two questions. the descriptive statistics on the results of the questionnaire were obtained in order to reveal the distribution of the strategies employed by more-successful and less-successful readers, comparing the strategies employed by more successful readers to the strategies employed by less successful readers. this is done to answer the first question of the research. then, the pearson product moment correlation was calculated in order to answer the second research question, that is, to find out whether the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that are employed by the pre-service teachers relate to their reading comprehension. result the results of the research are divided into two sections. the first section shows the results of the descriptive statistics to find out the nature of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance. the next section shows the correlation between the cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and the reading comprehension of these pre-service teachers, examining whether or not these variables relate to each other. the nature of cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance. in presenting the data, the researcher presented the data from the reading test first since they were used to categorize the participants into three categories namely less successful readers (lsr), moderately successful readers (msr), and highly successful readers (hsr), and the results of the questionnaire were arranged based on these categories. the results of the reading test were as follows. out of 118 participants, the data were classified into three categories based on the reading comprehension score, namely less successful readers (lsr), moderately successful readers (msr), and highly successful readers (hsr). those who scored zero to twelve were categorized as the less successful readers (lsr); those who scored thirteen to twenty-five were categorized as moderately successful readers (msr); and those who scored twenty-six to thirty-eight were categorized as the highly successful readers 53 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 (hsr). thus, 11 participants were categorized as lsr; 103 participants were categorized as msr; and 4 participants were categorized as hsr. the demography is illustrated in the following table. further, table 3 below shows the mean scores of each category. for the reading test, the mean score for lsr was 10.36, for msr was 17.71, and for hsr was 27. the mean scores for the cognitive and metacognitive strategies were also presented. it can be seen that the mean scores for cognitive strategies were almost similar across the groups, but the lowest one was lsr and the highest one was hsr. it shows that hsr reported using the cognitive strategies more than msr, who reported using the cognitive strategy more than lsr even though the difference was not really significant. however, the results for metacognitive strategies were slightly different, in that msr reported that they used metacognitive strategies more than hsr, who reported using the strategies more than lsr. another thing that can be seen from the table is that the mean scores for metacognitive strategies were always higher than the mean scores for cognitive strategies for all the groups, meaning that all groups reported using metacognitive strategies more than cognitive strategies. table 2 the categorization of the participants based on the reading comprehension score categories lsr msr hsr score range 0-12 13-25 26-38 number of participants 11 103 4 table 3 the mean scores on the reading test and cognitive and metacognitive strategies categories the mean score of reading test the mean score of cognitive strategy the mean score metacognitive strategy lsr 10.36 42.36 56.36 msr 17.71 42.92 59.50 hsr 27 44.25 57.75 total participants 17.34 42.91 59.14 54 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 more detail mean scores comparison across the groups and strategies is presented in table 4. for cognitive reading strategies, it can be seen that hsr reported using memory strategy more than lsr and msr. meanwhile, for the comprehension and retrieval strategies, hsr reported using them less than msr, but more than lsr. for the metacognitive reading strategies, hsr reported using monitoring and evaluating strategies less than msr, but more than lsr; and hsr reported using planning category less than both msr and lsr. table 4 the mean scores comparison across the group and strategies strategies lsr msr hsr total cognitive comprehension memory retrieval 42.36 16.18 12.64 13.54 42.92 16.94 11.62 14.35 44.25 16.75 13.50 14.00 total metacognitive planning monitoring evaluating 56.36 19.64 20.00 16.72 59.49 20.70 20.70 18.07 57.75 19.50 20.25 18.00 more detail mean scores comparison across the groups and strategies is presented in table 4. for cognitive reading strategies, it can be seen that hsr reported using memory strategy more than lsr and msr. meanwhile, for the comprehension and retrieval strategies, hsr reported using them less than msr, but more than lsr. for the metacognitive reading strategies, hsr reported using monitoring and evaluating strategies less than msr, but more than lsr; and hsr reported using planning category less than both msr and lsr. 55 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 table 5 the result of normality test of the data reading score cognitive strategies metacognitive strategies n 118 118 118 normal parametersa mean 17.339 42.915 59.144 std. deviation 4.0090 5.0342 8.4462 most extreme differences absolute .075 .059 .060 positive .075 .059 .060 negative -.064 -.044 -.056 kolmogorov-smirnov z .820 .638 .656 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .513 .810 .782 a. test distribution is normal. the table shows that the significant value for the reading score was 0.513; the significant value for the cognitive reading strategies was 0.810; and the significant value for the metacognitive reading strategies was 0.782. these significant values were more than 0.05, which means that the data were at the normal distribution, and they can be measured for the correlation test. the data were then tested using pearson product moment correlation test. the result of the test is shown in table 6 below. 56 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 table 6 the result of pearson product moment correlation test total cognitive total metacognitive reading score cognitive strategies pearson correlation 1 .721** .049 sig. (2-tailed) .000 .599 n 118 118 118 metacognitive strategies pearson correlation .721** 1 .127 sig. (2-tailed) .000 .171 n 118 118 118 reading score pearson correlation .049 .127 1 sig. (2-tailed) .599 .171 n 118 118 118 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). 57 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 the table shows the results of significance values and the pearson correlation index of cognitive reading strategies and reading score, and metacognitive reading strategies and reading score. the r values and the sig. (2-tailed) values are used to analyzed the data. for the r values, if the observed r values are higher than the r-table, h1 is accepted (observed r values > r-table). while for the sig. (2-tailed), if the sig. values are lower than 0.05, h1 is accepted (p-value > 0.05). the results are significant if the two of the requirements are obtained. the first result shows that the sig. (2-tailed) value between cognitive reading strategy and reading comprehension performance was 0.599. the score is higher than 0.05 (0.559>0.05). it can also be seen from the pearson correlation index (r value) at (d.f. = 118) which was 0.049. here the r value is lower than the r-table (0.049<0.181). the result shows that there was no statistically significant correlation between cognitive reading strategy and reading comprehension performance. for the correlation between metacognitive reading strategy and the reading comprehension performance, sig. (2-tailed) value was 0.171. it is higher than 0.05 (0.171> 0.05). in addition, the r value at (d.f. = 118) was 0.127. the r value is lower than the r-table (0.127<0.181). this indicates that there is also no statistically significant correlation between the use of metacognitive reading strategy and reading comprehension performance. thus, the result of the correlation test showed that alternative hypothesis (h1) is rejected for there is no statistically significant relationship between the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the pre-service teachers’ reading comprehension performance. it implies that the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies does not relate to the pre-service teachers’ reading comprehension performance. discussion this research focuses on the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and their relationship with the reading comprehension performance of pre-service teachers because the results of previous studies (naeni & rezaei, 2015; phakiti, 2003; zarra-nezhad, a., shooshtari, z. g., & vahdat, s., 2015; purpura, 1998) mostly showed that there is a correlation between the reading strategies and the reading comprehension performance of the users. these previous studies also showed that highly successful readers reported using more cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies compared to moderately successful readers. similarly, moderately successful readers reported using more cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies than less successful readers. it can be seen from the result of the descriptive statistics of this research in general that hsr reported using cognitive reading strategies the most. this confirms the results of the previous research ((naeni & rezaei, 2015; phakiti, 2003; purpura, 1998). meanwhile, for the metacognitive strategies, msr reported using the strategies the most. the results are not in line with the previous studies (naeni & rezaei, 2015; phakiti, 2003; purpura, 1998), in that hsr reported using both the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies the most, followed by msr in the middle, and lsr as the ones who reported using both strategies the less. moreover, the mean scores comparison across the groups and the sub-strategies of this study do not confirm with the results of previous research either. it can be seen 58 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 from the result of the descriptive statistics that the mean scores of msr were higher than hsr for comprehension and retrieval strategies (cognitive), and also for planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies (metacognitive). for one sub-strategy, lsr had higher scores than msr, that is, on the memory strategy. this is in contrast to the results of the previous research mentioned earlier in that highly successful learners had higher mean scores on both cognitive and metacognitive strategies compared to moderately successful learners, who had higher mean scores on both cognitive and metacognitive strategies than less successful learners, and the highly successful ones had particularly higher scores on metacognitive strategy use. one possible explanation to these results is that lsr, and msr probably over-reported their reading strategy use because they wanted to show that they understood about reading strategies, and that they already applied them while doing the reading test even though in fact they did not use the strategies or they use them but not very often. on the other hand, hsr might under-report their strategy use. they may have better understanding on reading strategies and also better awareness of the reading strategies they use, so they were more careful in filling out the questionnaire making sure that they reported their reading strategy use correctly. another possible explanation is that the pre-service teachers probably know and aware of the strategies for they have learnt them in the class, but they could not apply the correct strategies when they did the reading. as for the relationship between the cognitive and metacognitive strategies used and the reading comprehension performance, the results showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between the cognitive reading strategies employed by the pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance with the significant value of 0.599. there was also no statistically significant correlation between the metacognitive reading strategies and the reading performance with the significant value of 0.171. there was a correlation between the strategy use and the reading performance, but the correlation was only very small, that is 0.049 for cognitive strategies to reading performance and 0.127 for metacognitive strategies to reading performance, so that they were not significant. in general, these results are not in line with the results of previous studies which found that there is a relationship between cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the learners’ reading achievement (naeni & rezaei, 2015; zarra-nezhad, a., shooshtari, z. g., & vahdat, s., 2015; kummin & rahman, 2010). the results of this study do not confirm the results of previous studies. it might be because there are other factors influencing the reading comprehension performance of the pre-service teachers. these other factors which might take part in influencing the results can be the students’ language ability and the difficulty level of the test. this is in line with phakiti (2003), who stated that, the fact that the relationship of cognitive and metacognitive strategies to the reading performance was weak … might be because there were factors other than these strategies – such as language ability, test method effects and error of measurement – that could be used to explain thetest score (p.40). 59 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 thus, the results of the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies questionnaire and the reading test can be used by the lecturer to reflect on their teaching. the lecturer can provide more practices for the students, so that they can apply the reading strategies that they have learnt in the class to comprehend texts in english. that way, it is expected that the pre-service students’ reading comprehension performance could also be improved. conclusion and recommendation the current study seeks to reveal the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by the indonesian efl pre-service teachers. it showed whether highly, moderately, and less successful indonesian efl pre-service teachers differ in terms of reading strategies they employed in comprehending english texts. it also found out the relationship between the strategies and the reading comprehension performance of these pre-service teachers, analyzing whether the differences in the use of these reading strategies relate to their performances in a reading comprehension test. the results of the study showed that there was no significant relationship between the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teacher and their performance in a reading comprehension test. the results also showed that there was no significant difference in the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies between highly successful, moderately successful, and less successful readers. the results were different from the results of the previous studies which showed that there was a significant relation between the use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the reading performance, as well as there was a difference in the use of thse strategies. since the study showed that there was no significant relationship between cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies and the pre-service teachers’ reading comprehension performance; whereas some previous studies found otherwise, several implications regarding the implementation of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies in language learning can be drawn. first, the teacher is encouraged to provide more time to teach the students how to apply cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies to improve the students’ reading comprehension performance. second, the teacher should provide more practices and tasks on applying both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies for the students because they may know and understand the strategies, but they may not know how to apply them correctly when they are comprehending english texts resulting on the moderately or less successful reading comprehension performance. by practicing a lot, the students are expected to be able to internalize the strategies, and apply them appropriately while reading english texts. it is also suggested for future researchers to design their own reading test based on the students’ ability and the materials that they have received in the class, so that the students will be readier to do the test, and the results will be better, and might provide better insight for the use of reading strategies both cognitive and metacognitive strategies. also, the researcher might need to reconsider the time allocation to do the test, so the students have the right amount of time to finish all the test items. finally, it will be better if a follow up interview can be conducted since it can provide data that could not be obtained from the questionnaire. it can also be seen from the table that on the questionnaire, cognitive strategies include comprehension (5 statements), memory (4 statements), and retrieval (4 statements); whereas metacognitive strategies include planning (6 statements), monitoring (6 statements), and evaluating (5 statements). the data were collected during the class time with the permission from the lecturer and also the students. at first, the researcher explained the research, the data collection procedure, the reading comprehension test, and the questionnaire to the participants. afterward, the participants were requested to fill out the consent form, that is, the agreement to participate in the research to ensure that the participants understand the research and its risks. then, with the researcher’s presence in the classroom to answer students’ questions if they have any, the participants did the reading test for sixty minutes followed by filling out the questionnaire for fifteen to twenty minutes afterward. the data obtained were, then, analyzed statistically using descriptive statistics, and pearson product moment correlation (multiple correlation) in order to answer the two questions. the descriptive statistics on the results of the questionnaire were obtained in order to reveal the distribution of the strategies employed by more-successful and less-successful readers, comparing the strategies employed by more successful readers to the strategies employed by less successful readers. this is done to answer the first question of the research. then, the pearson product moment correlation was calculated in order to answer the second research question, that is, to find out whether the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that are employed by the pre-service teachers relate to their reading comprehension. result the results of the research are divided into two sections. the first section shows the results of the descriptive statistics to find out the nature of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance. the next section shows the correlation between the cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and the reading comprehension of these pre-service teachers, examining whether or not these variables relate to each other. the nature of cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their reading comprehension performance. in presenting the data, the researcher presented the data from the reading test first since they were used to categorize the participants into three categories namely less successful readers (lsr), moderately successful readers (msr), and highly successful readers (hsr), and the results of the questionnaire were arranged based on these categories. the results of the reading test were as follows. out of 118 participants, the data were classified into three categories based on the reading comprehension score, namely less successful readers (lsr), moderately successful readers (msr), and highly successful readers (hsr). those who scored zero to twelve were categorized as the less successful readers (lsr); those who scored thirteen to twenty-five were categorized as moderately successful readers (msr); and those who scored twenty-six to thirty-eight were categorized as the highly successful readers 60 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 references al-alwan, a. f. (2012). the effect of using metacognition reading strategies on the reading comprehension of arabic texts. international journal of applied educational studies, 13(1), 1-18. bachman, l. f. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford: oxford university press. baker, l., & brown, a. l. (1984). metacognitive skills and reading. in pearson, p.d., barr, r., kamil, m.l., & mosenthal, p. (eds.), handbook of reading research (pp. 353-394). new york: longman inc. carrell, p. l. (1989). metacognitive awareness and second language reading. the modern language journal, 73(2), 121-134. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. london: routledge. ets. (2009). the official guide to the toefl test third edition. new york: mcgraw-hill companies, inc. iwai, y. (2009). metacognition awareness and strategy use in academic english reading among adult english as a second language (esl) students. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of southern mississippi, u.s.a. iwai, y. (2016). promoting strategic readers: insights of preservice teachers’ understanding of metacognitive reading strategies. international journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning, 10(1), 1-7. kasımi, y. (2012). cognitive and metacognitive strategies employed by iranian and turkish efl readers. elt research journal, 1(3), 159-174. kummin, s., & rahman, s. (2010). the relationship between the use of metacognitive strategies and achievement in english. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 7(c), 145-150. naeini, m.b., & rezaei, r. (2015). examining and dealing with the issue of reading strategy use by iranian efl learners. the reading matrix: an international online journal, 15(2), 182-195. phakiti, a. (2003). a closer look at the relationship of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use to efl reading achievement test performance. language testing, 20(1), 26-56. phakiti, a. (2006). modeling cognitive and metacognitive strategies and their relationships to efl reading test performance. melbourne papers in language testing, 1, 53-95. purpura, j. e. (1997). an analysis of the relationships between test takers' cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and second language test performance. language learning, 47(2), 289-325. purpura, j. e. (1998). investigating the effects of strategy use and second language test performance with high-and low-ability test takers: a structural equation modelling approach. language testing, 15(3), 333-379. vianty, m. (2007). the comparison of students' use of metacognitive reading strategies between reading in bahasa indonesia and in english. international education journal, 8(2), 449-460. zarra-nezhad, a., shooshtari, z. g., & vahdat, s. (2015). the effects of attitude & motivation on the use of cognitive & metacognitive strategies among iranian efl undergraduate readers. english linguistics research, 4(4), 11-22. zare-ee, a. (2007). the relationship between cognitive and meta-cognitive strategy use and efl reading achievement. journal of applied psychology 2(5), 105-119. zhang, l., & seepho, s. (2013). metacognitive strategy use and academic reading achievement: insights from a chinese context. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 10(1), 54-69. personal perspective. tefl web journal, 2(1), 15-30. 61 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.1 no. 2, july 2016 rao, z. (2007). training in brainstorming and developing writing skills. elt journal, 61, 100-106. santos, t. (2000). on the future of second language writing: the efl/esl split. journal of second language writing, 9(1), 8-10. tananart, o. (2000). the survey of errors in written work of students learning fundamental english at chulalongkorn university. passa paritasna. 18: 87-101. yakhontova, t. v. (2003). english academic writing: for students and researchers. usa: new york: longman. zemach, d. e and rumisek, l. a. (2005). academic writing: from paragraph to essay. macmillian journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 138 article history: submitted: 4 april 2022 reviewed: 23 june 2022 edited: 5 july 2022 article accepted: 8 july 2022 metadiscourse markers: frequency and errors made by efl students junaity soften sine1*), rosdiana mata2 1institut agama kristen negeri kupang, indonesia 2politeknik negeri kupang, indonesia *)corresponding author email: junenighty@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14403 abstract to present a skillfully written abstract, an author should apply some strategies. one of them is the application of metadiscourse markers, which provides readers with linguistic features that will help them quickly get the gist of the entire research. studies have examined the metadiscourse markers in abstracts of theses and published article journals written by indonesian, but only a few used a corpus-based approach and analyzed the errors simultaneously. this study, therefore, aimed at finding the frequency of metadiscourse markers and grammatical errors made by accounting department students of kupang state polytechnic in their final papers’ abstracts. a corpus-based approach was applied by using antconc version 3.5.9 concordance tool. the study showed that interactive markers occurred more frequently than interactional resources. moreover, grammatical errors were related to applying punctuation (comma), plural forms, verb tenses, and modality. this study suggests the teaching material includes the features of metadiscourse markers in abstract writing and further emphasizes the grammar on topics where students performed errors. keywords: metadiscourse markers; interactive markers; interactional markers. =========================================================================== introduction english has been acknowledged as an international language for scientific publication. therefore, writing in english is unavoidable for those getting higher education at universities, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14403 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14403&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 139 even in countries where english is neither the first nor national language like indonesia. in indonesian universities, it is mandatory to write an abstract in both bahasa indonesia and english for students' final research papers. reports have shown how indonesian students thought writing abstracts in english was difficult (yanto & sulistiyo, 2017). in addition, students suggested that their english course include abstract writing techniques. abstract functions to briefly portray the whole research; thus, it must attract readers to read more. this function means an author should effectively present their abstract. because of this, research ideas in the abstract should be written by considering readability and acceptability in a particular discipline. there are techniques to learn to convey research information properly in academic articles, especially abstracts, such as using metadiscourse like transition words, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, or engagement markers (doró, 2015). moreover, accommodating ideas in a foreign language requires much effort, particularly in academic english. foreign language learners must have large vocabulary lists to properly support their thoughts and arguments. however, it is more than knowing the words; knowing how to use them in writing accurately. a study investigated language, structure, and content challenges faced by undergraduate students in afghanistan in writing academic articles. one finding concerning language was students’ incapability to appropriately use discourse markers and the repeated use of english words (noori, 2020). students could not express and support their ideas because they lacked academic phrase banks. consequently, they repetitively used the exact words. studies have examined academic abstracts, for example, the investigation of rhetorical moves and linguistic realization produced by english and spanish authors in ecuador and north america. neither native english nor non-native english researchers use complete structures of the five-move model (hyland). spanish authors wrote the purpose, method, and product organization, while native english writers added an introduction to their abstract. he further discussed that different written abstracts among writers were influenced by "linguacultural convention practiced in each discourse community." this practice included the discourse constructions adopted and accepted by journals and academic communities (viera, 2019). another research investigated syntactical errors when non-native english students wrote their thesis abstracts. this study investigated how acehnese undergraduate students organized https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 140 their thesis statement, idea, and metadiscourse markers to introduce their research papers. the findings showed that students used quasi-inductive ways to introduce thesis statements instead of inductive or deductive ones. moreover, the way they organized their idea was not linear (circular). the last finding was intriguing because they found four rarely-produced discourse markers: comparison, persuasion, emphasis, and opinion (novawan et al., 2020). the topic of metadiscourse applied in research articles and academic writing has been previously discussed. these researches can be categorized into several categories, such as research comparing different academic genres (research articles, theses, book reviews, and student essays), native-speaking influence, various disciplines, and other genres. for example, kawase (2015) exposed how research article writers employed more metadiscourse markers than thesis writers, arguing the nature of research articles as a professional genre that insists on presenting oneself in the academic world. however, research article and abstract thesis writers used more interactive markers than interactional markers (ashofteh et al., 2020; pandey, 2020; al-shujairi et al., 2016; mazidah, 2019). some other studies reflected how native speakers and non-native speakers of english used metadiscourse markers (hussein et al., 2018; kaies, 2019; nugroho, 2019). these comparative studies found that interactional markers were employed more frequently by native speakers of english. the challenge in employing metadiscourse markers is not concerned with native or non-native status but more with the language competence of the writers, as proved by gholami et al. (2014). they confirmed the correlation between the toefl score and metadiscourse markers. research contrasted and compared the production of metadiscourse markers between abstracts written by students from different disciplines and found that humanity research abstracts tended to use markers to convince rather than engage the readers (mansouri et al., 2016). this finding was also supported by jin and shang (2016) and suntara and chokthawikit (2018), in which interactional markers used were mostly attitude markers. moreover, there has been corpus-based research that examined the topic in various academic writing, such as book reviews (bal-gezegin, 2016), psychology books (karami & poor, 2020), opinion and sports articles in newspapers (nugroho, 2020), introduction and conclusion sections of the master dissertations (bouchemet, 2019) and students’ essay (alqahtani & abdelhalim, 2020). however, few studies have examined both corpus-based https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 141 analysis and the misuse or errors in deploying metadiscourse markers (gholami et al., 2014), especially in the indonesian academic context. therefore, this study was conducted to contribute to the corpus-based analysis of metadiscourse markers found in indonesian students' abstracts in accounting and the textual analysis of errors they made, which was not done before. this study applied a corpus-based approach to finding the frequency of metadiscourse markers in students’ abstracts and errors made when applying metadiscourse markers. literature review the fact that a text is written for readers should allow any writer to think about what ideas to offer and develop them carefully. an abstract is an introductory text that gives readers the gist of the research as attractive as possible, so they decide to find out more in the whole article. this function is clarified as a screening device (huckin, 2001). this term was expressed by cargill and o’connor as the only part of an article read by busy readers before they are convinced that it is essential for them to read further (as cited in jobling, 2014). by considering the vital role of an abstract as a part of an academic text, linguistic devices are used to make the writing more effective. one of these is metadiscourse which was first coined by harris (1959) and developed by williams (1981), kopple (1985), crismore (1989), and the most current one by hyland (2005). it refers to a strategy applied by writers to guide readers to grab the information in a text (hyland, 2005). he further revised metadiscourse categories by proposing two dimensions, namely interactive and interactional. the interactive dimension functions to construct and organise a text that will help readers while reading. the writers anticipate the presence of other academics that go through the text with particular background knowledge. the second dimension focuses on the writer's invitation to readers to interact during the reading process. resources in this category are deployed to share writers' opinions about their insight and ideas. table 1 shows this metadiscourse model. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 142 table 1. an interpersonal model of metadiscourse source: hyland, 2005:49 category function examples interactive help to guide the reader through the text resources transitions express relations between main clauses in addition; but; thus; and frame markers refer to discourse acts, sequences or stages finally; to conclude; my purpose is endophoric markers refer to information in other parts of the text noted above; see fig; in section 2 evidential refer to information from other texts according to x; z states code glosses elaborate prepositional meanings namely; e.g., such as; in other words interactional involve the reader in the text resources hedges withhold commitment and open dialogue might; perhaps; possible; about boosters emphasize certainty or close dialogue in fact; definitely; it is clear that attitude markers express the writer's attitude to the proposition unfortunately; i agree; surprisingly self mentions explicit reference to the author(s) i; we; my; me; our engagement markers explicitly build a relationship with the reader consider; note; you can see that applying the corpus-based method is considered helpful in analyzing metadiscourse markers that occur in abstracts. corpus linguistics is defined by mcenery and hardie (2012) as the way to examine a collection of texts – corpora – which is stored in a computer. the corpora are composed of texts produced naturally by language users. in this research, learner corpora were used. previously, mocanu (2015) and liu and huang (2017) have conducted corpus-based studies of metadiscourse in abstracts related to economics. the first examined 130 accounting research article abstracts produced by romann from 2006 to 2014. she confirmed her hypothesis that publication's maturity correlated to the use of interactional resources. there was an increasing number of metadiscourse elements deployed. hedges, boosters, and attitude markers had the highest frequency. the second study concerned interactional metadiscourse employed by chinese authors in 289 abstracts derived from prestigious economic journals in china. they found that hedges and boosters were frequently used while self-mentions and engagement markers were underused. both studies related their findings to the cultural and historical changes which have made academics aware of their contribution to a more global scientific community. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 143 in indonesia, corpus-based research on metadiscourse was done by some academics, such as hamid (2019) and nugroho (2019). the first study aimed to determine the types of interactive metadiscourse markers used by postgraduate students in their finding and discussion section. the result showed that transition and endophoric markers were dominant because the writers first wanted to connect their arguments to create coherence in their text and refer to previously mentioned information. the following study was a contrastive analysis of indonesian and american students applying metadiscourse features in their undergraduate thesis abstracts. using crismore et al.'s model (1993), his findings showed that indonesian used more markers than americans; however, the person marker is most frequent. in deploying metadiscourse markers, it is assumed that students may well commit errors. at this point, it is necessary to identify students' errors, categorize them, and provide suggestions for more effective language teaching. this process is called errors analysis (ea). the final purpose of doing ea is to evaluate and treat errors (yaghi & abdullah, 2015). they further explained that the classification of errors had been developed over time and one of the current taxonomies proposed by otchi (2005) in yaghi and abdullah (2015). he classified grammatical errors into five main errors: verb errors, noun ending errors, article errors, wrong words, and sentence structure. the research on ea in abstracts written by indonesian students was done by maria (2020), fitria (2020), and madkur (2013). the first study pointed out that word order was the most frequent error committed by students. she further proposed two solutions: applying an indirect method to teach grammar and prioritizing to teach grammar structures. the latter studies found that errors made in english translation abstracts were related to three aspects of writing: grammar, spelling, and punctuation. another interesting research was conducted by sharif and hassani (2016), who analyzed errors made by iranian writers in their english translation abstracts. the most frequent errors made were in articles and verb agreement. method this study relied on a quantitative approach followed by a qualitative analysis. a corpus-based method was applied in this study and followed by textual analysis. as explained previously, corpus-based is a methodology in which language is stored in a computer to be https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 144 processed by a concordance tool. in the process of analysis, concordance tools such as wordsmith (scott, 2013), antconc (anthony, 2005), concgram (greaves, 2009), sketch engine (kilgarriff, rychly, smrz & tugwell, 2004) can be applied (ngula, 2018). to answer the research questions concerning occurrences and errors students made in employing metadiscourse markers, a concordance tool, antconc version 3.5.9 (anthony, 2020), was used. the application is free to download and, therefore, more familiar to the researchers to be applied. furthermore, the texts were then analyzed to describe the errors made by students. learner corpus is collected from students who write texts for their language course activities (hunston, 2002). in this study, the data source was 50 english abstracts written by students of kupang state polytechnic in east nusa tenggara province. these abstracts were collected as learner corpus for this study. the population in the accounting department was 170 students. the sample was 50 students for the academic year of 2020 using a simple random sampling technique. this learner corpus contained 17149-word tokens with 1595 word types. to collect the data, two-step procedures were taken. first, the researchers collected the students' abstracts from kupang state polytechnique. the next was converting the texts to .txt format, which is acceptable for antconc version 3.5.9. the metadiscourse categorization used was hyland's (2005), which includes interactive and interactional features. this model was used because it has been the latest revision of the proposed metadiscourse model. a keyword list was presented in analyzing the data to find metadiscourse resources in the corpora. after the categorization, the words were examined whether or not students made errors in applying them using concordance and collocates tools. another english lecturer reevaluated the findings to ensure validity. table 2. demographic information of students faculty/study program male students female students total accounting 8 42 50 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 145 this study used corpora – texts collected from students in accounting department, politeknik negeri kupang. the female students in this department outnumbered male students, influencing the number of abstracts taken. findings frequency of metadiscourse markers the analysis showed that transition and frame markers were students' most frequent interactive metadiscourse resources. table 3 presents the frequency of each feature of the interactive dimension. table 3. frequency of the interactive metadiscourse in students’ abstracts transitions addition and 385 in addition 2 furthermore 1 comparison but 9 however 5 in contrast 2 while 9 whereas 1 meanwhile 8 consequence due to 10 because 30 so 27 therefore 3 nevertheless 3 thus 4 total 15 499 frame markers sequence parts third 1 then 5 at the same time 1 label text stages concluded 15 concludes 2 conclusion 4 result 3 results 85 announce discourse goals aim 1 aimed 1 aims 33 purpose 8 indicate topic shifts total 12 159 endophoric markers evidential according 8 code glosses namely 28 such as 7 total 2 35 total interactive markers 30 701 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 146 transition markers performed most frequently, with 499 occurrences in the texts. in this feature, additive resources were dominant, with 385 appearances. whereas markers used to show causative relations came next with 77 occurrences. after that, 34 times, students used markers that function to compare ideas. the frame markers ranked second with 159 hits, and 109 occurrences of ‘conclude’ and ‘result’ indicated passage stages. the next feature was the application of markers to announce the goals of a text with 43 hits. moreover, the frequency of features that function to sequence text parts ranked last with seven occurrences. no data was found that indicated shifts in topics. the last two features were code glosses and evidential. features of code glosses ranked third with 35 appearances in students’ corpora. ‘namely’ was deployed more frequently (28 hits) than ‘such as’ (7 hits) to elaborate information. evidential marker, ‘according’, hit eight occurrences in the corpora. there were not any endophoric markers found in the students’ text collection. table 4 presents 209 hits of interactional metadiscourse markers and shows that hedges and attitude markers are the two most frequent resources deployed in students’ abstracts. there were nine hedges with 74 occurrences on students' abstracts. can was the most frequent, followed by ‘indicate’ with 16 occurrences. most students deployed epistemic verbs – verbs showing how one is confident about an assertion – such as ‘could’, ‘would’, ‘need’, and ‘must’, while probability adverbs (‘generally’) and epistemic expression (‘most’) were the slightest variations of hedges used by students. the second most frequent interactional marker was attitude markers, and 60 occurrences with eight words were found. the most frequent resources were ‘good’, ‘consider’, and ‘well’. on the other hand, ‘appear’, ‘suggestion’, ‘important’, ‘appropriate’, and ‘better’ were less frequent markers presented on the corpora. generally, students were more familiar with using the variation of attitudinal adjectives compared to attitude verbs or adverbs. engagement markers came next, with 28 occurrences in the text collection. ‘seen’ and ‘consider’ were used by students more than other resources. self-mentions and boosters were the least frequent markers deployed by students. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 147 table 4. frequency of the interactional metadiscourse in students’ abstracts hedges can 43 could 1 would 1 need 2 must 3 indicate, indicates 16, 1 generally 1 most 6 total 9 74 boosters always 2 in fact 1 evidenced 1 prove, proved, proven, proves 2, 1, 1, 2 find, found 5, 1 total 9 16 attitude markers considered, considering 12, 1 appear 1 suggestion, suggestions 2, 4 important 1 appropriate 2 good 25 well 11 better 1 total 10 60 self mentions i 1 researcher, researchers 8, 6 writer 3 author, authors 3, 2 total 6 23 engagement markers seen 14 considered, considering 12, 1 need to 1 total 4 28 total interactional markers 37 206 grammatical errors in applying metadiscourse markers interactive markers students made errors in deploying transition and frame markers. the examples are shown in the table 5. the problem students faced in writing transition marker resources generally dealt with punctuation. for example, there were 27 hits in the corpora, with six commas before ‘so’, five wrote ‘so’ at the beginning of a sentence, and 16 did not use commas. another case found was about the verb agreement. they wrote ‘it because’ instead of ‘it is because’. students overgeneralized ‘due to’ as the synonym of ‘because’; therefore, they wrote it at the beginning of the sentence. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 148 table 5. errors in using transition markers no. error correction 1. “it would be useful in the long term and also pay attention to expenditure efficiency in order to maintain savings but also pay attention to any program realisation." (pnk 5) ‘and’ should connect parallel words (e.g., noun and noun, not a noun and verb) ‘but also’ is used when there ‘is not only’ previously used. 2. “due to the implementation stage, there are still activities that are not carried out as determined.” (pnk 12) ‘due to’ is similar to ‘caused by’, so it cannot be used at the beginning of a sentence. 3. “… statement, because” (pnk 46) “… is considered very poor, because the …” (pnk 41) “… maximised, because there are …” (pnk 19) ‘because’ functions to connect two clauses, so there should be no comma here. 4. “still, for dinas pendidikan dan kebudayaan kota kupang, they need to pay more attention to the allocation of expenditure funds so as not to cause significant variance and to the harmony of spending in order to increase capital funds.” ( pnk 5) ‘so’ is used to connect two independent clauses, so it should be written with a comma before. 5. “it because all activities have been able to be realised according to the predetermined targets." (pnk 32) ‘it is because’, not ‘it because’, to introduce cause and effect. 6. “… on time. therefore it is hoped that …” (pnk 27) use a comma after ‘therefore’ to connect two independent clauses. 7. “thus it is necessary to improve …” (pnk 49) put a comma after ‘thus’. when students presented rhetorical moves – introduction, purpose, methodology, result, and conclusion – in an abstract, it seemed difficult to differ when using the present or past tense, as seen in the table 6. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 149 table 6. errors in using frame markers no. error correction 1. “from the research conducted, it was concluded that the accountability of direct cash assistance in the maulafa village was quite …” (pnk 10) a conclusion should be written in the present tense, not the past tense. 2. “this study's results indicate that based on the ttest …” (pnk 37) the result of the study should be presented in past form. 3. “this study aims to analyse and understand the accounting information system's application for …" (33 hits) to state, the purpose of the research should be in the past tense. 4. “the purpose of this study is to determine …” (pnk 2) to state, the purpose of the research should be in the past tense. the structure of an abstract is constructed using frame markers such as label stages and present goals in the texts. according to the abstract writing convention, a conclusion should be in the present tense, while stating the purpose of the study and presenting results should be written in the past form. interactional markers the markers applied to open an interaction with readers are called interactional markers. a hedge is one of such markers that shows how a writer proposes ideas where they are not fully committed or open to alternatives. hedges were also problematic to students. table 4 clearly shows the problems. the first problem concerns the degree to which a writer is confident about their statements or opinions. students could not differentiate between' must' and ‘should’. secondly, they use present tense to state research goals and results, usually in past form. finally, students also made an error in mentioning themselves in plural form. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 150 table 7. errors in using hedges no. error correction 1. “… the rote ndao district government must maintain its expenditure efficiency in the future.” (pnk 2) ‘must’ is used to express “unavoidable obligation,” whereas ‘should’ express a recommendation regarding someone’s responsibility or duty. 2. “the results of this study indicate that local taxes …” (pnk 31) mostly, ‘indicate’ was used by students to report the result of the study. therefore, past tense must be used (‘indicated’). 3. “from the results of this study, the hypothesis testing and determinant coefficient test, prove that there is …” (pnk 44) past tense is applied when the author wants to report the result of the study. this sentence should also not have a comma before ‘prove’. 4. “the purpose of this study is to determine …” (pnk 2) stating the purpose of the research should be in the past tense. 5. “suggestions from researchers are that it is hoped that pt. asdp kupang branch …” (pnk 4) it should be ‘researcher’ or ‘author’ without –s because it is not a plural form. “researchers limit the problem to the analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency implementation keluarga harapan program in lasiana village.” (pnk 27) discussions an abstract is the first part that will impress readers before they decide whether to read the article further or not. the clarity and well-structured abstracts may well create the impression. it means the writer can present their research by employing linguistic features considered beneficial to meet these requirements. metadiscourse markers function to serve this purpose effectively. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 151 the interactive metadiscourse markers this study found that the interactive metadiscourse markers were more frequently used than the interactional markers in students' abstracts (see figure 1). consistent with those of alshujairi et al. (2016) and other previous studies mentioned earlier, the more frequent appearance of the interactive instances indicated that the writers consider the readers, so they organize the flow of the information efficiently. one possible reason for such a frequent occurrence is the characteristics of these markers to link ideas and, simultaneously, help readers follow the research's brief step-to-step process. figure 1. percentage of metadiscourse markers the students, of course, wanted to make their abstract apparent and easy to interpret. consequently, they mainly deployed transition and frame markers. transition markers were dominant in writing abstracts because they add, compare, and show causative relations in texts. students applied and showed an addition in their abstracts. only a few used the words ‘in addition’ to show additive function in texts. to compare ideas, they used lexical variations such as ‘however’, ‘in contrast’, ‘while’, ‘whereas’, and ‘meanwhile’. students frequently applied ‘because’ and ‘so’ for causative relations. some others used ‘due to’, ‘therefore’, ‘nevertheless’, and ‘thus’. it is entirely various. the most frequent resources were ‘and’, ‘because’, and ‘so’. this result seems consistent with the previous research that found extensive transition markers in abstract writing (mazidah, 2019; hamid, 2019). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 152 as previously mentioned, frame markers are used to set the structure of an abstract. features of frame markers that indicate stages and introduce discourse goals were the most occurring ones. both features are essential for an abstract because the nature of abstracts gives the main ideas of the whole research. ‘conclude’, ‘result’, ‘aim’, and ‘purpose’ were words deployed by students to mark stages and state goals. the least occurring markers were code glosses and evidential. code glosses provide readers with detailed information or elaborate on the writer's ideas. students preferred to use ‘namely’ over ‘such as’ to give additional information in their abstracts. furthermore, ‘according’ was the only word used to support their opinion. this result may be explained by the fact that the word count for an abstract usually ranges from 150 to 250 words, which makes elaborating and quoting ideas unnecessary in abstract writing. the interactional metadiscourse markers the interactional dimension is said to function to express the writer's perspective and provide space for readers' knowledge. students used hedges more than boosters. this finding is in line with a previous study indicating that students rarely used boosters (suntara & chokthawikit, 2018). the study, which examined 60 abstracts written in public health journals in thailand, clarifies that if the frequency of boosters is low, hedges might have been used more frequently. they further found that students used hedges mostly in conclusion moves; only a few used them in the background and objective moves caused by the strategy to let readers be involved in interpreting the result, which is still open for discussion. using hedges implies that they invite readers to consider their view and are still open to alternatives while using boosters means closing down alternatives. ‘can’ is the most occurring interactional marker used mainly by students to compose conclusions and results. meanwhile, they used boosters – ‘always’ and ‘in fact’ – to provide a convincing background of the study and ‘prove’, ‘evidenced’, and ‘found’ to highlight certainty in the result of their study. hyland believed that providing a balance portion of hedges and boosters is essential to show commitment to an assertion and still give readers a vital position in the interaction process while reading (rodina, 2007). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 153 other frequent interactional markers were attitude markers. out of ten words portraying students' attitudes towards opinions, they mainly used four attitude adjectives. ‘good’ and ‘well’ were frequent of all features in attitude markers. ‘good’ was frequently written with the word ‘category’ in the corpora showing practical expression. meanwhile, the attitude adverb ‘well’ collocates with ‘carried out’, ‘running’, and ‘planned’ to describe the quality of the actions. although features of self mentions were dominated by third-person pronouns such as ‘researcher’, ‘writer’, and ‘author’, the appearance of ‘i’ once in students' corpora is an intriguing finding. “as a researcher, i collect the data using interviews, documentation, and literature study.” (pnk 41) first-person pronouns in most academic writing in indonesia are not allowed due to the issue of subjectivity in a scientific field, including in politeknik negeri kupang. most students use a third-person pronoun to mention themselves in their abstracts to meet this academic convention. another feature in the interactional dimension is the engagement marker. when writers want to drag their readers to the thinking process, which leads them to the writer's interpretation, they use directives such as ‘see’, ‘note’, and ‘consider’ or obligation models such as ‘should’, ‘must’, and ‘have to’. in this study, ‘seen’, ‘considered’, ‘considering’, and ‘need to’ were found to be applied by students. mocanu (2015) and liu and huang (2017), in their studies, suggested the importance of interactional metadiscourse markers. they argued that the quality and maturity of published research could be seen from the increasing use of hedges, boosters, and attitude markers. unfortunately, these markers are not easy to employ by efl students. students are merely stating their rhetorical moves without reflecting their insight and opinion. the grammatical errors in applying metadiscourse markers word order, concord, parallel structure, learner languages, and spelling were five grammatical errors examined and found in students’ abstracts (madkur, 2013). he further https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 154 explained how language interference was also a phenomenon in his study, stating that a learner's foreign language portrayed their mother tongue. this study also examined concord, parallel structure, and learner language errors. gholami et al. (2014) mentioned this misuse as interlingua errors in students' argumentative essays when applying metadiscourse markers. in applying transition markers, grammatical errors are mainly related to punctuation (commas) in sentences. a comma should connect two independent clauses, such as ‘so’. students consistently miswrote commas. it may well be due to the influence of the function of a comma in bahasa indonesia. a possible reason for this might be that students translated their abstracts from bahasa indonesia directly to english without considering the grammatical rule in english. this finding confirmed the previous finding of fitria (2020), where students made errors concerning punctuation aspects in 29% of the abstracts. she also clarified the importance of mastering english grammar rules to produce high-quality english abstracts. the principle of modality is a problem students face. so far, students used ‘can’, ‘could’, and ‘would’ correctly. for example, ‘can’ is for presenting ability, ‘could’ is used to say that something can happen, and ‘would’ is used to describe something that certainly will happen in an imagined situation. the problem they found was using ‘must’ in a context where they can only recommend something to be executed, not an obligation. for example, when discussing what the government ‘must’ or ‘should’ do. in bahasa indonesia, the word harus is translated as ‘must’, so students were perplexed and used ‘must’ instead of ‘should’. in using frame markers resources, they made errors in applying tenses. for example, " ‘concluded’, " which indicates past form, " is incorrect because the writing conclusion should be in the present tense. in addition, the research purpose should be written in the past tense. another highlight is applying a plural form to mention themselves as researchers (plural form), not a singular person in charge of their final research paper. in line with sharif and hassani (2016), the translated version of the efl context's abstract should be carefully composed. they found grammatical errors in publishing journals in iranian universities were dominantly related to the use of articles and lack of concord or agreement. despite the difficulties in mastering, teaching english grammar should cover the most frequent errors. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 155 conclusion and implication metadiscourse markers are linguistic features that help authors to compose wellstructured academic writing. since abstracts are the first part of any scientific article to be read, it is essential to present clear and remarkable abstracts. resources of metadiscourse markers function to guide readers to find the entire research article. interactive markers technically function to guide readers in a step-by-step process of the research abstract. consequently, the interactive markers become more frequent than interactional markers. however, the interactional markers can depict the quality of the academic writing because they provide the author’s opinion, thought, and evaluation which are highly considered in the academic community. moreover, grammatical errors highlighted the need to add extra attention to the abstract structure with details on punctuation, tenses, plural form, and modality. this study encourages english lecturers at universities to include the teaching of metadiscourse markers and their application to produce a better abstract. the future study may contribute by adding interviews with students and lecturers to enrich the comprehension related to pedagogical issues. references al-shujairi, y. b. j., ya’u, m. s., & buba, j. a. (2016). role of moves, tenses, and metadiscourse in the abstract of an acceptable research article. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 7(2), 379–386. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n2s1p379 alqahtani, s. n., & abdelhalim, s. m. (2020). gender-based study of interactive metadiscourse markers in efl academic writing. theory and practice in language studies, 10(10), 1315– 1325. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1010.20 anthony, l. (2020). antconc (version 3.5.9). waseda university. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software ashofteh, z., shirvan, m. e., & golparvar, s. e. (2020). the move structure of abstracts in applied linguistics research articles in light of the distribution and functions of metadiscourse markers. journal of language and linguistic studies, 16(4), 2077–2096. https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.851035 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 156 bal-gezegin, b. (2016). a corpus-based investigation of metadiscourse in academic book reviews. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 232(april), 713–718. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.10.097 bouchemet, t. (2019). interactional metadiscourse in applied linguistics master theses: a corpus-based comparative study. 57 ,اإلنسانية العلوم مجلة. https://doi.org/10.34174/0079-000051-027 crismore, a. (1989). talking with readers: metadiscourse as rhetorical act. peter lang. doró, k. (2015). the rhetoric structure of research article abstracts in english studies journals. prague journal of english studies, 2(1), 119–139. https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2014-0013 fitria, t. n. (2020). error analysis of english abstract in international journal of economics, business and accounting research (ijebar). al-lisan, 5(2), 164–181. https://doi.org/10.30603/al.v6i2.1335 gholami, j., nejad, s. r., & pour, j. l. (2014). metadiscourse markers misuses; a study of efl learners’ argumentative essays. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 98, 580–589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.454 hamid, s. f. (2019). interactive metadiscourse in finding and discussion section of theses at english department universitas negeri jakarta. 254(conaplin 2018), 564–567. https://doi.org/10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.320 huckin, t. (2001). abstracting from abstracts. in m. hewings (ed.), academic writing in context (pp. 93–103). university of birmingham press. hunston, s. (2002). corpora in applied linguistics. cambridge university press. hussein, k. a. a., khalil, j. a., & abbas, n. f. (2018). metadiscourse markers in master thesis abstracts of american and iraqi english theses. arab world english journal, 9(4), 347–360. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no4.26 hyland, k. (2005). metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. continuum. jin, x., & shang, y. (2016). analyzing metadiscourse in the english abstracts of ba theses. journal of language teaching and research, 7(1), 210–215. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0701.24 jobling, m. (2014). [review of the book writing scientific research articles: strategy and steps (2nd edition by m. cargill and p. o’connor:). aquaculture international, 22(2), 963–964. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 157 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-013-9689-7 kaies, s. (2019). a corpus-based comparative study of the use of interactional metadiscourse markers in master theses general conclusions: the case of postgraduates of oum el bouaghi and iowa universities (university of larbi ben m’hidi oeb). karami, y., & poor, m. l. (2020). a comparative corpus-based analysis of using hedging, boostering, and self-mentioning metadiscourse markers in persian and english psychology books. international journal of research in english education, 5(2), 13-28. kawase, t. (2015). metadiscourse in the introductions of phd theses and research articles. journal of english for academic purposes, 20, 114–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.08.006 kopple, w. j. v. (1985). some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. college composition and communication, 36, 82–93. liu, p., & huang, x. (2017). a study of interactional metadiscourse in english abstracts of chinese economics research articles. higher education studies, 7(3), 25. https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v7n3p25 madkur, a. (2013). grammatical analysis on the abstract of scientific writing. pedagogy: journal of english language teaching, 1(1), 52–67. mansouri, s., najafabadi, m. m., & boroujeni, s. s. (2016). metadiscourse in research article abstracts: a cross-lingual and disciplinary investigation. journal of applied linguistics and language research, 3(4), 296–307. www.jallr.com maria, a. d. (2020). grammatical errors analysis in writing english abstract of final report at air conditioning and refrigeration programme study of politeknik sekayu. esteem journal of english education study programme, 2(1), 77. https://doi.org/10.31851/esteem.v3i2.4447 mazidah, e. n. (2019). a comparison of the interactive metadiscourse in the abstracts of articles written by indonesian and nes scholars. etnolingual, 3(1), 57–74. mcenery, t., & hardie, a. (2012). corpus linguistics. in library of congress cataloguing in publication data (vol. 53, issue 9). mocanu, m. (2015). an empirical analysis of metadiscourse in the abstracts of romanian accounting research articles. contabilitate şi informatică de gestiune, 14(2), 362–377. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 https://ijreeonline.com/article-1-275-en.pdf https://ijreeonline.com/article-1-275-en.pdf https://ijreeonline.com/article-1-275-en.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 158 ngula, r. (2018). corpus method in language studies. in perspectives on conducting and reporting research in the humanities (pp. 205–223). university of cape coast press. noori, a. (2020). an investigation of afghan undergraduate english major students’ academic writing difficulties. journal of foreign language teaching and learning, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.5249 novawan, a., aisyiyah, s., miqawati, a. h., wijayanti, f., & indrastana, n. s. (2020). exploring the teachers' perspective on morality in an english as a foreign language pedagogy. jer| journal of elt research. 5(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.22236/jer nugroho, a. (2019). exploring metadiscourse use in thesis abstracts: a cross-cultural study. journal of english language and culture, 9(2), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.30813/jelc.v9i2.1689 nugroho, a. (2020). investigating the use of metadiscourse markers by american and indonesian writers in opinion and business articles. journal of english language and culture, 10(2), 75–87. https://doi.org/10.30813/jelc.v10i2.2138 pandey, g. p. (2020). metadiscourse use in thesis abstracts : a case of m . ed. english. nepal journal of multidisciplinary research (njmr), 3(2), 1–17. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3126/njmr.v3i2.33019 rodina, h. (2007). metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing by hyland, ken. in the modern language journal (vol. 91, issue 3). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.2007.00593_9.x sharif, f. d., & hassani, m. (2016). error analysis of the grammatical patterns in the english translation of the abstracts of the persian articles in the iranian published academic journals. elt voicesinternational journal for teachers of english 7(1), 1–10. suntara, w., & chokthawikit, s. (2018). interactional metadiscourse in research article abstracts: an analysis from public health journals. language and linguistics, 36, 31–52. retrieved from https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/joling/article/view/154294 viera, r. t. (2019). analysis of abstracts in scientific papers written in english using corpora. script journal: journal of linguistic and english teaching, 4(2), 112. https://doi.org/10.24903/sj.v4i2.323 williams, j. (1981). style: ten lessons in clarity and grace. scott foresman. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 159 yaghi, e., & abdullah, a. (2015). review of learners' errors: an error analysis perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312595230 yanto, & sulistiyo, u. (2017). students ’ difficulties in writing their thesis in english at english education study program jambi university. international seminar and annual meeting bksptn wilayah barat, 763–765. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/903 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 77 article history: submitted: 17 january 2022 reviewed: 24 january 2022 edited: 27 january 2022 article accepted: 28 january 2022 learning english through international student exchange programs: english education department students’ voices suryanto suryanto1*), betha labova ayuza1, noor ahnis othman2 1english education department, faculty of language education, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia 2academy of language study, universiti teknologi mara (uitm), malaysia *)corresponding author email: suryanto@umy.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13717 abstract english language learning is a process that students must go through in order to reach the optimum level of proficiency in the language. international student exchange programs are activities that might assist students in practicing and improving their english. the purposes of this study were to investigate the benefits and to identify the challenges of participating in an international student exchange program while studying english at the english language education department of an islamic private university in yogyakarta. the research design for this study was a qualitative descriptive one. the data for this study were gathered through interviews. three students from the english language education department of a private islamic university in yogyakarta participated in this investigation. the first finding concerned the advantages of participating in an international student exchange program while studying english. it shown that participating in international student exchange programs aided students in making foreign friends, interacting with native english speakers, practicing, and improving their english abilities, and boosting their self-confidence. the second result concerned the challenges associated with participating in an international student exchange program to improve their english. it demonstrated that students who participated in an international student exchange program failed to engage with local people outside of school and experienced culture shock. all associated parties, including students, host universities, university senders, and the program's committee, should organize and execute the program's activities with care and attention, beginning with the program's planning, preparation, deployment, evaluations, and follow-up. keywords: students exchange program; learning english language; practice english in student exchange ======================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:suryanto@umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13717 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13717&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 78 introduction students must become active participants in the english teaching and learning process in order to succeed in their studies. as being active students, they entail participating in both academic and extracurricular activities. students should participate in classroom activities. they complete teacher-assigned exercises, present subjects in front of the class, study the materials, and discuss solutions to specific difficulties or other needed classroom tasks. students should also learn things outside of the classroom. they can become members of organizations, volunteer at big events, attend international conferences, and participate in foreign student exchange programs. joining organization entails engaging in activities outside of the classroom. numerous students wish to join the organization in order to get experience and expertise. additionally, the students also want to become volunteers at several major events. students volunteer to be personally involved in a social movement, whether through governmental, private, or university organizations. also, one of the most beneficial activities for students is to participate in an international student exchange program. international students exchange programs enable students to study at other universities in other countries. to participate in an international exchange program, students must complete various stages, including creating curriculum vitae, writing a motivation letter, and generating an academic transcript. furthermore, students have a variety of motives for participating in an international student exchange program. among these is the desire for pupils to enhance their english-speaking abilities. another reason is that students wish to broaden their horizons by immersing themselves in an international academic environment. moreover, they are eager to strengthen their communication abilities for the sake of their chances by participating in an international student exchange program. according to lindsey (2005), students who participate in foreign student exchange programs gain chance to improve their english language abilities. other scholars suggest similar concepts, namely that studying a language in a country where the language is spoken is extremely helpful for language acquisition, particularly for the development of oral skills. (llanes et al., 2016). additionally, they said that the influence of international student exchange programs can help develop english as a second language in countries where english is widely spoken. for instance, spanish students studying in the netherlands or germany with english as a second https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 79 language (llanes et al., 2016). in this context, the students participate in an exchange program for foreign students in a country where english is a second language. students who join an exchange program in countries where english is a first language still possess opportunities to practice their english as the programs mostly embrace and implement the idea of english as international language (mckay, 2018) where english takes a role as a means of communication (takehara et al., 2018), lingua franca (llanes et al., 2016; martin-rubió & cots, 2018), and as means of instruction (zhang, 2018) . a preliminary evaluation of students who had participated in an international student exchange program found that the program provided several benefits to the students. to begin, students can strengthen their english language abilities. the improvement covers the development of the students' primary abilities in the english language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. second, students can develop their english language skills. they met with international visitors and had the opportunity to develop their language skills in languages other than english. finally, pupils can boost their self-esteem and motivation. students that participate in international student exchange programs prepare the fight independently and are not reliant on others. such behaviors demonstrate that participation in foreign student exchange programs benefits students' self-confidence and motivation (jackson, 2017). according to llanes et al. (2016), students developed confidence in using english as a second language by participating in an international student exchange program. apart from the benefits, students who participate in an international student exchange program confront challenges (busche, 2017). the first challenge is adapting to the language spoken in the exchange country. when the destination country does not speak english as the first language, participants in international exchange programs may have communication issues with the local populace (johnson et al., 2018). students face difficulties communicating with residents outside the school. this condition may impair students participating in international student exchange programs' learning processes. finally, students may encounter culture clash as a result of their stay in an unfamiliar location (johnson et al., 2018). the limited number of the study on this topic in the context of this research encourage the researchers to choose an international student exchange program in the process of learning english language https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 80 to be the topic of the research, especially in english language education department of islamic private university in yogyakarta. . literature review learning english language is a process that takes place to master english as good as possible. students need extensive and close interactional contacts to practice the language. various endeavours can be provided by educational institutions to facilitate students in this process to obtain language knowledge and skills. they can perform learning activities in real life, interactive situations that can allow students to gain rational and meaningful learning practices (huang et al., 2016). international students exchange program constitutes facilitative activities that enable students to be immersed in the real language learning practices (berg et al., 2012). international students exchange program international students exchange program is a program that is provided by universities, in which the students from a university are provided with the opportunity to study to universities in other countries. international students exchange program is now a common activity in many schools of social work (gammonley et al., 2007). international students exchange program has been a part of academic culture from university program (vögtle & windzio, 2016). according to thompson and lee (2014), international students exchange program contributes to the improvement of learning english language, but it does not always guarantee improvement in the target language when the students fail to engage with inside and outside campus communities(wilkinson, 2000). the length of time staying in other countries is necessary for gaining experiences that are linguistically useful (isabelli-garcía et al., 2018). the benefits of joining international students exchange program there are several benefits that the students get when they join international students exchange program. they include having ample opportunities to practice english (berg et al., 2012), building international networks (hendrickson, 2018), connecting with native english speakers (hernandez, 2016), improve students' employment prospects (waibel et al., 2018), enhancing cross-cultural competence (earnest et al., 2016; krishnan et al., 2017), and crosshttps://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 81 cultural awareness and sensitivity improving english language skills (hernandez, 2016; thompson & lee, 2014), and increasing self-confidence (bretag & van der veen, 2017). ample opportunities to practice english the most important thing when students choose to join international students exchange program is that their language skills will grow and improve, especially their english language skills. the students will speak using english before they learn the local language of the country. inevitably, they must speak in english to be able to communicate with other people. although maybe at first, they are not too proficient, they will get used to speaking english and become proficient. according to trentman (2013) while studying in egypt, students often have difficulty communicating with local friends, and they spend more time using english than arabic. llanes et al. (2016) stated that the important aspect regarding the second language that was found after participating in the student exchange program was oral fluency. it means that students are able to have ample practice their english while joining international students exchange program that facilitate their language acquisition (dekeyser, 2018). building international networks getting international networks is one of the benefits of joining international students exchange program. when students choose to study in another country, people who study there do not only come from the country itself, but also from various other countries. according to bachner and zeutschel (2009), joining international students exchange program helps students to add more friends. the statement is also in line with crossman and clarke (2010), who stated that students who follow international student exchange programs receive various types of knowledge, connections, and ways of learning that cannot be obtained if they remain in their own country and practice their language skills. even, a study noted that network established by the student exchange program remain stable for long periods of time (vögtle & windzio, 2016) connecting with native english speakers the best way to practice a language is to connect directly with native speakers of the language. in this context, there are native speakers of english. while joining international students exchange program, students can interact directly with native english speakers. according to barrow and pithers (2016), interaction with native speakers of english helps students become proficient in english. additionally, based on researchers’ experience while https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 82 joining international students exchange program, the researchers was able to meet and communicate directly with native english speakers in the foreign university. in the foreign university, there were not only local students, but there were also foreign students in various countries. improve students' employment prospects education and labor market allocations are seen as two-sided matching procedures between applicants' talents and employer employment requirements. employers analyze potential workers and employees evaluate potential employers to enhance both educational and employment performance. the most prevalent hypotheses on how education is causally connected to job assignment are human capital and job employment (waibel et al., 2018). a thing to consider is that economists often depict mobility and education as investments in one's productive capacity. investing in human capital is rationally chosen if it will provide long-term economic gains. to acquire human capital may be the main motivation for students to move abroad like joining international student exchange program (waibel et al., 2018). foreign language learning, personal growth, and intercultural and mobility abilities are all improved during study abroad. on worldwide labor markets, this human capital is prized for its global knowledge, self-initiative, and personal accountability (waibel et al., 2018). enhancing cross-cultural competence a study compared study abroad and domestic student cultural abilities to assess the influence of study abroad programs in psychology. four hundred and forty-four undergraduate students from various disciplines performed pre–post cross-cultural adaptability inventory assessments. study abroad students showed stronger emotional resilience, perceptual acuity, and cultural adaptability than home students (earnest et al., 2016). another study sought to assess if an opportunity for experiential learning, especially a study tour, would increase potential educational leaders' intercultural competence and push them to broaden their own cultural awareness and attitude. participants in an educational leadership graduate program offered the opportunity to study abroad to improve their cultural competence. they were then asked to complete a survey measuring metacognition, cognition, motivation, and behavior. they were also asked to reflect on how the encounter influenced their own cultural understanding and conduct. the study tour participants were aware of their cultural https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 83 competency and compared their own cultural norms with those of the study tour destination. participants gained significant cultural awareness (krishnan et al., 2017) improving english language skill studies have indicated that students who spend at least a semester abroad learn a second language better. a study explores the link between students' speaking skill increases and their target language use outside of class in the host setting. a two-part modified language contact profile and a preand post-program simulated oral proficiency interview were administered to 20 students participating in a standard short-term study abroad program in spain. the findings indicate that students did enhance their english speaking skills (hernandez, 2016). increasing self-confidence based on trentman (2013), the advantage of joining international students exchange program is that it can increase students’ confidence. bretag & van der veen (2017) voice similar opinion stating that joining student mobility gave the students confidence in their capacity to travel and be self-sufficient. they mentioned that two students on the indonesia study tour mentioned enhanced self-confidence as a result of mobility the challenges of joining international students exchange program there are several challenges that students get when they join international students exchange program. the challenges of joining international students exchange program include language, transportation, assimilation, cultural and religious interactions, and identity (gautam et al., 2016). language. language barriers have been identified as a key difficulty for non-english speaking overseas students in joining international students exchange program. academic and social success need fluency in english as a means of international communication (meng et al., 2018). a study found that international students remain discouraged by such a perceived barrier to use their language proficiency for successful interaction with english speakers, while expressing reluctance to engage in existing opportunities to practice their language skill to make social adaption (wright & schartner, 2013). the language become challenges for students as it can distance them from teachers, acquaintances, and other university family members (gautam et al., 2016). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 84 transportation. transportation presented a distinct set of difficulties that were directly tied to the place where exchange program takes place. there was a lack of dependable mass transportation, a point raised by numerous students. the students showed that, while the university does provide a transportation system, it fails to fulfill the needs of international students. additionally, they highlighted the difficulties associated with obtaining a driver's license and becoming habituated to driving an automobile. for them, having a car was a significant financial investment that many felt they would be unable to make (gautam et al., 2016). social assimilation. involvement in social and cultural activities can be seen as a challenge. gautam et al. (2016) presents three different students who have such an issue. a south asian girl possesses a problem of a major departure from her usual routine. her residence in her home country has her own private bathroom and area. she struggled with sharing restrooms. the african student admits to feeling isolated. a student from europe feels sad due to the change of language she pronounces due to the influence of her stay in us. her family is shocked to hear her language. her family believes she has changed since moving to america. cultural and religious interactions. students who join mobility program are challenged with cultural and religious interaction. the conditions are portrayed by gautam et al. ( 2016) where students from different countries encounter different challenges. christians may freely practice their faith. they went to church and felt no prejudice or pressure because of their faith. the south asian individual who defined themselves as a devout muslim conveyed her experience clearly. she was surprised how pious people are at the place of her mobility program. she knew americans were not so religious. she was invited to a bible study. she felt like folks invited her to their bible study. as muslims, they do not invite foreigners or people of other faiths to their celebrations. but they did, and she felt great. my friend gave her a bible. she got the impression her friend knows islam. the students from europe challenge by religious heterogeneities as in her home countries the religion is homogenous. these conditions provide depiction on the challenge of students to deal with culture and religious engagement. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 85 method research design this study used a qualitative approach with qualitative descriptive design (lambert, & lambert, 2012; magilvy & thomas, 2009). according to lambert and lambert,( 2012) a qualitative descriptive design is a viable and acceptable research design (p. 255). this design was chosen because the researchers let the participants answer the questions based on their feeling as long as the answers in line with the information that the researchers want to get. in addition, telling an experience needs to explore further, in exploring the story the students require a deeper description, therefore qualitative descriptive is very appropriate for this research. this study took place at english language education department of islamic private university in yogyakarta. english language education department of islamic private university in yogyakarta is suitable place to explore the students’ perception in joining international students exchange program due to many students who have joined such a program. the researchers conduct research in three weeks from october 1, 2018 to november 10, 2018. the researchers used a purposive sampling. according to cohen, manion, and morrison (2011), purposive sampling focuses on particular characteristics to focus on specific purposes. this study set two criteria to choose the participants. firstly, the students of english language education department of islamic private university in yogyakarta would be served as participant of this study. secondly, the selected participants have been joining international students exchange program for at least three months, because the students have deep experiences in joining international student exchange program compared to students who are only joining international students exchange program for a few days or for week. the participants of this research consist of two female and one male of english language education department islamic private university in yogyakarta. the names of the participants are not mentioned. pseudonym is used to name the participants. the pseudonyms of the participants used in this research are okta as the first participant, amira as the second participant, and mukti as the third participant. the researchers used interview as the method to collect the data from participants. several steps were undertaken to collect data. firstly, the researchers made the interview guidelines containing several questions that the researchers asked to the participants. secondly, the researchers decided to choose the participants based on the characteristics set previously to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 86 be interviewees. thirdly, the researchers contact the participants using whatsapp to inform the purpose of contacting the participants and made an appointment about when and where the interview would be conducted. fourthly, before conducting an interview, the researchers prepared some tools to support the interview process, such as an audio recorder to record participants’ answers, a notebook to look at the questions, and a pen to write additional questions. then, the researchers started the interview. the interview process was conducted in bahasa indonesia in order to avoid bias and every conversation that happened between the researchers and the participants. the interviews were recorded under the permission of participants. after the interview was done, the researchers did three steps to analyse the data. there were transcribing, member checking, and coding. the first step that researchers did was transcribing the data. the researchers transcribed the recording of the interview, then the researchers gave the pseudonym to name the participants. after the data had been transcribed, the researchers did member checking to ensure the data’s trustworthiness. the participants read transcription, and when they think it was not right or they need to add more information. in this step, the researchers re-examine the participants' answers in the interview to make it clear that their answers in the interview section are correct. furthermore, the result was that respondents admitted that the transcription was the same as what they had said in the interview. then, the next step is coding. there are three types of coding manion, and morrison (2011), open coding means the researchers categorized the data which has similar meaning or similar theme. the next was axial coding. the researchers categorized and identified similar idea from each participant and also the researchers identify relations among two open codes. then the researchers picked the data use selective coding. selective coding is a way to choose open and axial coding into the bigger categories. in other words, the researchers selected the category based on the interview questions to make a report of the research. findings and discussion this section presents the findings and discussions of this study. the findings include the benefits and the challenges of the students who join international students’ exchange program https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 87 in the process of learning english language. the discussions are offered directly after the findings are posed. the benefits of joining international students exchange program in this study, the researchers found several findings related to the benefits of joining international students exchange programs the first finding is getting international networks. the second is connecting with native english speakers. the third is practicing students’ english ability. the fourth is improving students’ english skills. the last is increasing self-confidence. the participants sharing their voices about the benefits of joining international students exchange program are shown in the following detailed findings. getting international networks. the researchers found that joining international students exchange program helps students to get international networks. this was stated by all of the participants. the first statement was stated by okta. she said, “i have more friends, and i means get international friends”. she also stated, “we also get new international friends”. the second statement was stated by amira. she said, “i obtain many international connections and friends from various countries”. she also stated, “at the university where i studied, there were many students from outside of spain, very few friends were from spain, and all of them of course cannot speak indonesian, therefore we use english in every conversation”. the last statement was stated by mukti. he said, “by joining this student exchange program, i can gain new friends, especially in the international scope”. he also stated, “i also gathered native english speakers and other international friends”. then, mukti also said, “friendship networks also increase.” from the data above, joining international students exchange program can facilitate students to get international networks. getting international networks from various countries makes students interact and communicate using english. this finding is in line with bachner and zeutschel (2009), who stated that students exchange programs contribute to add students’ international connections. the statement is also in line with crossman and clarke (2010), who stated that students who take part in international students exchange program receive various types of knowledge, connection, and ways of learning that cannot be obtained if they remain in their own country, and also train students' language skills. when the students join international students exchange program, they can get new international friends and can practice their english with their international networks (hendrickson, 2018; vögtle & windzio, 2016). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 88 connecting with native english speakers. another finding in the benefits of joining international students exchange program is that it helps students to connect with native english speakers. it was stated by one participant. the participant is mukti. he stated, “there are lecturers from the united stated”. he also stated, “we are in the same class with english native speakers”. then, “i also gathered with native english speakers”. based on the data, the researchers found that joining international students exchange program helps students to connect with english native speakers. the finding is in line with barrow and pithers (2016), who stated that interactions with native english people help students to become proficient in english in a relatively shorter time. when the students join international students exchange program, it helps them to interact and communicate with native english speakers. interacting with native english people is considered to be effective to practice english and makes students speak english in every conversation. thus, joining international students exchange program helps students interact with native english speakers (barrow and pithers (2016),). practicing english skills. from the result of the interview, the participants of this research mentioned that joining international students exchange program can improve students’ english abilities. the first statement was expressed by okta. she said, “i have to use english in the country”. she also stated, “we use english”. the second statement is from amira. she said, “the third is practicing the language”. she also stated, “whether it is practicing english”. then, she said additional statement, “the third is preparing the language knowledge to communicate in the destination country, especially preparing the english knowledge. as we know, english is an international language”. she also said, “when we are in the campus environment, we talk using english intensely”. the last statement is from mukti. he said, “during the first time, we spoke using english”. he also stated, “we often used english in semester one”. the findings showed that joining international students exchange program makes students practice their english abilities. the finding is in line with dekeyser ( 2018) who affirmed that one semester of international study is often seen as a major opportunity for students to practice english. he also stated that students who go abroad make tremendous progress in their english-speaking skills. when the students join international students exchange https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 89 program, it helps them to practice their english and make meaningful changes in their english abilities. improving students’ english skills. based on the result of the interview, the researchers obtained the data that joining international students exchange program helps students improve their english. it was stated by all of the participants. the first statement was stated by okta. she said, “do not forget to strengthen english as a language in a foreign country!”. she also stated, “while joining the exchange program, i think my english ability also increased, because we communicated using english, especially in the campus area”. the second statement was stated by amira. she said, “i improved my english there.”. she also stated, “i felt my english improving.”. she also said that she took an english major in the foreign country. it made her improve her english in academic writing, because she took a reading and writing course. she also stated, “i felt that my english really improved when i got back to my country after joining the student exchange program.” she also believed that her english improved because she was taught by professors who could not speak indonesian. so, the students were required to speak and write using english. the last statement was stated by mukti. he said, “my english quite developed.”. the findings showed that joining international students exchange program helps students improve their english ability. the finding is in line with andrade (2006), who stated that students show willingness to try new ways to practice improving their language skills, especially those who aim to improve their english and communicate with peers. when students join international students exchange programs, it makes them try new things to improve their english skills (hernandez, 2016). increasing self-confidence. this finding showed that joining international students exchange program makes students more confident. the first statement was from okta. she said, “we are required to dare to speak, because if we do not communicate, we cannot live”. the second statement was from amira. she stated, “we became more courageous, braver to ask and braver to be ashamed”. she also stated, “it made me more confident”. amira also stated that while joining international students exchange program, students’ personality will be changed, especially their mentality. the last statement is from mukti. he said, “we dared to interact with https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 90 local people and with other international people”. he also stated, “i am willing to try new things, be more independent, and be more confident”. the statements above showed that those participants agreed that joining international students exchange program makes students increase their selfconfidence. those statements are in line with bachner and zeutschel (2009), who found that self-change is related to the process of student exchange programs, which refers to one's self-perception, self-confidence, behavior, and skills caused by exchange experiences. the statement is also in line with quezada (2004), who mentioned that this international learning experience can be seen as a positive experience because students’ self-confidence becomes much higher. when the students join international students exchange program, it helps them improve their confidence (bretag & van der veen, 2017). the challenges of joining international students exchange program in the process of language learning in this study, the researchers found several findings dealing with students’ voices about the challenges of joining international students exchange program in the process of learning english language. the first finding is do not understand the local language. the second finding is struggling to communicate with local people outside of campus. the last finding is experiencing culture shock. the finding about the challenges of joining international students exchange program is described as follows: do not understand the local language. from the result of interview, students do not understand the local language of the country. it was stated by all participants of this study. the first statement was stated by okta. she said, “we do not know the local language.”. the second statement was stated by amira. she said, “at first, i had a little difficulty in communicating, because everyone around me spoke with the local language.” she also stated, “in the city where we live, the environment spoke with the local language.” the last statement was stated by mukti. he said, “at first, we could not speak mandarin.” he also stated, “we could not speak mandarin.” the statements above showed that those participants do not understand the local language of the country. the finding is in line with altbach (2015), who stated that students have difficulty to understand the local language of the country that they visit. when the students https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 91 join international students exchange program, it leads them to face difficulties with the language (gautam et al., 2016). struggling to communicate with local people outside of campus. from the result of the interview, students struggle to communicate with the local people outside of campus. it was stated by all of the participants of this study. the first statement was stated by okta. she said, “we struggled to communicate with the local people of the country, especially outside of the campus area.” she also stated, “to communicate with the local people outside of campus, i used google translate as an intermediary. we said something using english, then translated it to mandarin.” she also stated that communication with the local people of the country was a struggle and a challenge. the second statement was stated by amira. she stated, “if we were outside campus, we communicated using google translate.” the last statement was stated by mukti. he said, “we were a little confused on how to communicate with the local chinese people.” he also stated, “the problem was also about communication, especially the communication with the local people outside of campus environment.” the statement above showed that all participants mentioned that students struggle in communicating with the local people outside of campus environment. international students face obstacles such as difficulties related to language and communicating with residents (gautam et al., 2016). when the students join international students exchange program, communication with the local people of the country would be one of their main struggles. in this respect, involvement in social activities for international students with local people is demanding and to some degree, they require facilitation for university base (gautam et al., 2016). experienced culture shock. the findings showed that joining international students exchange program makes students experienced culture shock. it was stated by two participants. the first statement was stated by okta. she said, “it turns out that culture shock exists. it began with different language and different customs.”. the second statement was stated by mukti. he said, “when i arrived there, i was quite shocked because of cultural difference”. he also said, “the problem is culture shock”. the statements above showed that both participants faced culture shock in the foreign country. the finding is in line with zhou et al. (2008), who affirmed that students who come to universities in languages and cultures that are different from their own must compete with new https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 92 habits and new education, behavior and expectations and deal with general adjustment challenges. conclusion and implication in this research, the researchers found five findings related to the students’ voices about the benefits of joining international students exchange program. they include getting international friends, possessing better opportunity to interact with english native speakers, having plentiful time to practice their english ability, improving their english ability, and boosting their self-confidence. this research also found three findings related to the challenges of joining international students exchange program. they cover facing difficulties to understand the local language, struggling in communicating with local people outside of campus, and experiencing culture shocked. the benefits of joining international students are significant. by then, some implication can be proposed. students should gain such benefits so that any related parties are better to fully support student to obtain such exposures. however, the perceived challenges should be addressed appropriately to anticipate the failures of the programs. all related groups including students, host university, university senders and the committee of the program should prepare the activities carefully and attentively starting from the planning, preparation, implementation, evaluation, and follow up of the program. references altbach, p. (2015). foreign study: patterns and challenges. international higher education, (30). andrade, m. s. (2006). international students in english-speaking universities: adjustment factors. journal of research in international education, 5(2), 131–154. bachner, d., & zeutschel, u. (2009). long‐term effects of international educational youth exchange. intercultural education, 20(sup1), s45–s58. barrow, l., & markman-pithers, l. (2016). supporting young english learners in the united states. the future of children, 159–183. berg, m. v., paige, r. m., & lou, k. h. (2012). student learning abroad: what our students are learning, what they're not, and what we can do about it. stylus publishing, llc. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 93 bretag, t., & van der veen, r. (2017). ‘pushing the boundaries’: participant motivation and self-reported benefits of short-term international study tours. innovations in education and teaching international, 54(3), 175–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2015.1118397 busche, s. (2017). advantages & challenges: an assessment of suny oneonta’s current approach to international student services. capstone collection. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/capstones/3060 dekeyser, r. m. (2018). the role of practice within second language acquisition. in practice in second language learning (pp. 30–52). cambridge university press. doyle, l., mccabe, c., keogh, b., brady, a., & mccann, m. (2020). an overview of the qualitative descriptive design within nursing research. journal of research in nursing, 25(5), 443–455. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987119880234 earnest, d. r., rosenbusch, k., wallace-williams, d., & keim, a. c. (2016). study abroad in psychology: increasing cultural competencies through experiential learning. teaching of psychology, 43(1), 75–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628315620889 gammonley, d., rotabi, k. s., & rotabi, k. s. (2007). enhancing global understanding with study abroad: ethically grounded approaches to international learning. journal of teaching in social work, 27(3–4), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1300/j067v27n03_08 gautam, c., lowery, c. l., mays, c., & durant, d. (2016). challenges for global learners: a qualitative study of the concerns and difficulties of international students. journal of international students, 6(2), 501–526. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v6i2.368 hendrickson, b. (2018). intercultural connectors: explaining the influence of extra-curricular activities and tutor programs on international student friendship network development. international journal of intercultural relations, 63, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.11.002 hernandez, t. (2016). short-term study abroad: perspectives on speaking gains and language contact. applied language learning, 26(1), 39–64. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 94 huang, c. s. j., yang, s. j. h., chiang, t. h. c., & su, a. y. s. (2016). effects of situated mobile learning approach on learning motivation and performance of efl students. educational technology & society, 19(1), 263–276. isabelli-garcía, c., bown, j., plews, j. l., & dewey, d. p. (2018). language learning and study abroad. language teaching, 51(4), 439–484. https://doi.org/10.1017/s026144481800023x jackson, j. (2017). the personal, linguistic, and intercultural development of chinese sojourners in an english-speaking country: the impact of language attitudes, motivation, and agency. study abroad research in second language acquisition and international education, 2(1), 80–106. https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.2.1.04jac johnson, l. r., seifen-adkins, t., sandhu, d. s., nadezda, a., & makino, h. (2018). developing culturally responsive program to promote international student adjustment: a participatory approach. journal of international students, 8(4), 1865–1878. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1468100 krishnan, l. a., masters, c., holgate, h., wang, c., & calahan, c. a. (2017). structured study abroad enhances intercultural competence. teaching and learning in communication sciences & disorders, 1(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.30707/tlcsd1.1krishnan lambert, v. a., & lambert, c. e. (2012). qualitative descriptive research: an acceptable design. journal of nursing research, 16(4), 255–256. lindsey, e. w. (2005). study abroad and values development in social work students. journal of social work education, 41(2), 229-249. https://doi.org/10.5175/jswe.2005.200303110 llanes, à., arnó, e., & mancho-barés, g. (2016). erasmus students using english as a lingua franca: does study abroad in a non-english-speaking country improve l2 english? the language learning journal, 44(3), 292–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2016.1198099 magilvy, j. k., & thomas, e. (2009). a first qualitative project: qualitative descriptive design for novice researchers. journal for specialists in pediatric nursing, 14(4), 298–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6155.2009.00212.x https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 95 martin-rubió, x., & cots, j. m. (2018). self-confidence amongst study abroad students in an ‘english as a lingua franca’ university. language awareness, 27(1–2), 96–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2018.1435673 mckay, s. l. (2018). english as an international language: what it is and what it means for pedagogy. relc journal, 49(1), 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217738817 meng, q., zhu, c., & cao, c. (2018). chinese international students’ social connectedness, social and academic adaptation: the mediating role of global competence. higher education, 75(1), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0129-x quezada, r. l. (2004). beyond educational tourism: lessons learned while student teaching abroad. internasional education journal, 5(4), 458-465. takehara, s., wright, f., kawaguchi, y., morio, i., ishida, y., & tagami, j. (2018). the impact of outbound exchange programs on japanese dental students. journal of medical and dental sciences, 65(2), 99－105. https://doi.org/10.11480/jmds.650207 thompson, a. s., & lee, j. (2014). the impact of experience abroad and language proficiency on language learning anxiety. tesol quarterly, 48(2), 252–274. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.125 trentman, e. (2013). arabic and english during study abroad in cairo, egypt: issues of access and use. the modern language journal, 97(2). 457-473. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.2013.12013.x vögtle, e. m., & windzio, m. (2016). networks of international student mobility: enlargement and consolidation of the european transnational education space? higher education, 72(6), 723–741. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9972-9 waibel, s., petzold, k., & rüger, h. (2018). occupational status benefits of studying abroad and the role of occupational specificity – a propensity score matching approach. social science research, 74, 45–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.05.006 wilkinson, s. (2000). emerging questions about study abroad. adfl bulletin, 32(1), 36–41. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 96 wright, c., & schartner, a. (2013). ‘i can’t … i won’t?’ international students at the threshold of social interaction. journal of research in international education, 12(2), 113–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475240913491055 zhang, z. (2018). english-medium instruction policies in china: internationalisation of higher education. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 39(6), 542–555. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2017.1404070 zhou, y., jindal-snape, d., topping, k., & todman, j. (2008). theoretical models of culture shock and adaptation in international students in higher education. studies in higher education, 33(1), 63–75 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 245 article history: submitted: 4 april 2022 reviewed: 23 june 2022 edited: 5 july 2022 article accepted: 8 july 2022 learners’ perceptions of language remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic omar colombo1*), tamara boscia2 1language center, university brunei darussalam, brunei darussalam 2faculty of languages and linguistics, university of malaya, malaysia *)corresponding author email: omar.colombo@ubd.edu.bn doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14550 abstract this paper investigated the learners’ perception and satisfaction of a distance learning course conducted by the french and italian lecturers as foreign languages in a malaysian university, during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic, from april to july 2020. the study aims to improve online and blended learning and teaching since distance learning is still being implemented because of the pandemic. a distance course perception and satisfaction survey were administered to collect the data. descriptive statistics of the learners’ scores (based on a five-point likert scale) highlighted that students appreciated the course structure/design and the learnerteacher and learner-learner interactions, while the general level of satisfaction for the online course as a whole remained moderate. it also underlined the negative influence of emergency remote teaching (ert) on the learners’ psychology, affecting students’ perceptions and task value. the french and italian lecturers acknowledged the results of this paper and made the necessary changes to enhance the quality of distance teaching, especially by improving the interpersonal online interactions and encouraging students to become independent learners. keywords: french language; italian language; covid-19; emergency remote teaching; perceptions =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14550 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14550&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 246 introduction blended (hybrid) learning has been defined as a specific teaching modality of distance learning combined with face-to-face/traditional learning (graham, 2006; thorne, 2002). distance learning has often been integrated into hybrid courses and met the educational needs of completing the curricula. however, since the covid-19 pandemic, educational institutions have been forced to invest in designing and immediately using entirely new distance learning courses to continue their educational programs from 2019 to 2020. thus, online learning has become the mainstay of teaching modality for secondary and higher education by suddenly replacing hybrid and face-to-face courses. as some researchers have defined, emergency remote teaching (ert) is more than well-planned, high-quality distance learning. hodges et al. (2020) argued that since ert is due to crisis circumstances, its nature is temporary and aims to provide fast and reliable access to instruction until the end of the emergency when the previous format of instruction will be put in place again. they claimed that acknowledging this situation is of the utmost importance to avoid the temptation to compare this online learning to face-to-face learning, which has not been planned and designed well in advance. in a study on the covid19 pandemic and remote learning, olasile and emrah (2020:2) stated that “effective online learning is a byproduct of cautious design and planning of instruction with the application of organized models for designing and development of instruction”. consequently, many academics questioned the quality of their online teaching, caused by extreme circumstances and was far from real online learning. this study analyzed learners’ perception and satisfaction of the full distance foreign language learning (dfll) that the lecturers put in place in a malaysian higher education context in the bachelors of french and italian as foreign languages (ffl, ifl) during the second semester of the academic year 2019/2020 (april/july). thus, this research aimed to improve distance learning in the academic year 2020/2021 and the post-pandemic blended teaching and learning by considering the students’ opinions based on their personal experience and pedagogical needs. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 247 this study will address the following research questions: 1) what was the learners’ perception of the online course? were learners satisfied with the distance course experience? 2) how did the students feel about the specific four e-learning dimensions (distance course categories), structure/design, interactions, task value, and students’ preference regarding online versus traditional face-to-face courses? were there any connections in the evaluation of the category items? 3) did the learners’ perceptions and satisfaction vary depending on individual characteristic factors? educational context: the emergency remote teaching experience of the bachelor of french and italian as foreign languages in the educational context, students are offered different disciplines (language, linguistics, translation, civilization, literature, administration, business) in content and language integrated learning context, and each discipline has its curriculum set by each foreign language division, for example, ffl and ffl in this case. the ert set up by the lecturers of french and italian shares some common aspects despite the differences mentioned above. lecturers of ffl and ifl had to set up their courses on the institutional platform spectrum, often recurring to email services and whatsapp when poor internet connection made it difficult to access online platforms. lecturers had to work following their experience and knowledge of the students’ needs. some lecturers did not have continuous internet access. others were ill-disposed towards distance learning in the same way some students were, finding themselves in a situation that had been imposed on them. if synchronous lessons meant that there must be learner-lecturer interaction, then all lecturers were available during the planned lesson time and throughout the day. if the meaning were restricted to face-to-face online live webcam interaction, 25% of the lessons would be conducted in synchronous live-streamed modality, via zoom or googlemeet, and 75% in asynchronous modality. according to connolly and stansfield (2006), the asynchronous lessons correspond to the first generation of e-learning modality, where traditional materials were repurposed to an online format, while the synchronous ones would be typical of the second and third e-learning https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 248 generations (popovici & mironov, 2015: 1515). the emergency in which lecturers found themselves forced them to produce materials that were a combination of traditional materials repurposed to an online format and new material which made use of learning apps and other technological tools. many students started their courses with little autonomy in the learning process. furthermore, despite the wide experience in learning english as a foreign language, language learning strategies were underdeveloped and acknowledged by studies conducted at school and higher education levels. azman et al. (2012: 40-41) identified the problems students within the malaysian education system face in terms of learning english: a focus on national assessment fails to produce autonomous students, “whereby learners assume the part of empty vessels to be filled up by the teachers alone” (naginder, 2006: 22), expecting teachers to feed them what they are supposed to know. the problems mentioned above demanded that lecturers simplify content and assessment. literature review learners’ perception and satisfaction research the literature on student perceptions regarding implementation, content, interactions, and exam assessment of the distance teaching-learning environment (tle; entwistle, 2011) is ample. for instance, bauk (2015) gave details of thirty master’s and ph.d. learners’ perception and satisfaction of the distance tle, particularly of four e-learning dimensions: interface (accessibility to the technological environment), communication (interactions learners/teachers), instructional (teaching) materials and self-evaluation (outcomes, self-efficacy, and task value). the findings stated that teaching materials took the highest position in the students’ positive perception, followed by communication, interface, and self-evaluation. interestingly, most of the responders of bauk’s study preferred traditional assessment to online assessment. in particular, in their research study of digital learning, both blended and distance, charlier et al. (2015: 382) claimed that existing research in educational technology, cognitive https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 249 psychology as well as adult and university education provides a relevant and methodological framework to understand how individual characteristics, digital environment and interactions between students and environment can lead to quality learning. furthermore, tle features influence the students’ learning styles and quality of outcomes (charlier et al., 2015: 385) as well as learners’ perceptions and satisfaction. among the personality (psychological-affective) features influencing (e)learning and its perceptions, the learning attitude consists of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components which are closely aligned with each other and create a stable perception of a given object or concept (lee watson & kim, 2016: 274). self-efficacy is a specific learning attitude, “a judgment of one’s capability to accomplish a certain level of performance” (bandura, 2002: 94), affecting the learning process (sitzmann & ely, 2011), academic motivation and achievement (schunk & pajares, 2002). task value (tv) is another learning attitude, more precisely, the students’ judgment of how interesting, important, and useful a course is to them (eccles & wigfield, 2002). moreover, the tv looks into the students’ perception of the “cost of a task, as a factor to predict the learners’ decision to follow the task further or not” (ghasemi & dowlatabadi, 2018: 665). tv “is connected to closer or more remote aims, beyond one’s immediate pleasure” (cocoradă & maican, 2021: 4). tv has a positive influence on “many important outcomes, such as cognitive engagement, choice of future learning activities, and academic achievement” (artino, 2009: 149). furthermore, teachers’ behavior is likely to influence foreign language learning (fll) since negative perceptions of the teacher’s role increase students’ anxiety. (cocoradă & maican, 2021). effectiveness is a final learning attitude: “effectiveness is the indicator of the result obtained to the achievement’s programs by the ratio, it is a reflection from the performance that someone did, to indicate whether the outcome what someone did well (mihaiu et al., 2010)” (rifiyanti, 2020: 33). regarding the social actors’ presence in a distance tle, collaborative social interaction is investigated in transitional distance (td) theory. in a study concerning the interactions in a fully english as a foreign language distance learning context, kara (2020: 1-2) said that td is an interactionist theory focusing on the psychological and communicative relationship between learners’ peers and learner and teacher (constructive dialogues), and between learner, the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 250 structure (level of openness/flexibility of the course or program, relationship learners/educational material) and learning autonomy (degree of learners’ ability to determine their learning goals, experiences and evaluation). based on the findings reported by the author, perceived satisfaction was higher when the teacher had a positive attitude towards interaction and lowered if there was a lack of teacher encouragement and moderation for learner-learner interaction, meaning that learner-learner interaction played a significant role. interestingly, daewele et al. (2019) underlined teachers’ major role in students’ enjoyment compared to students’ peer relationships. learners’ perception and satisfaction researches during covid-19 pandemic various studies during the covid pandemic have dealt with students’ feelings and perceptions. the researchers have selected the most meaningful ones for this research and compared the results of students’ feelings and perceptions. recent studies on distance learning showed students’ negative perceptions (rohman et al., 2020) and caused psychological distress (bao & hasan, 2020). however, a study focused on the students’ perception of knowledge, accessibility, effectiveness and difficulties in an online english course during the covid-19 pandemic at the institut bisnis & informatika kosgoro 1957 (indonesia), rifiyanti (2020: 33) revealed the learners’ effectiveness perception. she revealed that 63% of the students agreed that learning the target foreign language (fl) online was an effective solution. in observation of 207 romanian students’ behavior, perceptions, and emotions during the pandemic, cocoradă and maican (2021) concluded that the students were unhappy with individualized teacher feedback, which was prompt in a physical environment but delayed when fully online. even though the students expressed enjoyment of dfll, they preferred blended learning over full online classes due to poor internet connection, task overload, and limited interaction with teachers and fellow students. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 251 research on the influence of individual characteristics on learners’ perceptions finally, most research in this field has been focused on the relationships between individual characteristics like independent demographic variables (age, gender, ethnicity), educational profile (degree, technological knowledge, distance learning experience), language competence (native, fl), cognitive skills and personality (psycho-affective variables) on the one hand, and the other hand, students’ conception of learning, perceptions and satisfaction of the tle (meyer, 1991). for instance, in their study involving students from the university college in malaysia, azliza et al. (2012) have shown the positive relationship between the learners’ perceptions of e-learning implementation and gender, years of study, faculty and technology usage variables. altugan (2015) found that students’ cultural features influence fll motivation since they can lessen identification with the target fl and culture. the learners’ educational profile influences tv and td: kara (2020) showed that tv (perceived learning in the author’s words) and instructional td are influenced by the learner’s previous digital knowledge. popovici and mironov’s (2015: 1516-1517) study of students’ perceptions of e-learning, technology and expertise found it important for the successful development of academic programs since the attitude of the end user toward the application of information technology is one of the most effective factors. more generally, for the same tle, a positive student perception leads to a positive learning approach and perceived effects on learning (charlier et al.: 391). in a study conducted on the degree of the openness of teaching, jézégou (2005: 103) stated that openness is related to the level of the digital environment flexibility and empowerment: a digital tle should give learners freedom of choice so that they can exercise control over their training and their learning. however, these results contradicted other ones. for instance, cocoradă and maican (2021) found that learners’ perception of dfll during the pandemic did not depend on their gender, type of study or achievement level. therefore, this paper also aims to verify whether students’ characteristics affect their ert experience (see 4.3). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 252 methods and sample data collection and analysis a dfll course perception and satisfaction survey were used for collecting the data. a pilot survey was conducted to ensure the coherence and the relevance of the items and questions: five external students who had attended a dfll during the covid-19 pandemic were asked to complete the survey and write comments, which were used to develop the questionnaire further. the online questionnaire was designed with google forms, which was already familiar to students. by submitting the survey, learners granted their permission for the data generated to be used for research purposes. the final version of the survey is an adaptation of young and norgard’s (2006) questionnaire on learners’ dfll perceptions. the survey covered four categories, five items for each one: student perception of the course structure/design (category 1), course td (online learner interpersonal collaboration with peers and lecturers; category 2), course tv (content and assessment; category 3), learner preference regarding remote versus physical (face-to-face) courses, learner dfll autonomy and satisfaction (category 4). learners were asked to anonymously assess 20 items based on a five-point likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). students were also asked questions at the end of each section and provided comments and suggestions on their dfll experience. during the last week of distance learning (june 2020), ffl and ifl students received a whatsapp link to complete the survey. learner participation was voluntary. a few statistical tests were run through spss between each independent variable (iv) and dependent variables (dvs), as well as between the dvs, together with a descriptive statistical analysis of the students’ scores based on the means and the standard deviation (sd). each test had a minimum level of significance of p<0.05 (two-tailed). three groups of ivs, six learners’ factors in total, were correlated with the dvs: sociocultural (ethnicity; gender), linguistic background (number of languages known; mastery of the target fl; muet (malaysian university entrance test), english as an fl certificate results, educational background (previous or nonprevious online learning experience). data analysis was performed through one-way anova https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 253 tests, paired sample t-test (for descriptive statistics in analyzing the mean and sd variances) and linear correlation tests (pearson, r; eta squared coefficient test, eta2) between dvs and ivs, as well as between and within the dvs. lastly, the independent t (t value) test was used to correlate the two learner dichotomous nominal variables of gender and previous or non-previous distance learning experience with the dvs. sample the 78 students of ffl and ifl programs completed the dfll course perception survey: 50% (n=39) were enrolled in ffl and 50% in ifl undergraduate programs, in the first year (44.9%, n=35), second (29.5%, n=23), third (19.2%, n=15) or fourth (6.4%, n=5). in terms of students’ educational backgrounds, most of them had no previous experience with distance learning (70.5%, n=55). as for the students’ sociocultural information, learners were mainly females (87.2%, n=68) and malay (62.8%, n=49), followed by chinese (21.8%), kadazandusun and indian (5.1% each) and other ethnicities (5.2% in total). regarding the students’ linguistic backgrounds, table 1 shows that learners spoke more than two languages (between three and eight native and fls) and that only over half (55.1%, n=43) spoke four or five languages due to malaysia being a multilingual and multi-ethnic country, with around 140 different historical languages (coluzzi, 2017: 210). moreover, given that most of the students were enrolled in the first or the second year (74.4%, n=58), they rated their mastery of the target fl above all as low intermediate (a2) or intermediate (b1) level (82.1%, n=64). finally, 87.2% (n=68) of them stated that they obtained band 3 or 4 (out of 6 levels in total) in the muet certificate, and this finding is in line with the national educational policy ensuring that only learners with necessary qualifications in english are enrolled in malaysian public universities. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 254 table 1. student linguistic information (n=78) languages known mastery of ffl/ifl muet three languages: 23% beginner: 15.4% band 2: 1.3% four languages: 25.6% low-intermediate: 44.9% band 3: 35.9% five languages: 29.5% intermediate: 37.2% band 4: 51.3% six languages: 15.5% upper-intermediate: 2.5% band 5: 11.5% seven/eight languages: 6.4% advanced: 0% band 6: 0% findings overall findings on learners’ perceptions and satisfaction of the dfll as a whole figure 1 displays moderate scores between the four sections with a different mean of 0.39, a general overall mean of 3.59 and a similar likert distribution (sd; difference sd=1.14). however, the results revealed that the students particularly appreciated course structure/design and interpersonal interactions (td), while the general level of satisfaction for the dfll was lower. a series of paired sample t-tests showed that the more relevant variances in terms of means were between structure, td, and tv. meanwhile, satisfaction (satisfaction/structure, t=-5.45; satisfaction/td, t=-5,27; satisfaction/tv, t=-3.06; p=0.00, df=77): that confirms the generally lower final dfll satisfaction. a pearson correlation test corroborated the relevance of td appreciation by learners (td/tv, r=0.48; td/structure, r=0.42; td/satisfaction, r=0.35; p=0.00). td was linearly linked with the other three sections: appreciation of tv, course structure/design and dfll satisfaction increased when interpersonal relationships were given a higher value. in the same way, course satisfaction was higher with a higher tv (r=0.35, p=0.00). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 255 figure 1. overall findings of students’ perceptions and satisfaction with ffl and ifl online courses in response to research question 1, despite a general low dfll final satisfaction, the learners with the highest level of general appreciation perceived the dfll as interesting and useful (tv) and valued the interpersonal collaboration with peers and teachers (td) positively. to respond to research question 2, the next stages of this study (see § 4.2.1/4.2.4) summarize the learners’ responses within the four perception and satisfaction survey categories based on learners’ scores (means, sd and frequencies) and statements. findings on learners’ perceptions and satisfaction of the specific dfll dimensions (distance course categories) learners’ perceptions and satisfaction of online course structure/design. as shown in figure 2, the students stated their preference for a balance of synchronous (live online webcam interaction) and asynchronous (online tasks and assignments without live webcam interaction) lesson modality (item 4, 80% of agreement), while only 34.7% preferred a course structured with mainly synchronous lessons (item 3 has the lowest mean). indeed, paired sample t-tests confirmed that one of the most relevant variances in terms of means was between items 3 and 4 (t=-5.53, df=77, p=0.00). learners found the tools (apps, platforms, etc.) used by their lecturers suitable for the tasks assigned (item 5, 87% of agreement). respondents moderately agreed that they preferred online courses to follow a consistent 0,43 0,65 0,63 0,55 3,35 3,56 3,7 3,74 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4) satisfaction 3) online course tv 2) online course td 1) online course structure/design dfll course as a whole mean sd https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 256 structure that did not change from one course to another (item 1, 59% of agreement) and that lecturers used the same tools (item 2, 69.5%; item 1/item 2: r=0.50, p=0.00). a consistent course structure makes students feel more comfortable and self-confident during their dfll. figure 2. student perceptions of ffl and ifl online course structure/design when asked about the advantages and disadvantages of the tools used by the lecturers, most students underlined problems relating to internet connectivity (“disadvantages: i have to purchase more data, which i cannot afford, i cannot understand the lessons well, i feel pressured”). learners’ perceptions and satisfaction of online course transactional distance (interactions). figure 3 indicated that learners appreciated mainly the interactions with lecturers (item 8, 81.3% of agreement: i had numerous interactions with the instructor during the class) and that lecturers replied to their questions in a timely fashion (item 9, 83.4% of agreement) and students received enough feedback when they needed it (item 10, nearly 79%). if pearson tests showed positive correlations within the whole category (r between 0.28 and 0.59, p=0.00/0.01), the highest relationship involved items 9 and 10 (r=0.59, p=0.00). when considering interactions with fellow students, over 69% of the respondents found that the courses facilitated interaction in course content and assignments during the lesson (item 6). however, only 43.3 % found it easy to interact with fellow students in synchronous lessons (item 7). the score difference between items 6 and 7 (t=5.09, df=77, p=0.00), seemingly contradictory, can be explained by the fact that students may find it difficult to relate with each 0,73 0,91 0,96 1,01 1,02 4,04 4 3,2 3,85 3,6 0 1 2 3 4 5 item 5 item 4 item 3 item 2 item 1 category 1: online course structure/design mean sd https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 257 other in synchronous webcam learning situations but feel more at ease when communicating via other tools (i.e., by whatsapp). this result confirms: (1) the learners’ general disapproval of a course structured mainly on synchronous webcam lessons. at the same time, it can hint at a lack of proper design and planning of the course itself, which did not provide the balance requested and did not succeed in promoting interaction in synchronous webcam lessons; (2) the learners’ preference for learner-teacher as compared to learner-learner interaction (item 7/item 9, t=-6.56; item 7/item 10, t=-5.57; df=77, p=0.00). as said before, and in line with the literature review, the teachers’ role in promoting learner-learner interaction was probably lacking, hampering effective communication among students in synchronous lessons. figure 3. student perceptions of ffl and ifl online course td many students’ comments supported the perception that communication had a key function in a tle. other comments expressed the difficulties experienced in the interaction in an online environment (the lack of “physical touch”, the limited communication in the fl) and the consequences (it is “challenging to understand”, “it makes me feel bad about it”). learners’ perceptions and satisfaction of online course task value (content and assessment). over 70% of the respondents found that free access to materials made it easier to accomplish assignments, tasks and exams (item 15), while only 46% agreed the exams were wellbalanced in terms of number and time allocated (item 14; t-test, item 14/item 15: t=4.98, df=77, p=0.00). 0,87 0,7 0,98 1,06 0,73 3,91 4,05 3,53 3,22 3,8 0 1 2 3 4 5 item 10 item 9 item 8 item 7 item 6 category 2: online course td (interactions) mean sd https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 258 pearson findings highlighted correlations within the whole category, and the highest ones concerned items 11, 12 and 13 (r between 0.41 and 0.51, p=0.00; similar moderate-high scores, with levels of agreement between 55% and 59%): the higher the respondents perceived that the assignments in their dfll helped them to master course content (item 12), the higher they found the teaching material to be adequate with the course goals (content and aim of the lesson: item 11) and that the exams provided an accurate assessment of knowledge of course content (item 13). figure 4. student perceptions of ffl and ifl online course tv however, the answers to the open question on how learners coped with difficulties draw attention to feelings of exhaustion and frustration, which can negatively affect learner selfefficacy. the comments underline comprehension difficulties, inability to participate fully, excessive workload, difficulties connected with time management and feeling mentally drained and frustrated. learners’ satisfaction, online vs. face-to-face courses. figure 5 shows that students found online courses more difficult content-wise than traditional face-to-face courses (item 17, 73.1% of agreement), even if 82% had the perception that the courses helped them to become more independent learners (item 20). only 34.6% expressed their dfll satisfaction (item 18), and 43.6% neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. similarly, as for effectiveness, which concerns students’ perception 0,95 0,9 0,95 0,78 0,86 3,86 3,29 3,45 3,54 3,65 0 1 2 3 4 5 item 15 item 14 item 13 item 12 item 11 category 3: online course tv (content and assessment) mean sd https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 259 of improving their competence in the target language (item 19), over 43% felt it had satisfactorily increased, and 42.3% neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement (item18/item 19: r=0.35, p=0.00). more relevant variances in terms of means involved item 16 (item 16/item 17, t=-8.50; item 16/item 18, t=-9.21; item 16/item 19, t= -8.11; item 16/item 20, t=-14.85; df=77, p=0.00). item 16 yielded the lowest appreciation, given that a moderate majority of students, 59%, responded that they did not learn more in dfll compared to traditional face-to-face courses. however, the students who were more satisfied with the dfll than with the class-based course (item 16) perceived a consistently higher satisfaction with the overall distance course (item 18; item 16/item 18: r=0.64, high correlation strength, p=0.00). more interestingly, the higher the perceived difficulty of the dfll (item 17), the lower the appreciation of its efficacy (item 16) and, likewise, the overall satisfaction with the online experience (item 18; pearson test: item 17/item 16, r=-0.61; item 17/item 18, r=-0.54; p=0.00). figure 5. student satisfaction of ffl and ifl online courses the students’ comments when comparing traditional lessons to dfll highlighted insufficient time to carry out tasks, feeling lazy and inactive compared to when they are “physically learning”, lack of focus due to the home environment, and the possibility of turning off the microphone and webcam and doing other tasks. a few students suggested resuming face-to-face classes as soon as possible to avoid further stress and difficulties or postponing or even canceling the semester. 0,73 0,84 0,89 0,97 0,95 3,96 3,32 3,13 3,99 2,33 0 1 2 3 4 5 item 20 item 19 item 18 item 17 item 16 category 4: satisfaction: online vs. face-to-face courses mean sd https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 260 in response to research question 2, findings showed a general high correlation regarding learners’ evaluation of the items. further comments will be exposed in the discussion section. the next stage of this study looked into individual variables and their effect on learners’ perceptions and satisfactions (research question 3). correlations with learners’ characteristics among individual characteristics, only for td (category 2), the tests showed significant differences regarding learners’ language background. td appreciation increased by increasing the number of languages known (f=3.01, df=5, 72, ηp2=0.17, eta2=0.52; p<0.05): this is especially evident between trilingual and quadrilingual and pentalingual learners, that is to say, the majority of the respondents (61 learners, 78% in total: trilingual, n=18, m=3.30, sd=0.65; quadrilingual, n=20, m=3.84, sd=0.52; pentalingual, n=23, m=3.80, sd=0.72). discussion four main aspects of the dfll student experience (1) dfll uniformity and balance; learner autonomy. the students’ preference for uniform course structure/design and use of the same tools is consistent with the findings of bauk (2015) and young and norgard (2006: 113). additionally, learners agreed to a balance between synchronous and asynchronous lessons. a discrepancy appeared between the request for synchronous lessons and the poor internet connection experienced by many respondents. another reason to favor a more balanced offer of synchronous/asynchronous lessons can be related to the learners’ degree of autonomy. along with the research results in some malaysian universities (see § 1), these findings could hint at the lack of student autonomy in online learning, which can cause even more stress in an ert environment. even though most learners stated they acquired greater autonomy in distance learning practices, the need for more synchronous lessons can also be explained by the evidence that synchronous lessons facilitate guidance in the learning process. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 261 (2) effective communication. the previous considerations are further underlined by the students’ appreciation of the communication with their lecturers, which is consistent with the findings of the papers of cocoradă and maican (2021), kara (2020), daewele et al. (2019) and bauk (2015). lecturers offered quality guidance when requested, thus solving the apparent contradiction of the need for more (than 25%) synchronous lessons and the difficulties perceived by the students in face-to-face online lessons. indeed, the overall findings (see § 4.1) showed that learners were satisfied with td. the qualitative findings revealed that many students considered face-to-face communication more valuable and effective. at the same time, the lecturersresearchers observed that shy students benefited from synchronous lessons in terms of td, even if most of them kept their webcams off during most of the online courses. in a study by chun (1994), the author used computer distance learning to improve language learners’ interactive competence through intense collaboration and student participation during synchronous distance classes. as seen in chun’s findings, some students who were often shy and quiet in faceto-face learning contexts found that they had more chances to generate and initiate different kinds of discourse, and were more involved during dfll, often becoming the most active learners. interestingly, the analysis within the td category has also highlighted that students were not at ease when relating with their peers in synchronous webcam lessons. the cause could be traced back to poor planning or the medium’s characteristics, which affected each student differently, facilitating or hindering communication often in a different fashion from the classroom experience (see chun’s studies above). (3) low dfll overall satisfaction. the overall perceived satisfaction with the dfll is connected to the general appreciation of the distance classes in design, content and exam assessment, and the learner-teacher relationship appreciation. indeed, in line with kara’s findings, the present study confirmed that students showing a higher perception of the learnerteacher relationship (questions 6, 7 and 8) yielded a higher level of satisfaction with the dfll (final satisfaction mean of these students: means between 4 and 4.20): more generally, this result would confirm that td plays a significant role in the distance learning perception and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 262 satisfaction. however, the survey results and qualitative findings suggested three reasons for the overall moderate-low level of satisfaction, which is in line with rohman et al.’s (2020) findings of an online course due to the covid-19 pandemic. first, findings within the category (which highlighted a strong connection in the students’ evaluation of the items) showed that students who found dfll particularly difficult stated that they did not improve more than in traditional face-to-face courses. this condition would negatively influence the perceived satisfaction, tv and effectiveness. second, the perceived pressure from the demands of the assignments and assessment often generated feelings of frustration and uneasiness, which influenced perceptions and satisfaction. finally, following jézégou’s research (see § 2.3), this study proved that the low degree of openness of teaching the ifl and ffl online courses also negatively influenced satisfaction and perceptions, for instance, self-efficacy and tv. (4) ert as the major psychological-social influence on learners’ perception and satisfaction. in response to research question 3, consistently with cocoradă and maican’s (2021) findings, but unlike other studies (see § 2.3), individual characteristics did not play an important role in learners’ perceptions and satisfaction. the study referred to a blended learning context before the pandemic, substantially different from an ert environment. this paper confirmed what research in the field stated about the role of ert. ert accounts for some of the critical issues underlined by this paper and for some significant differences with the findings of previous studies on distance and blended language learning courses freely chosen by students and lecturers. the survey showed that the likert score of three stood out in most answers, highlighting a general situation of uncertainty. students pointed out their fears and difficulties from the beginning of the dfll when some students even suggested postponing or canceling the semester (see § 4.2.4). stressful psychological-emotional situations, or psychological distress (bao & hasan, 2020), are related to the fear of not being able to cope with online learning and failing the semester, together with the fear of family members contracting the covid-19 have influenced the whole dfll experience. furthermore, the survey indicated that the difficulties had not been overcome at the end of the course. charlier et al. (see § 2.3) stated that a positive perception of learning leads to a positive learning approach. in this study, a general moderate score of students’ https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 263 perception and satisfaction might have negatively influenced their learning approach regarding tv, motivation and self-efficacy. conclusion and implications as a consequence of the global evolution of covid-19, lecturers-researchers have acknowledged the results of this paper and made the necessary changes to improve the quality of distance teaching in the first semester of 2020/2021 and of any future blended learning course. indeed, the first semester of 2020/2021 saw a significant improvement in course design and planning. first, study programs and pedagogical materials were simplified through red programs and materials, with fewer tasks, reduced class time and more breaks during the lesson. secondly, the number of synchronous live-streamed lessons increased from the previous 25% to 80% and above to respond to the need for interpersonal interaction in an online environment since video conferencing, as stated by blum (2020), can resemble real life, where information and views can be exchanged, and voices can be heard. zoom was chosen as the main platform for two main reasons to favor pair or group work in the break-out rooms and to allow the lecturers to monitor individual students during the activities. third, even if students’ learning autonomy improved from the previous semester, it must be constantly fostered and supported. indeed, any future blended learning course should consider students’ constant monitoring and continuous feedback in synchronous and asynchronous lessons. consequently, the teachers’ intervention has granted the students’ continuous monitoring through the zoom break-out rooms and synchronous communication with the students on whatsapp throughout the day. fourth, unlike the previous semester, the lectures could integrate their materials with new online resources, which the students could access autonomously. most of these activities can be carried out individually, are interactive and introduce a playful aspect that increases students’ motivation. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 264 fifth, in the light of the results, obtained (dissatisfaction with the examination modalities and the exam timing allocated: see 4.2.3) and since the university granted lecturers the freedom to choose the type of assessment most suitable for their students, the lecturers-researchers of this study decided to propose continuous and alternative assessment. the continuous assessment was based on the students’ coursework and small individual or collective tasks, while the alternative assessment was based on individual and collaborative projects. these projects focused on topics developed during the semester and were conveyed through various means, including video projects, recordings, presentations, and podcasts. the research highlighted the negative influence of ert on students’ psychological/emotional welfare and showed that there are key issues that must be solved, related, for example, to family problems, poor internet connection and lack of appropriate devices. nevertheless, self-confidence in lecturers and learners seems to have increased. during the first semester of 2020/2021, students were more willing to show their faces on webcams and seemed to find participation in a dfll easier than before. teachers improved their skills and found ways to avoid the negative effect of 2019/2020 ert, designing a learning environment in which students could cope with the course and achieve their goals. finally, during the lockdown, some lecturers took advantage of the various webinars offered by international educational institutions. this training was effective in helping lecturers build up their confidence in the practice of distance learning. in the future, it would be interesting to explore the role of educators during ert. finally, the negative effects caused by ert suggest the need to investigate learners’ emotions, which influence the affective filter with direct consequences on learning in terms of motivation, tv, and self-efficacy and might contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the role of the affective filter in an ert context. list of abbreviations (d)fll: (distance) foreign language learning dv(s): dependent variable(s) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 265 ert: emergency remote teaching ffl: french as a foreign language fl: foreign language ifl: italian as a foreign language iv(s): independent variable(s) muet: malaysian university entrance test sd: standard deviation td: transitional distance tle: teaching-learning environment tv: task value references altugan, a. (2015). the relationship between cultural identity and learning. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 186, 1159-1162. doi.10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.161 artino, a. r. (2009). think, feel, act: motivational and emotional influences on military students’ online academic success. journal of computing in higher education, 21, 146-166. doi.10.1007/s12528-009-9020-9 azliza, y., kadir, a.z.a., zainudin, o., & zurairah, a. (2012). students’ awareness toward elearning in education. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 67, 93-101. doi.10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.310 azman, h., lie, k.y., & che musa, n. (2012). exploring english language learning and teaching in malaysia. gema: online journal of language studies, 12(1), 35-51. issn 1675-8021. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11492256.pdf bandura, a. (2002). social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory. in d. marks (eds.), the health psychology reader (pp. 94-106). london, uk: thousand oaks. bao, y., & hasan, n. (2020). impact of “e-learning crack-up” perception on psychological distress among college students during covid-19 pandemic: a mediating role of “fear of academic year loss”. children and youth services review, 118. doi.10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105355 bauk, s. (2015). assessing students’ perception of e-learning in blended environment: an experimental study. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 191, 323-329. doi.10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.393 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 266 blum, s.d. (2020, april 22). why we’re exhausted by zoom. retrieved from file:///users/apple/downloads/why_were_exhausted_by_zoom.pdf charlier, b., cosnefroy, l., jézégou, a., & lameul, g. (2015). understanding quality of learning in digital learning environments: state of the art and research needed. in a. curaj, l. matei, r. pricopie, j. salmi, & p. scott (eds.), the european higher education area (pp. 381-398). cham, switzerland: springer. chun, d. (1994). using computer networking to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence. system, 22(1), 17-31. doi.10.1016/0346-251x(94)90037-x cocoradă, e., & maican, m.a. (2021). online foreign language learning in higher education and its correlates during the covid-19 pandemic. sustainability, 13(2), 781, 1-21. doi.10.3390/su13020781 coluzzi, p. (2017). the vitality of minority languages in malaysia. oceanic linguistics, 56(1), 210225. doi.10.1353/ol.2017.0008 connolly, t.m., & stansfield, m.h. (2006). from elearning to games-based elearning: using interactive technologies in teaching an is course. journal of information technology education, 5, 459-476. doi.10.28945/259 daewele, j.m., chen, x., padilla, a.m., & lake, j. (2019). the flowering of positive psychology in foreign language teaching and acquisition research. frontiers in psychology, 10(2128). doi.10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02128 eccles, j. s., & wigfield, a. (2002). motivational beliefs, values, and goals. annual review of psychology, 53, 109-132. doi.10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135153 entwistle, n. (2011). cultivating the disposition to understand in 21st-century university education. learning and individual differences, 21(3), 303–310. doi.10.1016/j.lindif.2010.11.017 ghasemi, a.a., & dowlatabadi, h.r. (2018). investigating the role of task value, surface/deep learning strategies, and higher order thinking in predicting self-regulation and language achievement. the journal of asia tefl, 15(3), 664-681. doi.10.18823/asiatefl.2018.15.3.7.664 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 267 graham, c. r. (2006). blended learning systems: definition, current trends, and future directions. in c. j., bonk & c.r., graham (eds.), handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs (pp. 3-21). san francisco, usa: pfeiffer. hodges, c., moore, s., lockee, b., trust, t., & bond, a. (2020, march 27). the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remoteteaching-and-online-learning jézégou, a. (2005). formation ouvertes : libertés de choix et autodirection de l’apprenant. paris, france: l’harmattan. kara, m. (2020). transactional distance and learner outcomes in an online efl context. open learning: the journal of open, distance and e-learning, 36(1), 1-16. doi.10.1080/02680513.2020.1717454 lee watson, s., & kim, w. (2016). enrolment purposes, instructional activities, and perceptions of attitudinal learning in a human trafficking mooc. open learning: the journal of open, distance and e-learning, 31(3), 273-287. doi.10.1080/02680513.2016.1230845 meyer, j.h.f. (1991). study orchestration: the manifestation, interpretation and consequences of contextualised approaches to studying. higher education, 2(3), 297-316. doi.10.1007/bf00132293 naginder, k. (2006). non-autonomy and low english proficiency among malaysian students: insights from multiple perspectives. in k. ariffi n, m. r. ismail, n. k. leng & r. abdul aziz (eds.), english in the malaysian context (pp. 21–34). shah alam, malaysia: university publication centre (upena), uitm malaysia. olasile, b.a., & emrah, s. (2020). covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges and opportunities, interactive learning environments. interactive learning environments, 1-13. doi.10.1080/10494820.2020.1813180 popovici, a., & mironov, c. (2015). students’ perception on using elearning technologies. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 180, 1514-1519. doi.10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.300 rifiyanti, h. (2020). learners’ perceptions of online english learning during covid-19 pandemic. scope, journal of english language teaching, 05, 31-35. doi.10.30998/scope.v5i1.6719 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 268 rohman, m., marji, d.a.s., sugandi, r.m., & nurhadi, d. (2020). online learning in higher education during covid-19 pandemic: students’ perceptions. journal of talent development and excellence, 12 (2s), 3644-3651. schunk, d. h., & pajares, f. (2002). the development of academic self-efficacy. in a. wigfield & j. s. eccles (eds.), a vol. in the educational psychology series. development of achievement motivation (pp. 15–31). cambridge, usa: academic press. doi.10.1016/b978-012750053-9/50003-6 sitzmann, t., & ely, k. (2011). a meta-analysis of self-regulated learning in work-related training and educational attainment: what we know and where we need to go. psychological bulletin, may 137(3), 421-442. doi.10.1037/a0022777 thorne, k. (2002). blended learning: how to integrate online and traditional learning. london, uk: kogan page. young, a., & norgard, c. (2006). assessing the quality of online courses from the students’ perspective. the internet and higher education, 9, 107-115. doi.10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.03.001 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2 july 2017 abstract this study aims to design a survey instrument that can be used to collect information on the relationships between the ict-related learning experiences of the english language pre-service teachers in yogyakarta, indonesia, and their technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to analyse the degree of the reliability and validity of the instrument. the result suggests that this instrument meets the general requirements to be used in a larger scale of work in investigating the role of pre-service teachers’ experiences in learning to use ict in their pedagogical practice in influencing the development of their tpack. keywords: learning experience; technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack); validity; reliability introduction the purpose of this study is to develop an instrument that can be used to examine the relationship between the technology-related learning experiences of the english language pre-service teachers at a teacher training institution in yogyakarta, indonesia, and their current level of technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). tpack is a current framework which emerged as a response toward the ineffectiveness of information and communication technology (ict) to influence educational improvement and student learning achievement. successful ict integration in learning and teaching consider technology not as an the development of the survey of technology use, teaching, and technologyrelated learning experiences among pre-service english language teachers in indonesia dyah setyowati ciptaningrum c ompleted her study majorin g in i ct in edu cation in monash university, australia, in 2007, an d rec eiv ed h er ed.d degree from flin ders univ ersity, austr alia, in 2015. she is currently wor king at yogyakar ta s tate univer sity, in donesia, as a lecturer in english language educ ation depar tmen t. her r esearc h in ter est in c lu des th e u se of i ct in edu c ati on , en glish lan gu age learn in g and teac h in g, an d teac her profession al learn in g. 11-26 12 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 end in itself but it needs to be related to the content of school subject, good pedagogy, and classroom context (mishra & koehler, 2006). this study is important within the recent context of education in indonesia. the indonesian ministry of education (mone) has mentioned that indonesian teachers need to integrate ict in the learning and teaching process (ministry of national education, 2007a; ministry of national education, 2007b; ministry of national education, 2009). to support the ict integration mone has invested in the provision of ict infrastructure in schools (ministry of national education, 2010) by providing schools with computers, internet connection and online learning content (p. 28, 31). mone has also invested in various ict-related teacher professional developments (the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2007; belawati, 2005). ict has the potential to contribute to the improvement of indonesian students’ english language proficiency. the internet has made access to authentic materials, vast linguistic resources and an exhaustive range of materials in all languages easier. thanks to the web 2.0 technology, teachers and students of languages are able to communicate with each other across the globe. with ict, learning languages is no longer confined within school walls. students’ preferred learning styles can also be catered for by the use of ict. however, this potential of ict will be realized if teachers’ use of ict in the classroom is guided by principles of good curriculum design and pedagogy for teaching english. within this context, the role of pre-service teacher education becomes crucial as it serves as the initial and primary source of teachers’ knowledge. putnam and borko (2000) argue that “how a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, become a fundamental part of what is learned” (p. 4). what teachers learned during their pre-service study would influence the way they teach as in-service teachers. teachers’ knowledge base needs to be expanded to include knowledge of ict use in education that is closely connected with curriculum and good pedagogy. tpack has become the framework for restructuring teacher education programs in preparing teachers to teach with technology. there have been a number of studies that develop instruments to measure the teachers’ tpack (koehler & mishra, 2005; koh, chai, & tsai, 2010; sahin, 2011; schmidt et al., 2009/2010). koehler and mishra (2005) conducted a survey to assess the impact of a certain course on educational technology in influencing the participants’ perception of their understanding of content, pedagogy, and technology. thus, this instrument is subject-specific. schmidt et al. (2009/2010) designed a survey that measured teachers’ understanding of each component of tpack. even though they claim that their survey was designed for general contexts and multiple content areas (p. 128), this survey is still content and context specific as it is designed to be used by k-12 pre-service teachers in the u. s. who are prepared to teach science, mathematics, social studies, and literacy. however, the items within each of these subjects are noticeably similar while there are differences in the content and pedagogy of each subject. sahin (2011) also developed a tpack survey for more general use. his survey is intended to measure the tpack of pre-service teachers regardless of their major. koh, chai, and tsai’s (2010) instrument was designed for general use as well but 13 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 within singapore educational contexts. since the tpack framework itself indicates that the effective use of technology has to be context-specific, the instrument needs to be specifically developed for a particular school subject within the unique classroom context surrounding the teaching of that subject. teacher knowledge is influenced by their learning experience. research on effective teacher professional development (pd) suggests that ict-related teacher pd should value teachers as adult learners and be conducted in a constructivist instructional approach to facilitate meaningful learning (hawley and valli, 1999; garet, porter, desimone, birman, & yoon, 2001; desimone, 2009). most importantly, ict-related teacher pd needs to be seen as a systematic effort by taking into consideration teachers’ contextual factors in the pd design to influence changes in teachers’ classroom practices to enhance student learning (guskey, 2000; desimone, 2009). the existing survey instruments on tpack were designed for the educational context of the western, developed countries that have different sociocultural factors from indonesia and they did not attempt to tap teachers’ perceptions on their ictrelated learning experience. besides, there is a lack of data on how the principles of quality ict-related teacher pd work in the indonesian educational context. therefore, it is important to design an instrument that can measure the level of tpack of indonesian pre-service teachers and their perceptions concerning the quality of their ict-related learning experiences. considering the existing instruments are usually written for school subjects such as math, science, and social studies, the present study modifies the work of schmidt et al. (2009/2010) and sahin (2011) on the tpack survey by incorporating indonesian english language teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge into the teachers’ tpack measurement instruments. since the tpack level of indonesian efl pre-service teachers and their learning experience that shape the current development of their tpack have not been studied yet, this study attempts to bridge this gap. thus, the question addressed in this study is whether the survey instrument developed in this study valid and reliable to measure the tpack levels of the english language pre-service teachers at a teacher training institution in yogyakarta, indonesia. the questionnaire may become a basis in evaluating the outcome of pre-service education institutions in indonesia, particularly their graduates’ readiness to use ict in their pedagogical practices. the questionnaire may also be useful to inform the development of effective interventions to assist the indonesian english language pre-service teachers in developing their tpack. foreign language teachers’ tpack the idea of tpack has been built on shulman’s notion of pedagogical content knowledge (1986, 1987). shulman (1987), as cited in mishra and koehler (2006), argues that teacher’s knowledge consists of “content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contexts and knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds” (p. 8). he went further by stating that content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge intersected in the minds of the teachers (figure 1); 14 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 thus, making the pedagogical content knowledge (pck) central in the body of knowledge of teaching. mishra and koehler (2006) propose a framework that includes the integration of technological knowledge into the pedagogical content knowledge. they stated that in order to realize the potential of ict in the teaching and learning process, teachers needed to develop a knowledge that showed a connection and interaction among technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge (figure 1). in addition to shulman’s categorization of teacher’s knowledge, mishra & koehler’s framework yields to the development of technology knowledge, technological content knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge and technological pedagogical content knowledge. technology knowledge (tk) refers to the skills to use the technology. teachers need to show the ability to use the standard technology like the black/white board, textbooks, visual aids, or the new technology like the internet and digital video. including in this knowledge are teachers’ skills to operate computer system and hardware, and use software tools like word processors, powerpoint, spreadsheet, web browsers, e-mail, and instant messaging. digital technology is continuously changing. it is imperative for teachers to have the ability to keep up and adapt with the changes in technology. in addition, teachers should also need to decide whether the technology supports or hinders the attainment of the purpose of the lesson (mishra & koehler, 2008). figure 1: technological pedagogical content knowledge as a result of the blending of technology knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge (koehler & mishra, 2008, p. 12). technological content knowledge (tck) includes the ability to select the appropriate technology tool to deliver the subject matter since technology can support or impede the learning of the subject matter. the nature of the ideas in the subject matter drives the selection process. this is a combination of content knowledge and technology knowledge. richards (1998), as cited in van olphen (2008), argues that language teachers’ content knowledge includes an understanding of linguistics components (phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, socio-linguistics, pragmatics), second language acquisition, cross-cultural awareness, and the development of language proficiency skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). tck for foreign language teachers can be defined as “the body of knowledge that teachers have about their target language and its culture and how technology is used to represent this knowledge” (van olphen, 2008, p. 113). technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk) is the interaction between technology and pedagogy. teachers have a repertoire of teaching strategies and they should be able to skillfully select the one that best represents the idea in the subject matter 15 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 and suits the students’ context or characteristics such as age, fluency/mastery level of the topic, learning style, or background knowledge. with technology, the complexity increases. teachers need to understand how technology can change the teaching and learning. there are different technology tools that can be used for a task. the selection of the appropriate tool is “based on its fitness, strategies for using the tool’s affordances, and knowledge of pedagogical strategies and the ability to apply those strategies for use of technologies. this includes knowledge of tools for maintaining class records, attendance, and grading, and knowledge of generic technology-based ideas such as webquests, discussion boards, and chat rooms” (mishra & koehler, 2006, p. 1028). technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) is the heart of effective teaching using technology. it requires “an understanding of how to represent concepts with technologies, pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content; knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help students learn; knowledge of students’ prior knowledge and theories of epistemology; and knowledge of how technologies can be used to build on existing knowledge and to develop new epistemologies or strengthen old ones” (mishra & koehler, 2008, p. 10). according to the american council of teachers of foreign languages (actfl, 2002) program standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers, the knowledge that foreign language teachers should be able to demonstrate consists of the following six content standards: (1) language, linguistics, comparisons; (2) cultures, literatures, cross-disciplinary concepts; (3) language acquisition theories and instructional practices; (4) integration of standards into curriculum and instruction; (5) assessment of languages and cultures; (6) professionalism. the teacher of english to speakers of other languages (tesol) also released a document containing a set of standards that need to be made in preparing foreign language teachers. briefly, teacher candidates are expected to show proficiency in the following five domains, each is divided into a number of standards: (1) language; (2) culture; (3) instruction; (4) assessment; (5) professionalism. explanations, rubrics, and performance indicators of the standards and domains are provided in these two documents. the knowledge that is covered in these documents incorporate the notion of pedagogical content knowledge proposed by shulman (1986; 1987). using mishra & koehler’s concept of tpack, van olphen (2008, p. 117) states that meaningful technology integration in language teaching entails the following condition: a) an understanding of how linguistic and cultural concepts can be represented using technology b) educational approaches to language teaching that draw from socio-constructivist philosophies to develop students’ language and cultural competence c) an awareness of what facilitates or hinders the acquisition of language and the development of language competence and how technology, specifically call or cmc, can revamp common problems that students ordinarily face d) an awareness of students’ previous knowledge, and particularly knowledge of second language acquisition and cognitive development theories 16 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 e) an understanding of how current and emerging technologies can be used to advance present knowledge and to develop new epistemologies and sustain previous ones. quality learning in developing foreign language teachers’ tpack learning for teachers is an ongoing and continuous process which also includes activities that are embedded in their daily lives (desimone, 2009). ref lecting, reading journal or magazine, group discussion, teacher network or study group, selfor observer examination of the teachers’ practice, teachers’ individual activities, such as engagement in educative online venues are examples of teacher learning activities (desimone, 2009). thus, there are different forms of learning that can be performed by teachers to improve their knowledge on ict integration. technology related teacher professional development shows a movement from one-size-fits-all type of training or workshops that focus on showing teachers how to use the technology hardware and software (denning & selinger, 1999) to those that are conducted over time with the element of follow-up learning and feedback (cole, simkins & penuel, 2002; kariuki, franklin, & duran, 2001; mulqueen, 2001). studies on teachers’ learning should focus on the critical features of teachers’ learning experiences (desimone, 2009). several studies (campbell, mcnamara, and gilroy, 2004; garet, porter, desimone, birman, & yoon, 2001) conclude that teachers’ learning models can impact student achievement if they have the following features: 1. longer in duration in terms of contact hours plus follow-up in order to be sustainable 2. actively engage teachers in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual contexts 3. school-based 4. provide a degree of autonomy for teachers to design and choose the topics and types of pd that suit their need and contexts 5. promote peer collaboration and community building 6. have a clear goal toward student achievement 7. provide access to new technologies for teaching and learning tpack framework has been used recently to underline models of professional development. learning-by-design approach is an example where the tpack framework and the critical features of teacher learning are used. in this model of teacher learning, teachers need to construct artifacts (such as online courses, digital video, podcasts, and so on) based on the content of the subjects taught by the teachers to be used in their own classroom (angeli & valanides, 2009; beckett et al., 2003; cole, simkins & penuel, 2002; keller, hixon, bonk, & ehman, 2004; koehler, mishra, & yahya, 2007; mulqueen, 2001). koehler and mishra (2005) mention that learning by design approach focuses teachers’ attention on a problem they might encounter in thei r practi ce; then the y wo rk collaboratively with other participants to investigate the ways in which technology can be used to address the problem. this approach is informed by the principles of social constructivism or constructionism with the participants actively construct their knowledge on a particular topic with the help of their peers by creating artifacts that meet their teaching goals. design projects lead to sustained inquiry and revision of ideas (koehler & mishra, 2005). learning in this kind of environment hap17 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 pens informally and within the immediate context of the participants which results in deeper understanding of the topic. problem-based learning also influences this approach since the length of the program is extended than the traditional one-shot type of training, the activities to solve the ‘realworld’ problems are learner centered, interdisciplinary, and ‘ill-structured’ where there can be more than one solution to the problem (koehler & mishra, 2005). this kind of learning environment required a pedagogical shift on the role of the learners and the teacher/instructor. the learners have to be like an ‘apprentice’ who investigate the problem and find solutions with the help of their peers (who might have more or less knowledge on the topic under investigation) in the actual context of practice. the teachers/instructors assist learners to understand the content, provide them with feedback, mentor and coach, and manage the learning context and setting. they no longer become the main source of information who transmit their knowledge to their students. hence, learning by design approach reflects the principles of transformational adult learning. it allows the participants to exercise self-directedness (brookfield, 1991), provides more learners’ engagement, and builds connections with their real need and context (eraut, 2007; borko, 2004). there are also opportunities to critically reflect on their experiences in learning and teaching as well as building a learning community. the whole process results in the ownership of the program, a sense of agency. this kind of learning environment creates meaningful learning experiences that will highly likely make the learning sustained even after the program has finished (lawless & pellegrino, 2007). method the purpose of this study is to develop an instrument that can be used to examine the relationship between the technology-related learning experiences of the english language pre-service teachers at a teacher training institution in yogyakarta, indonesia, and their current level of technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). in line with this purpose, the survey of technology use, teaching, and technology-related learning experiences among pre-service english language teachers was constructed. survey design is the appropriate method underlying this study. according to creswell (2011), survey research design is a quantitative research procedure where a sample or the entire population of people complete a set of questions (questionnaire) to describe the opinions, attitude, behaviours, or characteristics of the population. in order to investigate the validity and reliability of this instrument, it needs to be tested by sending the instrument to a sample of english language pre-service teachers in yogyakarta, indonesia and asking them to complete it. since the population of english language pre-service teachers in yogyakarta is quite large and geographically dispersed, survey design enables this study to collect information from a few respondents to describe the characteristics of the whole population, which is cost effective and time efficient (salant & dillman, 1994). since survey design does not rely on observation and long, structured or semi-structured interview that utilise open-ended questions to collect data, survey design cannot provide the depth of understanding that interview and observational techniques provide (salant & dillman, 1994). in order to address this issue, the instrument designed 18 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 in this study included two essay (open-ended) questions and two semi-closed-ended questions to elicit qualitative information from the respondents. instrument development reviewing the literature around the existing surveys used to measure teachers’ tpack was the first step conducted in the development of the instrument in this study. the instrument used was adapted from schmidt et al. (2009/2010) and sahin (2011) to measure technological pedagogical content knowledge of indonesian english language pre-service teachers at a teacher training institution in indonesia. this study’s instrument focused on the specific content and pedagogical knowledge related to learning and teaching foreign language, i.e. the english language. the literature around teacher learning was also consulted in order to develop the items about the ict-related learning experiences of the english language pre-service teachers. there are five domains in the questionnaire. four domains measure tpack perceptions on technological knowledge (tk), technological content knowledge (tck), technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), and technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). one domain measures the pre-service teachers’ perceptions on their ict-related learning experiences. demographic questions are included to identify the characteristics of the respondents in order to understand gender differences or relationships between teachers who have access to technologies at home and those who do not. the tk domain collects information on english language pre-service teachers’ skills in operating technological hardware and software, which are generally available in the context of these teachers. the tck domain covers questions about the teachers’ use of technology in enhancing their knowledge on the non-teaching topics they have enrolled at the english language and education study program. the tpk domain aims to collect information on the teachers’ use of technology to improve their knowledge and skills in teaching. the tpack domain contains questions about the interrelationship among technology, content and pedagogical knowledge that influence the teachers’ english language and teaching skills. the questions in the ict-related learning experiences domain are designed to collect information on the teachers’ perceptions on their learning experiences that might inform their level of tpack. this questionnaire uses multiple types of questions and response formats which are carefully constructed to minimize common responses or common method variance which can cause measurement error and mislead conclusions (podsakoff, mackenzie, & lee, 2003). unlike the instruments designed by schmidt et al. (2009/2010) and sahin (2011) where they used the same question and response format which raise an issue concerning ‘consistency motif’ of the respondents (podsakoff, mackenzie, & lee, 2003), this questionnaire also incorporates different types of questions that require the use of different response formats. initially, there was a total of 64 items in this instrument. most of the items (36 items) used fivepoint likert-type response scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ with the inclusion of ‘neutral’ option. 18 other items were also based on five-point likert-type scale, but the options were labelled differently (from ‘very competent’ to ‘not competent’ with the addition of ‘not 19 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 applicable’ option). research surrounding the number of options in response scale has been inconclusive (lietz, 2008). for example, nagata, ido, shimizu, misao, and matsuura study’s (1996) showed that the 5-point scale was the easiest of the other types of response scales to complete when applied to instruments for assessing health status. finn and peng’s study (2009), however, showed that seven category responses outperformed five category responses for both likert and semantic differential item formats when scaling marketing stimuli. cook, cella, boespflug, and amtmann (2010) argued that four to five response categories were better than two to three. however, their study also found that more than five categories did not necessarily improve the reliability, person separation, or validity of scores. thus, five-point response categories were adopted in the initial development of this study’s questionnaire on tpack and technology related learning experiences among pre-service english language teachers in indonesia. in the questionnaires, two items adopt ordering and ranking type of question, two items are written in multiple choice/selection, and 1 item is written in openended question. respondents was also informed that their answers would be anonymous, there were no right or wrong answer, and their answers would not be used for any marking purposes to reduce ‘mood state’ effect (podsakoff, mackenzie, & lee, 2003). research site and participants the sur vey was crea ted online b y using surveygizmo 14-day trial program. the link of this survey was sent to 133 english language pre-service teachers of a teacher training institution in yogyakarta, indonesia, who were listed on the researcher’s facebook friend list. the 133 pre-service teachers made up this study’s target population. their response indicated their informed consent. the first reminder to participate on the survey was sent two days after the survey was launched, followed by the second reminder two days later. the reminders were posted on the researcher’s facebook wall and sent to the participants’ inbox messages. thirty-seven responses were received. out of this number, fifteen responses were partial (incomplete). a number of respondents sent the researcher personal messages through facebook regarding technical problems they encountered when trying to complete the survey. it appeared that some of the respondents were not familiar with this kind of online survey and stopped completing the survey after they clicked the first ‘next’ button, which explained the high occurrence of partial responses. thus, there were only 22 respondents who were selected as the sample of this study. as for the language that was used in the questionnaire, it was decided to use english since the respondents of this study are pre-service english language teachers who understand english well. the procedure of the survey development in this study is illustrated in figure 2. literature review research questions survey questions development cognitive interview pilot test validity and reliability check add/delete/ change questions figure 2: the model of survey procedure of this study delimitation and limitation of the study in order to provide a good estimate of the population characteristics, there are several factors that 20 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 need to be considered in conducting survey research (salant & dillman, 1994; creswell, 2011). the number of sample needs to be as large as possible to ensure that the sample represents the target population. every member of the population also has the same chance of being selected for the sample. the non-responsive respondents in the sample should have similar characteristics with the people who give responses in the sample. the instrument needs to be well-constructed to avoid any ambiguity both in the questions and in the responses and rigorous administration procedure needs to be implemented to obtain as large a return rate as possible. due to the limited time under which this study needs to be completed, rigorous sampling technique is not possible. it is the instrument development that is emphasized in this study. expert review as an evidence of validity was unlikely to be conducted due to the funding limitation of this study. thus, the effort to achieve a degree of validity and reliability was performed by implementing cognitive interviewing procedure (desimone & le floch, 2004) and by carrying out statistical tests on the responses (i.e. cronbach alpha and factor analysis). to achieve stronger reliability and validity, the initial survey items of this study were modified by the deletion of several items based on the result of the validity and reliability tests. according to field (2009, p. 681), a second run of factor analysis is essential if the survey items undergoes a number of changes as a result of the statistical tests. with the limited scope of the paper, a second run of factor analysis was not conducted. moreover, the limited sample size of this study made the application of factor analysis to the whole items not viable. data analysis qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to analyse the degree of the reliability and validity of the instrument. a cognitive interview was applied after the first construction of the survey items. the internal consistency of each domain in this instrument was analysed by using cronbach’s alpha reliability technique. factor analysis was implemented to examine the construct validity of each domain. the two essay (open-ended) questions and two semi-closed-ended questions were not included in this analysis. results on the cognitive interviews after the initial survey was completed, cognitive interviews were conducted to 5 participants. cognitive interviews is a method to contribute to increase reliability and validity of surveys (desimone & le floch, 2004). based on the feedback gathered during the cognitive interviews, some items were revised (refer to appendix 1 for the cognitive interview results). the revision included the following: 1) removal of negative items, which were modified into positive statements, 2) removal of the adjective ‘appropriate,’ 3) addition of information to clarify meaning of the statements, such as ‘school work’ instead of ‘work’ only and an example of ‘difficult concept in english language,’ 4) removal of examples from some statements in tk section to avoid double barrel statement, 5) emphasis on the instruction of certain items (e.g. the ranking-type question) by formatting the sentence in the instruction with italic, bold, and colour, 21 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 6) simplification on the length of several statements, 7) addition of information to make the meaning of the statement clear (e.g. from ‘i do not know how to use technology to assess students’ performance’ into ‘when i teach later, i will know how to use technologies to assess students’ performance’), 8) change one of the ranking-type items to a semiclosed-ended type item, 9) addition of one open-ended item, and 10)removal of the neutral option from the response scale. research on the omission and inclusion of neutral option has been inconclusive (lietz, 2008). the decision to remove neutral option from the response scale in this survey was based on the result of the cognitive interview which appeared to support the findings that the introduction of neutral option would attract respondents to select this option when they were not completely sure about their answers (garland 1991; kalton et al. 1980; krosnick & helic 2000; o’muircheartaigh 2000; schumann & presser 1996, as cited in lietz, 2004). results on the factor analysis and cronbach’s alpha survey items need to be checked whether they relate to the construct that the study intended to measure (field, 2009). factor analysis is a technique for identifying groups or clusters of variables. each domain in this survey item was analysed by using factor analysis. after the application of factor analysis to validate this survey items, the reliability of the scale was examined using the cronbach’s alpha. technology knowledge domain the construct of this domain is about teachers’ skills to use technology. the factor analysis on the 22 items representing tk resulted in 7 components underlying this construct. these components may, or may not, relate to genuine sub-components of tk. special attention was given to the items with factor loadings below 0.40 (field, 2009). these items are presented in table 1. the result shows that each of these items has a much bigger factor loading in another component. having closely examined the items of variable tuttea3, tuttea5, tuttea6, tuttea7, tuttea 9, and tuttea12, it turned out that these items represent the same concept (i.e. ability in operating technologies). since there were 22 items in this scale (which represented the answers from the 22 sample of this study), it is suspected that the limited sample of this study may result in the low factor loading of these items. the decision was then made that all items that asked the preservice teachers’ ability in operating technologies (i.e. tuttea1 to tuttea17) were dropped since these items had a similarity to tuttea20 (‘i play around with different technologies’) which had much greater factor loading (.771). tutteea18 and tutteea19 item were also deleted since they appeared to have resemblance with tuttea20 item as well. technological content knowledge (tck) tck includes the ability to select the appropriate technology tool to deliver the subject matter. it is the relationship between content and technology. based on the factor analysis, two components had the eigenvalues over 1 and in combination 22 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 explained the 64.06% of the variance. it means that the 10 items reflected two constructs. the factor loadings were above.40 for each item (i.e..44 to.83). thus, all items were retained. technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk) the factor analysis extracted 2 components for this domain. since tpk is the interaction between technology and pedagogy, the 6 items in this domain may reflect these two concepts (technology and pedagogy). factor loadings were between.51 to.86. this result showed that the factor loadings were considered as good and accepted. no item was changed or deleted. technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) tpack is where technology, pedagogy, and content merge to create a unique notion of effective teaching using technologies. only one factor emerged as the underlying construct of this scale based on the factor analysis. the 6 items within this domain were built around one coherent construct. the factor loadings were between.64 to.90. all items were then retained. teachers’ technology-related learning experience (tle) this refers to the quality of learning experiences that can inf luence teachers’ development of tpack. it is predicted from the literature around effective teacher professional learning that teachers with positive or high-quality learning experiences will have a higher level of tpack and teachers’ with negative or poor learning experiences will have a lower level of tpack. the factor analysis extracted 2 components underlying this construct, each component has the eigenvalue over 1 which account for the 71.20% of the variance. this means that there are two constructs underlying the 6 items in tle domain. two items (tuttee53 ‘when technologies are used in my classroom, it is the lecturers who use technologies most of the time’ and tuttee54 ‘i am allowed to use any technology software/hardware i am familiar with in the classrooms’) needed special attention since their factor lo adin gs were. 267 and .003 res pect ivel y. tuttee53 item was then deleted since the question might be redundant with tuttee49 (‘my lecturers use technologies in the classrooms’) and the information asked was in fact implied in tuttee52 (‘when technologies are used in my classroom, it is the students who use technologies most of the time’). item tuttee54 was eliminated by considering its irrelevancy with the construct. the internal consistency of the set of items under each domain was investigated using cronbach’s alpha technique. table 2 illustrates the internal consistency from each domain. domain name cronbach alpha technological knowledge (tk) .82 technological content knowledge (tck) .86 technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk) .82 technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck) .87 technology-related learning experience (tle) .67 table 2: cronbach alpha for each domain the result in table 1 indicates that the internal consistency reliability for technology-related learning experience was low while the other domains had satisfactory scale. the questionable items 23 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 within the technology-related learning experience domain were examined. in line with the result of the factor analysis for this construct, items tuttee53 and tuttee54 needed to be dropped to increase the reliability of this domain. the cronbach’s alpha increased to.78 when these two items were dropped. as a result, a total of 21 items were eliminated from the survey, including 19 tk items and 2 tle items. conclusion efforts toward building the validity and reliability of the instrument had been performed by this study. the results suggest that this instrument is considered acceptable to be used in a larger scale of work that aims to investigate the role of preservice teachers’ experiences in learning to use ict in their pedagogical practice in inf luencing the development of their tpack. however, much work needs to be done with regards to further validating and revising the instrument. stronger validity and reliability should be the focus of future studies. this can be done by conducting expert review to build content validity, applying rigorous sampling techniques, and conducting validity and reliability tests on the qualitative types of the items in this instrument. a valid and reliable instrument will be beneficial in providing accurate feedback on ict-related teacher professional learning programs. references angeli, c., & valanides, n. (2009). epistemological and met hodo logi cal issues f or t he conceptualization, development, and assessment of ict–tpck: advances in technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck). computer & education, 52, 154-168. beckett, e. c., wetzel, k., chishlom, i. m., zambo, r., buss, r., padgett, h., et al. (2003). supporting technology integration in k-8 multicultural classrooms through professional development. techtrends, 47(5), 14-17. belawati, t. (2005). unesco meta-survey on the use of technologies in education: indonesia ict use in education. retrieved from http:// www.unescobkk.org/ fileadmin/user_upload/ ict/metasurvey/indonesia.pdf borko, h. (2004). professional development and teacher learning: mapping the terrain. educational researcher, 33(3). campbell, a., mcnamara, o., & gilroy, p. (2004). practitioner research and professional development in education. london: paul chapman. cole, k., simkins, m., & penuel, w. r. (2002). learning to teach with technology: strategies variable name item label component 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 tuttea3 ability in operating instant message .291 .255 -.218 .619 -.406 -.252 -.337 tuttea5 ability in operating weblog .310 .628 -.332 .058 -.400 -.352 -.057 tuttea6 ability in operating electronic mailing list .081 .219 .191 .676 .245 .008 .513 tuttea7 ability in operating podcast .341 .447 .638 .163 -.137 -.134 .074 tuttea9 ability in operating scanner .037 .185 .838 .193 -.050 .131 .055 tuttea12 ability in operating tablet computer .026 .536 .602 -.178 .038 -.316 -.214 table 1: component matrix of problematic items under the tk domain http://www.unescobkk.org/ 24 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 for inservice professional development. journal of technology and teacher education, 10(3), 431-455. cook, k. f., cella, d., boespf lug, e. l., & amtmann, d. (2010). is less more? a preliminary investigation of the number of response categories in self-reported pain. retrieved from h t t p : / / s ch o l a r. g o o g l e u s e rc o n t e n t . c o m/ scholar?q=cache:x7rupgwtrcgj:scholar.google.com/ +is+less+more%3f+a+preliminary+investigation+of+ the+number+of+response+categories+in+selfreported+pain&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 creswell, j. w. (2011). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). boston: pearson education. denning, t., & selinger, m. (1999). patterns of change and innovations in pre-service education. paper presented at the annual conference of site ’99 (society for information technology & teacher education, san antonio, texas. desimone, l. (2009). improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: toward better conceptualizations and measures. educational researcher, 38(3), 181-199. desimone, l. m., & le floch, k. c. (2004). are we asking the right questions? using cognitive interviews to improve surveys in education research. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 26(1), 1-22. eraut, m. (2007). learning from other people in the workplace. oxford review of education, 33(4), 403-422. field, a. (2009). discovering statistics using spss (3rd ed.). london: sage. finn, a., & peng, l. (2009). how many response categories best scale stimuli? retrieved from http://www.duplication.net.au/anzmac09/ papers/anzmac2009-146.pdf garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945. guskey, t. r. (2000). evaluating professional development. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. hawley, w. d., & valli, l. (1999). the essentials of professional development: a new consensus. in l. darling-hammond & g. sykes (eds.), teaching as the learning profession: handbook of theory and practice. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. kariuki, m., franklin, t., & duran, m. (2001). a technology partnership: lessons learned by mentors. journal of technology and teacher education, 9(3), 407-417. keller, j. b., hixon, e., bonk, c. j., & ehman, l. h. (2004). professional development that increases technology integration by k-12 teachers: influence of the tickit program. retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/journal/mar_08/ article01.htm koehler, m. j., & mishra, p. (2005). teachers learning technology by design. journal of computing in teacher education, 21(3), 94-102. koehler, m. j., mishra, p., & yahya, k. (2007). tracing the development of teacher knowledge in a design seminar: integrating content, pedagogy, and technology. computers & education, 49, 740-762. koehler, m. j., & mishra, p. (2008). introducing tpck. in aacte (ed.), the handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck) for educators. new york: routledge. http://www.duplication.net.au/anzmac09/ http://www.itdl.org/journal/mar_08/ 25 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 koh, j. h. l., chai, c. s., & tsai, c. c. (2010). examining the technological pedagogical content knowledge of singapore pre-service teachers with a large-scale survey. journal of computer assisted learning, 26(6), 563-573. lawless, k. a., & pellegrino, j. w. (2007). professional development in integrating technology into teaching and learning: knowns, unknowns, and ways to pursue better questions and answers. review of educational research, 77(4), 575-614. lietz, p. (2008). questionnaire design in attitude and opinion research: current state of an art. priorisierung in der medizin, for 655(13). retrieved from http://www.priorisierung-ind e r m e d i z i n . d e / d o c u m e n t s / f o r 6 5 5 _ nr13_lietz.pdf. ministry of national education. (2007a). peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional republik indonesia nomor 16 tahun 2007 tentang standar kualifikasi akademik dan kompetensi guru [the minister of national education regulation no. 16/2007 about teacher academic qualification and competency standard]. jakarta. ministry of national education. (2007b). peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional republic indonesia nomor 41 tahun 2007 tentang standard proses untuk satuan pendidikan dasar dan menengah [the minister of national education regulation no. 41/2007 about the standardize processed for primary and secondary level of education]. jakarta. ministry of national education. (2009). peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional republik indonesia nomor 78 tahun 2009 tentang penyelenggaraan sekolah bertaraf internasional pada jenjang pendidikan dasar dan menengah [the minister of national education regulation no. 78/2009 about the implementation of international standard school at primary and secondary level of education]. jakarta. ministry of national education. (2010). rencana strategis pendidikan 2010-2014 [strategic plan in education 2010-2014]. jakarta. mishra, p., & koehler, m. j. (2006). technological pedagogical content knowledge: a framework for teacher knowledge. teachers college record, 108(6), 1017-1054. mulqueen, w. e. (2001). technology in the classroom: lessons learned through professional development. education, 122(2), 248-256. nagata, c., ido, m., shimizu, h., misao, a., & matsuura, h. (1996). choice of response scale for health measurement: comparison of 4, 5, and 7-point scales and visual analogue scale. journal of epidemiology, 6(4), 192-197. podsakoff, p. m., mackenzie, s. b., & lee, j. (2003). common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the putnam, r. t., & borko, h. (2000). what do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning?. educational researcher, 29(1), 4-15. sahin, i. (2011). development of survey of technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack). the turkish online journal of educational technology, 10(1), 97-105. salant, p. a., & dillman, d. a. (1994). how to conduct your own survey. new york: wiley & sons, inc. schmidt, d. a., baran, e., thompson, a. d., mishra, p., koehler, m. j., & shin, t. s. (2009/ 2010). technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack): the development and validation of an assessment instruments for preservice http://www.priorisierung-in26 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 teachers. journal of research on technology in education, 42(2), 123-149. shulman, l. s. (1986). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2), 4-14. shulman, l. s. (1987). knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. harvard educational review, 57, 1-22. unesco (2007). initiating and managing sch ooln ets. ret riev ed f rom http :// www2.unescobkk.org/elib/publications/111/ van olphen, m. (2008). tpck an integrated framework for educating world language teachers. in aacte (ed.), the handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck) for educators. new york: routledge. http://www2.unescobkk.org/elib/publications/111/ pengantar juni 2016 abstract technology provides numerous assistances for education, particularly for language learning. by the presence of technology, students get exposures to internet which enables them to interact and communicate with native speakers, the experience of which may not be available for in-class activities in general. in other words, students are given chances to be exposed to a more interesting and interactive learning instruction. the implementation of e-learning, thus, becomes one alternative to teaching techniques which empowers students to be more active language users. this study highlights the integration of e-learning into language teaching and learning. it aims to investigate students’ perceptions on what opportunities and drawbacks e-learning brings to their language learning. this study involved a private university which offered some courses implementing elearning. during the courses, the students were required to participate in e-learning inside and outside the classroom. the activities included commenting on a thread, analysing a specific topic or case, submitting assignments, responding to other students’ comment or work, taking polls, doing quizzes, and accomplishing a project. the findings from interviewing the six participants revealed some issues related to how they perceived the opportunities that e-learning provided and also the drawbacks that e-learning created. keywords: e-learning, internet-based language learning, web-based activity, opportunities and drawbacks. background over the past few years, educational researchers have been investigating the impacts the technology offers to language learning (arkorful & abaidoo, 2014; e-learning implementation: its opportunities and drawbacks perceived by efl students fitria rahmawati received her bachelor degree in english education from universitas negeri jakar ta (unj) in 2009. then in early 2014, she earned her master’ degree in english language studies from sanata dharma university, yogyakar ta (usd). she currently teaches at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakar ta since 2013 joining the english education depar tment as a lecturer. her teaching areas include academic reading and writing, reading and writing for career development, academic presentation, digital technology in education, and research methodology. additionaly, her current research interests are technology in language learning, teaching strategies and media in writing skills, and teaching practicum implementation. 1-15 2 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 dargham, saeed, & mcheik, 2012; lam, lee, chan, & mcnaught, 2011). one of significances the technology brings into language learning is that teachers are able to deliver lessons more effectively. the development of technology has also significantly encouraged teachers to be more creative in utilizing technology to reach students’ learning outcomes. additionally, technology together with the advent of the internet, known as information communication and technology (ict), creates new opportunities for language students. there is a widespread belief that ict transforms teaching and learning processes from being highly teacher-dominated to studentcentered. the transformation the ict brings will then result in students’ increased learning achievements, which creates and allows opportunities for students to develop their language skills, communication skills, problem solving abilities, and critical thinking skills (ganderton, 1999; levy & kennedy, 2005; levy, 2010). the rapid development of ict, internet technologies, and web-based applications has initiated some efforts in universities all around the world to implement e-learning strategies. similarly, there has been a growing interest in developing an e-learning system in universities in indonesian contexts. university administrators design policies that strongly encourage teachers to incorporate e-learning in their subjects, although traditional ways of learning (e.g. face-toface class meetings) are still popular. in addition, departments pay more attention and allocate bigger fund to support the implementation of elearning within the departments. although there is much enthusiasm to fully develop e-learning systems, e-learning implementation, in general, is still very much in its infancy. the implementation of e-learning has not received an equal portion comparing to the face-toface learning. it happens because e-learning in most classes is used only for additional learning which means that it is used as a supplementary learning tool for the traditional face-to-face learning. with regard to the fact, there is a need for university administrators to increase their understanding and knowledge on the successful adoption and diffusion of e-learning (dudeney & hockly, 2007). this article, therefore, aims to present students’ perception on the implementation of e-learning in a language learning context. students’ perceptions are mainly related to opportunities and drawbacks of the e-learning implementation. reviews of related studies, theories underlining this study, and the findings of the study are discussed too later. literature review the concept of e-learning is subject to constant change. the followings are definitions of elearning proposed by some scholars. lee and lee (2006) define e-learning as a self-paced or realtime delivery of training and education over the internet to a user device. liao and lu (2008) define e-learning as education delivered or learning conducted by web techniques, while alonso, lópez, manrique, and viñes (2005) believe that e-learning is the use of new multimedia technologies and the internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services, as well as collaboration. the other definition of e-learning is proposed by burdette, greer, and woods (2013) who state that “e-learning is defined as a program or course 3 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 in which students receive some or all of their education over a networked system such as internet” (p. 65). accordingly, e-learning could be defined as any use of web and internet technologies to create learning experiences. the literature acknowledges five types of elearning in educational context: learner-led elearning, facilitated e-learning, instructor-led e-learning, embedded e-learning, and telementored e-learning or ecoaching (horton & horton, 2003). the first type called learner-led e-learning is also known as “standalone or self-directed e-learning” (horton & horton, 2003, p. 14) which provides course materials to students and allows them to experience independent learning. the next type of elearning is facilitated e-learning, which involves collaborative learning. this type of e-learning provides facilities which allow students to discuss with other students as well as teachers via forums and chats that are related to an assignment. the third e-learning type, according to horton & horton (2003), is instructor led e-learning which consists of instructors’ presentations via real-time webcast technology, and could include audio and video conferences, speaking, screen sharing and whiteboard applications. students’ direct participation here is via audio, video or instant messages. the other type is embedded e-learning. it is when teachers embed videos and web pages to enhance students’ learning. last but not least is the telementored e-learning which involves a combination of distance learning and the use of technology. for example, students are given printed material, and then instructors provide them with extra guidance and information about this material via video conferences, instant messages, and internet phones (gulbahar, 2009). e-learning is being implemented today in various forms and through various tools or software which have been enormously created and offered. some of the tools are ranging from emails, blogs, wikis, e-portfolios, animation, video links, to social networkings, like yahoo messenger, facebook, twitter, youtube, moodle, edmodo, yammer, and schoology. email is a web feature which enables students to communicate with the teacher and other students and also enables students to submit completed assignments. a blog is essentially a web page with regular diary or journal entries (dudeney & hockly, 2007). it is increasingly being used by innovative teachers to place educational materials, visuals, exercises, and assignments. the other tool is wiki. dudeney and hockly (2007) define wiki as a public website, or public web page, which visitors can add, edit, or modify the existing content as they wish. in a learning context, wiki can be used to set up collaborative writing project where students work in group to create a content of a specific topic and other groups revise or modify it (hu & johnston, 2011). in recent years, several studies have been published exploring perceptions of e-learning implementation in language learning context. studies regarding e-learning implementation in taiwan (pituch & lee, 2004), in hong kong (lam, lee, chan & mcnaught, 2011), in oman (tanveer, 2011), in egypt (gamal & aziz, 2011), and in ghana (tagoe, 2012), confirm that the vast majority of the students have a ready access to web-enabled personal computers and web features and have their own personal digital devices. they also use a wide range of digital features and web features in their everyday lives, 4 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 either for communication or for forming social networks. a study by tanveer (2011) reveals that e-learning allows students to be autonomous, offers various activities, promotes intrinsic motivation to learn, facilitates introvert students to interact better, permits gaining meaningful study experience and time management skills, and allows teachers to have a more studentcentered form of learning. e-learning, in spite of its significances, it also has some drawbacks. a study conducted by ku and lohr (2003) reveals that one of the frequently reported disadvantages of e-learning is on technical problems faced by students while trying to access the web. the problems include frequent disruption to the internet connection, slow loading, and incompatibility of software and hardware. moreover, keller and cernerud (2002) argued that the most observable weaknesses related to the use of e-learning are inconsistent use of e-learning in different courses, technical problems, too much dependence on computers, and lack of human contact. theoretical framework since students’ perception might be influenced by several factors, hence, there are several theories that can be applied regarding the infusion of technology in language learning context, particularly e-learning. some of the variables which have been identified as major predictive factors affecting the students’ perception are age, gender, previous experience of technology, technology acceptance and individual learning styles (keller and cernerud, 2002). two theories underlining this study are the technology acceptance model (tam) developed by davis (1989) and the diffusion of innovation theory proposed by rogers (1995). the learning theory that is best applied to elearning is the technology acceptance model (tam) developed by davis (1989). tam has been widely applied in the area of technology use. tam, as proposed by davis (1989), describes that a person’s behavioural intention to use e-learning is determined by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. perceived usefulness is the belief that using a particular technology will improve one’s performance, while perceived ease of use is the belief that using technology will be effortless (mahdizadeh, biemans, & mulder, 2008). although tam’s ultimate goal is on its actual usage, it could also be used to explain why individuals might accept or not accept a particular technology such as e-learning (jung, loria, mostaghel & saha, 2008). in addition, in this model, perceived ease of use is believed to affect perceived usefulness, and both of them affect the computer technology adoption. another applicable theory to e-learning is the diffusion of innovation theory proposed by rogers (1995). when investigating the infusion of technology in education, especially in higher education setting, diffusion of innovations theory is one of the most appropriate models. rogers (1995) proposed a number of users’ perceptions which might affect the adoption of innovation. the perceptions include relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity. he defines a relative advantage as the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the comparable product it overtakes, while the compatibility is as the degree of consistency with existing values, past habits, and experiences of the users 5 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 of the innovation. the last perception is regarding the complexity which he defines as the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. therefore, the study uses the two models in investigating the students’ perceptions on the e-learning implementation in language learning. the perceptions being investigated are regarding the opportunities in terms of perceived usefulness and ease of use as proposed by davis (1989) and the drawbacks regarding to complexity as proposed by rogers (1995). methodology six students of an english department in a private university in indonesia participated in this research. the department’s curriculum showed that the department strongly encouraged the use of e-learning. this can be observed from some of the courses offered by the department, such as ict in language learning, innovative technology, and digital technology in language learning. other subjects also integrated the use of e-learning as additional learning outside the class. the six students, ratri, dani, devi, rina, sasty, and laksita were seniors at the time the data were collected and were enrolled in the courses mentioned earlier. purposive sampling was implemented to select the participants. according to creswell (2012), “in purposive sampling, the researcher intentionally selects individuals and sites to learn or understand the phenomenon” (p.206). students who actively participated in the e-learning activities were chosen. in this case, they who actively gave responses, replied to the posts, gave comments and feedbacks and also helped the other friends. since students who were active and contributed themselves in the discussion were considered to have richer experience than the others. thus, they can provide more information and perception about the e-learning implementation, as supported by creswell (2012) that “the standard in choosing of participants and sites is whether they are “information rich” (p. 206). the in-depth interviews were all recorded and conducted in bahasa indonesia with which the participants felt convenient. all names were pseudonyms. qualitative analysis involves categorization and interpretation of data in terms of common themes in the way it serves the overall portrait of the case (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011). for the present study, themes for analysis were identified from re-reading of the interviews scripts. in other word, data collected from the interview were transcribed verbatim, then categorized into the corresponding theme. in general, data were analyzed in terms of the three major themes which were the students’ perception on: first, the use of online learning toward the students’ language skills; second, the use of online learning toward the students’ language skills; and last is the drawback e-learning implementation. additionally, several efforts were made to address validity and reliability issues in the qualitative data analysis. possible factual errors in the interview data were checked by cross-checking. the transcribed interviews were delivered to each participant for review. findings and discussion with the emergence of the internet and new technologies, e-learning has become one of promising solutions for the universities which are currently in an environment of an intense 6 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 change. investigating students’ perception toward e-learning technologies is important because it is one of the most effective factors for the successful e-learning implementation (gamal & aziz, 2011; keller & cernerud, 2002). students’ perception on the opportunities of e-learning implementation in language learning with regard to the e-learning implementation, the participants of the study claimed to have received opportunities from e-learning. the data shows that e-learning “offered flexibility”, “provided updated information”, “provided rich, unlimited resources”, “encouraged students to read”, “helped less active students become more active”, and “was fast and simpler”. e-learning offers flexibility. from the interviews, flexibility became the main opportunity that e-learning offered. flexibility referred to the ease of access to which students could access at any time and from anywhere. ratri, dani, devi, sasty, and laksita admitted that e-learning offered flexibility in terms of time and place. in the interview they stated: one of opportunities is flexibility where we can access e-learning from any where, at any time, and in any situation. we only need to have gadget and internet connection. e-learning is not limited to space and time. so, it is more flexible (ratri). the opportunity of e-learning is it is more flexible in terms of time and place, as it can be done at any time and in anywhere (dani). the opportunity of e-learning is that we can learn from any place not only from the classroom. as long as we have connection, we can learn (devi). e-learning is more flexible. we do not need to come to the class. also, we can do it in everywhere (sasty). the opportunity of e-learning is flexibility. it can be done at any time and in anywhere as long as there is an internet access. it is flexible in time and place (laksita). the participants made some strong points regarding the flexibility in e-learning. first, elearning was not limited to space and time. second, by having e-learning, students could learn from any places, not only from classroom. the last, to be able to access e-learning, a reliable internet connection was imperative. that elearning provides flexibility in learning is supported by smart & cappel (2006) who argued that e-learning brings the flexibility and convenience because e-learning allows students to access the lesson anytime and anywhere, and students can complete the lesson units at their own pace. e-learning provides updated information. the second opportunity of e-learning perceived by the participants was that it provided updated material and information. ratri, devi, and rina shared their experience that they could immediately get updated information or material from the teacher. updated information as internet always provides updated information, even in a second, it has new information (ratri). we become more updated. so, if the lecturer gives information or assignment, we can directly know it, as there is a notification. so, we do not need to meet the lecturers and do not need to wait until the d-day we can know what the news or the assignment is (devi). the opportunity of e-learning is on the updated 7 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 material (rina). as asserted by ally (2008), the materials in elearning can be updated, and students can access and see the changes immediately. teachers can also easily give students direct information based on their needs related to the course and the materials. thus, besides getting news or materials related to the course, students can also get other updated information from the internet. e-learning provides rich, unlimited resources. the next opportunity of e-learning the students perceived was that e-learning provided rich and unlimited resources, as dani and rina stated, such as references for assignment, learning materials, and examples or quizes for language skills practices. dani revealed that using e-learning, students became freer as it was not face to face. in e-learning, he added, they could freely explore resources, and found knowledge. elearning provides free and easy access for students to find out the resources which are helpful for them in completing an assignment. a similar comment was made by rina, who stated that elearning also provided them with rich, unlimited resources. it is a common sense to admit the fact that using e-learning in learning process provides not only teachers but also students with abundant of useful resources. e-learning encompasses technology, websites, and internet access. these features of e-learning allowed rapid access to resources, and random access to information or hyperlink. e-learning encourages reading. another finding on the opportunity of e-learning was that it encouraged students to read. ratri made a strong note about such opportunity. she pointed out that e-learning could encourage students to read more as when they joined e-learning, they would find rich resources. she then added, activities in e-learning encouraged them to look for other information or sources outside the forum. since e-learning permitted students to visit other students’ pages, they could learn from reading and comparing their friends’ work to make improvement on their own work. besides, e-learning allowed teacher to provide addditonal suggested readings which were easily accessed by students to encourage reading and enrich students’ knowledge on a particicular lesson topic. ratri’s response indicated that by joining elearning, it could encourage her to have more reading. since most of the instructions in elearning were delivered in written forms, and most of the activities were commenting, replying, and responding in a discussion forum, students were required to read in order to be able to do the task instructed. first, in order to be able to finish the assignment correctly, it was necessary for students to read the written instruction carefully. secondly, in the discussion forum, students were required to comment on a certain topic provided by the teacher. then, students were also required to respond to the other students’ comment. thirdly, e-learning facilitates various language skills activities, one of them is reading comprehension. in the activity, teacher provided several passages related to the lesson topic, while students were required to comprehend the text and have a discussion on it. e-learning helps less active students become more active. the finding also revealed that elearning provided a chance for less active students to become more active. in this context, less active students refer to students who did not actively 8 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 participate in the class activity. it could also represent students who were hesitant to speak up although they know what to say as a cause of the indonesian cultures. ratri remarked that elearning gave more chances for less active students who were usually not confident performing in the classroom to actively engage in online discussion forum. she explained: related to personality, we found some less-active students in the class. students who have less participation, they got more chance to have improvement in e-learning rather than in class. if in the class they felt shy or not confident, their personality improved better (ratri). this finding is in line with soliman (2014) who argues that e-learning allows students who are introverts to take a chance in interacting virtually through forums and chats which lead to enhance communicative competency. in addition, the participants in tanveer’s (2011) study also confirmed that e-learning allows them to be autonomous, offers various activities, promotes intrinsic motivation to learn, and facilitates introvert students to interact better. those opportunities were attained since e-learning permits different type of communication which enables students to interact with their peers without meeting face to face and without feeling worry of being bullied if they make mistake. e-learning is fast and simpler. the last finding on the opportunity of e-learning perceived by the participants was that it was fast and simpler. ratri maintained that e-learning was fast since students can directly find out updated course information provided by either their teacher or their classmates. besides, it also provided push-up notification for any activity in the online class, such as notification on who currently commented or replied a post or what information was currently posted. the same point was expressed by sasty who informed that e-learning did not take time, as for her, if she met face to face, she needed to spend some times on the trip. therefore, she concluded that e-learning was simpler. simple meant that it was easy to use and was applicable to any context. this finding inferred that elearning benefitted them as it provided essential course information faster. besides, the features of e-learning allowed a simple way of delivery. students’ perception on the drawback of e-learning implementation in language learning as with any approach to learning, there are also limitations to consider. possible drawbacks involved in innovation particularly used in language learning should not be underestimated. thus, the other purpose of this study regarding the use of e-learning was investigating the drawbacks or complexity that e-learning had created perceived by students. during the interviews, the participants shared their stories with regard to the drawbacks of e-learning implementation. they expressed that e-leaning, in terms of social interaction, “decreased direct interactions” and “decreased oral communication”. in addition, “it was costly”. other drawback they remarked is in terms of technical problems, such as e-learning required “adequate technological skills” and “good internet access or connection”. last but not least, e-learning “did not allow actual or direct teachers’ feedback” and “increased possibility of plagiarism and cheating”. e-learning decreases social interaction. ratri, 9 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 dani, devi, and sasty remarked that e-learning decreased social interaction. they argued that compared to the classroom activity, the interaction atmosphere in e-learning was limited as the activities were conducted virtually. ratri explained that the drawback of e-learning was that it did not allow face-to-face interaction atmosphere among students and teachers. she explained further that on one side, e-learning was good, but on the other side, teachers cannot disregard face to face learning. the same point was experienced by dani who maintained, “elearning decreased interaction among students”. he also explained “as the interaction was limited, then it seemed passive”. he considered that elearning generated a passive interaction as its interaction was limited to a written language. in addition to ratri and dani, devi explicitly stated, “also, in my opinion, e-learning reduces the frequency of meeting up with friends and with the teacher, so, it reduces the social interaction”. the last participant who agreed that e-learning decreased face-to-face interaction was sasty. she found out that e-learning hindered her from direct social interaction. she then argued that since it was a virtual learning, she could not interact face-to-face so that she could not see facial expression. the facial expression belongs to body language which is significance in communication. it helps students understand utterances better. the finding infers that e-learning, to some extent, provided limited access for students and their teachers to interact as it is done virtually. this finding is in support with young’s (1997) study, which revealed that one of the most prominent weaknesses of e-learning implementation is the absence of direct interaction, not only between students and teachers, but also among colleague students. from the findings, even though students and teacher could experience face-to-face communication virtually by the support of video call applications such as yahoo messenger, skype, google hangout, and tanggo, the atmosphere was different, and was still limited by the delayed response and unclear voice depending on the connection. e-learning decreases oral communication. the second drawback of e-learning perceived by the participants was that it decreased oral communication. ratri noted that e-learning decreased oral communication by stating that although she could interact with her classmates and her teacher during the e-learning activity, it was not a direct communication. she added, “students and teacher were lacked of oral communication”. for her, students should also have had interpersonal interaction which allowed them to know how to communicate in front people directly so that they communicate neither only in social media, nor behind the scene. rina and laksita had the same opinion about e-learning which decreases oral communication. rina stated, “in my opinion, elearning decreased oral communication,” while laksita pointed out that “the drawback of elearning was that it decreased direct face-to-face communication with friends”. it was obvious that students were not able to have direct oral communication as the communication the e-learning provided was in the form of written language. that e-learning decreased students’ opportunities to communicate orally was considered unfortunate by the participants as it minimized their chance to learn how to com10 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 municate in real situation. this finding is supported by zhao & mcdougall (2008) who state that e-learning cannot enhance students’ oral english communication proficiency because it is lack of personal contact. e-learning is costly. the study also revealed that e-learning was considered costly by one participant. ratri made a strong point that she had to spend extra money to experience e-learning. she stated, “it is costly. e-learning required much money for the personal internet access.” elearning enabled students to work at their own pace and space. thus, each student had to provide themselves with internet connection which allowed them to involve in the e-learning activity. however, this internet connection was considered costly. the faster the internet connection they wished to have, the more the cost they had to spend. e-learning requires technological skill. the next drawback perceived by the participants regarding the implementation of e-learning was that this technique required a decent technological skill. devi shared her experience in joining elearning. she expressed, “in the beginning of elearning, i feel lack of technological skills.” her lack of technological skills made her ask her teacher or her classmates to help her dealt with the technological issues, such as how to operate a software or application and how to do an online task or assignment in a particular site. this research finding suggested that teachers need to provide students with sufficient knowledge and skills about the software or application used for e-learning. in order to assure the successful e-learning implementation, teachers should introduce the application to the students in the beginning of the implementation, demonstrate them how to operate it, and provide guidelines about what the students need to accomplish, so that the students become familiar and are not confused. besides, e-learning serves as a tool or media to help students in learning english, teachers still play significant roles in the learning activity; therefore, they should provide continuous direction and supervision to their students. e-learning requires internet access or connection. internet connection becomes one of the crucial elements in e-learning. it serves as the channel to connect the computer into one of elearning tools or websites. however, internet connection turns into a technical problem perceived by the participants. during the interview, ratri, devi, sasty, and laksita expressed their disappointment regarding the slow internet connection. they stated that it was a big problem when they were joining e-learning, as seen in the following response: limited access became a problem, especially when we were having fun activities in e-learning, then suddenly the connection was troubled. no signal meant it could be the end. in conclusion, the drawback was more on the technical problems (ratri). [the drawbacks of e-learning was] lack of signal (devi). if it is e-learning, it means we need connection. whereas, we were still lack of internet connection (sasty). the drawback was that we should have good internet connection. for example, if we were going to a remote area, then it could be a problem when we were doing online assignment (laksita). the participants’ experiences indicated that 11 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 despite the apparent advantages of e-learning, it presented certain technical problems with regard to utilising it in educational learning environments. volery’s (2000) study identified that while being involved in e-learning was considered rewarding, most of his respondents did not fully participate in the e-learning due to technical problems, which led to frustrations in trying to connect and utilise the network systems. moreover, ku and lohr (2003) assert that technological problems commonly faced by students in elearning include frequent disruption to the internet connection, slow loading, and incompatibility of software and hardware. hence, these technical problems, especially the slow internet connection, were a drawback that hamper the implementation of e-learning. e-learning does not allow actual or direct teachers’ feedback. another drawback of elearning the participants perceived was on the lack of actual teachers’ feedback. dani pointed out that he did not get detail feedback when it was delivered through e-learning. further, he explained that it was easier and clearer to have feedback from face-to-face learning rather than through e-learning. he responded, “in e-learning, we did not get detail feedback from our lecturer as the feedback was only a written feedback, while i preferred detail feedback as in face-to-face class”. that e-learning changed the way how learning was conducted, so did it change how feedback was delivered. compared to face-to-face learning, the feedback provided by teachers was indeed limited to a written form. additionally, in some applications or sites, the feedback was limited to a certain number of characters. this limited written feedback might create confusion for some students. students might need to clarify to their teacher what the feedback or revision meant in order not to create misunderstanding. for some students who were not comfortable with virtual feedback, they might find it difficult. e-learning increases possibility of plagiarism and cheating. lastly, this study indicated that plagiarism and cheating were notions emerged during the interviews regarding the drawbacks of e-learning implementation. rina and sasty believed that in e-learning, students were able to access resources freely by surfing some sites, then they easily copied and pasted their surfing results into e-learning forum or online assessment without paraphrasing or citing the original work. rina remarked, “e-learning makes students cheat easily because when answering a question, students can easily open other sites, find the answer or similar materials, and copy paste the answer into the discussion forum”. in addition to rina, sasty explicitly stated, “actually, there was an issue in e-learning that students could easily copy paste work. so, it was related to plagiarism.” she then added, “maybe, some students, who were lazy to think, just copied and pasted the answer from their friends or looked for materials from internet, then posted the answer based on their browsing results.” the finding revealed that e-learning increased the possibility of plagiarism and cheating. it is also argued by arkorful and abaidoo (2014) that since e-learning is delivered through the use of “proxy”, it causes loss of control or regulation in the context of bad activities like cheating. this study suggested that in order to minimize the chance of plagiarism and cheating, teachers should make a clear regulation toward this issue 12 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 in the beginning of the e-learning implementation. furthermore, the teacher should check the students’ work in order to avoid such issue in elearning. teachers and students are also advised to make an agreement upon a punishment for students who are doing plagiarism. conclusions and implications evidence from this research showed that participants had diverse perceptions towards elearning ranging from highly positive to reluctance of relying heavily on its use. generally, students’ perceived that e-learning offered flexibility, provided updated information, provided rich and unlimited resources, encouraged reading, and helped less active students become more active, and was fast and simpler. however, in spite of the benefits to students when e-learning is incorporated into teaching and learning, there are some drawbacks which needed immediate attention. the drawbacks like decreasing social interaction and oral communication, costly, lack of technological skills, lack of digital resources, slow internet access or connection, lack of actual or direct teachers’ feedback, and increasing possibility of plagiarism and cheating, acted as barriers to cause the full potential of e-learning to remain untapped. these results are in line with the findings of similar studies conducted at major institutions and illustrate the importance of elearning. with regard to the implementation of elearning, this study suggests some strong notes for the e-learning users, including teachers and university administrators. firstly, some students might not be familiar with the use of e-learning since they come from various social background and technology literacy levels. therefore, teachers are responsible to give demonstration or guideline to students dealing with how to operate this e-learning. secondly, using various types of learning, e.g. using e-learning and face-to-face, is strongly recommended. by doing so, students can enhance both oral communication in face-to-face learning and nonverbal communication. thirdly, teachers should discuss the materials which they discussed in class at e-learning session more intensively to get better understanding. then, teacher could also provide clarification or correction if there were any misconception towards the material. besides, teachers are suggested to design their e-learning with various materials, activities, and sites to minimize monotonous activities and to provide meaningful learning experience. regarding the second and the third findings, teachers may vary or combine the five different types of e-learning as proposed by horton and horton (2003), so that the students’ needs can be facilitated. lastly, teachers need to check and provide constructive feedback on students’ works in order to avoid cheating and plagiarism. in order to enhance the efficacy of e-learning environment, teachers and students must be provided with ample supports by university administrators. this study also emphasized that the university administrators should pay more profound interests and efforts in supporting the e-learning implementation for learning. as asserted by dudeney and hockly (2007), there is a need for university administrators to increase their understanding and knowledge on the successful adoption and diffusion of e-learning. one of the ways to do so, perceived by the participants, is by providing facilities and equipment 13 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 supporting the implementation of e-learning, especially on more updated computer software and fast internet connection. although most participants had asserted that e-learning enhanced teaching and learning, they also attributed some complexities towards its implementation. better understanding of the context of e-learning readiness and perception should enable university administrators to address their students’ needs more fully. finally, although e-learning has a lot of potentials and advantages, until the e-learning challenges have been taken into consideration, its fully potentials and advantages cannot be completely acquired by students. reference ally, m. (2008). foundations of educational theory for online learning. in t. anderson, the theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed). canada: au press, athabasca university. alonso, f., lópez, g., manrique, d., & viñes, j. m. (2005). an instructional model for webbased e-learning education with a blended learning process approach. british journal of educational technology, 36(2), 217-235. arkorful, v., & abaidoo, n. (2014). the role of elearning, the advantages and disadvantages of its adoption in higher education. international journal of education and research, 2(12), 397 – 410. burdette, p. j., greer, d. l., & woods, k. l. (2013). k-12 online learning and students with dissabilities: perspective from state special education directors. journal of asynchronus learning networks, 17(3). 65 – 72. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. 7th ed. london: routledge. creswell, j. w. 2012. educational research: planning, conducting, evaluating, quantitative and qualitative research. 4 th ed. boston: pearson. dargham, j., saeed, d., mcheik, h. (2012). elearning at school level: challenges and benefits. the 13th international arab conference on information technology. acit2012 dec. 1013, issn: 1812-0857, 2012. davis, f. d. (1989). perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. mis quarterly, 13(3), 319–339. dudeney, g., & hockly, n. (2007). how to teach english with technology. new york: pearson education. gamal, s.e., & aziz, r.a.e. (2011). the perception of students regarding e-learning implementation in egyptian universities. el & ml 2011: the third international conference on mobile, hybrid, and on-line learning. ganderton, r. (1999). interactivity in l2 webbased reading. in r. debski & m. levy (eds.), worldcall: global perspectives on computerassisted language learning (p. 49–66). lisse, the netherlands: swets & zeitlinger. gulbahar, y. (2009). e-learning. turkey: pegem academy publishing. horton, w. and horton, k. (2003). e-learning tools and technologies. hoboken, nj: wiley publishing, inc. hu, q., & johnston, e. (2011). using a wikibased course design to create a studentcentered learning environment: strategies and lessons. journal of public affairs education, 18(3), 493 – 512. journal of educational media, 14 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 27(1-2), 55-65. jung, m., loria, k., mostaghel, r & saha, p. (2008). e-learning: investigating university students’ acceptance of technology. european journal of open, distance and e-leaning [online] http://www.eurodl.org./materials/contrib/ 2008/jung_loria_mostaghel_saha.htm keller, c., & cernerud, l. (2002). students’ perception of e-learning in university education. ku, h. y., & lohr, l. l. (2003). a case study of chinese student’s attitudes toward their first online learning experience. educational technology research & development, 51(3). 95 – 102. lam, p., lee, j., chan, m., & mcnaught, c. (2011). students’ use of e-learning strategies and their perceptions of e-learning usefulness. in s-m. barton, j. hedberg, & k. suzuki (eds.), proceedings of global learn asia pacific 2011 (pp. 1379–1388), melbourne australia, 28 march – 1 april. chesapeake va: association for the advancement of computers in education. lee, t., & lee, j. (2006). quality assurance of web based e-learning for statistical education. compstat: proceedings in computational statistics: 17th symposium, rome. levy, m. (2010). developing the language skills: aligning the technological tool to the pedagogical purpose. in c. ward (ed.), the impact of technology on language learning and teaching: what, how and why. anthology series 51 (p. 16-27). singapore: seameo regional language centre. levy, m., & kennedy, c. (2005). learning italian via mobile sms. in agnes kukulska-hulme and john traxler (eds.), mobile learning: a handbook for educators and trainers. london: routledge. liao, h., & lu, h. (2008). richness versus parsimony antecedents of technology adoption model for e-learning websites. retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85033-5_2. mahdizadeh, h., biemans, h., & mulder, m. (2008). determining factors of the use of elearning environments by university teachers. computers & education, 51, 142-154. organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd). (2005). e-learning in tertiary education: where do we stand? oecd. pituch, k.a., & lee, y. (2004). the influence of system characteristics on e-learning use. computers and education, 47(2006). 222 – 244. rogers, e. m. (1995). diffusion of innovations. new york: the free press. smart, k. l., & cappel, j. j. (2006). students’ perceptions of online learning: a comparative study. (c. cope, ed.) journal of information technology education, 5, 201-219 soliman, n. a. (2014). using e-learning to develop efl students’ language skills and activate their independent learning. creative education, 5, 752-757. retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.4236/ce.2014.510088 tagoe, m. (2012). students’ perceptions on incorporating e-learning into teaching and learning at the university of ghana. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology (ijedict), 8(1), 91 – 103. tanveer, m. (2011). integrating e-learning in classroom-based language teaching: perceptions, challenges and strategies. ict for language learning: 4th edition. retrieved from 15 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.1 no. 1 january 2016 http://conference.pixel-online.net/ ict4ll2011/common/download/ paper_pdf/iec141-252-fp-tanveerict4ll2011.pdf. volery, t. (2000). critical success factors in online education. the international journal of educational management, 14(5), 216 – 223. young, j. r. (1997). rethinking the role of the professor in an age of high-tech tools. the chronicle of higher education, 44(6), 26 – 28. pengantar juni 2016 layout juni 2016 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 178 article history: submitted: 15 march 2022 reviewed: 7 june 2022 edited: 30 june 2022 7 july 2022 article accepted: 8 july 2022 the utilities of online formative assessment in indonesian efl learning contexts during covid-19 pandemic kristian florensio wijaya cita hati international school, indonesia author email: kristianw611@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14249 abstract amid covid-19 pandemic, online formative assessment has grown in english language teaching. previous researchers strongly contended that the accurate usage of online formative assessment could remarkably substantiate efl learners’ target language learning motivation, achievements, and outcomes. this present qualitative study was conducted in support of a document analysis approach to generate varied insightful perspectives for indonesian efl teachers and learners to begin valuing the potential rewarding merits as a result of online formative assessment implementations in distant learning situations. twenty relevant online formative assessment studies from 2020 until 2022 year were selectively chosen to produce more up-to-date and rewarding research findings worth applicable in nowadays indonesian efl teaching-learning enterprises. based on the in-depth document analysis, two major pivotal research results strongly encouraged indonesian efl teachers to make use of online formative assessment in daily-based online learning activities namely: (1) online formative assessment progressively promotes holistic second language learning rewards for learners and (2) online formative assessment fully creates a more convenient efl teaching-learning atmosphere for learners. these above-depicted research results opened a broader perspective for future researchers to replicate this research theme in the light of potential online formative assessment shortcomings and a greater number of relevant investigation sources. keywords: online formative assessment; covid-19 pandemic; document analysis =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 mailto:kristianw611@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14249 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14249&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 179 introduction due to the widespread dissemination of covid-19 pandemic since 2020, the globalized educational landscape has undergone significant shifts discerned through online learning enterprises. as a result, all educational stakeholders are commissioned to teach and learn from home to prevent an expeditious transmission of this disease. atmojo and nugroho (2020) stated that online learning is an alternative solution amid the covid-19 pandemic to halt the rapid local transmission. in a similar vein, burgess and sievertsen (2020) promulgated that the entire educational institutions all over the globe are determined to dramatically switch their onsite learning into online learning enterprises to enable all educational parties to infuse robust health conditions and run the teaching-learning processes well. in the elt realm, one of the educational dynamics having obtained all these consequences is the assessment type appropriately utilized in these online second language learning circumstances. since the specific second language learning assessment model can potentially solidify the fruitful learning outcomes obtained by learners, language teachers have to ponder on this matter more profoundly not to make the ongoing learning dynamics fruitless. this argument is correspondingly pinpointed by sari (2020), asserting that in the light of appropriate, contextual, and accountable second language learning assessment, worldwide efl learners will have wider opportunities to fully achieve the targeted educational objectivities set up by their teachers. by nature, the major aim of internalizing suitable second language learning assessment is to precisely solicit more comprehensive portrayals concerning learners’ learning skills development, strengths, and weaknesses worthwhile for the teachers to conduct more meaning-making learning enterprises in future events. this basic premise is decisively consolidated by brown and harris (2014) avowing that it is crucially pivotal for efl teachers all around the world to incorporate more compatible language learning assessment in the presence of diverse-wide ranging learners to identify their particular learning progresses beneficial for the further advancement of the intended target language competencies and exposure. contrarily, second language assessment can be either facilitating or debilitating. it can be deemed supportive target language testing when efl learners’ designated competencies are accurately measured. the assertion mentioned above is positively linked with the theory of assessment postulated by zhang et al., (2021) adducing that assessment could foster efl https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 180 learners’ target language learning skills if it has holistically evaluated the desired competencies stipulated by language teachers. in the meantime, second language assessment can probably address uninvited washback in which it is failed to quantify the learners’ specific target language skills fairly. this statement seems to be trustworthy while referring to the idea of ali and hamid (2020) mentioned that efl learners will experience unpleasant, frustrating, and pointless target language learning processes when the given second language assessment exceptionally diverges from the corresponding competencies that should be assessed. two specific types of assessments are rewarding to be harnessed by efl teachers before commencing online teaching-learning enterprises in this pandemic era namely formative and summative assessments. the first type of assessment can be denoted as a practical trajectory functioning to progressively measure efl learners’ learning skills improvement in the ongoing learning processes. this interpretative definition is strongly corroborated by karimi and shafiee (2014), theorizing that the main purpose of formative assessment is to allow teachers to discern the specific target language achievements, skills, and progress attained by the learners in an ongoing manner. in contrast, summative assessment is termed as a learning measurement mode aiming to judge the particular results achieved by the learners manifested in the forms of formal tests. connors (2021) articulated that through the integration of summative assessment, efl teachers will have broader chances to thoroughly determine the final learning achievements obtained by learners accompanied by formal testing generally run at the end of the learning period. in current online elt enterprises, the advantageous values of formative assessment are manifold. firstly, with the support of online formative assessment, efl teachers can promote a more positively-sound learning atmosphere where all learners are well-informed about the laudable learning progress they should constantly maintain and the particular learning shortfalls they have to minimize in the future. regarding means as mentioned above, prastikawati (2021) strongly suggest efl teachers globally employ formative assessment in their targeted language learning enterprises to properly signify particular learning progress and shortcomings achieved by learners valuable for the future escalation of their target language skills. secondly, online formative assessment can alleviate efl learners’ learning stress due to the more flexible deadline of this testing mode, which is completely different from what they https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 181 have normally experienced in summative assessment; a fixated submission deadline. in compliance with these above-explicated conceptions, ninomiya (2016) highly recommended worldwide efl teachers reiteratively implement formative assessment during their online teaching-learning activities to provide sustainable friendly-sound learning surroundings in which learners experience a lower level of stress. thirdly, another notable benefit of having an online formative assessment is to gradually transfigure efl learners into more competent, lifelong, and autonomous academicians. all these positive learning merits take place since they gain a more exhaustive understanding of the targeted learning materials, become more motivated to continuously improve their learning skills, and exert greater controls over the targeted learning processes. ibragimova (2021) put forward the most well-articulated formative assessment learning value in which learners’ learning progress is rigorously reinforced by an apparent internalization of online formative assessment in terms of materials mastery, learning motivation, and independent learning characteristics showcased by learners. to fully actualize all these above-explained advantageous values, efl teachers are highly advised to overarchingly comprehend the nature, major functions, and utilities of formative assessment in their online target language learning venture. this conception is tightly interwoven with the standpoint proposed by brown and gao (2015), delineating that when language teachers identify all the indispensable factors, requirements, and contexts forming in online formative assessment, learners can successfully obtain more gratifying learning outcomes. through these means, efl teachers will be more capable of promoting more meaningful teaching-learning processes wherein all learners are collectively directed to forge the designated learning competencies to achieve the pre-determined learning objectivities they have stipulated before. remesal (2011) forthrightly affirmed worldwide efl teachers’ perspective on the benefits, purposes, and innate characteristics of online formative assessment should be correspondingly matched with the tangible teaching-learning processes running in their classroom settings to make all the meaningful learning outcomes come to their best version for learners. five prior related studies were conducted in this archipelago dealing with the use of online formative assessment. the first study was run by fitriana and purnamasari (2021) unveiling that the retardation of meaningful online elt enterprises through the internalization of https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 182 formative assessment occurred due to the unstable internet connectivity, learners’ low motivation level, and lack of innovative teaching approaches. in another identical investigation, haryani and ayuningtyas (2021) strongly prompted indonesian efl teachers to integrate pear deck online learning application as one of the formative assessment types since the majority of learners were capable of expanding their target language knowledge, magnifying their learning endeavor, and elevating their higher-order thinking skills. in the third study, lutfiana and suwartono (2020) highly advocated that indonesian efl teachers to ascertain the reliability, credibility, and authenticity of the online formative assessment incorporating in their learning processes to enable all learners to improve their target language competencies to the utmost potential. malvado et al., (2022) acknowledged that an appropriate internalization of online formative assessment represented in the quizizz application would situate a more positive springboard for the significantly enhancing efl learners’ l2 writing skills. lastly, nasution et al., (2021) scientifically four major paramount requirements indonesian efl teachers consider before implementing online formative assessment in their daily teachinglearning enterprises; learners’ specific target language proficiency, classroom learning time, instructional modes, and digital literacy. given the beneficial research results from those five prior studies, this present small-scale qualitative study was run to better contribute to our existing understanding of online formative assessment utilities in indonesian efl learning contexts. since a fairly limited number of studies in this nation investigating the potential rewarding second language learning merits generated by this type of ongoing assessment amid covid-19 pandemic, this current investigation can potentially impart a stronger underlying premise for indonesian efl teachers to feel assured while internalizing online formative assessment in distinctive second language teaching-learning circumstances in terms of its influential impacts toward learners’ forthcoming learning improvements. for this reason, one major research problem was depicted here as guidance of this investigation: (1) what are the potential utilities of utilizing online formative assessment in indonesian efl learning contexts during the covid-19 pandemic? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 183 literature review formative assessment in online efl learning in this line, formative assessment is one of the valuable learning evaluations functioning to lead learners to develop their learning skill potentials to the utmost level. van diggelen et al., (2016) highly advocated efl practitioners continually internalize formative assessment in their diverse classroom vicinities to allow all learners to enhance their targeted learning competencies to a greater level significantly. through the formative assessment, language teachers will be more capable of addressing more constructive and meaningful feedback for further enhancing learners’ learning achievements, resulting a positive learning atmosphere. this conception agrees with prastikawati (2017), arguing that in the formative assessment, efl teachers have been more adept at creating a more conducive-friendly classroom climate and imparting more meaning-making feedback to greatly elevate their learners’ target language competencies into more advanced development. bearing all these contentions described above, implementing formative assessment in modern efl classroom settings is extremely important since learners can obtain more compatible feedback beneficial for their future learning competencies. similarly, learners have correspondingly transformed into more proficient, well-organized, and autonomous academicians with the support of formative assessment due to the continual rejuvenation of learners’ specific knowledge, skills, and mindset concerning the learning strategies working best for their discipline-specific fields. wong and mak (2019) asserted that the precise incorporation of formative assessment could probably provide more potent groundbreaking for efl learners to better manage their particular learning enterprises, locate their appropriate effortful actions to fulfill the designated learning goals, and persistently bear their learning responsibility. the applicability of formative assessment in the presence of online efl learning enterprises is considerably important. as many worldwide efl learners have transformed into digital natives in this global age, online formative assessment can exponentially expedite learners’ target language skills development. this major benefit occurs since learners constantly cope with actual learning processes, provoking a higher degree of learning enjoyment. this assertion is strongly espoused by wiyaka and prastikawati (2021), believing that the continual https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 184 internalization of online formative assessment will enable efl learners to experience more pleasurable language learning circumstances and vivid language acquisition impactful for their target language competencies growth. for the teachers’ side, using formative assessment can create a more student-centered learning model in which learners are eager to engage in the designated target language learning enterprises proactively. this positive viewpoint is in harmony with the theory of elmahdi et al., (2018) exemplifying that the further incorporation of online formative assessment can instigate learners to become more proactive participants through varied captivating student-centered learning activities. further, integrating appropriate online formative assessment can also address a vast range of advantages for the continuity of a second language learning venture. ogange et al., (2018) scientifically mentioned three main benefits of incorporating online formative assessment in second language exposure: a more flexible submission deadline, satisfying learning achievements, and efficient feedback to improve future learners’ learning performances. concerning these rewards, language teachers are thus advocated to transform into more wellorganized lesson creators, resourceful language learning facilitators, and innovative learning activity designers while planning to apply online formative assessment in their classroom learning surroundings. by doing so, efl learners will be more persistent, optimistic, and effortful while confronting various learning hurdles. this suggestive advice is mutually interlinked with kristiyanti (2021), strongly motivating globalized efl teachers to fully apprehend the utmost utilities of online formative assessment to be applied in their daily-based classrooms to create more contextual, pleasurable, and meaningful learning dynamics successfully where all learners can altogether strive and thrive in improving their competencies. formative assessment in the light of social constructivism theory formative assessment has a tight-knit relationship with social constructivism theory. wilson (2017) propounded that under the guidance of social constructivism, learning community members will have broader chances to augment their learning efforts, outcomes, and achievements due to the apparent occurrence of intensive social interactions during the learning processes. in other words, the knowledge and skills transmission does not solely depend on the teachers, yet all learning stakeholders are accountable for delivering a wide array of worthwhile information through solid cooperative networking. language teachers are highly https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 185 advised to play their new roles as supportive learning facilitators and judicious counselors while incorporating the social constructivism approach in their unique classroom settings. cagasan et al., (2020) stated that on account of the social constructivism approach, modern language teachers are strongly motivated to enforce more adaptive, mutual, and cooperative knowledge dissemination among the learning community members through a supportive and relaxing teaching-learning atmosphere. besides promoting a more psychologically sound learning atmosphere, language teachers are concurrently commissioned to ascertain that second language learning enterprises supported by social constructivism theory should highly emphasize the dynamic mutual knowledge sharing interplay to be taken place in their classroom contexts. learners must become more proactive, open-minded, and dynamic knowledge disseminators to progressively invoke more transformative learning enterprises. this basic premise is closely correlated with rachmawati et al., (2022) admittedly confessing that since there is no absolute truth forming in a social constructivism approach, all learners’ arguments, opinions, and ideas have to be highly valued concerning the ever-changing nature of every shared perspective in this learning occasion. corresponding to all these aboveexplained conceptions, the convenient utilization of online formative assessment should reflect all the characteristics of the social constructivism approach. language teachers desirous of integrating online formative assessment in their daily-routine classes are commissioned to discern the ongoing target language learning exposure as a rewarding social dynamic that leads learners to advance their targeted skills into higher levels. this requirement is in tandem with wylie (2020) contending that for efl teachers to fully incorporate more meaningful online formative assessment in their daily classroom contexts, they need to conceive the existing learning processes as a social continuum dynamic where all learners possess equal opportunities to elevate their specific skills into the utmost potentials. by infusing this principal premise, efl learners will begin to accept all the gifts, talents, and uniqueness that reside within them sincerely. this positive self-acceptance occurred since all their beliefs were exceptionally respected by other learning community members resulting in a more holistic knowledge infusion. al-wassia et al., (2015) forthrightly repudiated that the social constructivism approach embedded with online formative assessment can instill a meaningful https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 186 groundbreaking for the striking advancement of efl learners’ self-beliefs since they perceive that these particular learning circumstances allow them to share their thoughts freely. method this current small-scale qualitative investigation was conducted with the support of a document analysis method to reveal valuable insights produced by prior relevant literature. to fulfill this research objectivity, the researcher selected 20 previous online formative assessment studies conducted in indonesian efl learning contexts. by exhaustively referring to this amount of prior investigations, the researcher expectantly hoped that indonesian elt experts, practitioners, educationalists, and policy-makers start incorporating online formative assessment in their daily-based teaching-learning activities to maximally promote the uttermost target learning outcomes to be fully attained by our learners. all selected literature ranged from 2020 to 2022 year. the main concern of choosing these new sources was to provide a more upto-date data basis applicable and contextual for nowadays elt dynamics. firstly, since a considerable number of studies concerning the utilities of online formative assessment were still scarce in indonesian efl learning contexts, this current small-scale library study could potentially pave an enlightening perspective for elt stakeholders to convincingly implement this assessment mode during and after the covid. secondly, to the researcher’s knowledge, most online formative assessment studies in indonesian efl contexts merely repeated identical findings concerning this assessment type. hence, some renewable perspectives were crucially needed to supportively assist indonesian efl educators in internalizing more appropriate online formative assessments to improve second language learning enterprises. for the data analysis process, the researcher aimed to heed more attention to the specific results yielded by specifically-selected 20 pieces of literature. the major reason for embodying this action was to give the researcher a more exhaustive insight into the discussed topic. after carrying out that first data interpretation step, the researcher planned to reread, recheck, and reevaluate all the specific findings taken from this chosen 20 literature to delineate more robust research results for globalized elt stakeholders confronting the continual dilemma of whether or not to utilize this assessment mode in daily online learning activities. ultimately, the researcher subdivided each related finding into some major-specific themes to be supportively https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 187 corroborated by interrelated theories and findings. the researcher expounded all these particular categories argumentatively to strongly convey the potential utilities of harnessing online formative assessment in multivariate efl classroom vicinities for worldwide elt parties. to ensure the credibility and accountability of these data delineations, the researcher asked for help from his former lecturer to assess the discussed research results. this human validation process was conducted after the researcher profoundly analyzed, categorized, and illustrated all potential research findings. findings and discussion this subsection heed more exhaustive concern on two major specific themes engendered through an in-depth document analysis approach. those two main themes were: (1) online formative assessment progressively promotes holistic second language learning rewards for learners and (2) online formative assessment fully creates a more convenient efl teachinglearning atmosphere for learners. table 1: online formative assessment progressively promotes holistic second language learning rewards for learners theme 1 authors online formative assessment progressively promotes holistic second language learning rewards for learners kristiyanti (2021); adelia et al., (2021); nafisah et al., (2021); nurfiqah and yusuf (2021); ukhrowiyah et al., (2021); robiasih and lestari (2020); setyowati and hastuti (2021); sudarwati et al., (2021); wiyaka and prastikawati (2021); yakkop et al., (2020) the further internalization of online formative assessment can potentially bring about more comprehensive efl learning outcomes in the presence of diverse efl learners. chiefly, efl learners exposed to the accurate internalization of online formative assessment were more liable to become more active, competent, and autonomous target language academicians. these laudable second language learning behaviors were highly affected by the nature of online formative assessment in which all learners’ targeted second language learning competencies https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 188 were assessed harmoniously in accord with their specific learning goals, interests, and needs. this argument agress with kristiyanti (2021), discovering that many indonesian efl learners were strongly willing to proactively participate in the designated teaching-learning processes since their target language skills have been assessed accurately through valid online formative assessment. as a result, they have concurrently transfigured into more proficient and selfreliant academicians. concerning this above-explained conception, language teachers strongly suggest designing more well-organized, reliable, and genuine online formative assessments in their various classroom learning vicinities. by teaching this basic mindset, indonesian efl learners will be more capable of cultivating their target language competencies to the utmost potential. a predominant number of these academicians have fully inculcated more positive conceptions after integrating this ongoing assessment in their learning enterprises. this contention is mutually aligned with the finding of nafisah et al., (2021), revealing that many indonesian efl learners were committed to fostering their target language competencies rigorously under the guidance of authentic, well-made, and transparent online assessment. to better accelerate the holistic second language learning rewards come to the fore, indepth language teachers’ preparation in creating the particular online formative assessment is indispensably needed. specifically speaking, in-depth online formative assessment reparation refers to the innovative incorporation of innovative pedagogical strategies, well-timed feedback imparted to learners, and qualified teaching-learning materials. ukhrowiyah et al. (2021) strongly recommended that indonesian efl teachers constantly include more dynamic teaching strategies, timely language learning inputs, and high-quality teaching-learning materials in the light of online formative assessment to greatly maximize the potential target language learning outcomes to be attained by learners. concerning one of the pivotal 21stcentury skills paramount to be mastered by indonesian efl learners, online formative assessment can terrifically elevate their critical thinking skills to the utmost levels. this significant escalation occurs since learners have encountered broader opportunities to implement the specifically-obtained target language skills daily. thus, it is inevitable for language teachers to design more authentic online formative assessments in which learners can intensively forge their specific target language skills. by doing so, learners will experience more pleasurable second language learning exposure. the above-said learning merit is positively https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 189 linked with robiasih and lestari (2020) unearthing that a vast number of indonesian efl learners had been more capable of enhancing their critical thinking skills in varied learning situations due to the hands-on, valid, and practical online formative assessment implanted continuously by teachers. interestingly, online formative assessment is also valuable for significantly improving indonesian efl learners’ four major language skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. on a closer look, learners exposed to online formative assessment can holistically elevate these four main language competencies due to the thorough evaluation characteristic formed in this assessment. as noted previously, online formative assessment was conducted progressively and dynamically during particular teaching-learning dynamics enabling learners to infuse greater awareness of the specific skills they have to advance in the future. setyowati and hastuti (2021) strongly remarked that it is vitally essential for indonesian efl teachers to continuously apply online formative assessment in their daily-based classroom learning situations to raise learners’ profound consciousness regarding the importance of increasing four core target language competencies into more advanced levels. lastly, online formative assessment can offer more favorable second language learning enterprises for indonesian efl learners. through this positive learning trajectory, learners strongly perceive that their target language learning endeavor had been strongly sustained with the support of trustworthy online formative assessment, eventually impactful for the further advancement of their target language learning progress. this conception seems to concur with sudarwati et al. (2021), strongly prompting indonesian efl teachers to devise more reliable online formative assessments at the onset of second language learning acquisition to successfully promote a higher degree of learning enjoyment, encouraging learners to become desirous knowledge discoverers. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 190 table 2: online formative assessment fully creates a more convenient efl teachinglearning atmosphere for learners theme 2 authors online formative assessment fully creates a more convenient efl teaching-learning atmosphere for learners astiandani (2021); firdaus and prastikawati (2022); fitriyah and jannah (2021); lisyowati et al., (2021); bagus and mantra (2021); meiantoni et al., (2021); rachmawati et al., (2022); werdiyanti (2021); widiastuti et al., (2021); yulianto and mujtahid (2021) manifold prompting factors attributing online formative assessment as one of the potential second language learning springboards that can promote more pleasurable learning climates for indonesian efl learners. in the online formative assessment, learners will fully experience more flexible assignment submission, continually obtain clearer feedback concerning their learning performances, and enjoy the ongoing second language learning activities. for this circumstance to happen, indonesian educational institutions are strongly advised to establish more solid collaborative networking with elt experts, practitioners, educators, and policymakers to invent meaningful online formative assessments in the upcoming teaching-learning events. this basic paradigm aligns with astiandani (2021), finding that indonesian efl stakeholders and teachers must make an online formative assessment as one of the cornerstones wherein all learners can solicit more gratifying target language learning outcomes of enjoyable teaching-learning enterprises. furthermore, it is also worthy of attention that decent digital literacy skill is one of the prominent impetus that should be pondered on more conscientiously before applying online formative assessment on a daily teaching-learning basis. to embody this action, language teachers must have sufficient knowledge, skills, and awareness regarding the digital learning platforms where they will implement their particular online formative assessment. without this critical stance, the second language learning enterprises can be meaningless effortful actions by learning community members. this advice also hoovers in the perspective of firdaus and prastikawati (2022), advocating indonesian educational institutions to fully equip their efl teachers with a more comprehensive understanding of paramount digital literacy skills urgently required in their specific subject-specific fields to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 191 magnify the utmost advantageous values provoked by online formative assessment through daily lessons. on the language teachers’ pedagogical behalf, the incorporation of online formative assessment has enabled more positive trajectories for them to manage sizeable classroom surroundings better and design more practical lessons for learners. by capitalizing on this action, indonesian efl teachers have gradually transfigured into more prudent, careful, and well-organized lesson planners opening more flexible rooms for their learners to accomplish every online formative assessment model with a higher level of interest. lisyowati et al. (2021) unfolded that an overwhelming majority of indonesian efl teachers were strongly determined to sustainably utilize online formative assessment in their daily teaching-learning activities due to its practicality, suitability, and flexibility, which at the same time, directing them into more professional lesson designers successfully fulfilling their learners’ learning objectivities. contrarily, the readily-planned online formative assessment does not take place without the presence of internal and external obstructions. during the covid-19 pandemic, it is an easy task to unveil the majority of indonesian efl teachers encountering a higher degree of serious adversity while internalizing online formative assessment in their classroom learning vicinities. those hindrances were unstable internet connection, learners’ distinctive target language competencies, the presence of unmotivated learners, and limited mastery of digital literacy skills. to minimize these drawbacks, indonesian efl teachers must take intensive initiatives to work more mutually with other educational stakeholders to create more relevant, meaningful, and beneficial online formative assessment types for their learners. meiantoni et al. (2021) believed that all potential internal and external impediments in implementing the appropriate use of online formative assessment could be gradually diminished while indonesian efl teachers are willing to ingrain a more robust commitment to nurturing the mutual collaborative works with other educational parties to invent more applicable online formative assessment for the betterment of future second language teachinglearning dynamics. as a source of inspiration, two relevant online platforms correspondingly suited to internalizing online formative assessment in modern second language learning enterprises: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 192 plickers and google forms. the first platform can be deemed as one of the reference points for indonesian efl teachers highly desirous of creating more interactive, enjoyable, and authentic teaching-learning processes. with the support of plickers, learners have progressively augmented their curiosity, enthusiasm, and resilience while confronting a wide variety of challenges. despite the potential stumbling blocks, learners experienced robust learning enjoyment with this online learning platform integration since they are constantly eager to display their best learning performances to be assessed by teachers. this belief is underpinned by the finding of wiyaka and prastikawati (2021), strongly contending that it is progressively important for indonesian efl teachers to integrate plickers as one of the accompanying media of their online formative assessment to enlarge learners’ persistent, enthusiastic, and curious behaviors while coping with the particular learning challenges. further, the second online learning platform can probably provoke a higher level of second language learning enjoyment among learners since they have wider opportunities to practice varied target language competencies in an ongoing test repeatedly. in other words, indonesian efl learners, having been introduced to google form, would be capable of reaping more fruitful target language learning outcomes and reinforcing their specific comprehension of the learned subject-specific skills. as an effect, they will be more spirited, positive, and motivated to participate in the learning enterprises conducted by their teachers. when all these facilitative learning behaviors are about to take place, the gratifying target language achievements will be anticipated for their eventual learning rewards. this influential technological impact is also in the view of yakkop et al. (2020), forthrightly confessing the overarching advantageous values yielded through google form, namely a more comprehensive understanding of the targeted lessons, significant enhancement of learners’ proactive learning engagement, intensive target language practices, full attainment of fruitful target language learning outcomes, and satisfying feelings of obtaining gratifying target language learning achievements. conclusion and implication based on the findings, online formative assessment could be one of the propelling forces for indonesian efl learners to improve their target language learning competencies progressively, strongly inculcate positive learning behaviors, and fully obtain more fruitful https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 193 learning outcomes. all these rewarding second language learning rewards could potentially be taken by our academicians when teachers consistently internalize high-quality, reliable, valid, and authentic online formative assessments in their daily-based classroom situations. therefore, indonesian efl teachers must be more eager to establish solid collaborative networking with all educational stakeholders to design meaningful online formative assessments compatible with learners’ target language learning needs, interests, preferences, and proficiency. in this situation, holistic educational enterprises will be the eventual rewarding rewards for the entire learning community members. furthermore, this present small-scale library study was also presented with several shortages. since the researcher solely unpacked the advantageous values of utilizing online formative assessment during the covid-19 pandemic, there is an indispensable need for future researchers to heed more exhaustive attention to examining the particular weaknesses of incorporating this assessment model in daily online learning circumstances to provide richer interpretative results useful for the enhancement of indonesian efl teaching-learning qualities. another drawback in this current investigation was a limited number of online formative assessment literature. this restricted number of sources was affected by the shortage of in-depth investigation concerning the potential meritorious values promoted by online formative assessment implementation. hence, those above-explained research results can be a cornerstone for future researchers to utilize a considerable number of sources corresponding with this current research theme to yield more durable, sustainable, and robust research findings significantly contributable to the further development of the whole efl structural systems. references adelia, a., miftahurrahmah, m., nurpathonah, n., zaindanu, y., & ihsan, m. t. (2021). the role of google form as an assessment tool in elt: critical review of the literature. etdc: indonesian journal of research and educational review, 1(1), 58-66. https://etdci.org/ al-wassia, r., hamed, o., al-wassia, h., alafari, r., & jamjoom, r. (2015). cultural challenges to implementation of formative assessment in saudi arabia: an exploratory study. medical teacher, 37(s1), s9–s19. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2015.1006601 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 194 ali, m. m., & hamid, m. o. (2020). teaching english to the test: why does negative washback exist within secondary education in bangladesh? language assessment quarterly, 17(2), 129– 146. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1717495 astiandani, f. r. (2021). efl teachers ’ perceptions towards the implementation of online formative assessment amidst the covid-19 pandemic. elt worlwide journal of english language teaching, 8(2), 269–277. https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ atmojo, a. e. p., & nugroho, a. (2020). efl classes must go online! teaching activities and challenges during covid-19 pandemic in indonesia. register journal, 13(1), 49–76. https://doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v13i1.49-76 bagus, i., & mantra, n. (2021). a portrayal of portfolio as an alternative online learning assessment. international journal of social sciences, 4(2), 249-254. https://doi.org/10.31295/ijss.v4n2.1724 brown, g. t. l., & gao, l. (2015). chinese teachers’ conceptions of assessment for and of learning: six competing and complementary purposes. cogent education, 2(1). 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2014.993836 brown, g. t., & harris, l. r. (2014). the future of self-assessment in classroom practice: reframing self-assessment as a core competency. frontline learning research, 2(1), 22-30. burgess, s., & sievertsen, h. h. (2020). schools, skills, and learning: the impact of covid-19 on education. voxeu. org, 1(2). cagasan, l., care, e., robertson, p., & luo, r. (2020). developing a formative assessment protocol to examine formative assessment practices in the philippines. educational assessment, 25(4), 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2020.1766960 connors, c. b. (2021). summative and formative assessments: an educational polarity. kappa delta pi record, 57(2), 70–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/00228958.2021.1890441 elmahdi, ismail; al-hattami, abdulghani; fawzi, h. (2018). using technology for formative assessment to improve students’ learning. tojet: the turkish online journal of educational technology, 17(2), 182–188. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1176157 firdaus, m. s., prastikawati, e. f., (2022). online formative assessments in english teaching and learning. salee journal, 3(1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.35961/salee.v3i1.385 fitriana, d., & purnamasari, n. (2021). teaching english through an online learning model to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 195 efl students in rural areas during the covid-19 pandemic: teacher's reflection. jela (journal of english language teaching, literature and applied linguistics), 3(2), 8-20. fitriyah, i., & jannah, m. (2021). online assessment effect in efl classroom: an investigation on students and teachers’ perceptions. indonesian journal of english language teaching and applied linguistics, 5(2), 265–284. https://files.eric.ed.gov/ haryani, f., & ayuningtyas, n. (2021). the impact of interactive online learning by pear deck during covid-19 pandemic era. journal of physics: conference series, 1957(1). 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1957/1/012006 ibragimova, m. k. (2021). digital tools for formative assessment. topical issues of teaching foreign languages, republican scientific-practical online conference. 335–339. karimi, m. n., & shafiee, z. (2014). iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of dynamic assessment: exploring the role of education and length of service. australian journal of teacher education, 39(8), 143–162. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2014v39n8.10 kristiyanti, k. l. (2021). the implementation of online formative assessment in english learning. journal of educational study, 1(2), 68–76. https://doi.org/10.36663/joes.v1i2.155 lisyowati, w., wiyaka, w., & prastikawati, e. f. (2021). english teachers’ conceptions of formative assessment in online teaching. language circle: journal of language and literature, 16(1), 177–186. https://doi.org/10.15294/lc.v16i1.29998 lutfiana, l., & suwartono, t. (2020). online efl teaching and learning: advanced grammar class and washback effect in test. technium soc. sci. j., 11, 23. malvado, v., prastikawati, e. f., & wiyaka, w. (2022). improving english writing skill by utilizing quizizz as a technology-based assessment. linguamedia jounral, 2(2), 1–11. http://jurnal.untagsmg.ac.id/ meiantoni, d., wiyaka, w., & prastikawati, e. f. (2021). online assessment in english classroom: efl teachers’practices and challenges. journal of english education and linguistics, 2(2), 26-36. nafisah, d., haryadi, a., & mistar, j. (2021). student’s perceptions of english classroom assessment during covid-19 pandemic. celtic: a journal of culture, english language teaching, literature and liguistics, 8(2), 206–218. https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v8i2.16450 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 196 nasution, s., tryana, t., br. sitepu, s., sagimin, e., & gintings, m. (2021). the challenges of using e-learning platform amid covid-19 outbreak: voices from the lecturers. proceedings of the 1st international conference on economics engineering and social science, inceess 2020, indonesia, 17(2), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.4108/eai.17-7-2020.2302991 ninomiya, s. (2016). the possibilities and limitations of assessment for learning: exploring the theory of formative assessment and the notion of &ldquo; closing the learning gap&rdquo. educational studies in japan, 10(0), 79–91. https://doi.org/10.7571/esjkyoiku.10.79 nurfiqah, s., & yusuf, f. n. (2021). teacher practice on online formative assessment. proceedings of the thirteenth conference on applied linguistics (conaplin 2020), 546(conaplin 2020), 534–538. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210427.081 ogange, b. o., agak, j., okelo, k. o., & kiprotich, p. (2018). student perceptions of the effectiveness of formative assessment in an online learning environment. open praxis, 10(1), 29-39. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.1.705 prastikawati, e. f. (2017). pre-service efl teachers’ perception on technology-based formative assessment in their teaching practicum article info. journal of english language teaching, 6(1), 163–171. http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt prastikawati, e. f. (2021). pre-service efl teachers’ perception on technology-based formative assessment in their teaching practicum. journal of english language teaching, 10(2), 163171. rachmawati, d. l., purwati, o., & anam, s. (2022). esp teachers’ sociocultural challenges in oline formative assessment: voices of teachers, learners, and coordinators. computer assisted language learning electronic journal (call-ej), 23(1), 150–167. http://callej.org/journal/23-1/rachmawati-purwati-anam2022.pdf remesal, a. (2011). primary and secondary teachers’ conceptions of assessment: a qualitative study. teaching and teacher education, 27(2), 472–482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.09.017 robiasih, h., & lestari, t. (2020). formative assessment performed by high school teachers in the pandemic era. loquen: english studies journal, 13(2), 80-87. https://doi.org/10.32678/loquen.v13i2.3557 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 197 sari, f. m. (2020). exploring english learners’ engagement and their roles in the online language course. journal of english language teaching and linguistics, 5(3), 349-361. https://doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v5i3.446 setyowati, r., & hastuti, i. (2021). understanding on online assessments for efl learning during covid-19 pandemic. international conference of healt, scievice and technology 2021, 2016, 301–306. http://ojs.udb.ac.id/index.php/icohetech/article/view/1146 sudarwati, e., fatimah, f., astuti, y., & ubaidillah, m. f. (2021). developing online learning assessment instrument for english sentence structure course during covid-19 pandemic. langkawi: journal of the association for arabic and english, 7(2), 170-181. https://doi.org/10.31332/lkw.v7i2.3122 ukhrowiyah, n. f., nasihah, m., & pratawati, f. m. (2021). language assessment in online learning: challenges and effective strategies for esp classrooms. acitya: journal of teaching & education, 3(1), 131-145. http://journals.umkt.ac.id/index.php/acitya van diggelen, m. r., morgan, c. m., funk, m., & bruns, m. (2016). formative assessment: enriching teaching and learning with formative assesment. eindhoven university of technology. werdiyanti, n. n. d. (2021). assessment process in teaching and learning english in the midst of covid-19 pandemic. the art of teaching english as a foreign language, 2(2), 134–142. https://doi.org/10.36663/tatefl.v2i2.132 widiastuti, i. a. m. s., mantra, i. b. n., sukoco, h., & santosa, m. h. (2021). online assessment strategies to enhance students’ competence and their implementational challenges. jees (journal of english educators society), 6(2), 245–251. https://doi.org/10.21070/jees.v6i2.1378 wilson, s. (2017). exploring the importance of using formative assessment in informing instruction to improve student learning. mwcommons, 1(17), 1–16. https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/education_masters wiyaka, w., & prastikawati, e. (2021). plickers as an online formative assessment to improve secondary school students’ english learning. ssrn electronic journal, 302, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3864809 wong, k. m., & mak, p. (2019). self-assessment in the primary l2 writing classroom. canadian https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 198 modern language review, 75(2), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.2018-0197 wylie, e. c. (2020). observing formative assessment practice: learning lessons through validation. educational assessment, 25(4), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2020.1766955 yakkop, m., basri, m., & mahmud, m. (2020). teachers ’ perception in google forms -based english assessment in an indonesian vocational high school. elt worldwide: journal of english language teaching, 8(2), 278–292. https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ yulianto, d., & mujtahid, n. m. (2021). online assessment during covid-19 pandemic: efl teachers’ perspectives and their practices. jet (journal of english teaching), 7(2), 229–242. https://doi.org/10.33541/jet.v7i2.2770 zhang, c., yan, x., & wang, j. (2021). efl teachers’ online assessment practices during the covid-19 pandemic: changes and mediating factors. the asia-pacific education researcher, 30(6), 499-507. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 329 article history: submitted: 24 february 2022 reviewed: 12 july 2022 edited: 26 july 2022 article accepted: 1 august 2022 ghanaian chinese language learners’ perception of chinese characters bright nkrumah*), raymond asamoah university of ghana, ghana *)corresponding author email: bnkrumah@ug.edu.gh doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14077 abstract this paper investigated students’ perception of learning chinese characters at the university of ghana. the chinese writing system is an exclusive indispensable script that forms part of the chinese culture. however, the complexity, forms, strokes, pronunciation, radicals, and orthography structure of the characters makes it difficult for ghanaian students to learn the chinese language. a qualitative and quantitative design was used for the study. of 338 students, 183 participated in the study from the first to the fourth year. purposive sampling was used to select the students to respond to the questionnaire and share their opinions about the chinese characters in interviews. the findings showed that (a) reading and writing of the chinese characters were perceived to be more difficult than speaking. (b) the chinese character radicals, forms, remembering of strokes, orders, numbers, and the orthography structure of the chinese characters were a hurdle for chinese language learners. suggestions were made to urge students to cultivate the habit of consistently practicing the characters through collective participation and learning. the language learners need to do away with excuses, fear, and make-believe obstructions and spend more time in the learning process to enhance their skills in the chinese writing system. keywords: university of ghana; chinese learners; chinese characters; perception ================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 mailto:bnkrumah@ug.edu.gh https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14077 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.14077&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 330 introduction due to china’s position as a major economic force, non-native speakers worldwide desire to learn chinese as a second foreign language (wang, maloney, & li, 2013). learning chinese as a second language will expand one’s opportunities (gong, lai, & gao, 2020). it simply means being equipped with the value-added tools and skills needed to adapt to the job market and preparing to meet current and future trends. this fact is illustrated by increasing enrollments of non-native speakers in chinese foreign language (cfl) courses and admission to the chinese proficiency test: hanyu shuiping kaoshi (hsk), the national standardized test of chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers (qi & lemmer, 2014; kuo et al., 2015; nel et al., 2019; nkrumah & darko, 2020; mbugua & iraki, 2022; yang, 2022). the university of ghana started teaching the chinese language as a major, combination, and minor program in september 2009. irrespective of how to enthuse students towards learning the language, the characteristics of the language are often perceived as one of the most difficult components of the language by the learners, especially those with alphabetic first-language (l1) backgrounds (gao, 2020; lin et al., 2022). chinese is a logophonetic or logographic language, meaning that each script represents meaning and sound (gao, 2020). however, dialectology attests to the fact that the features of the chinese language are unique, with different scripts or styles than any other alphabetic language. linguists have pointed out that chinese writing (characters) is one of the main characteristics that completely differ from other languages like english (hu, 2010; huang, 2000; shen, 2004; shu, 2003). due to its linguistic significance and difficulties in learning, character learning has received considerable attention in cfl/csl research since its onset. ghana is not exceptional among the countries such as botswana, kenya, and nigeria, which are learning the chinese language in africa (nkrumah & darko, 2020; mbugua & iraki, 2022). with the rapid increase in the number of chinese learners worldwide (kuo et al., 2015), the chinese characters remain a major part of the learning process that discourages most students from learning or performing better in the language (lin et al., 2022). more than one hundred articles have been published in english or chinese to probe this topic (gao, 2020). regardless, little is known about this issue regarding how language learners https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 331 in ghana perceive the characters. therefore, the study aims to investigate students’ perception of learning chinese characters at the university of ghana. literature review chinese characters the phrase “chinese character” typically denotes what is currently referred to as chinese characters. most words in contemporary chinese are compounds. two or three monosyllabic morphemes are combined to generate these words (hsu, 2012). in the chinese writing system, each morpheme may be distinguished as a distinct written character with a distinct meaning. it is possible to infer a composite character’s meaning from its morphemes or characters (hsiang et al., 2022). chinese characters come in a genuinely enormous variety, yet there are far fewer of them that are employed often. approximately 3,800 common chinese characters are enough to cover 99.90% of chinese reading materials (perfetti & zhang, 1995; hsiang et al., 2021). two thousand five hundred (2500) characters are listed as the most commonly used characters in modern chinese (lou & wang, 1987), and this number makes up 97.97 percent of the reading materials in that language. another 1,000 characters were identified as the second most frequently used characters and make up 1.51 percent of the reading materials in that language, meaning that 3,000 to 4,000 characters cover nearly 99.64 percent to 99.90 percent of all general reading materials (graham, 2018). it has always been difficult for learners to understand the distinctive chinese writing system, especially for those whose mother language uses the roman alphabet (graham, 2019). each chinese character represents a word or morpheme, but for beginning students, it is nearly difficult to distinguish the pronunciation from the character’s structural characteristics (schleicher & everson, 2005; graham, 2019; hsiang et al., 2022). everyone agrees that “pictographs” were the ancestors of chinese characters (defrancis, 1984; hsiang et al., 2021). this common name implies that the fundamental building blocks of chinese writing are separated images and sounds. however, many other experts limit this classification to the oldest chinese characters. ideography is a different word that is frequently used. this phrase refers to written signals conveying abstract and tangible ideas without considering sound for certain people (defrancis, 1984; wang & leland, 2011; hsiang et al., 2018). another well-known https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 332 category of the chinese language is the “logographic” language, which refers to a wordrepresentation graph. according to others, “syllable and character constitute at most not a word but a morpheme” (the smallest unit of meaning), which is defined by a variation of the logographic notion known as “morphographic” (defrancis, 1984, p.72; ho & siegel, 2016). chinese characters are therefore referred to be a “morpheme-syllable writing system” by mori (1998). researchers asserted that a chinese word is a syllable when spoken and a character when written. the chinese writing system uses morpho-syllabic symbols with “deep” orthography. chen et al. (2011) wrote, “ the relationship between the written symbol and spoken sound is irregular and unsystematic. “in conclusion, although academics may hold varying ideas regarding their perceptions of the chinese language, all of the mentioned terms accurately capture the essence of chinese from various perspectives (hsiang et al., 2022) because chinese characters are descended from pictographs. the consensus among experts on the subject is that all writing began with the creation of pictures, if not quite in that order (gelb, 1963; kong, 2020). numerous non-pictographic characters were created using pictograms to replace words for abstract ideas and improve writing effectiveness. chinese scholar xu shen originally categorized the numerous character kinds, classifying the script into six groups in his etymological dictionary shuōwén jiězì, (说文解字) (defrancis, 1984, pp. 79): (a) pictographic characters (象 形字, xiàngxíng zì); (b) ideographic characters (指事字, zhǐ shì zì); (c) logical aggregates (会意 字 , huìyì zì); (d) semanticphonetic compounds ( 形声字 , xíng shēng zì); (e) associate transformation (转注字, zhuǎnzhù zì); (f) (borrowing (假借字, jiǎjiè zì). pictographic characters (象形字, xiàngxíng zì). the fact that pictograms only make up a small part of chinese characters, in stark contrast to the widespread perception that pictograms make up the majority of chinese characters, is one of the most remarkable aspects of this category (hsu, 2012). only 4% of characters are said to have fallen into this group. 日 for “sun,” 月 for “moon,” and 木 for “tree” are a few examples. ideographic characters (指事字, zhǐ shì zì).simple indicative, simple ideograph and ideographic letters are other names for ideographic symbols. these characters either directly portray abstract ideas or add markers to pictographs to give them new interpretations (hsu, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 333 2012). the characters 一 for “one,” 二 for “two,” and 三 for “three” serve to demonstrate this. other frequent instances are 上 “above” and 下 “below” in the language. logical aggregrates (会意字, huìyì zì). associative compounds can also be interpreted as logical aggregates. to represent abstract ideas, the characters in this set are all multior compound-element graphs. the combination of the pictographs 日 “sun” and 月 “moon” forms “bright,” 明 which is typically regarded as signifying the union of the sun and moon as the natural source of light, is a well-known example of this group (hsu, 2012). another common example is the creation of the word 林 “forest” by combining two pictograms of the word “tree” 木. semantic-phonetic compounds (形声字, xíng shēng zì). this category, often known as pictophonetic or phono-semantic compounds, includes most of the characters used in contemporary chinese (hsu, 2012; kim, 2020). approximately 90% of characters fit this description. “phonetic” and “semantic” elements are combined to create a new character. the term “phonetic element,” as defined by defrancis (1984), often refers to a syllable of sound. the “semantic element” proposed by defrancis (1984) is a crucial classifier or radical that reflects the character’s overall meaning. examples include 河 “river,” 湖 “lake,” and 流 “stream.” all of these characters have a radical of three dots on the left, which is a condensed picture of a water drop, suggesting that all of these symbols have a semantic relationship to water; the indications on the right are phonetic. (zhuanzhuzi) associate transformation. these kinds of characters are uncommon. this category is frequently left out or mixed with other groups in contemporary systems (hsu, 2012). a well-known example in this category is the separation of the terms 考 “to test” and 老 “old,” which once had the same character meaning as “elderly person” but later became two distinct words with different connotations. borrowing (假借字 , jiǎjiè zì). word borrowing is also known as phonetic loan characters. this category is known for using existing characters to represent unrelated words with similar pronunciations; occasionally, the original meaning is lost (hsu, 2012). for example, the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 334 character 自, which originally meant nose, now signifies oneself; the character 萬, which originally meant spider but is now used to mean 10,000. learners’ perception of chinese characters more individuals are encouraged to study mandarin because of china’s rapidly expanding economy, yet many struggles with the language’s challenging characters and give up (nel et al., 2019). students of the chinese language find it difficult to recall the shape, sound, and meaning of the characters as they are not densely integrated. according to research by yang (2022), one of the difficulties students have when learning chinese is the sheer volume of characters that must be learned with their pronunciations, orthographic forms, and meanings. students often discuss how difficult it is to write in the proper stroke order when practicing. students agree that practicing writing, using radicals and orthographic hints, reviewing flashcards, and engaging in interactive activities are good learning methods. the traditional chinese character system exhibits a higher level of intricacy, making it one of the most aesthetically complex writing systems (yang & wang, 2018). insufficient exposure to chinese characters leads to a high forgetting rate, confusion of the characters, and the improper use of chinese characters (lin et al., 2022). according to (nkrumah & darko, 2020), the perception of the chinese characters being difficult depends on learners’ general attitude toward the language. however, chinese characters with radicals and less visual complexity tend to be easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity regardless of learners’ perception (kuo et al., 2015). the chinese language is entirely dissimilar from the english language, which essentially does not adopt the alphabetic approach, but the chinese use a logographic language system. learning chinese characters is more difficult when there is no relationship between a character and its pronunciation. 2011 (sung & wu). chinese characters consist of various patterns of strokes that, to some extent, reflect the meanings of the words by replicating the real objects in the world, unlike alphabetic languages where the word sound may be derived from the spelling (li, 1996). as stated by (lin et al., 2010), some strokes have extremely minute distinctions; for instance, ‘未’ and ‘末’ can only be https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 335 recognized by the lengths of their two horizontal lines. the radicals of chinese characters are combined with additional components to create the characters. additionally, since characters have the same phonetic components but have distinct radicals, their pronunciations may appear to be different from one another. zhang (2011), for instance, characters with radicals “ 氵” and ” 忄” suggested that they are primarily connected to water and human psychology, respectively. this fact brings about huge complexities in studying the chinese characters as a lot of effort and time is needed to ponder on recalling and memorizing what the components and strokes add to each character. according to (lee & kalyuga, 2011), this activity is cognitively challenging for students who have little or no prior understanding of the strokes and elements of characters before studying more characters because a slight change in the character stroke might affect the meaning of the characters or result in a writing mistake. to become completely literate in chinese, students must remember and master many chinese characters (sung & wu, 2011). 3000 chinese characters are widely used and may be found in 99 percent of written chinese documents, according to wong, li, xu, and zhang (2010). these parodies of chinese characters demonstrate the importance of certain information to explain the purpose of the chinese language. for instance, the character 爸/bà with the first tone denotes “father,” whereas 拔 / bá with the second tone denotes “pull out.” therefore, mastering chinese tonal knowledge is necessary for understanding and speaking chinese (liu et al., 2011). chinese language students have also been taught hanyu pinyin, which may help students with character pronunciation and character input in mobile technology. the most significant study on character learning procedures was undertaken by shen (2005) with 95 university-level non-native speakers ranging from beginning to advanced learners. the study found eight underlying psychological elements represented by 30 widely employed methods at all levels. shen categorized 25 as cognitive methods (such as making connections with previously taught characters) and five as metacognitive tactics (such as reviewing before class) out of 30. however, for learners to contribute to character writing, they must be literate or have a particular number of characters mastered, which is difficult for them. as stated by (sung, 2014), to apply the appropriate characters in a given situation, learners must understand character traits well. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 336 method this study employed the mixed method technique, combining a qualitative and quantitative approach to collecting and analyzing data (creswell & hirose, 2019). by paying attention to both the feature and the pervasiveness of the case, researchers may perform highquality research using the mixed approach. therefore, considering the issue under investigation, it was more suitable to identify a theme in the data that addressed the shortcomings of both methodologies (quantitative and qualitative). a single technique for research design would not have been able to produce a more sophisticated knowledge of some phenomena, which is the goal of the mixed-method approach. population a researcher refers to the population as the whole group of study participants with particular qualities that are of interest to them when referring to the study’s findings (indu and vidhukumar, 2020). all students at the university of ghana studying chinese were included in the study population (students from year 1, year 2, year 3, and year 4). therefore, 338 people made up the study’s population. these individuals were enrolled in every subject acceptable for study in a program for learning chinese. the fact that each participant entered from a different year at the university allowed for various perspectives on how they saw learning a second language. sampling for the study’s objective, purposive sampling was employed to develop the data sample of the research study under discussion. the sampling was based on the researchers’ insights. a sampling design refers to the approach used to select a sample from a target population. target sampling was used because the researchers selected respondents based on their peculiar characteristics, such as program of study and knowledge of the chinese language proficiency. of a total of 338 participants, 183 students participated in the survey, comprising 97 male students https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 337 from year one, year two, year three, and year four, constituting 53.1% of the total correspondents. eighty-six (86) were female students from the various years; year one, year two, year three, and year four comprised 46.9% of the total correspondents. the overall research plan of the mixed method used incorporated the deployment of questionnaires and interview guides for the study. as such, 40 respondents were interviewed, while the remaining 143 were given questionnaires to gather data for the study. the interview session was conducted in a focus group setting, where the researchers moderated the discussion to obtain the necessary answers needed to answer the questions. background information of respondents table 1. respondent gender group number age gender m f year 1 20 18-19 16 14 year 2 25 20-21 19 17 year 3 45 22-23 25 25 year 4 53 23-25 37 30 total 183 97 86 sampling size the study’s sample size was determined from the population using a 95% confidence level according to a formula propounded by cochran (1963). the population size was the total number of students at the university of ghana. therefore: n=n/1+ne^2 where n=required sample size n=population size e=error e=100-95/100=0.05, using a population size of 338 n=338/1+(338) (0.05)^2 n=338/1.85 n=182.7027 n=183 hence, a sample size of 183 respondents was selected for the study. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 338 primary data primary and secondary data were used in the research to solicit information from firsthand articles, journals, and relevant books and distribute questionnaires to the students. primary and secondary inputs provided direct access to the research study of the people and the phenomena. data collection tools when conducting research, there was a need to have tools that would help collect data. open-ended questionnaires and interview guides were used to gather information on the ghanaian students’ perceptions of the chinese characters at the university of ghana. a questionnaire is a survey instrument used to gather data from participants for the research study. using the two data collection instruments allowed the researchers to properly understand and address the problem. data analysis data analysis compresses large amounts of data and presents results to answer research questions and understand research goals (smith, 2018). the qualitative part of the interview was explained using thematic structure analysis. this structure allows researchers to minimize the data for the study using case and code analysis (lucani, 2019). first, the data was transcribed. the data transcribed was then evaluated manually using the edifice framework analysis by retaliating to the research study objectives to ensure that the research data analysis procedure was systematic. the quantitative aspects of the research were assessed using version 26 of the statistical package for social sciences software (spss). quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency table, mean and standard deviation. questionnaires: (1) what is your perception of the chinese characters? (2) what is the importance of learning the chinese characters? (3) what are the difficulties in learning the chinese characters? (4) what are some interesting things you came across when learning the chinese characters? (5) what strategies can be used to improve chinese character learning? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 339 analysis of the questionnaire table 2. perception of the chinese characters item (n=143) percent the participant rated chinese characters to be difficult in general 34 24% chinese characters are magical 32 22.3% recognition of chinese characters is easier than writing 30 20.9% matching the pronunciation of words with chinese characters is very easy 25 17.5% chinese character is easier to read and write than to speak and understand 22 15.3% source: field data, 2022 since the purpose of this study was to investigate the student’s perception of chinese characters, as far as learning the language was concerned, it was, therefore, prudential that the researcher first and foremost seeks the opinion of the respondents on the characters, whether they are difficult to learn or not. to this effect, 34(24%) participants generally rated chinese characters as difficult. however, some of the students 30 (20.9%) also saw the recognition of letters as easier than writing. irrespective, it was easier to match the pronunciation of the words as 25 (17.5%) respondents agreed to this. finally, the remaining 22 (15.3%) students perceived that chinese character was easier to read and write than to speak and understand. table 3. difficulties in learning chinese characters item mean std deviation chinese character writing system 4.202 .982 reading 4.007 1.141 grammar (sentence order) 4.076 1.041 pronunciation 3.867 1.182 vocabulary 3.741 .668 source: field data, 2022 writing chinese characters is the most difficult as this skill recorded the highest mean of 4.202 with a standard deviation of 0.982. writing the characters is the most difficult because of all the parameters of learning the chinese characters, such as reading, writing, and pronunciation, followed by grammar. from table 2, the second highest difficulty students encounter in their quest to acquire knowledge of the chinese language is grammar (mean=4.07, sd=1.041). the reading of the characters is also considered a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 340 problem. this challenge is not as pressing as grammar and writing, as this skill obtained the third highest mean value (mean=4.007, sd=1.141). the table also indicates that pronunciation is a little manageable on the spectrum of difficulty learning the characters as it had (mean=3.887, sd=1.82). the item that is not deemed difficult is vocabulary (mean=3.741, sd=0.668). table 4. the importance of learning chinese character item mean std deviation it improves students’ proficiency in the chinese learning 4.776 .6962 it helps students to be acquainted with basic writing rules (for example, the chinese strokes order ). 4.622 .8119 learning chinese characters allows students to understand the historical evolution of the chinese 4.797 .7650 it helps students to learn more about the character components (radicals) 4.671 .8029 speakers of chinese are very knowledgeable 4.720 .7908 source: field data, 2022 the importance of learning the characters manifests in allowing students to understand the historical evolution of chinese, with the highest mean score of 4.797 and a standard deviation of .7650. another benefit of learning the characters is that it improves students’ proficiency in overall chinese learning, as this recorded a mean of 4.776 and a standard deviation of 0.6962. speakers of chinese are knowledgeable (mean=4.720, sd=.7908). it also helps students to learn more about the character components (radicals) as this had a mean of 4.720 and a standard deviation of .7908. notwithstanding the difficulty in learning the chinese characters, the students have learned interesting aspects by trying to master the characters presented in table 4. the students have learned about the chinese radicals. thirty-three (33) of them, representing 23.1%, have learned the radicals in their attempt to learn the characters. interestingly, 30 (21%) of them have discovered the uniqueness of the chinese writing system through learning the characters. twenty-nine (29) (20.3%) students have also learned a lot about the uniqueness of the strokes and the stroke order. twenty-six (26) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 341 (18.2%) and 25 (17.4%) have learned about the dialects of the chinese language and the uniqueness of homophones, homonyms, and homographs, respectively. table 5. interesting aspects found in learning chinese character item (n=143) percent chinese radicals 33 23.1% chinese writing system 30 21% the uniqueness of the strokes and the stroke order 29 20.3% the dialects of the chinese language 26 18.2% the uniqueness of homophones, homonyms, and homographs 25 17.4% source: field data, 2022 table 6. strategies to improve the learning of chinese characters items mean std deviation by doing away with excuses and anxiety when learning chinese characters 4.776 .7729 participating in all class quizzes 4.580 .8171 reading: using multiple sources (e.g., workbooks, textbooks, and teaching slides to improve the grammar knowledge 4.734 .7867 consistent handwriting practice of the chinese characters and memorization every day 4.839 .7473 reviewing flashcards 4.650 .8071 source: field data, 2022 as a way of helping deal with the difficulty that comes with learning the characters, most of the respondents agree that they will improve their knowledge of the characters by consistent handwriting practice of the chinese characters and memorization every day. this strategy recorded the highest mean of 4.839 and a standard deviation of 0.7473. doing away with excuses and anxiety when learning chinese characters also has the propensity to help with the difficulty of learning the chinese language. this strategy recorded the second highest mean of 4.77 and a standard deviation of 0.7729. reading: using multiple sources (e.g., workbooks, textbooks, and teaching slides to improve grammar knowledge is noted to be a good strategy as this had https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 342 (mean=4.734, sd=.7867). reviewing flashcards as a strategy for managing the challenge of the chinese characters had the fourth highest score (mean=4.650, sd=.8071). participating in all class quizzes is also seen as a strategy as this recorded the least mean of 4.580, with a corresponding standard deviation of 0.8171. analysis of the interviews perception of the chinese characters an interview is a crucial research tool, in part because skilled, sensitive, and perceptive interviews produce a rich set of accounts of the interviewee’s experiences, knowledge, ideas, and impression (coleman, 2019) and make it easier to understand people’s private and public lives, as well as their thoughts and emotions (coleman, 2019). forty students from year one to year four were interviewed on their perception of learning chinese characters. about thirty-five believed that chinese characters were hard to learn and write. these respondents could not be described as anything short of negative. twenty of them explained that those skills made it extremely difficult to pass their quizzes and exams to further elaborate on this finding. the remaining five thought recognizing chinese characters is easier than reading and writing. all 40 respondents confessed that chinese characters used multiple strategies to represent the language’s words. on this account, they easily forgot the characters right after learning. however, they agreed that learning the characters demanded time, consistent practice, and patience. difficulties in learning chinese characters all forty students raised concerns about the difficulties encountered while learning the chinese characters as their major problem. some students were, however, of the view that the chinese writing system was boring and time degenerative. forming simple sentences using the characters was impossible as only ten out of the forty respondents could do it. more than half of them did not find difficulty when it came to the pronunciation of the characters. however, the correction tonation was something they struggled with because they are foreign learners of the language. regarding some https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 343 chinese characters and their attached radical structures, some students were concerned that the radicals made the characters complex to identify. the importance of learning chinese character learning despite the challenges that confront the learners because of how difficult the characters are to learn and master, twenty-seven students revealed that writing the characters in the right order helped them memorize the words’ structure and meaning. twenty of them would not hide the joy of the characters helping them better understand the cultural context of the chinese language. all forty respondents believed that learning the characters made them more intelligent and better understand and write correctly in other languages like english. interesting aspects found in learning chinese characters the results showed the students an in-depth understanding of chinese radicals. through consistent learning, fifteen got a deeper knowledge of the chinese writing system and the stroke order. the homophones, homonyms, and homographs became easy to recognize from the opinion of the fifteen. strategies to improve the learning of chinese characters through the focus group discussion, thirty-five students commented that having an interest in the chinese course and consistent practice was a positive, motivating factor that should not be overlooked. notwithstanding these, the university of ghana students suggested that the lecturers give more assignments to help them improve their character writing skills and knowledge of the chinese characters. the interview lasted for 15 minutes. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 344 discussions this study examined the ghanaian students’ perception of learning chinese characters. the researchers designed the scope of work to understand why students of the university of ghana find it so challenging and have difficulties with chinese characters. secondly, among reading, speaking, and writing, which one do students find most demanding? firstly, a significant number of the students of the university of ghana found difficulties in learning chinese characters in general. more than 80 percent (80%) said identifying chinese characters was difficult, and reading and writing the chinese language were all perceived to be more difficult than speaking and understanding it. chinese characters are not equivalent to words. more than 90 percent (90%) of the respondents illustrated that identifying chinese characters was easier than writing the characters. chinese characters are considered unique (liu et al., 2006), although there is little agreement among many english speakers about how difficult chinese characters are to read. the attitudes and views of learners about studying mandarin were investigated in research by yin and abdullah (2014). purposive sampling and questionnaires were utilized in this study’s quantitative field research to gather information. seventy-four (74) students from universiti malaysia kelantan participated in the sample. the results showed that most respondents appeared to have favorable opinions regarding mandarin, as seen by their readiness to recommend the course to their friends and commitment to keep learning it even after graduating. however, most students experienced anxiety while studying mandarin. so, contrary to what they said, the anxiety they experienced during language instruction had no evident impact on their ability to learn the language. this study finding agreed with students who perceived the chinese characters to be difficult to learn. in another study by lin et al. (2022), the challenges of the characters of the language lead to students easily forgetting the characters. a qualitative, eight-week case study described and analyzed a particular group of learners’ difficulties and coping strategies within their specific contexts (huang, 2000). the study results indicated that depending on several variables. students may experience different difficulties in learning the characters and adopt different coping strategies for even the same difficulty. furthermore, the researchers were keen to examine the perception of the merits or the importance of the chinese language. it was obtained from the respondents that; the chinese https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 345 language improved one’s skills in chinese depending on the effort. per the students’ views, students that could speak the chinese language became more knowledgeable. the respondents were geared towards learning to write chinese characters and did not perceive that as boring. they also emphasized character components as being essentially important when studying chinese entirely. hence, the respondents believed that chinese people stressed the relevance of learning chinese characters. on the aspects of students’ perception of effective approaches to learning chinese characters, most participants said studying a new character of the chinese language helped to recognize its parts. shen (2010) found that “beginning learners…… considered radical knowledge to be a help in learning characters” (p. 60). similarly, xiang (1995) revealed that in teaching commonly used characters, knowledge of phonetic components did not help much with pronunciation leading to students suggesting that studying chinese characters involved a lot of handwriting practice and memorization. however, the respondents believed that creating imaginative visualizations and finding a connection between the new character and the previously learned characters improved studying chinese characters. hence, a significant number of the respondents were of the view that learning a new character enabled the story of the characters to help) in memorizing the characters as for making up stories. furthermore, the participants who participated in the interview raised concerns about the difficulties encountered while learning the chinese characters as their major problems. the students also emphasized reading and writing characters as time-consuming tasks. the students at the university of ghana still showed their gratitude and assurance in learning characters, particularly in writing. finally, the university of ghana students emphatically stated that to be more accustomed to the characters, one needs to practice more and be interested in the subject. students’ perception of the chinese characters will alert educators on how best to open windows and approaches to developing the chinese characters. conclusion and implication after carefully examining the data collected and its analysis, the general perception of learning the chinese characters was seen as difficult. the participant rated chinese characters to be difficult in general. writing chinese characters was the most difficult as this recorded the highest mean of 4.202 with a standard deviation of 0.982. the importance of learning the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 346 characters manifested in allowing students to understand the historical evolution of chinese. the students have learned about the chinese radicals. consistent handwriting practice of chinese characters and memorization daily would improve their knowledge of the characters. this strategy recorded the highest mean of 4.839 and a standard deviation of 0.7473. there was much evidence pinpointing the key challenges associated with the university of ghana’s students regarding chinese language characters. most students have significant and serious issues, challenges, or difficulties with chinese characters. recommendations chinese language lecturers should guide students to notice the connections between different characters, such as the characters’ complexity, forms, radicals, and orthography structure. also, students should be allowed to visualize the chinese characters to memorize them effectively and efficiently. individuals or students should be encouraged by their lecturers to spend more time and attention on chinese characters to help ease their learning issues. constant practice of reading and writing the characters can greatly help achieve desired results of learning chinese characters. references chen, y. z., wu, s. h., yang, p. c., ku, t., & chen, g. d. (2011). improve the detection of improperly used chinese characters in students’ essays with an error model. international journal of continuing engineering education and life long learning, 21(1), 103-116. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijceell.2011.039697 chua, h. w., & tan, t. g. (2015). lin chia ying. a review of challenges in learning chinese characters among non-native learners in malaysia. history, 5(16), 93-100. cochran, w.g. (1963) sampling techniques. wiley, new york coleman, p. (2019). in-depth interviewing as a research method in healthcare practice and education: value, limitations, and considerations. international journal of caring sciences, 12(3). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 347 creswell, j. w., & hirose, m. (2019). mixed methods and survey research in family medicine and community health. family medicine and community health, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1136%2ffmch-2018-000086 defrancis, j. (1986). the chinese language: fact and fantasy. university of hawaii press. everson, m. e. (1998). word recognition among learners of chinese as a foreign language: investigating the relationship between naming and knowing. the modern language journal, 82(2), 194-204. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb01192.x foreign language. beijing, china: beijing language university press 北京语言大学出 版社. gao, x. (2020). australian students’ perceptions of the challenges and strategies for learning chinese characters in emergency online teaching. international journal of chinese language teaching, 1(1), 83-98. gelb, i. j. (1963). a study of writing. university of chicago press. gong, y., lai, c., & gao, x. (2020). the teaching and learning of chinese as a second or foreign language: the current situation and future directions. frontiers of education in china, 15(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11516-020-0001-0 graham, s. (2018). a revised writer (s)-within-community model of writing. educational psychologist, 53(4), 258-279. graham, s. (2019). changing how writing is taught. review of research in education, 43(1), heng, c. h., & ling, t. l. (2014). interactive character learning model (iclm)—chinese character learning using whatsapp for malay l3 learners. us-china education review, 4(11), 772-786. ho, f. c., & siegel, l. s. (2016). a study of the relationships among chinese multicharacter words, subtypes of readers, and instructional methods. journal of learning disabilities, 49(1), 97-110. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219414529334 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 348 hsiang, t. p., graham, s., & wong, p. m. (2018). teaching writing in grades 7–9 in urban schools in chinese societies in asia. reading research quarterly, 53(4), 473-507. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.213 hsiang, t. p., graham, s., wang, z., & gong, y. (2021). how chinese characters are taught: an analysis of three popular textbooks used in macao. technology, knowledge and learning, 26(2), 355-381. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-021-09492-8 hsiang, t. p., graham, s., wang, z., wang, c., & skar, g. b. (2022). teaching chinese characters to students in grades 1 to 3 through emergency remote instruction during the covid-19 pandemic. reading and writing, 1-40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10288-0 hsu, j. f. (2012). learning chinese characters: a comparative study of the learning strategies of western students and eastern asian students in taiwan (doctoral dissertation, colorado state university). hu, b. (2010). the challenges of chinese: a preliminary study of uk learners’ perceptions of difficulty. language learning journal, 38(1), 99-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571731003620721 huang, j. (2000). students’ major difficulties in learning mandarin chinese as an additional language and their coping strategies. research report. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed440537 indu, p. v., & vidhukumar, k. (2019). research designs-an overview. kerala journal of psychiatry, 32(1), 64-67. https://doi.org/10.30834/kjp.32.1.2019.179 kim, y. s. g. (2020). hierarchical and dynamic relations of language and cognitive skills to reading comprehension: testing the direct and indirect effects model of reading (dier). journal of educational psychology, 112(4), 667. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/edu0000407 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 349 kong, m. y. (2020). the association between children’s common chinese stroke errors and spelling ability. reading and writing, 33(3), 635-670. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145019-09981-4 kuo, l. j., kim, t. j., yang, x., li, h., liu, y., wang, h., ... & li, y. (2015). acquisition of chinese characters: the effects of character properties and individual differences among second language learners. frontiers in psychology, 6, 986. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00986 lee, c. h., & kalyuga, s. (2011). effectiveness of different pinyin presentation formats in learning chinese characters: a cognitive load perspective. language learning, 61(4), 1099-1118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00666.x li, x. (1996). hypercharacters: a pilot study in computerized learning of chinese characters. calico journal, 77-94. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24157095 lin py and childs ra chen j, wang c and cai j (2010). an analysis of orthographic processing. in: (eds) teaching and learning chinese: issues and perspectives. charlotte, nc: information age publishing, pp. 257–275. lin, y. s., lim, j. n., & wu, y. s. (2022). developing and applying a chinese character learning game app to enhance primary school students’ abilities in identifying and using characters. education sciences, 12(3), 189. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12030189 luciani, m., campbell, k., tschirhart, h., ausili, d., & jack, s. m. (2019). how to design a qualitative health research study. part 1: design and purposeful sampling considerations. professioni infermieristiche, 72(2). http://www.profinf.net/pro3/index.php/in/article/view/632 liu, x. (2000). 对外汉语教育学引论 [introduction to the pedagogy of teaching chinese as a foreign language]. beijing language university press. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 350 liu, y., wang, m., perfetti, c. a., brubaker, b., wu, s., & macwhinney, b. (2011). learning a tonal language by attending to the tone: an in vivo experiment. language learning, 61(4), 1119-1141. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00673.x liu, y., perfetti, c. a., & wang, m. (2006). visual analysis and lexical access of chinese characters by chinese as second language readers. institute of linguistics, academia sinica, 7(3), 637-657. lou, j., & wang, g. (eds.). (1987). xian dai han yu chang yong zi biao. beijing jiao yu chu ban she; xin hua shu dian beijing fa xing suo fa xing. mbugua, w., & iraki, f. (2022). motivations for studying the chinese language in kenya: a case study of usiu-africa. journal of language, technology & entrepreneurship in africa, 13(1), 22-38. mori, y. (1998). effects of first language and phonological accessibility on kanji recognition. the modern language journal, 82(1), 69-82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.1998.tb02595.x nel, e. n., krog, s., lebeloane, l. d. m., & zhou, q. (2019). comparative study on teaching and learning chinese characters by primary school non-native chinese learners in south africa and china. per linguam: a journal of language learning= per linguam: tydskrif vir taalaanleer, 35(2), 1-17. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-1d415771a6 neuman, w. l. (2000). social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (4th ed.). boston nkrumah, b., & darko, j. o. (2020). a study of attitudes towards learning chinese as a foreign language in ghanaian universities: a comparative study of university of ghana and university of cape coast. integrity journal of education and training, 4(1), 8-15. perfetti, c. a., & zhang, s. (1995). very early phonological activation in chinese reading. journal of experimental psychology: learning, memory, and cognition, 21(1), 24. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0278-7393.21.1.24 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 351 qi, y. w., & lemmer, e. m. (2014). worlds apart: experiences of students learning chinese as a foreign language in universities in china and south africa. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 5(15), 414-414. https://www.richtmann.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/3248 schleicher, a., & everson, m. (2005). advancing less commonly taught language instruction in america: the time is now. al heining-boynton (ed.), 2015, 199-216. smith, b. (2018). generalizability in qualitative research: misunderstandings, opportunities, and recommendations for the sport and exercise sciences. qualitative research in sport, exercise, and health, 10(1), 137-149. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2017.1393221 shen, h. h. (2004). level of cognitive processing: effects on character learning among nonnative learners of chinese as a foreign language. language and education, 18(2), 167182. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780408666873 shen, h. h. (2005). an investigation of chinese-character learning strategies among non-native speakers of chinese. system, 33(1), 49-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.11.001 shu, h. (2003). chinese writing system and learning to read. international journal of psychology, 38(5), 274-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590344000060 sung, k. y., & wu, h. p. (2011). factors influencing the learning of chinese characters. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 14(6), 683-700. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.571658 wang, d., moloney, r., & li, z. (2013). towards internationalising the curriculum: a case study of chinese language teacher education programs in china and australia. australian journal of teacher education, 38(9), 116-135. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/aeipt.204137 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 352 wang, j., & leland, c. h. (2011). beginning students’ perceptions of effective activities for chinese character recognition. reading in a foreign language, 23(2), 277-303. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/66851 wang, m., perfetti, c. a., & liu, y. (2003). alphabetic readers quickly acquire orthographic structure in learning to read chinese. scientific studies of reading, 7(2), 183-208. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0702_4 wong, k. f., li, w., xu, r., & zhang, z. s. (2009). introduction to chinese natural language processing. synthesis lectures on human language technologies, 2(1), 1-148. https://doi.org/10.2200/s00211ed1v01y200909hlt004 xiang, j. (1995). 3500 常用汉字中声旁的表音功能 [phonetic function of phonetic components in 3,500 commonly used characters]. 黄 冈 师 专 学 报 ［journal of huang gang teachers college], 15(2), 63–66 yang, j. (2022). teenage beginners’ perceptions of learning chinese characters: a case study. journal of chinese writing systems, 6(1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/25138502221050960 yang, r., & wang, w. s. y. (2018). categorical perception of chinese characters by simplified and traditional chinese readers. reading and writing, 31(5), 1133-1154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-018-9832-y yin, s. s., & abdullah, a. (2014). learners’ attitudes, perceptions, and efforts towards mandarin as a foreign language course. researchers world, 5(4), 38. zhao, j. m. (ed.). (2004). 对外汉语教学概论 [an outline of teaching chinese as a foreign language]. beijing, china: commercial press 北京商务印书馆. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 199 article history: submitted: 15 june 2022 reviewed: 7 july 2022 edited: 22 july 2022 article accepted: 26 july 2022 foreign language learning via online modular instruction and related variables: a sequential explanatory study jeremie m. maleon1*), robert carl j. garcia2, blossom b. gasper3 1malayan colleges laguna, philippines 2department of education, philippines 3immaculate conception, philippines *)corresponding author email: jmmaleon@mcl.edu.ph doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15050 abstract this study describes the relationship between the respondents’ foreign language learning proficiency and the following variables: respondentrelated factors, teacher factors, school factors, and home factors. a survey questionnaire based on the theory of performance (top) by elger (2007) was used to gather data about the factors. meanwhile, the grades in a foreign language class of 25 college students were collected for the correlation. the quantitative data were processed through the spss software using the pearson productmoment correlation coefficient formula, while the nvivo software was run to process the qualitative responses that served as a follow-up to the correlation results. findings revealed that none of the four factors significantly correlated with the respondents’ fl grades, but one item under school factors was found to have a moderate positive correlation with the fl grades. furthermore, the respondents’ attitudes towards online learning, fathers’ educational background, and teacher factors resulted in a weak positive correlation. the themes from the qualitative data also supported the correlation findings. keywords: foreign language learning; related variables; online modular learning =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15050 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15050&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 200 introduction to boost and ensure global employment of graduates and to make competitive and internationalized curricula, foreign language elective courses are being offered to different philippine higher education institutions (heis). the country’s commission on higher education ched explained and secured the implementation in their memorandum order no. 23 (2010). the fl courses typically offered are nihongo, spanish, french, chinese, and others; each language is instructed to be credited as a non-mandatory three-unit subject that a student may choose. it is expected that students taking these courses would be “equipped with basic communication and interaction skills to fully understand and easily communicate with various nationals” (commission on higher education, 2010). therefore, often conducted in these classes are practical drills to enhance their communicative skills, i.e., speaking, writing, reading, and listening, especially during the previous academic years before the pandemic. however, when the covid-19 virus spread globally, heis had to adjust and adopt alternative ways to deliver education. distance learning became a solution. heis resorted to remote online instruction using various teaching modes such as live or synchronous, asynchronous, and self-paced instructions (joaquin et al., 2020). distance learning, defined as correspondence education or remote study, is a form of education with little or no face-to-face interaction between students and their instructors. it has three types: modular distance learning (mdl), online distance learning (odl) and tv/radio-based instruction. specifically, mdl is an approach to remote long-distance instruction that employs self-learning modules (slms) in print or digital form (quinones, 2020). however, mdl gives safety and security to students, but many still experience several barriers in answering the modules. some of the problems of the public elementary pupils in mdl were fluency in the foreign language, the appropriate tools, and insufficient time and space to answer modules (panganiban & madrigal, 2021). oranggaga (2022) also enumerated some challenges, such as the credibility issues in answering activities in the worksheets, defiance of assessment’s purpose due to module formats, and the issue of too many workloads affecting the consistency of systematic release and retrieval of the module. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 201 in this paper, the digital form of mdl was the object of study. the respondents in an online nihongo class using interactive modules were asked to rate factors deemed contributory to their language learning. without question, the transition from traditional ways to a new mode of teaching and learning foreign languages affected the performance of students and teachers alike (nugroho et al., 2020; sevencan, 2021; klimova, 2021). this study deemed it necessary to examine the correlation between the respondents’ foreign language proficiency as demonstrated in their grades in the course and the following: a. their profile, i.e., sex and parents’ educational background; b. their perceived attitude towards online learning; c. teacher factors; d. school factors; and e. home factors may yield important results that not only add to the already existing body of knowledge about the same subject but also provide useful recommendations to help enhance the efficacy of online foreign language teaching, especially during a global pandemic. specifically, this study was guided by five research objectives: 1. to describe the profile of the respondents in terms of sex and parents’ education background (quantitative); 2. to determine the respondents’ attitude towards online learning and the other factors, i.e., teacher, school, and home (quantitative); 3. to describe the respondents’ grades in the foreign language class based on the institution’s grading system (quantitative); 4. to correlate the respondents’ grades and the factors (quantitative); and 5. to determine the other perceived factors in learning a foreign language (qualitative). literature review modular distance learning distance learning is a form of education with little or no face-to-face interaction between students and their instructors. its types are module distance learning (mdl), online distance learning (odl), and tv/radio-based instruction. in an mdl setup, aside from providing students with all the materials needed for learning, a teacher’s primary role is to monitor their progress and give feedback. for this kind of interaction between the teacher and a student to take place, house visits are normally done; other times, the teacher monitors students via call or text (chin, 2020). the philippines is adjusting to the sudden shift in basic education. educators’ ongoing innovations, combined with the active participation of other stakeholders, are the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 202 driving forces behind the country’s future success. the primary issues arose from insufficient school budget in creating and distributing self-learning modules, students’ difficulties with selfstudying, and parents’ academic deficiency in guiding their children (dangle & sumanog, 2020). although mdl has been used and recognized in many countries as an effective teachinglearning technique as it promotes reflective learning, focus, independence, and self-regulation or autonomy, it also has its disadvantages, such as the question of the integrity of the learners’ outputs, the students’ difficulty in answering tasks due to limited teacher and school support, motivation, resources, and more (karthikeyan & kumar, 2014; sadiq & zamir, 2014; nardo, 2017; dangle & sumaoang, 2020; anzaldo, 2021; talimudao & madrigal, 2021). factors affecting performance and foreign language learning elger (2007) theorized that performance and improvement rely on six elements which he called components, consisting of the level of identity, personal factors, level of skills, context, level of knowledge, and fixed factors. furthermore, he proposed three hypotheses, i.e., performer’s mindset, immersion in an enriching environment, and engagement in reflective practices, to effectively increase performance. elger’s theory of performance (top) has been a staple in setups where learning happens, such as in classrooms, as it is commonly used to “analyze performance, define performance criteria, and develop meaningful performance measures”. the six core components are diagnosed to examine performance. the first component, identity, is defined as the shared character of an individual while in a community; this identity, however, also fosters the person’s distinctiveness. personal factors are the individual situations of a person, such as availability of resources, time, and logistics. skills pertain to the soft and hard abilities that may be transferred and honed; examples are resilience, curiosity, recording, managing, collaborating, and more. context refers to the situation and its variables where the individual performs. the level of knowledge is the concepts, ideals, and facts obtained through exposure like education and experience. lastly, fixed factors are the unique variables associated with an individual that cannot be changed, such as sex, age, physical attributes such as height and weight, and disability (elger, 2007; apple & ellis, 2015). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 203 variables related to foreign or second language learning have always been a subject of an investigation to improve instruction and acquisition. several studies in the past have already identified internal or individual characteristics such as age, sex, attitude, motivation, personality, cognitive style, self-esteem and first language proficiency, as well as external factors like sociocultural status, family expectations, school curriculum and setup, and teacher, among others, as factors influencing language acquisition (gardner & lambert, 1972; walberg, 1981; skehan, 1989; khasinah, 2014; tsai & wu, 2010; mirhadizadeh, 2016; jalili, 2017; shabir, 2017; sun, 2019; iwaniec, 2020; jones, 2013, as cited in zhou, 2020; baskota & shrestha, 2022). each of these identified factors can be categorized under one of the six components identified by elger as pivotal to performance. in this study, the following factors will be examined: sex (fixed factor), parents’ educational background (personal factors), attitude about online instruction (skills and personal factors), teacher, school, and home factors (context of performance and personal factors). the value and purpose of the implementation of digitalization in higher education have recently been studied by many researchers (marshall, 2018; amhag et al., 2019; ashilova et al., 2019; bates, 2019; phoong et al., 2019; ruano-borbalan, 2019; stefaniak & carey, 2019; ha & im, 2020; guardia et al., 2021). one significant issue that has dominated the profession for a long time is the ability and willingness of educators to adjust their teaching methods. according to one study by englund et al. (2017), there are obvious disparities between new and seasoned teachers. distance learning techniques have significantly altered traditional ideas about the purpose and content of education and the learning outcomes in many ways in ukrainian higher educational institutions. this finding demonstrated the necessity to be clear about what is meant exactly by the phrase “remote learning.” in modern educational research, distance learning is also known as distance education, e-learning, online supplemented, learning, hybrid learning, and flipped classroom. no matter what terminology is chosen to describe this complicated phenomenon, it is highly contentious in education. distance learning typically refers to a technology-mediated interaction between teachers and students, providing a favorable teaching and learning environment. according to landau (2019, p. 54), this representation signifies a new stage in the historical development of the classroom and creates a semiotic landscape about the shapes that can represent learning activities. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 204 a common perception of instruction as an overt teacher-learner presentation of the material may be distorted by efl teaching and learning processes. modern platforms and internet services can give users immediate access to data (ferreira, & bernales, 2020, p. 187). they significantly contribute to developing an effective efl distant learning program for higher education. method the proponents of this mixed-methods sequential explanatory study requested and were granted permission to use the research instrument by monter (2011), which likewise assessed the factors above that were believed to be related to performance. the validation and reliability testing of the instrument was no longer necessary as the tool had already been subjected to both in the past (korb, 2012). total population sampling was used with a purposive sampling technique that uses the entire population. the respondents were chosen because they took foreign language subjects using the online modular method. a total of 25 students were enrolled in the said subject. the link to a google form with the copied items from the survey questionnaire was provided to the 25 respondents to gather data, but only 22 students answered the survey questionnaire. the research underwent ethical consideration, and the respondents were informed. the online survey has two parts. the first part has two sections; section one required a student to provide their profile, i.e., sex and parents’ educational attainment. the second section inquired about the respondents’ attitude towards online modular instruction for a foreign language class. meanwhile, the second part had three sections; the first section contained possible qualities of a teacher that may affect the foreign language learning of the respondents. section two included specific school factors that could likewise be contributory to their fl learning. tables were used to organize quantitative data; the correlation of variables was computed using the pearson productmoment correlation coefficient formula through the spss statistics software. furthermore, to follow up on the quantitative results, the respondents were interviewed to name the other factors that they perceived as related to their fl learning. for the thematic https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 205 analysis in analyzing qualitative data, the nvivo software was used. the transcripts were analyzed through line-by-line coding. before the open analysis of the files, the codes/nodes/ parent nodes, as well as the childcodes, were created; these references were based on the stated components of a learner’s performance, which were contextualized for learning and reduced into five, i.e., identity, learning skills, level of knowledge, context of performance, and personal factors, by apple and ellis (2015). the written interview via google form distribution only consisted of one question, which was also a part of the borrowed instrument. all twenty-two respondents provided answers to the inquiry, albeit short and somehow unrelated to the actual inquiry. findings and discussions none of the four factors, i.e., respondent-related factors, teacher factors, school factors, and home factors, significantly correlated with the respondents’ fl grades. however, item 4 under school factors, referring to the teacher’s training for the learning management system (lms), was found to have a moderate positive correlation with the fl grades. furthermore, although weak, the respondents’ attitudes towards online learning, fathers’ educational backgrounds, and teacher factors resulted in a positive correlation. in addition, the qualitative data supported the quantitative findings. derived themes from the interview pointed to the context and learning skills as related factors to foreign language learning.; both related to the factors above with a weak correlation to the fl grades. the tabulated data followed by their corresponding analyses and interpretation are presented in chronological order, based on the identified specific research objectives. the first research problem inquired about the profile of the respondents based on their sex and parents’ educational background. table 1 presents the frequencies and the percentages of the respondents’ sexes. most respondents are female, 77.27%, while the males comprise only 22.73%. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 206 table 1. frequency distribution and percentage of sex sex frequency percentage male 5 22.73 female 17 77.27 total 22 100 table 2. frequency distribution and percentage of father’s educational background father’s educational background frequency percentage ph.d./master’s degree 2 9.09 college 16 72.73 high school 0 0 elementary 3 13.63 no formal schooling 1 4.55 total 22 100 % table 2 shows the frequency distribution and percentage of the respondents’ fathers’ educational backgrounds. the data imply that majority of the fathers are college graduates (73%), followed by elementary graduates (13%), ph.d./master’s degree holders and students (9%), and those without formal schooling (5%). table 3. frequency distribution and percentage of mother’s educational background father’s educational background frequency percentage ph.d./master’s degree 2 9.09 college 16 72.73 high school 0 0 elementary 4 18.18 no formal schooling 0 0 total 22 100 % table 3 reveals that most of the respondents’ mothers are likewise college degree holders (72.73%); the rank is followed by elementary graduates (18.18%) and those who are ph.d./master’s degree degree holders and students (9.09). the second research inquiry is about the respondents’ perceived attitude toward online foreign language learning and the other factors such as the teacher, school, and home; section 2 of part 1 of the research questionnaire. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 207 the mean and standard deviation for each set of questions based on a factor was computed. in statistics, the mean or the average score is one of the three measures of central tendency; it denotes the equal distribution of values for a given data set. it is related to standard deviation as the latter measured how dispersed the given data are to the former. a low standard of deviation implies clustered data, while the opposite indicates spread data (national library of medicine, n.d.). a 5point likert scale was used to allow the respondents to specify their level of agreement with each statement in the questionnaire. the scales meant: (1) strongly disagree; (2) disagree; (3) neither agree nor disagree; (4) agree; and (5) strongly agree. table 4. mean and standard deviation of responses on statements about online instruction attitude attitude towards reading (ar) mean standard n aoi1 4.14 0.81 22 aoi2 4.32 0.70 22 aoi3 4.23 1.08 22 aoi4 4.41 0.65 22 aoi5 3.64 1.32 22 aoi6 3.41 0.79 22 aoi7 3.59 1.07 22 aoi8 4.36 0.57 22 aoi9 4.14 0.87 22 aoi10 4.14 0.97 22 overall mean 4.04 the computed mean-standard deviation of the respondents’ answers in section 2 of part 1 can be deemed in table 4. this section with ten items is about the perceived attitude of the respondents towards online learning of a foreign language. all ten means ranged from 3.41 to 4.41, while the average mean for their attitude about online learning was 4.04. therefore, the respondents generally responded “agree,” indicating their agreement. among the ten items, only item 6 got the lowest mean of 3.41, which stated, “i often feel prepared when studying a material,” while the highest mean was item 4.41, which stated, “i jot down important notes while studying a material.” https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 208 this result supports the study of tsai and wu (2010), where participants who took notes in english outperformed their peers, and those who received the combined effects of both instruction and taking notes in english scored substantially higher than any other conditions. they further recommended helping efl learners better comprehend short conversations and long lectures. teachers should teach how to take notes in an organized manner and encourage using english. table 5. mean and standard deviation of responses on statements about teacher factors teacher factors (tf) mean standard deviation n tf1 4.86 0.34 22 tf2 4.55 0.58 22 tf3 4.82 0.39 22 tf4 4.55 0.58 22 tf5 4.73 0.45 22 tf6 4.18 0.65 22 tf7 4.68 0.47 22 tf8 4.64 0.57 22 tf9 4.59 0.58 22 tf10 4.50 0.58 22 overall mean 4.61 the computed mean-standard deviation of the respondents’ answers in section 1 of part 2 of the questionnaire is shown in table 5. this section, with also ten items, required the foreign language students to rate their teacher. all ten means ranged from 4.18 to 4.86, while the average mean for the teacher factors section was 4.61. the respondents generally responded “strongly agree,” indicating that they strongly agreed with the statements under the teacher factors. of the ten items, only item 6 had a low mean of 4.18. this item stated, “our teacher allows us to use tagalog or english if we cannot express ourselves in the foreign language.” the mean implied that the teacher used tagalog or english depending on the instructional context. the teacher allows students in some situations to use l1, especially when a learner has low proficiency and has anxiety in using l2, leading to an inability to express anything. students expect more use of l1 because they feel more comfortable. more l1 maximizes the learners’ exposure to the target language and could help them learn it faster (ellis, 2005, as cited in shabir, 2017). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 209 table 6. mean and standard deviation of responses on statements about school factors school factors (sf) mean standard deviation n sf1 4.45 0.66 22 sf2 4.23 0.52 22 sf3 3.86 0.76 22 sf4 4.27 0.45 22 sf5 4.05 0.56 22 overall mean 4.17 the computed mean-standard deviation of the respondents’ answers in section 2 of part 2 of the questionnaire can be viewed in table 6. this section, with five items, required the foreign language students to rate their school’s assistance and provided resources for online learning. all five means ranged from 3.86 to 4.45, while the average mean for the school factors section was 4.17. the respondents generally responded “agree”, indicating that they agreed with the statements about school factors. only item 3 got a low mean of 3.86 among the five items. this item stated the school library provides easy access to resources that can assist with the course learning. the mean implied that the respondents found it difficult to access library resources that could help them learn. during covid 19 pandemic, students could no longer come to school and access the physical library. the school must provide access to digital books that those with the internet could access, get physical books to students where the internet was not accessible or open the library for a session every day when lockdown has eased (baskota & shrestha, 2022). table 7. mean and standard deviation of responses on statements about home factors home factors (hf) mean standard deviation n hf1 3.36 1.23 22 hf2 2.95 1.02 22 hf3 3.23 1.28 22 hf4 3.27 1.32 22 hf5 2.55 1.30 22 hf6 3.86 1.87 22 overall mean 3.20 the computed mean-standard deviation of the respondents’ answers in section 3 of part 2 of the questionnaire can be seen in table 7. this section, with six items, required the foreign language students to rate home factors. all six means ranged from 2.55 to 3.86, while the average https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 210 mean for the home factors section was 3.20. the respondents generally responded “undecided,” indicating that they were undecided about the statements under home factors. of the six items, only item 5 had a low mean of 2.55. this item stated: learners have family members and/or relatives who use foreign language when speaking with them. the mean implies that most respondents do not have a family member who uses a foreign language when speaking to them. as stated by jones (as cited in zhou, 2020), when it comes to learning a foreign language, the ability of the parents to communicate in the foreign language may increase children’s chances of getting in touch with the language. parents are important role models for children, and their ability to speak the foreign language daily is related to improving proficiency and efficiency. the third research objective is to describe the respondents’ grades in the foreign language class based on the institutions’ grading system. table 8. institutional grading system average (%) above 96.00 91.51 – 96.00 87.01 – 91.50 82.51 – 87.00 78.01 – 82.50 73.51 – 78.00 69.01 – 73.50 64.51 – 69.00 60.00 – 64.50 below 60.00 final grade 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 2.25 2.50 2.75 3.00 5.00 table 8 shows the institution’s grading system where the foreign language was offered. the respondents’ final class standing or grade was interpreted based on the grading scale. to pass the course, every student must obtain a final average grade of 60%. table 9. frequency distribution and percentage of grades average final grade frequency percentage above 96.00 1.00 3 13.63 91.51 – 96.00 1.25 12 54.54 87.01 – 91.50 1.50 5 22.73 82.51 – 87.00 1.75 1 4.55 78.01 – 82.50 2.00 1 4.55 73.51 – 78.00 2.25 0 0 69.01 – 73.50 2.50 0 0 64.51 – 69.00 2.75 0 0 60.00 – 64.50 3.00 0 0 below 60.00 5.00 0 0 total 22 100 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 211 the frequency distribution of the grades and their corresponding percentage are shown in table 9. twelve (12) out of 22 respondents got 1.25, with 54.54% of the total population. five got a grade of 1.50 (22.73%), and 3 got a 1.0 (13.63%). meanwhile, 1 got a grade of 1.75 and 2.00, which is the transmutation for the grade range from 82.51 – 87.00 to 78.01 – 82.50. none of the respondents got a grade lower than 2.00. based on the results, the respondents got high grades in their online foreign language class that employed modular instruction. although modular distance learning was found to have its disadvantages (dangle & sumaoang, 2020; anzaldo, 2021; talimudao & madrigal, 2021), the grades of the respondents, i.e., the result of research question three, supported the findings of previous studies where online and modular instruction were favored by learners as the students gained more autonomy in class and developed study skills and a sense of responsibility (karthikeyan & kumar, 2014; nardo, 2017; klimova, 2021). the fourth objective is to correlate the grades of the respondents and their scores to the factors. an rvalue greater than 0.232 and a p-value below 0.05 should be exhibited to determine a significant relationship. the researchers recognized the null hypothesis that the grades of the respondents did not significantly correlate with the following factors: respondentrelated factors: sex and parents’ educational background, and the other factors: teacher, school, and home. the correlation test results between the respondent-related factor and the respondents’ fl grades are shown in table 10. it also reveals the correlation between the respondents’ grades and their attitude towards online instruction. although the correlation test results revealed that no significant relationship existed between the grades of the foreign language learners and the respondent-related variable, the fathers’ education background, as well as the majority of nine out of the ten items under attitude towards online instruction, had a weakmoderate positive correlation with the grades. generally, the set for attitude toward online instruction got a mean of 0.264 and a p-value of 0.234 weak positive correlation; this association indicated that both variables tend to increase following each other, but the relationship is not that significant. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 212 table 10. test of correlation between the respondent-related factors and the fl grades respondentrelated variables variable r-value p-value interpretation profile sex -0.048 0.832 very weak negative correlation father’s education 0.140 0.533 weak positive correlation mother’s education -0.223 0.318 weak negative correlation attitude towards online instruction (aoi) aoi1 0.184 0.412 weak positive correlation aoi2 0.195 0.385 weak positive correlation aoi3 0.019 0.935 very weak positive correlation aoi4 0.162 0.473 weak positive correlation aoi5 0.366 0.094 moderate positive correlation aoi6 0.174 0.439 weak positive correlation aoi7 0.498* 0.018 moderate positive correlation aoi8 0.126 0.576 weak positive correlation aoi9 -0.054 .811 very weak negative correlation aoi10 0.104 0.645 weak positive correlation aoi mean 0.264 0.234 weak positive correlation father’s education factor got an r-value of 0.140 and a p-value of 0.533, while the mother’s education got an r-value of -0.223 and a p-value of only 0.318. the weak positive correlation between the father’s education and the weak negative correlation between the mother’s education refuted the study of jalili (2017), where she stated that children whose mothers’ had university education had a higher language proficiency. table 10 shows that some fathers only go to formal schooling and are only elementary graduates, thus contradicting the study by iwaniec (2020), where she emphasized that students with parents with a lower level of education tended to be less motivated in language learning compared to their peers from cities whose parents had a higher level of education. the majority of the items about the respondents’ attitude toward online learning resulted in a positive correlation, although not significant. the attitude and motivation of a learner were discussed by apple and ellis (2015) in their article that framed the theory of performance (top) by elger (2007) to explore the specific dimensions of learning. performance in learning improves when an individual takes ownership and responsibility for their knowledge construction; this motivation to learn falls under the component identity of the top. meanwhile, a learner’s focus, time management, persistence, self-confidence, and ability to cope with achieving are affective skills necessary to retain a positive attitude towards learning. identity and skills are two https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 213 components of the top. theoretically, elger (2007) posited that performance and improvement both rely on six elements he called components. table 11. test of correlation between the teacher factors and the fl grades teacher factors (tf) variable r-value p-value interpretation tf1 0.280 0.206 weak positive correlation tf2 -0.069 0.760 very weak negative correlation tf3 0.290 0.191 weak positive correlation tf4 0.184 0.411 weak positive correlation tf5 -0.010 0.965 very weak negative correlation tf6 0.131 0.561 weak positive correlation tf7 0.024 0.916 very weak positive correlation tf8 0.134 0.552 weak positive correlation tf9 0.244 0.273 weak positive correlation tf10 -0.126 0.575 weak negative correlation tf mean 0.159 0.479 weak positive correlation the correlation test results between the teacher factors and the respondents’ fl grades can be seen in table 11, revealing that no significant relationship existed between the grades of the foreign language learners and the teacher factors. generally, the set for teacher factors got an r-value of 0.159 and a p-value of 0.479. the two variables followed each other as one increased, but the relationship was insignificant. eight out of ten items under this set resulted in a positive correlation while weak. the teacher factor set elicited feedback based on the teacher’s expertise in the foreign language, preparation of the online modular course, intervention for learning, and attitude or enthusiasm. the findings of klimova (2021) revealed that although foreign language learners felt online classes as effective, they still prefer the presence of a teacher to traditional language training. apple and ellis (2015) identified three aspects or sub-components under context of performance, a component of top. they explained that performance in learning could be improved when students are immersed in high-quality learning experiences that allow cooperative and active learning. cooperative learning as a set of “principles and techniques for helping students learn with peers and others” offers several cognitive and affective rewards to learners such as greater self-esteem, boosted creativity, enhanced interrelation, higher scores on standardized tests, a more positive outlook towards the school, peers, and teachers, language https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 214 competence, and enhanced overall performance (smith et al., 1996, as cited in jacobs, 2017; luo, 2018). online learning has changed how classes are conducted, affecting instruction (rotas & cahapay, 2020; harefa & sihombing, 2021; barrott et al., 2021). the teacherstudents and peerpeer interactions have been limited. furthermore, it has only been two years since the outbreak of the pandemic and school policies and guidelines for online instruction, in line with the international standards, are yet to be fully set, so teachers are still being trained to improve their methods and approaches to model their online classes that will either retain or improve student engagement (joaquin et al., 2020; nugroho et al., 2020; barrot et al., 2021; harefa & sihombing, 2021). moreover, although online learning has its disadvantages, there are also advantages to learning from the comfort of home. examples are the findings from gordon (2020) and astuti (2021), revealing that students experienced less anxiety and stress when performing online as they gained more autonomy which allowed them to express ideas freely and sometimes privately during online class without having to worry much about their classmates’ reactions towards their speaking ability. table 12. test of correlation between the school factors and the fl grades school factors (sf) variable r-value p-value interpretation sf1 0.061 0.786 very weak positive correlation sf2 0.039 0.863 very weak positive correlation sf3 -0.003 0.990 very weak negative correlation sf4 0.342 0.120 moderate positive correlation sf5 -0.115 0.609 weak negative correlation sf mean 0.084 0.712 very weak positive correlation table 12 presents the correlation test results between the school factors and the respondents’ fl grades. the majority, i.e., 3 out of 5 items about the respondents’ perception of school factors, resulted in a positive, insignificant correlation. overall, the sf mean got an rvalue of 0.084 and a p-value of 0.712 with an interpretation of “very weak positive correlation”. of the five items, only item 4 stated, “the faculty members are well-trained in using the lms, and other applications used for the foreign language course,” had a significant relationship https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 215 with the fl grades. before the pandemic, the university where the fl course was offered had already used blackboard, a learning management system (lms) or web-based software, to assist online instruction. the administrators and officials of the university bagged the blackboard award for optimizing the student experience teaching and learning in 2021 (malayan colleges laguna, 2021). it indicates the school’s effective practices in using the lms. the software blackboard is listed among the top 15 best lms of 2022, according to softwaretestinghelp.com (2022). table 13. test of correlation between the home factors and the fl grades home factors (hf) variable r-value p-value interpretation hf1 0.098 0.663 very weak positive correlation hf2 0.015 0.663 very weak positive correlation hf3 -0.138 0.539 weak negative correlation hf4 0.078 0.663 very weak positive correlation hf5 -0.257 0.248 weak negative correlation hf6 0.048 0.831 very weak positive correlation hf mean -0.040 0.861 very weak negative correlation the correlation test results between the home factors and the respondents’ fl grades can be seen in table 13. overall, the home factors got an r-value of -0.40 and a p-value of 0.861, indicating a very weak negative correlation. home factor items 1, 2, 4, and 6 resulted in a positive correlation, although very weak or insignificant. item 4, “i have family members and relatives who use the foreign language in their work or dealings with other people,” is connected with table 7, where item 5 got a low mean of 2.55. this item indicates the relation of having a family member who uses a foreign language to fl learning. meanwhile, item 6, “the atmosphere at home is favorable for studying the foreign language,” relates to the result in table 11, where the context of performance was identified as a component with a weak positive correlation with the fl grades. on the other hand, items 1 and 2 of this set pertain to the support provided by family members to the fl study of the respondents through the purchase of materials. sun (2019) identified reading various materials as a factor that can help learners update their knowledge of the fl. zhou (2020) also recommended providing fl learners with other learning materials such https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 216 as reading books, magazines, newspapers, and movies at home. he also suggested that parents involve themselves in the fl learning of their children. table 14 summarizes all the correlations to determine a significant relationship, an r value greater than 0.232. table 14. summary of tests of correlation between variables and fl scores variable r-value interpretation sex -0.048 very weak negative correlation parents’ education -0.128 weak negative correlation attitude (online instruction) 0.264 weak positive correlation teacher factors 0.159 weak positive correlation school factors 0.084 very weak positive correlation home factors -0.040 very weak negative correlation table 14 summarizes the tests of correlations between the grades of the respondents and the following variables: respondent-related factors (sex and parents’ education background), teacher factors, school factors, and home factors. in brief, it can be seen that none of the factors significantly correlate with the respondents’ fl grades. however, it was noted from the previous discussions that item 4 under school factors was found to have a moderate positive correlation with the fl grades. furthermore, although weak, the respondents’ attitudes toward online learning, fathers’ educational backgrounds, and teacher factors resulted in a positive correlation. lastly, the fourth objective of this research is to determine the other perceived factors in learning a foreign language through the respondents’ narratives; they answered the question, “what do you think are the things that affected your foreign language learning in this class?” the qualitative analysis did not yield other factors but supported the quantitative findings. the qualitative data were processed using the nvivo software. the transcripts were analyzed through line-by-line coding. before the open analysis of the files, the codes/nodes/ parent nodes, as well as the childcodes, were created; these references were based on the stated components of a learner’s performance, which were contextualized for learning and reduced into five, i.e., identity, learning skills, level of knowledge, context of performance, and personal factors, by apple and ellis (2015). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 217 table 15 and the hierarchy chart (fig. 1) present the summary of the codes referred to by the respondents in their narratives when asked the follow-up question. the quantitative data analysis was done to elaborate the quantitative results further. table 15. summary of coded items or qualitative data codes number of coding references the aggregate number of coding references a. context of performance 9 13 a.1. cooperative learning 4 b. identity 1 9 b.1. learner efficacy 3 b.2. ownership and responsibility 5 c. knowledge 1 5 c.1. aligning forms 4 d. learning skills 2 11 d.1. affective 5 d.2. cognitive 3 d.3. social learning 1 e. personal factors 2 6 e.1. life challenges 3 e.2. making life choices 1 figure 1: hierarchy chart of coded items or qualitative data (source: nvivo) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 218 from the visual presentations, the context where the respondents performed was frequently identified as affecting their foreign language learning; data pertained to this set of factors were from thirteen out of twenty-two coded files. some of the statements given by the respondents regarding this factor were: “the weather is too hot”; “devices might overheat”; “environment”; “the place i use for studying a foreign language is suitable; “my study environment is not a good place for me to focus”; “my study environment is only in an open area where noise can be anywhere, and that makes me distracted”; “self-paced learning is good, but when it comes to foreign language, a guide is a must”; “because of the excitement to learn with others”; and “the way language is taught at school”. most references were attributed to the student’s study environment and need for teamwork or the usual faceto face learning setup. this result parallels the findings based on the data in tables 11 and 13. interestingly, these findings are also aligned with the study of sonza et al. (2022), where they also emphasized that the barriers to mdl comprised inevitable home distractions, poor comprehension, and lack of parents’ assistance. learning skills follow context in the hierarchy. eleven out of the twenty-two transcripts had items that referred to this set of factors. some of the statements given by the respondents about this factor. under affective learning are: “i am afraid of making mistakes since a lot of people are easy to judge”; “time management”; “not always in the mood to learn”; “lack of motivation”. meanwhile, an example response for social learning was “having a person to practice with,”; while for cognitive learning: “i cannot understand the way they express the words” and “i kind of understand the basic parts. but i can’t understand much the difficult parts” among others. cognitive, social, and affective learning skills were the identified subcomponents of learning skills in the theory of performance. apple and ellis (2015) explained that for learning to take place and improve, an individual has to actively integrate all levels of thinking skills to improve their learning performance. students need to process information, construct meaning, apply knowledge, and be able to solve problems. furthermore, they also need to communicate and relate with others (social) and strengthen their affective skills through proper time management, persistence, maintenance of self-confidence, focusing, and coping regardless of frustrations in life. meanwhile, the ability to accept ownership and responsibility for own learning is related to a person’s affective learning capacity; this may be the reason why the identity factor ranked https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 219 third in the hierarchy of the codes. nine out of twenty-two had items that referred to this code. example studentresponses were: “it would greatly enhance my communication skills”; “i want to learn more about the japanese language and not just for a course requirement but to learn it to have an enjoyable life in serving jehovah god.”; “i feel interested in studying foreign language”; and “i kind of show interest in learning japanese because it is a good language”. learner efficacy is defined as the learner’s conviction that they are effective while learning ownership and responsibility manifest in a learner’s desire to learn (apple and ellis, 2015). these findings are in parallel with the results based on the data in table 10. conclusion and implication online modular instruction can be an effective means to facilitate foreign language learning, even when it is done remotely, especially in higher education, as students tend to be more resilient and responsible for their learning. however, other external and internal factors which can be classified under the six components of performance based on elger’s theory of performance (top) should not be disregarded as they are still associated with learning performance. in this research, the teacher’s knowledge of navigating the lms was found to have a moderate positive correlation with the fl grades. therefore, universities should invest in their faculty training to optimize the use of the software that can aid and guarantee a high-quality online teaching-learning experience. meanwhile, the respondents’ attitude towards online learning, fathers’ educational background, and teacher factors resulted in a positive correlation, although weak; these are the other related components or factors that have always been stapled findings in studies of the same nature. the researchers, therefore, further conclude that teachers of foreign languages who opt to use online modular instruction should remain aware of these variables to ensure acceptable learning performance and also to help improve it. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 220 references apple, d. & ellis, w. (2015). learning how to learn: improving the performance of learning. international journal of process education 7(1), 2128. amhag, l., hellström, l., & stigmar, m. (2019). teacher educators’ use of digital tools and needs for digital competence in higher education. journal of digital learning in teacher education, 35(4), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2019.1646169. anzaldo, geraldine. (2021). modular distance learning in the new normal education amidst covid-19. international journal of scientific advances, 2. 263-266. 10.51542/ijscia.v2i3.6. astuti, n.w. (2021). i feel less judged, so i speak more: introverted students’ response on online learning platforms in speaking class. jetle, 2 (2). ashilova, m., begalinov, a., begalinova, k. (2019). about the impact of digitalization of society on education in kazakhstan. science for education today, 9(6), 40–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.15293/2658-6762.1906.03. barrot, j.s., llenares, i.i. & del rosario, l.s. (2021). students’ online learning challenges during the pandemic and how they cope with them: the case of the philippines. educ inf technol, 26, 7321–7338 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10589-x baskota, p., & shrestha, k. (2022). the importance of access to libraries during lockdown. in m. hammond (ed.), volume of research, supporting remote teaching and learning in developing countries: from the global to the local (pp. 114–118). british council. https://www.britishcouncil.org.np/sites/default/files/teaching_learning_book. bates, t. (2019). teaching in a digital age: guidelines for designing and learning (2nd ed.). tony bates associates limited. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/ chin, m. (2020). students’ new normal: modular distance learning. https://www.uniquephilippines.com/students-new-normal-modular-distance-learning/ commission on higher education. (2010). implementing guidelines in the inclusion of foreign languages as electives in the curricula of higher education programs. https://ched.gov.ph/wpcontent/uploads/2017/10/cmo-no.23-s2010.pdf dangle, y. and sumaoang, j. (2020). the implementation of modular distance learning in the philippine secondary public schools. https://www.dpublication.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/11/27-427.pdf https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2019.1646169 http://dx.doi.org/10.15293/2658-6762.1906.03 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10589-x https://www.britishcouncil.org.np/sites/default/files/teaching_learning_book https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/ https://www.uniquephilippines.com/students-new-normal-modular-distance-learning/ https://ched.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cmo-no.23-s2010.pdf https://ched.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cmo-no.23-s2010.pdf https://www.dpublication.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/27-427.pdf https://www.dpublication.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/27-427.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 221 elger, d. (2007). theory of performance. in s. w. beyerlein, c. holmes, & d. k. apple (eds.), faculty guidebook: a comprehensive tool for improving faculty performance (4th ed.). lisle, il: pacific crest. https://www.pcrest2.com/fol/1_2_1.htm englund, c., olofsson, a. d., & price, l. (2017). teaching with technology in higher education: understanding conceptual change and development in practice. higher education research & development, 36(1), 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1171300 ferreira, r. a. & bernales, k. (2020). exploring foreign language learning with eeg and eye-tracking: what can online tools add to the story? in f. anastassiou, & g. andreou (eds.), english as a foreign language. perspectives on teaching, multilingualism and interculturalism (pp.186-210). cambridge scholars publishing. gardner, r. c., & lambert, w. e. (1972). attitudes and motivation in second language learning. rowley, ma: newbury house publishers guardia, l., clougher, d., anderson, t., and maina, m. (2021). ideas for transforming higher education: challenges. international review of research in open and distributed learning, 22(2), 166-184. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/106/17 gordon, s. (2020). online school is a popular option to avoid bullying. 31 january, 2022. https://www.verywellfamily.com/online-school-popular-option-to-avoid-bullying-4690674} ha, y. & im, h. (2020). the role of an interactive visual learning tool and its personalizability in online learning: flow experience. online learning, 24(1), 205-226. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i1.1620 harefa, s. & sihombing, g.l.a. (2021), students’ perception of online learning amidst the covid-19 pandemic: a study of junior, senior high school and college students in a remote area. f1000research, 2021(10), 867. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.52152.1) iwaniec, j. (2020) the effects of parental education level and school location on language learning motivation, the language learning journal, 48(4), 427-441, doi: 10.1080/09571736.2017.1422137 jacobs, g. m. (2017). introverts and cooperative learning. iasce newsletter, 36(1), 7-8. http://www.iasce.net/home/newsletter jalili, s. (2017). parents’ educational level and children’s english language proficiency. language teaching research quarterly (3), 25-39. joaquin, j.j.b., biana, h. t., & dacela, m. a. (2020). the philippine higher education sector in the time of covid-19. frontiers in education, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.576371 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://www.pcrest2.com/fol/1_2_1.htm https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1171300 http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/106/17 https://www.verywellfamily.com/online-school-popular-option-to-avoid-bullying-4690674 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i1.1620 https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.52152.1 http://www.iasce.net/home/newsletter https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.576371 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 222 karthikeyan, k., & kumar, a. (2014). integrated modular teaching in dermatology for undergraduate students: a novel approach. indian dermatology online journal, 5(3), 266. https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-5178.137774 khasinah, s. (2014). factors influencing second language acquisition. englisia journal, 1. 10.22373/ej.v1i2.187. klimova, b. (2021). an insight into online foreign language learning and teaching in the era of covid19 pandemic. procedia computer science, 192, 1787-1794. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.08.183. kocaman, n., & kocaman, o. (2015). parents’ views regarding foreign language teaching in pre-school institutions. the turkish online journal of educational technology, (special issue for inte 2015), 383-393. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed589196.pdf korb, k. a. (2012). conducting educational research. adopting or adapting an instrument. http://korbedpsych.com/r09aadopt landau, m. (2019). exploring representations of classroom practices mediated by information communication technologies (icts). in t. c. pargman, & i. jahnke (eds.), emergent practices and material conditions in learning and teaching with technologies (pp. 53-66). springer nature. doi: 10.1007/978-3030-10764-2_4. luo, x. (2018). an empirical study of cooperative learning in overcoming reticence in college english. cnki. http://www.cnki.com.cn/article/cjfdtotal-hwyy201822122.htm malayan colleges laguna (2021). malayan colleges laguna wins blackboard award for optimizing the student experience. https://www.mcl.edu.ph/ marshall, s. j. (2018). technology and modern students – the digital natives fallacy. in s. j. marshall (ed.), shaping the university of the future (pp. 197–211). springer singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7620-6_10. mirhadizadeh, n. (2016). internal and external factors in language learning. international journal of modern language teaching and learning, 1(5), 188196. http://ijmltl.com/fulltext/paper09102016153900.pdf monter, j. (2011). the related variables and the lexile scores of grade six pupils of morning star montessori school, inc. laguna state polytechnic university. national library of medicine. (n.d.). common terms and equations. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/stats_tutorial/section2/mod8_sd.html https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-5178.137774 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.08.183 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed589196.pdf http://www.cnki.com.cn/article/cjfdtotal-hwyy201822122.htm https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7620-6_10 http://ijmltl.com/fulltext/paper-09102016153900.pdf http://ijmltl.com/fulltext/paper-09102016153900.pdf https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/stats_tutorial/section2/mod8_sd.html journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 223 nardo, m. t. b. (2017). modular instruction enhances learner autonomy. american journal of educational research, 5(10), 1024-1034. 10.12691/education-5-10-3 nugroho, a., dwi, i., & rekha, a. (2020). efl teachers’ challenges and insights of online teaching amidst global pandemic. metathesis: journal of english language literature and teaching, 4(3), 277291. http://dx.doi.org/10.31002/metathesis.v4i3.3195 oranggaga, s. d. (2022). challenges and prospects in teaching grammar using the modular distance learning in marawi city, philippines. international journal of linguistics studies, 2(1), 40–44. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijls.2022.2.1.5 panganiban, g. & madrigal, d., (2021). grappling with the learning modules: experience of public elementary pupils attending english written modular class”. technium social sciences journal. 20, 263-274. doi:10.47577/tssj.v20i1.3640. phoong, s. y., phoong, s. w., moghavvemi, s., & sulaiman, a. (2019). effect of smart classroom on student achievement at higher education. journal of educational technology systems, 48(2), 291– 304. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239519870721 quinones, m. t. (2020, july 3). deped clarifies blended, distance learning modalities for sy 2020 2021. philippine information agency. https://pia.gov.ph/news/articles/1046619 rotas, e. e., & cahapay, m. b. (2020). difficulties in remote learning: voices of philippine university students in the wake of covid-19 crisis. asian journal of distance education, 15 (2). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1285295.pdf ruano‐borbalan, j. c. (2019). innovation in higher education: actors, policies and pedagogical effects. european journal of education, 54(4), 493–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12371 sadiq, s., & zamir, s. (2014). effectiveness of modular approach in teaching at the university level. journal of education and practice, 5, 103-109. sevencan, s. (2021). language teaching to shift to e-learning in post-virus era. doi: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/education/ shabir, m. (2017). student-teachers’ beliefs on the use of l1 in efl classroom: a global perspective. canadian center of science and education 10 (4), 45-52. http://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n4p45 skehan, p. (1989). individual differences in second-language learning. london: edward arnold softwaretestinghelp. (2022). 15 best learning management systems of the year 2022. https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/learning-management-system/ sonza, s.,protacio, a.,padojinog, w.,peñafiel, n., javier, b., dolojo, r.,magtulis, s., & barcelona, b. (2022). facilitators and barriers of students’ modular distance learning in english: a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 http://dx.doi.org/10.31002/metathesis.v4i3.3195 https://doi.org/10.32996/ijls.2022.2.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239519870721 https://pia.gov.ph/news/articles/1046619 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1285295.pdf https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12371 http://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n4p45 https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/learning-management-system/ journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 224 phenomenological inquiry. globus journal of progressive education, 1(12), 175-79. doi:10.46360/globus.edu.220221009 stefaniak, j., & carey, k. (2019). instilling purpose and value in the implementation of digital badges in higher education. international journal of educational technology in higher education, 16(1). retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0175-9 sun, y. (2019). an analysis on the factors affecting second language acquisition and its implications for teaching and learning. journal of language teaching and research, 10(5), 1018-1022. : http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1005.14 talimodao, a. j. s., & madrigal, d. v. (2021). printed modular distance learning in philippine public elementary schools in time of covid-19 pandemic: quality, implementation, and challenges. philippine social science journal, 4(3), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.52006/main.v4i3.391 tsai, t. & wu, y. (2010). note-taking instruction and note-taking languages on college efl students’ listening comprehension. new horizons in education, 58(1), 120-131. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej893716.pdf walberg, h. j. (1981). a psychological theory of educational productivity. in f. h. farley & n. gordon (eds.), psychological and education (pp. 81-110). chicago: national society for the study of education. zhou, y. (2020). the influence of family on children’s second language learning. major papers. 112. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/major-papers/112 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0175-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1005.14 https://doi.org/10.52006/main.v4i3.391 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej893716.pdf https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/major-papers/112 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 1 article history: submitted: 7 october 2022 reviewed: 5 december 2022 edited: 16 december 2022 article accepted: 30 january 2023 indonesian efl teachers’ perceptions on flipped classroom approach in modern classroom contexts kristian florensio wijaya sanata dharma university, indonesia author email: kristianw611@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16543 abstract one of the notable shifts efl educationalists have to incorporate to promote more holistic language learning outcomes is the learner-oriented approach. with this background issue in mind, flipped classroom approach is rewarding to be integrated with nowadays classroom contexts since second language learners are more capable of becoming more proactive, responsible, and well-organized learning community members. this case study was conducted to generate richer and more robust research results out of the specific research phenomenon. the main purpose of this case study is to reveal the importance of integrating flipped classroom approach in modern classroom contexts to indonesian efl educators. to fulfill this study objective, two experienced indonesian efl teachers were invited to share their experiences in utilizing flipped classroom approach by filling out five open-ended written narrative inquiry questions through the whatsapp application. regarding the obtained research results, there were two major specific themes namely: (1) the effectiveness of flipped classroom approach depends on learners’ learning eagerness and (2). flipped classroom approach progressively promotes more fruitful learning outcomes. based on these two themes, it can be fairly inferred that the constant internalization of flipped classroom approach can promote a significant degree of benefits for efl learners’ target language learning proficiency, motivation, and independence. keywords: flipped classroom approach; efl teachers; narrative inquiry =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 mailto:kristianw611@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16543 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v8i1.16453&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2023-01-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 2 introduction in this 21st century, english is deemed one of the essential languages to be acquired by efl learners worldwide. hsieh et al. (2016) stated that it is critical for second language learners all around the globe to learn the english language to survive in these ever-changing life dynamics. inevitably, technology integration also plays another crucial role in sustaining the continuity of exploring this target language due to the transformative educational roles played by educators and learners. chuang et al. (2018) argued that in technology integration, efl educationalists and learners must strive to discover various learning methods complying with their daily-based classroom learning circumstances. concerning this notable educational shift, a more proactive and learner-oriented approach is preferred by efl teachers and learners since they are capable of finding out a wide variety of information boundlessly. turan and akdag-cimen (2020) believed that with a student-centered learning approach, efl teachers and learners could potentially engage in more enjoyable and meaningful second language learning enterprises. one of the potential learner-oriented teaching methods worthwhile to be internalized by nowadays efl teachers is flipped classroom. through the flipped classroom approach, efl learners can progressively become more autonomous knowledge seekers and lifelong academicians. yang and chen (2020) asserted that efl learners constantly participating in flipped classroom learning models are more likely to unearth limitless knowledge independently. the nature of flipped classroom model itself refers to out-of-classroom learning exploration dynamics where learners are demanded to read the assigned learning materials before the upcoming teaching-learning processes to broaden their specific understanding of the targeted subject-specific topics discussed in the classrooms. jeong et al. (2018) theorized that in the flipped classroom dynamics, efl learners can highly inculcate a higher level of learning motivation, endeavor, and confidence as they have expanded their background knowledge toward the specific learning materials posted by the teachers. another good value promoted by flipped classroom learning model is that efl learners will become more proactive learning participants by establishing more interactive and encouraging learning dynamics. chuang et al. (2018) strongly suggested that globalized efl teachers implement flipped classroom approach at the commencement of second language learning activities to continuously promote more positive, interactive, and meaningful learning dynamics in which all learners gradually https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 3 transfigure into more active learning community members. for struggling efl learners, the further integration of flipped classroom model can promote a higher sense of learning composure since they have wider opportunities to learn the posted learning materials based on their learning pace and levels. hsieh et al. (2016) averred that flipped classroom incorporation can pave more comfortable learning pathways for struggling efl learners since they are endowed with continual liberation to read the designated learning materials conformance with their learning proficiency and velocity. under flipped classroom learning approach, efl learners can instill a higher level of responsibility toward their ongoing language learning processes. this positive learning value occurs since they can determine their learning objectives, loads, and interests based on the flexible knowledge discovery activities conducted outside the classroom walls. ngo and yunus (2021) highly recommended worldwide efl teachers start applying flipped classroom learning model at the beginning of their second language learning activities to make them more responsible and well-organized target language academicians who know the appropriate learning strategies working best for them. similarly, the flipped classroom learning approach can enable efl learners to gain more profound insights into the specifically-assigned learning topics stipulated by their learners. this rewarding learning benefit is more likely to happen since learners have long-term independent learning periods where they can understand those posted learning materials to have more mutual discussions with their learning counterparts and teachers. kiang and yunus (2021) unveiled that many efl learners not only become more knowledgeable but also well-prepared with the supervision of flipped classroom learning approach as they have fully comprehended the particular subject-specific matters assigned by their teachers to be further discussed in the physical learning circumstances. mcnally et al. (2017) suggested that efl teachers willing to incorporate this student-centered learning approach in their classroom vicinities should keep four fundamental principles in mind. the first notion deals with flexible learning surroundings in which learners can explore the posted learning materials without being delimited by time and place. the second principle refers to the student-centered learning culture that highly emphasizes the dominant roles of learners rather than teachers. the third pillar denotes the intentional learning content attempting to significantly enhance learners’ specific understanding of the targeted learning materials without https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 4 any boundaries. while the last element strongly accentuates the educators’ professionalism in designing interactive, meaningful, and transformative lessons aiming to bring about more holistic second language learning exposure where all learning community members can develop their learning skills to the fullest potential. there are four previous studies relevant to the above-proposed research topic. afrilyasanti et al. (2017) revealed that efl learners exposed to flipped classroom learning models were more prone to elevate their target language competencies constantly due to the accommodation of distinctive learning abilities. mubarok et al. (2019) found that most university efl learners instilled positive perceptions toward integrating flipped classroom approaches since they have gradually become more proactive learning participants aware of their particular strengths and weaknesses. harunasari (2020) highly recommended that indonesian efl teachers internalize the flipped classroom model in their everyday classroom learning dynamics to enable all learners to obtain more satisfying target language learning achievements successfully. santosa (2017) strongly advocated for indonesian university efl teachers to start incorporating flipped classroom model at the onset of second language learning exposure to minimize the gap between struggling and proficient learners resulting in more meaningful, transformative, and profound learning processes. apart from the aboveelucidated research results, there is still an essential need for the researcher to exhaustively investigate indonesian efl teachers’ perceptions of flipped classroom approach in modern classroom contexts to generate more insightful and deeper perspectives for second language educationalists to start prioritizing the critical importance of this learner-oriented approach in this ever-changing era. to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, none of these prior studies have critically investigated flipped classroom integration in nowadays classroom contexts based on our teachers’ perspectives. hence, the researcher highly encouraged to conduct this qualitative investigation to enable efl teachers, curriculum designers, and educational institutions to establish more solid collaborative networking with each other to create varied meaningful, interactive, and enjoyable learning activities sustaining our learners’ target language competencies as well as motivation within the proper implementations of flipped classroom approach. by conducting this study, indonesian efl teachers will be strongly motivated to internalize flipped classroom approach in their classroom learning circumstances https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 5 due to its importance, flexibility, and benefits for the entire second language learning processes. to meet this major research objective,one research problem was enacted as follows: how do indonesian efl teachers value the integration of flipped classroom approach in their classroom contexts? literature review the basic conceptions of flipped classroom approach through flipped classroom approach, more interactive, pleasurable, and flexible second language learning dynamics can be fully experienced by efl learners since educationalists uploaded the intended learning materials before the onsite learning processes conducted in the classroom circumstances to promote a more collaborative learning interface among learning community members. this definition above is mutually interlinked with unal et al. (2020), mentioning that efl learners can possess a broader understanding of the targeted learning materials after being exposed to flipped classroom model in which they already instilled a more exhaustive understanding of the targeted learning materials posted by their teachers. thus, it is worth keeping in mind that efl teachers have to rejuvenate their roles as supportive learning facilitators while applying this learner-oriented learning approach to promote more positive interactions and discussions among diverse-wide ranging learners. chun and sathappan (2020) propounded that in flipped classrooms, efl learners will become more responsible academicians ready to explore limitless information under the supervision of supportive facilitators. in line with all the above-explained conceptions, two fundamental elements must be maintained by efl educators before implementing flipped classroom approach in their daily-based classroom learning enterprises, solid collaborative networking and mutual learning discussions. by continually preserving these two basic principles, efl learners can experience a higher degree of second language learning enjoyment in interactive and hands-on learning activities. yousufi (2020) adduced that the heart of flipped classroom model should be designed in more collaborative and interactive fashions to significantly increase efl learners’ motivation and interest to learn the target language more. furthermore, the learning contents posted in flipped classroom approach should be designed in richer and more enjoyable ways before being accessed by the learners. by carrying https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 6 out this action, efl learners can progressively become more broad-minded target language academicians, inculcating in-depth analytical, questioning, and exploration skills. say and yıldırım (2020) highly recommended that efl educators all around the globe insert a vast range of captivating, creative, and fruitful learning activities in flipped classroom approach to allow learners to become more critical and insightful academicians. the fundamental theory of flipped classroom approach eppard and rochdi (2017) acknowledged that the new bloom’s taxonomy has a tight-knit relationship with the flipped classroom approach, highly emphasizing the combination of autonomous learning characters and assimilation learning processes undergone by learners to foster their targeted learning competencies to the utmost levels. as noted before, the placement of independent learning behaviors in flipped classroom model mostly took place outside the classroom walls since learners must explore the assigned learning materials through their particular learning competencies and pace. while the assimilation learning processes occurred in flipped classroom dynamics requested the learners to formulate various critical inquiries and explain the complex learning conceptions clearly to other learning community members. kiang and yunus (2021) contended that a high-quality flipped classroom approach should comprise analytical, critical, reasoning, and self-reliant skills unless the ongoing second language learning processes will be debilitating for all learning community members. the key points of conducting meaningful flipped classroom activities after implementing the flipped classroom model, efl teachers must ascertain that all learning community members are walking on the right learning pathways by deliberately allowing them to explore the posted learning materials based on their particular learning levels and speed. by releasing this action, efl learners will have wider opportunities to escalate their cognitive development to advanced levels. zainuddin and halili (2016) asserted that flipped classroom approach could be labeled as a meaningful, enjoyable, and transformative learning route for efl learners only if language teachers grant constant flexibility to fully engage with the readily-made personalized learning activities harmonious with their specific learning competencies and velocity. eventually, the integration of flipped classroom approach https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 7 simultaneously offers a wide array of excellent values for efl learners to improve their higherorder thinking skills for greater development. these learners can potentially attain the preservation and enlargement of higher-order thinking skills under the flipped classroom model, where they are intensively trained to establish mutual group discussions and solid collaborative enterprises with other learning counterparts. sharma (2017) strongly advised worldwide efl teachers to utilize a wide range of higher-order thinking enterprises through flipped classroom model by equipping their learners with ample group discussion activities in which learners’ social, collaborative, and critical thinking skills are sustainably thriving. method this current investigation was framed within a case study framework to explore people’s experiences regarding their particular life events. heale and twycross (2018) theorized that the researchers could obtain more realistic and robust data collections since more exhaustive data delineations are fully generated from the specifically-examined phenomenon. the researcher invited two indonesian efl teachers working in state and private institutions to fulfill this major research objective. both teachers hold english education master’s degrees, yet they graduated from different batches. the first teacher was considered a senior second language educator since he has been teaching for more than five years and implemented a wide variety of flipped classroom media in his daily-based learning processes. the current age of first teacher is 26 years old, and he is a male educator working in a private school in yogyakarta city. the second teacher also gained adequate teaching experience since he currently works as a second language instructor in one of the state school institutions in yogyakarta city. this second teacher was 30 years old and a male educator willing to transform future generations’ lives by using interesting flipped classroom activities. the researcher employed a purposive sampling technique during the participants' selection stage. the main aim of integrating this research method is to generate more in-depth research results based on the appropriacy and relevancy of the research participants’ experiences regarding the flipped classroom approach applied in their daily-based second language learning dynamics. etikan et al. (2016) articulated that the major advantage of utilizing a purposive sampling approach for qualitative researchers is that more specific data can potentially be obtained as the invited research participants already instilled well-required and richer https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 8 knowledge of the specifically-explored topics. for the data gathering processes, the researcher distributed five open-ended written narrative inquiry questions to these two research participants through whatsapp. this worldwide technological application effectively bridges the lengthy distance hindering the onsite data-gathering processes involving the research participants and researcher. in the data analysis processes, the researcher subsumed the mostappeared findings into some major-specific themes supported by previous flipped classroom theories and results to generate more robust, reliable, and trustworthy scientific explanations to second language educational parties. a thematic analysis approach was also applied to cluster the attained research findings in line with the above-proposed research theme to ensure the intended results' robustness. findings and discussion this section is purported to impart more specific delineations regarding two main themes yielded by a thematic analysis approach. those two major themes are: (1) the effectiveness of flipped classroom approach depends on learners’ learning eagerness, and (2) flipped classroom approach progressively promotes more fruitful learning outcomes. table 1 delineates the research results from disparities between the first and second efl teachers. the table is shortly followed by the researcher's argumentations, theories, and previous supportive findings. table 1. the disparities between two efl teachers’ perceptions of the successfullness of flipped classroom approach teacher 1 teacher 2 1. efl learners must push their limits to benefit from flipped classroom activities. 1. efl teachers need to apply a flipped-classroom approach to promote more fruitful learning outcomes. 2. the flipped classroom approach can improve efl learners’ self-discipline, teamwork, and social skills. 2. through flipped classrooms, efl learners can share their thoughts more confidently after reading the posted learning materials. 3. more responsible learning companions should mentor unmotivated efl learners to thrive together in the flipped classroom learning processes. 3. the flipped classroom approach's effectiveness is often obstructed by limited school facilities and spare teaching preparation time faced by indonesian efl teachers. 4. efl learners should play dominant roles in flipped classroom activities to experience more meaningful language learning enterprises. 4. efl learners are encouraged to conduct more rigorous personalized learning management in flipped classroom activities to better structure the targeted knowledge and skills. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 9 teacher 1: the effectiveness of flipped classroom approach depends on learners’ learning eagerness the first efl teachers frankly confessed that the efficiency of flipped classroom approach strongly depends on learners’ learning eagerness. second language learners, having been introduced to the flipped classroom approach, are requested to inculcate a higher level of learning commitment irrespective of a vast range of severe impediments. competent second language learners are disabled as resilient knowledge seekers relentlessly improve their targeted competencies by stipulating clearer learning objectives. khalil and fahim (2017) strongly supported efl learners to infuse more robust learning endeavors when integrating the flipped classroom approach to maximize their target learning competencies to greater levels. similarly, kozikoglu (2019) repudiated that by internalizing a higher degree of learning commitment, efl learners can orchestrate a wide range of efficient strategies due to continual exposure to more authentic, enjoyable, and contextual learning activities. all these above-explicated conceptions are in partnership with the following interview excerpts shared by the first efl teacher. [teacher 1: fruitful or not, the outcomes may depend on how far the students are willing to push themselves and others in their team to achieve the expected learning objectives.] [teacher 1: this, of course, is also a testament that flipped classrooms, when being applied appropriately, may at least “push” the students to a certain standard, which may encourage the students to put more effort towards their learning.] furthermore, the first efl teachers concurrently construed that flipped classroom approach can offer richer and more enlightened avenues for their learners to become more well-organized and responsible target language academicians. this first benefit truly emerged since learners, having been introduced to the flipped classroom approach, are strongly demanded to possess adequate background knowledge by exploring the assigned learning materials beforehand. lie, and yunus (2019) proved that an overwhelming majority of indonesian university efl learners are strongly motivated to proactively participate in varied target language learning processes after being exposed to flipped classroom approach due to the autonomous learning dynamics and boundless information they progressively possess. the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 10 second main benefit of implementing flipped classroom model is that efl learners can significantly foster their critical thinking skills. the tangible enhancement of critical thinking skills occurred since they are accustomed to comprehending, analyzing, and selecting the most appropriate information relatable to their specific learning contexts. by doing so, these types of learners can potentially attain more gratifying learning outcomes by the end of flipped classroom incorporation. these above-explained contentions are closely associated with liou et al. (2016) highly advocating globalized efl educators to apply flipped classroom approach at the outset of teaching-learning dynamics to grant more flexible knowledge exploration rooms for the learners in which their critical thinking skills toward the designated learning materials are terrifically fostered. the second teacher remarked that integrating the flipped classroom approach is rewarding to fully disseminate stronger collaborative skills among learning community members. efl learners having worked together in flipped classroom approach are more readily to excel at actualizing the concepts they have learned daily since others’ sharing harmoniously substantiates their existing knowledge formation. ansori and nafi (2018) phrased that it is of utmost importance for efl educationalists to activate the flipped classroom approach in their diverse, wide-ranging classroom vicinities to intensively assist learners in fine-tuning their solid collaborative networking enriching their extant understanding of the targeted specific subjects. such conceptions explained above have shared some similarities with these quoted interview excerpts. [teacher 1: flipped classroom approach nurtures students’ awareness of the benefits of “being wellprepared” because knowing something you will be taught is better than knowing nothing and being surprised.] [teacher 1: flipped classroom approach acts as a disciplinary means that invoke steadfastness, it means that the students are trained to be on alert at all times, to turn their critical thinking engine at all times.] [teacher 1: flipped classroom approach promotes teamwork between classmates. when the students work on a live problem-solving activity in the class, they can work with their partners. their knowledge is justified as they confirm each other’s learning results.] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 11 it is highly indispensable for efl teachers to entrust trusted learning mentors during the collaborative learning interfaces to ascertain the meaningful continuity of flipped classroom approach infused among distinctive efl learners’ specific learning backgrounds and needs. by realizing this action, learners are more liable to work persistently to achieve the collectively predetermined learning objectives. as a result, low learning motivation and awareness can be progressively degraded through this intensive group work supervision. yeo (2018) believed that for the flipped-classroom approach to run more successfully, efl educationalists are constantly prompted to promote more emotionally-supportive collaborative teamwork among the learning community members, eventually impacting the learners’ learning desires and plans. arifani et al. (2020) parsed that flipped classroom approach can be deemed as one of the successful learning trajectories for efl learners to nurture their existing learning endeavor, commitment, and management only if the more proficient counterparts are strongly willing to facilitate other struggling members. all these underlying principles concur with the following interview excerpts attached below. [teacher 1: some of the problems that may occur include students with low motivation and no awareness of the need to prepare for classes. students with such conditions are in immediate need of support.] [teacher 1: what can be done in many ways is through teamwork and selecting responsible classmates to “mentor” those students. this way, the students will at least be motivated to grow together with their more responsible friends.] as a final remark, the first efl teacher highly encouraged second language educators in this archipelago to gradually play minor roles while incorporating flipped classroom approach in their daily-based learning activities. briefly speaking, efl teachers have to be more eager to play their novel roles as supportive learning facilitators continually desirous of supervising their ongoing learners’ learning progress and motivating a certain number of learners encountering unpleasant learning obstacles. haghighi et al. (2019) advised worldwide efl teachers to play their new roles in flipped classroom approach by becoming more caring learning instructors who not merely present the learning materials but also encourage, attract, and organize their learners’ current learning enterprises. coupled with this remarkable transformation, efl teachers can be fairly presumed as facilitative learning instructors. at the same time, they can https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 12 display more relatable, contextual, and enjoyable learning materials in their flipped classroom platforms. the further incorporation of this ultimate flipped classroom element should take considerable attention from efl teachers to actualize more vibrant learning circumstances where the physical classroom contexts do not rigidly confine learners’ knowledge discovery. merrill (2015) proclaimed that one of the significant benefits of a meaningful flipped classroom approach is learners’ immediacy to explore limitless information without being delimited by teacher-oriented. rather, it should be fully replaced by student-centered and fun learning activities. all these elaborations are positively linked to these interview excerpts that can be seen as follows. [teacher 1: they certainly do. the teachers will become facilitators who provide daily challenges and problems to be solved. not as the guiding light, but more like a mentor who monitors and supports students’ growth from the back, without being a menacing standard for the students to follow.] [teacher 1: the students have the dominant role of leading their classroom’s pace. the discussions in a flipped classroom are usually rich and interesting in terms of pointers and knowledge; this makes classrooms more “alive” and “useful.”] teacher 2: flipped classroom approach progressively promotes more fruitful learning outcomes the second efl teacher acknowledged that flipped classroom approach could promote more fruitful learning outcomes for diverse wide-ranging learners. this positive learning outcome occurred since learners can limitlessly explore various learning materials before participating in classroom discussions. as a result, their independent learning behaviors are significantly increased. irianti (2020) revealed that many indonesian university efl learners have transformed into more independent target language academicians after being exposed to flipped classroom approach resulting in the successful attainment of more satisfying learning outcomes. similarly, jeong et al. (2018) unveiled that most worldwide university efl learners uphold positive perspectives toward the integration of flipped classroom approach since they have become more autonomous knowledge discoverers and successful target language academicians. all these above-explicated findings found support from the following interview excerpts taken from the second efl teacher. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 13 [teacher 2: yes, i think that flipped classroom approach can promote more fruitful learning outcomes for my students because the students easily access the learning content whenever they want through an online system, and it helps them to be able to work it autonomously.] [teacher 2: these ways, the learning outcomes are achieved better than the traditional learning approach.] the second fruitful learning outcome constantly promoted by flipped classroom approach is the significant elevation of efl learners’ self-confidence and active learning engagement. these significant learning impacts are attained since they have infused a more exhaustive understanding of the specifically-assigned learning topics posted by the teachers before attending the prospective learning activities. while learners have transfigured into more wellprepared academicians, they will concurrently become more confident in sharing their thoughts, ideas, and opinions enriching the ongoing learning processes. lee and martin (2020) unfolded that an overwhelming majority of second language learners have gradually transformed into more confident and proactive learning participants after engaging in flipped classroom approach due to the heightened learning responsibility, in-depth mastery of learning materials, and high-quality learning materials. the following second efl teacher’s interview excerpts also confirmed similar results. [teacher 2: building the confidence in my students. when they come to my class, they have the knowledge to participate, dare to speak, and follow the class better.] [teacher 2: students confidently share their ideas and opinions because they understood the materials fully before the classroom sessions.] reversely, the effective and meaningful incorporation of flipped classroom approach is not without its common impediments. the second efl teacher sanctioned that flipped classroom approach can potentially increase learners’ learning loads outside of the physical classroom contexts. this general issue is prompted by the fact that not all learners can freely and boundlessly access all the posted learning contents due to unstable internet connectivity and the absence of proper digital devices. maharsi et al. (2021) strongly suggested that indonesian university efl teachers create a balanced internalization between the integration of flipped https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 14 classrooms and collaborative learning approaches to enable struggling learners to have similar opportunities to access the designated materials under supportive learning supervision. the second obstacle is in accord with the increasing workload efl teachers endure. efl teachers determining to internalize flipped classroom approach in their learning vicinities are required to inculcate a higher degree of resilience and commitment in analyzing, selecting, and preparing the targeted learning materials to promote better, more meaningful, intriguing, and qualified second language experiences for learners. mehring (2016) highly advocated that educational institutions provide more intensive flipped classroom training for efl teachers to actualize more hands-on learning experiences where learners’ cognitive and organization skills can prolifically thrive. in partnership with this assertion, noroozi et al. (2021) believed that intensive flipped classroom training can gradually alleviate efl teachers’ burdens on their working loads since they are more aware of the nature, utilities, and strategies on how to utilize this student-centered learning approach to the utmost potentials. these above-explained challenges align with the following second efl teacher’s interview excerpts. [teacher 2: the flipped classroom requires readily available digital access to learning objects. and so, the students without access are disadvantaged compared to their peers. to overcome this problem, i encourage the school to provide available digital access to those struggling with internet access.] [teacher 2: the second common hurdle is the time-consuming process. the teacher spends more time preparing the syllabus following the flipped classroom model.] conclusion and implication given these points, indonesian efl educationalists need to start implementing flipped classroom approach in nowadays second-language classroom contexts to enable efl learners to nurture their responsibility, motivation, and commitment with the existence of gratifying learning outcomes that deserve to be their eventual rewards. two drawbacks should be fairly acknowledged in this study. first, since this case study merely investigated two indonesian efl teachers’ perspectives toward flipped classroom approach in nowadays language classroom vicinities, it will be more noteworthy for the prospective researchers to involve a greater number of indonesian efl teachers working in distinctive school institutions to yield more insightful research results applicable in various https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 15 second language learning enterprises. second, since this case study merely focused on exploring indonesian efl teachers’ perceptions of flipped classroom approach in modern classroom contexts, future researchers are encouraged to explore a vast array of external educational factors hampering the effective implementation of flipped classroom approach in this 21stcentury era. this area deserves more profound investigation to prepare indonesian efl teachers' readiness to overcome various obstructions hindering the meaningfulness of flipped classroom integration. references afrilyasanti, r., cahyono, b. y., & astuti, u. p. (2017). indonesian efl students’ perceptions on the implementation of flipped classroom model. journal of language teaching and research, 8(3), 476–484. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0803.05 ansori, m., & nafi, n. n. (2018). english teachers' perceived benefits and challenges of flipped classroom implementation. jeels (journal of english education and linguistics studies), 5(2), 211-227. https://doi.org/10.30762/jeels.v5i2.820 arifani, y., asari, s., anwar, k., & budianto, l. (2020). individual or collaborative whatsapp learning? a flipped classroom model of efl writing instruction. teaching english with technology, 20(1), 122–139. http://www.tewtjournal.org chuang, h. h., weng, c. y., & chen, c. h. (2018). which students benefit most from a flipped classroom approach to language learning? british journal of educational technology, 49(1), 56–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12530 eppard, j., & rochdi, a. (2017). a framework for flipped learning. proceedings of the 13th international conference on mobile learning 2017, ml 2017, 33–40. etikan, i., musa, s. a., & alkassim, r. s. (2016). comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. american journal of theoretical and applied statistics, 5(1), 1-4. https://10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11 haghighi, h., jafarigohar, m., khoshsima, h., & vahdany, f. (2019). impact of flipped classroom on efl learners’ appropriate use of refusal: achievement, participation, perception. computer assisted language learning, 32(3), 261–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1504083 harunasari, s. y. (2020). flipping out the classroom: a case study in indonesian efl class. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 https://doi.org/10.30762/jeels.v5i2.820 http://dx.doi.org/10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 16 international journal of psychosocial rehabilitation, 24(4), 3572–3584. https://doi.org/10.37200/ijpr/v24i4/pr201469 heale, r., & twycross, a. (2018). what is a case study?. evidence-based nursing, 21(1), 7-8. irianti, l. (2020). teachers’ perception on flipped classroom model in digital literacy era. elt-lectura, 7(2), 94–102. https://doi.org/10.31849/elt-lectura.v7i2.3685 jeong, j. s., cañada-cañada, f., & gonzález-gómez, d. (2018). the study of flipped-classroom for pre-service science teachers. education sciences, 8(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040163 kiang, n. h., & yunus, m. m. (2021). what do malaysian esl teachers think about flipped classroom? international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 20(3), 117– 131. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.20.3.8 kozikoglu, i. (2019). analysis of the studies concerning flipped learning model: a comparative meta-synthesis study. international journal of instruction, 12(1), 851-868. lee, y. y., & martin, k. i. (2020). the flipped classroom in esl teacher education: an example from call. education and information technologies, 25(4), 2605–2633. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10082-6 lie, w. w., & yunus, m. m. (2019). flipped for a betterment: the acceptance level towards flipped learning among malaysian esl learners. journal of education and development, 3(1), 69. https://doi.org/10.20849/jed.v3i1.569 liou, w. k., bhagat, k. k., & chang, c. y. (2016). beyond the flipped classroom: a highly interactive cloud-classroom (hic) embedded into basic materials science courses. journal of science education and technology, 25(3), 460–473. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-016-9606-8 maharsi, i., wijayanti, y. r., & astari, t. r. (2021). evaluating flipped classroom approach in efl students reading classes. llt journal: a journal on language and language teaching, 24(1), 92–102. https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.v24i1.2768 mcnally, b., chipperfield, j., dorsett, p., del fabbro, l., frommolt, v., goetz, s., lewohl, j., molineux, m., pearson, a., reddan, g., roiko, a., & rung, a. (2017). flipped classroom experiences: student preferences and flip strategy in a higher education context. higher education, 73(2), 281–298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0014-z https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 17 mehring, j. (2016). present research on the flipped classroom and potential tools for the efl classroom. computers in the schools, 33(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2016.1139912 merrill, j. e. (2015). the flipped classroom: an examination of veteran teacher practices when flipping their classrooms for the first time. texas a&m university. mubarok, a. f., cahyono, b. y., & astuti, u. p. (2019). effect of flipped classroom model on indonesian efl students’ writing achievement across cognitive styles. dinamika ilmu, 19(1), 115–131. https://doi.org/10.21093/di.v19i1.1479 ngo, h. k., & md yunus, m. (2021). flipped classroom in english language teaching and learning: a systematic literature review. international journal of academic research in business and social sciences, 11(3), 185–196. https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v11-i3/8622 noroozi, a., rezvani, e., & ameri-golestan, a. (2021). students’ perceptions of the incorporation of flipped learning into l2 grammar lessons. teaching english with technology, 2021(1), 112–130. rafik khalil, r. m., & fahim, s. s. (2017). assessment as a learning tool in a flipped english language classroom in higher education. in arab world english journal, december 2016 asels annual conference proceedings. santosa, m. h. (2017). learning approaches of indonesian efl gen z students in a flipped learning context. journal on english as a foreign language, 7(2), 183. https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v7i2.689 say, f. s., & yıldırım, f. s. (2020). flipped classroom implementation in science teaching. international online journal of education and teaching (iojet), 7(2), 606–620. http://iojet.org/index.php/iojet/article/view/759 scott chen hsieh, j., vivian wu, w.-c., & marek, m. w. (2016). computer assisted language learning using the flipped classroom to enhance efl learning. taylor & francis, 30(1–2), 1–21. http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=ncal20 sharma, m. m. m. (2017). teacher in a digital era. global journal of computer science and technology, 17(3), 11–14. turan, z., & akdag-cimen, b. (2020). flipped classroom in english language teaching: a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 8, no. 1, january 2023 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 18 systematic review. computer assisted language learning, 33(5–6), 590–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2019.1584117 unal, a., unal, z., & bodur, y. (2020). using flipped classroom in middle schools: teachers’ perceptions. journal of research in education, 30(2), 90–112. yang, c. c. r., & chen, y. (2020). implementing the flipped classroom approach in primary english classrooms in china. education and information technologies, 25(2), 1217–1235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10012-6 yeo, m. (2018). flipping or flopping: lessons learnt from flipping a course for asean teachers of english. in innovations in flipping the language classroom (pp. 23-44). springer, singapore. yousufi, u. (2020). an integrative review of flipped classroom model. american journal of educational research, 8(2), 90–97. https://doi.org/10.12691/education-8-2-4 zainuddin, z., & halili, s. h. (2016). flipped classroom research and trends from different fields of study. international review of research in open and distributed learning, 17(3). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/964 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2 july 2017 abstract teaching english as a foreign language is a challenging task, particularly when it is done in places where english serves a very limited purpose. this study attempted to investigate english teaching challenges as well as the solutions taken by the english teachers at mtsn taliwang. the study captured the english teachers’ point of view in facing english teaching challenges in the classroom and the solutions they implemented to solve them through interview. a number of challenges emerged, partly coming from students, partly from teachers, and partly from the school’s facility. students are challenged by their lack of vocabulary mastery, low concentration, lack of discipline, boredom, and speaking problem. meanwhile, teachers’ challenges are shortage of teachers’ training, language proficiency issue, limited mastery of teaching methods, unfamiliarity to it, and lack of professional development. in addition, facilities issues including inadequate resources and facilities, and time constraint. the solutions to overcome these challenges were also suggested in this study. the efforts taken are divided into two; efforts done by the school and by the english teachers. reforming attitude and improving resources and facilities are the solutions taken by mtsn taliwang. on the other hand, applying various teaching methods and techniques, matching students’ proficiency level and learning situation, making use of available resources and facilities, providing motivational feedback, looking for appropriate methods or materials, and teachers’ self-reflection are the english teachers’ efforts in tackling english teaching challenges. keywords: teaching, english language, challenges, solutions introduction teaching a language has many different features. a teacher does not only teach challenges in teaching english faced by english teachers at mtsn taliwang, indonesia aisyah mumary songbatumis earn e d h er u n de rgradu ate degree fro m en gl ish edu c at ion dep ar t men t at un iv er sit as muh ammadiyah yogyakar ta. she has produ ced some papers acc epted in n ation al and in tern a tion al c on fe ren c es in l an g u age tea c h in g. two of the papers were presented in the 13th asia tefl international conference at nanjing, ch in a an d 1s t i n ter n at ion a l c on f eren c e of i k atan gu ru b ah a sa i n gg ris i n d on e sia at yogy akar ta. currently, she works as a tran slator an d en glish tutor at ams on lin e en glish course.  54-67 55 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 and pay attention to students’ language skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but also helps, facilitates, and encourages students to have enthusiasm, good attitude, and motivation towards english. furthermore, teachers have to understand what students learn, how and why such learning influences them, how lessons could be beneficial for them in the future (derakhshan, 2015). hence, language teaching requires teachers to teach students to develop both academic and personal abilities. however, teaching english becomes a crucial issue when it is taught as a foreign language. teaching english as a foreign language is a demanding task when it comes to the places where english serves limited exposure (khan, 2011). it was shown by the researcher’s teaching experience in several schools in yogyakarta. she encountered various challenges in teaching english, including lack of english exposure, classroom size, and shortage of english teachers. challenges regarding shortage of english teachers should not have happened since there is a great number of english graduates in indonesia, particularly in yogyakarta. according to statistics which were taken from official online database of some universities in yogyakarta, the researcher has found about 240 english education students graduate from five universities in a year. furthermore, the kind of challenges faced by the researcher in her teaching practice exists in yogyakarta, one of the developed areas in indonesia, which likely has enough english graduates, competent teachers, and english exposures, such as books and other language learning facilities. if such challenges are still encountered in several schools in a developed area, let alone in schools in a rural area. mishra (2015) asserted that “the rural areas lack good schools having proper ambiance and affordability which cater to the changing needs and expectations of the crass” (p. 38). for that reason, the researcher is interested in finding a wider range of challenges in teaching english especially in a rural area that is taliwang city of west sumbawa. teaching english in indonesian context english is taught and used as a foreign language in indonesia. the fact that english is one of the most essential international languages for communication has been acknowledged by the indonesian government since its independence; therefore, the government has recommended that english become a compulsory subject in secondary schools (nurkamto, 2003). furthermore, lie (2007) also argues that “the maintenance of english as a foreign language has been steady as it is officially taught throughout the secondary schools” (p. 2). lie (2007) also stated that there has been a tendency in several big cities in indonesia to teach english starting from the lower grades of primary schools and even from kindergarten. the aim of teaching english in schools is based on the decree of the minister of education and culture no. 060/u/1993 dated 25 february 1993 and the 1989 constitution on the system of national education that the final goal of the english subject at the schools is to enable the students to be proficient in english in the globalization era (rachmajanti, 2008). meanwhile, nurkamto (2003) asserts that “the aim of the teaching of english in the schools has been to develop the students’ communicative competence that would help the students in their university education” (p. 287). however, these aims have never been satisfactorily achieved. although english is officially taught throughout secondary schools, competence and 56 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 proficiency in this foreign language among high schools are generally low (lie, 2007; nurkamto, 2003). learners find english particularly difficult when they are instructed to state their opinion in english (nurkamto, 2003). there are only few students who are able to learn english to the next level, especially those who come from the middle and upper socio-economic classes. such students have “the easy access and opportunity to enhance their english proficiency through private courses, computer-aided language instruction, and exposure through western influences, tv channels, and foreign movies” (lie, 2007, p. 3). in addition, lie (2007) added that outside the academic and professional worlds, english has never been widely used as the lingua franca of the majority of the population. this is because the geographic position of indonesia is far away from english-speaking countries as well as several particular cultural values that to some extent, cannot motivate students to study english (nurkamto, 2003). literature review generally, teaching english might seem similar to any other teaching, yet it has its own unique challenges. these challenges exist in various forms. a number of studies have discussed these challenges along with their solutions. below are the challenges encountered in english teaching. severe shortage of training. in some countries, problems regarding a severe shortage of trained english teachers are reported (nunan, 2003; salahuddin, khan, & rahman, 2013; nurkamto, 2003). thus, teachers might “find themselves teaching english either without sufficient english training generally or in teaching english to learners particularly and such thing frequently occurs in poor or rural area” (garton, copland, & burns, 2011, p. 740). since teachers may get only basic preparation in the supportive theory and practical applications, they may then struggle for embodying teaching methods effectively (bulter, 2005; littlewood, 2007). emery (2012) outlines some issues that occur because of insufficient preparation for teaching: teachers’ inabilities to deal with challenges that take place in teaching context because of the lack of training, teachers’ poor language ability, and teachers whose english is not their subject area are hired to teach it. such challenges take place in a rural area because rural areas lack proper and good teaching and learning tools (mishra, 2015). furthermore, english teaching process tends to be c hall engi ng w hen it c omes to the teachers’qualification, language proficiency level, and training since these points can cause teachers’ confidence (emery, 2012). teachers whose teaching training is not enough might strive to embody teaching methods effectively (littlewood, 2007). applying appropriate teaching methods and techniques is tough because the teachers do not merely think of how to transfer four language skills, but also how to remain students’ motivation and enthusiasm in learning and practicing english (ansari, 2012). crowded class. according to emery (2012), one of the most often mentioned problems encountered by english teachers is that “overcrowded classes and the effect of such condition can have on teaching and learning” (p. 4). nurkamto (2003) also lists one of the challenges in teaching english that is the size of the classroom. likewise, baker and westrup (2000) state several problems of teaching large classes, such as “desks and chairs are fixed or difficult to move; students sit close together in 57 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 rows; little space for the teacher and students to move in the classroom; walls between classrooms are thin, and noise will disturb other classes” (p. 2). consequently, it is necessary that teaching and learning process requires comfortable and enjoyable atmosphere, otherwise, teachers might be in failure to fulfill students’ need and achieve learning goals. lack of vocabulary. hasan (2016) states that one of the most challenging tasks students encountered is mastering vocabulary. maruyama (1996) as cited in hoa and mai (2016) point the reason why students lack vocabulary, i.e. “students believed that they did not need to know words because they were not common, even rarely used in their daily lives, therefore, they have no motivation to learn the words” (p. 155). consequently, students in english as a foreign language context are limited by their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of the target language and have to struggle to comprehend the content (chung, 2016). lack of english exposure. teaching english as a foreign language is a challenging duty in the places where english has inadequate exposure. lack of english exposure also serves less opportunity for students to use english. khan (2011) argues that the lack of english purposes demotivate students to practice and understand english due to students’ insufficient background knowledge of english. moreover, it gets more difficult for teachers to encourage students to be enthusiastic in using english due to the lack of english exposure (khan, 2011). limited resource accessibility. another challenge in english language teaching is the issue of resources. garton et al (2014) states that “in some countries, such as south korea and malaysia, textbooks are set; in singapore and china, teachers can select from government-approved books, yet, it is a matter that in many countries appropriate books are either not available or not used in the classroom” (p. 740). furthermore, ajibola (2010) argues that “the inadequacy of resources also constitutes a trial to the english teaching and the larger number of students is the large number of sources is needed” (p. 97). in addition, lack of facilities and equipment hinder teachers to embody an effective teaching process (fatiloro, 2015; nurkamto, 2003). pande (2013) puts forward that “language could only be understood by practicing all the four skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing” (p. 417). hence, the availability of teaching aids holds vital role and needs to be provided as soon as possible, otherwise teachers will not be able to teach effectively. in other words, to get students familiar with english and to provide them sufficient with exposure of target language, the amount of learning resources are in dire need. linguistic problems. mukattash (1983) categorized english teaching challenges that are encountered into two: first, most inaccuracies done regarding the pronunciation, morphology, syntax, and spelling; second, most of students have problems in expressing themselves when using english. the first issue is also strengthened by khan (2011) that “specific problem connected to pronunciation, stress, and intonation become problem for students” (p. 72). as a consequence, these linguistic problems are found in all language skills, which make students demotivated in practicing a target language. another issue regarding linguistic problem is first language or mother tongue interference. both teachers and students frequently talk using their mother-tongue language which uncon58 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 sciously affects their english performance (fatiloro, 2015). additionally, pande (2013) describes when teacher and students speak in their mother-tongue, they sometimes use english words in the midst of the sentences and disremember that every language varies in stress, intonation, and pronunciation. psychological problems. pande (2013) asserts that “it is a common misinterpretation among students that english is the most difficult of all subjects” (p. 416). similarly, fatiloro (2015) states that the challenging difficulty in teaching english as a foreign language is meeting students’ awful attitude in practicing english. for instance, students can be fearful to speak in front of their classmates, particularly when it comes to the presence of a competitive student in the classroom. another example is related to students who enroll in english courses outside schools. according to khajloo (2013), these students have higher academic level than others and when they “listen to repetitive low-level content for them, they find it unattractive and boring” (p. 57). such psychological issues can affect students’ motivation and learning attitude toward english language. solutions to solve english teaching challenges the discussions below are only the solutions for some english teaching problems, and the rest are not yet found. nevertheless, to some extent, these solutions can be used and referred to a certain problem. attitude reform. the english language teaching and learning “should be examined in order to deal with the challenges, it can be done through reforming attitude” (fatiloro, 2015, p. 29). fatiloro (2015) also adds that an absolute commitment to comprehend english should be made among teachers and students. in addition, pande (2013) proposes one way to reform attitude is that “the place of english in education system and policy should be well-defined” (p. 418). another way is asserted by august and shanahan (2006) who say that in order to embody an effective teaching, teachers have to ask students to understand native language and similarity of native language and mother tongue. in summary, reforming attitude involves not only teachers and students, but also government in order to come up with precise education system. different teaching methods and techniques application. there are numerous methods of language teaching that can be implemented. fatiloro (2015) argues that “in handling english teaching problems, teachers must use a variety of methods for teaching english language” (p. 29). in addition, pande (2013) also believes that through applying various methods, particularly in matching the method and teaching topic, it will help teachers to establish an effective teaching process. additionally, applying various techniques in language teaching should be taken into account because it will enable teachers to create suitable condition for students in learning english as well as help students to deal with their learning challenges (holenšinská, 2006). therefore, students can be helped in their language learning when teachers understand what best teaching methods or technique meet the need of students. teaching facilities improvement. english teaching will not achieve its objectives if the teaching tools are not backed up. hence, “special effort should be made to ensure that teachers get proper teaching facilities, including space, books, and teaching aids” (pande, 2013, p. 419). it is necessary to “confront facilitation of teaching tools as to empower teaching and learning english” (fatiloro, 59 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 2015, p. 29). thus, teaching a language needs equipment, particularly for those who teach in the milieu where english exposure is limited. students’ level match. since students’ educational background in learning english, personality, goals, age, and learning style are different, it is imperative to come up with helpful ideas to dealing with such multilevel class. there are several ways to handle such issue, “it can be begun from the lesson planning should contain leveled tasks using a variety of groupings and throughout the practice of the lesson, students’ assignments are leveled based on their language skills” (roberts, 2007, pp. 2-3). roberts (2007) also adds that teacher’s own version of textbook can be used to develop leveled task since it is considered effective when it covers various tasks for students whose level is different. it is also suggested by pande (2013) that teachers should be patient in teaching different ability of students and striving for matching level with students. as a result, since english level of students in classroom might be uneven, teachers have to provide appropriate tasks for meeting and improving students’ language level. classroom management. based on the virginia department of education (2006), understanding english and creating english language’s exposure for students can be done through managing classroom. for instance, “designing a classroom which expresses cultural diversity, considering seating positions for cooperative learning activity, building a classroom library containing age-appropriate books with various reading levels” (p. 19). those are the ways to manage classroom in order to get students familiar with and get used to use target language. teacher’s reflection. christodoulou (2010) put forward that one of the most important aspects of teaching is self-reflection. teachers should be all aware of their acting, such as knowing consequence of everything they do as well as finding solutions or suggestion in a teaching and learning situation. additionally, self-reflection are included in the essential teaching skill. self-reflection consists of knowing how to act “in interaction with pupils, th eir pare nts, and col leag ues at s choo l” (christodoulou, 2010, p. 19). methodology this present research was conducted at mtsn taliwang, located at poto village, taliwang, west sumbawa, west nusa tenggara province. mtsn taliwang is the only school which is located in the outskirts of taliwang city compared to the other schools. the location receives attention from learners who come from other rural areas of west sumbawa. according to the researcher’s observation, among four secondary schools in taliwang city, mtsn taliwang was the only school whose teachers and students were from remote areas of west sumbawa regency. it means that the students and teachers were those who lived in taliwang city and the other parts of west sumbawa, while the other schools’ students and teachers were mostly the residents of taliwang city. taliwang city is the capital city of west sumbawa. this may indicate that the people are more developed than the people from other cities. the participants of the research were the english teachers of mtsn taliwang. initially, the participants consisted of five teachers. however, at the end, there were only four participants because one participant was doing pilgrimage. the participants consisted of three females and one male. purposive sampling was applied in selecting the research 60 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 participants. according to teddlie and yu (2007), “purposive sampling is undertaken for several kinds of research including: to achieve representativeness, to enable comparisons to be made, to focus on specific, unique issues or cases” (p. 80). a group of english teachers at mtsn taliwang were chosen because of some criteria. first, they have joined and participated in teaching training in and outside the school. second, they have contributed and taught english for more than five years. in order to obtain better understanding of the phenomenon, in-depth interview was applied using mixed language of both indonesian language and sumbawa language (local language). member checking was also done in this study. the researcher used initial for all participants, there were the first participant (p1), second participant (p2), third participant (p3), and fourth participant (p4). findings and discussion the challenges in teaching english faced by the teachers at mtsn taliwang the challenges found are varied in which they are related to the students, the teachers, and the facilities. students’ side. the findings revealed that challenges in teaching english comes from students as well. these challenges are students’ lack of vocabulary mastery, students’ low concentration, lack of parents’ support, lack of discipline, boredom, and speaking problem. students’ lack of vocabulary mastery. p1 and p4 stated that one of the challenges in teaching english in classroom is students’ lack of vocabulary mastery. it hindered the students’ understanding of the subject. “…some students might have lack of vocabulary mastery which makes them not actively participate in class” argued p1. in addition, p4 asserted that the main challenge in achieving teaching and learning goal was students’ lack of vocabulary mastery. with regard to this issue, hasan (2016) states that one of the most challenging tasks that students encountered is mastering vocabulary. maruyama (1996) as cited by hoa and mai (2016) also points out one of three reasons why students have lack of vocabulary mastery is because english is not used by students in their daily life which make them feel not need to learn the words. students’ lack of parents’ support. p1 and p4 concluded that lack of students’ motivation can be caused by the absence of their parents’ support. p1 elaborated her experience in which she once caught a student who did not bring any books to school due to forgetfulness, while the other students intentionally left their books in the desk of the classroom. this participant believed that such things would not have happened if students’ parents supervised and controlled their children’s learning at home. meanwhile, p4 made a comparison between the motivation of students’ parents who lived in taliwang city and the students’ parents who lived in the rural areas of taliwang. he elaborated that the motivation of the parents who live in the city is high. they let their children master english by having a private course in their home or sending them to english courses. on the other hand, the parents who lived in rural areas only expect the school to be the place where their children get knowledge. copland, garton, and burns (2014) state that students do not have any ideas on the purpose of learning english, “an attitude which may be exacerbated by their parents” (p. 747). students’ low concentration. students’ low concentration in classroom causes challenges in compre61 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 hending knowledge transferred by the teacher. p1 argued that teaching goal could not be achieved one hundred percent because some of students do not concentrate in classroom. as described by the participant that when she was explaining a certain topic, the teaching process was interrupted by students who were busy in talking and doing other things. therefore, she needed to stop and give the students advices. khajloo (2013) says that students do not concentrate in learning english, otherwise, they will do their best and get good scores. students’ lack of discipline. discipline issue was linked to the classification of the students’ class. as p1 described that such issue is not encountered in class e, in which it is the class of smart students, yet it is faced the other classes (class a, b, c, and d). copland, garton, and burns (2014) found that discipline problems were related to “the age and sex of students, differentiation, parental attitudes, inexperience, not sharing the learners’ first language, and keeping the students motivated” (p. 746). students’ boredom. p2 argued that some of her students get bored in studying english when she teaches a certain topic of the subject. it is because some of her students have already studied that in their primary schools and private courses. ajibola (2010) and khajloo (2013) indicated that these students have higher academic level than others and when they listen to repetitive low-level content for them, they find it unattractive and boring. speaking problem. the comments about getting students to speak were stated by two participants. p3 and p4 similarly stated that making students speak is quite difficult. each of them mentioned students’ problems in speaking performance. pronunciation problem. p3 put forward, “most of students commit errors in pronouncing words.” this corresponds to mukattash (1983) who found that most inaccuracies done regarding the pronunciation, morphology, syntax, and spelling. this is also strengthened by khan (2011) that “specific problem connected to pronunciation, stress, and intonation become problem for students” (p. 72). confidence issue. students are timid in performing their speaking skill. p3 argued, “…when i ask my students to retell what they have written in their diary and speak in front of their classmates, they get timid.” this was also reinforced by p4 that “students’ speaking skill is not improved since most of students are timid.” copland, garton, and burns (2014) that many children are timid in front of their classmates, particularly in speaking a foreign language since it can be face-threatening. another thing is that most of students are afraid of making mistakes, especially in pronouncing or spelling incorrect words. p4 stated, “…there is no improvement in students’ speaking skill because they are mostly afraid of making mistakes.” this finding goes hand in hand with the statement of p2 in which there are some students who have studied english outside the school which can make other students are afraid. fatiloro (2015) said that the presence of a competitive student in the classroom make other students have awful attitude. teachers’ side. challenges in teaching english are also faced because of teachers’ limited teaching knowledge and development. english teaching challenges from teachers’ perspectives including shortage of training, limited mastery of teaching methods, unfamiliarity to it, and lack of professional development. shortage of teachers’ training. the most common comments were about the shortage of trainings 62 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 experienced by all participants. they all were in agreement that english teaching training is in dire need. p1 said, “…if i may conclude, my english teaching training experience is insufficient.” it was also argued by p3 that “although i have joined a number of training, it is still not enough.” most of teachers in poor or rural area find themselves teaching english without sufficient english training (copland, garton, & burns, 2014). meanwhile, p2 showed dissatisfaction with herself in which she asserted, “…perhaps i am the one who does not develop myself through joining training and updating english teaching innovation in education.” it was also stated by p1, “i sometimes feel unconfident in what and how i teach.” these are corresponding with the study done by emery (2012) that english teaching process tends to be challenging when it comes to the teachers’ teaching qualification, language proficiency level, and training since these points can cause teachers’ confidence. limited mastery of teaching methods. applying various teaching methods is tough for p1 and p2. one of them argued that her teaching method is monotonous. “…my teaching method is monotonous. i enter the class, i teach, i close the class by giving them suggestion to join study club. that is all.” implementing various teaching methods and techniques is difficult because the teachers do not merely think of how to transfer four language skills, but also how to remain students’ motivation and enthusiasm in learning and practicing english (ansari, 2012). unfamiliarity to it. one participant admitted that she did not involve electronic devices when she was teaching in the classroom. p2 stated, “…to be honest, i have no idea how to use electronic devices, such as lcd projector, laptop, online stuff, and so on.” conley (2010) says that “teachers often struggle with an inadequate knowledge of specific technology, technology-supported pedagogy, and technology-related-classroom management.” teacher’s lack of professional development. developing english teaching ability really depends on the teacher’s motivation. it was only p2 who reflected her teaching ability during interview. she admitted, “…perhaps, i do not try to develop and enrich myself with training and innovation in english language teaching.” in addition, she described the difficulty she faced in teaching songs to students. in k13 (curriculum of 2013) there is a topic about songs in which she sometimes does not teach it because she cannot sing. another thing is that regarding teacher’s unfamiliarity to it, p2 found it reluctant to practice or take toefl test. facilities issue. in facilities issue, it covers not only about the things concern with facilities provided and time devoted, but also the support facilitated by students’ parents to learn english. inadequate resources and facilities. p3 described that the availability of k13-based books were barely provided, especially books for the seventh grade students. additionally, all participants agreed that the available facilities in the school did not support english teaching and learning process. p1 and p4 mentioned that devices such as lcd projector and sound system were very limited in which there was only one device that could be used by all teachers. such inadequacy “constitutes a challenge to the teaching of english in which large numbers of students require a large number of resources” (ajibola, 2010, p. 97). ajibola (2010) also added that ensuring the availability of sufficient textbooks, computers, listening devices, hands-on tools, and other 63 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 teaching instruments is a challenging assignment. time constraint. three participants considered that the time provided was not enough to apply teaching ideas in the classroom as well as to improve their own professional development. time provided to teach english was only two hours for each meeting, to be exact, 40 minutes in every meeting, whereas, these participants expect that the ideal time to teach english is 90 minutes for each meeting. “…teaching english within two hours seems not possible because it requires extra effort to explain the lesson under the lack of books” said p1. khajloo (2013) in which “some experts complain about the amount of time devoted to the course and believe that in many cases teachers cannot teach all subjects in this limited time” (p. 56). likewise, p4 often planned to play games in his class but due to the time constraint, only few of them were implemented. moreover, related to professional development, p2 is the one who was unfamiliar to high-tech cannot learn it well since she only has 30 minutes for recess and such amount of time might be used to either correcting students’ assignments or doing personal stuffs. on the other hand, p4 was the only teacher who had many responsibilities since he was the students’ supervisor in which he had to teach and be involved in students’ extracurricular activities. p4 stated, “as soon as i wanted to take an online toefl test, i had to postpone it because i have students’ parents to meet, students’ problems to solve, and students’ activities to attend.” the solutions implemented reforming attitude. reforming attitude can be done through the efforts of students, teachers, and school in improving english teaching and learning. fatiloro (2015) argues that an absolute commitment to comprehend english language should be made among teachers and students. p4 explained the effort done by the school in facilitating students to learn english through holding study club as well as facilitating teachers through workshop or training in which the school invited speakers from mataram, including iain mataram (state islamic univeristy of mataram) and lembaga penjamin mutu pendidikan (education quality assurance agency) to give a lecture and training about teaching materials, media, and teaching methods. ajibola (2010) states one way to overcome shortage of teachers’ training is holding professional development activity for teachers by having partnership with universities and experts. applying various teaching methods and techniques. three participants varied their teaching methods and techniques in the classroom. fatiloro (2015) asserts that “in handling english teaching problems, teachers must use a variety of methods for teaching english language” (p. 29). p1 used pictures and role-plays in teaching since “students often feel more attracted towards images and photographs” (mishra, 2015, p. 42) and teachers are advised to use role play activity in order to motivate students and to help the less motivated learners take part in the lesson (alexenoamen, 2010). p3 and p4 implemented monthly diary writing and applied various games to improve their students’ vocabulary mastery. in addition, based on the virginia department of education (2006), understanding english for students can be done through managing classroom. p1 described that if she finds students do not concentrate, she would point them out and tell them to stop their activity. brewster, 64 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 ellis, and girad (2002), when a teacher wants to gain students’ attention, it can be done through “firmly name the children who still talking and say stop talking please and maintain eye contact” (p. 221). another thing p1 would do for disciplined and misbehaved students were control and give them punishment. additionally, p2 would not hesitate to involve smart students; those who have learned english outside the school to help her in teaching certain topic of the subject. furthermore, in dealing with students’ lack of vocabulary mastery, two participants ask students to bring dictionary when they have english class or study club activity in the school. in fact, p3 would provide the list of vocabulary behind the copies of the materials she is about to teach. fatiloro (2015) says that dictionaries, grammar guides, and the web should always be as the tool for consultation when teaching and learning english. another way is, as the three participants argued that they always look for suitable teaching materials and methods in order to solve students’ challenges in learning english. p4 uses dialogues in order to teach pronunciation and structures that ha have searched. meanwhile, in teaching listening, p3 let students listen to the songs she has downloaded. p2 would search for songs on the internet although she does not know how to sing them. improving resources and facilities. regarding the shortage of books, p2 whose job was also as the financial manager of bantuan operasional sekolah (school operational assistance) stated that every year, the school always made efforts to complete and provided books in the library and free wifi. special efforts should be made for ensuring that teachers receive proper teaching facilities, including space, books, and teaching aids (pande, 2013). matching students’ proficiency level and learning situation. the way to match students’ level and learning circumstance can be done by lesson planning (roberts, 2007). all participants admitted that they did some revision in lesson plan. p3 focused on simplifying learning objectives which was more easily to be understood by students. p1 tended to consider availability of real examples around them that could be used in english teaching. meanwhile, p1 and p2 would select simple words and diction to be used in teaching english when they explain the material. on the other hand, p3 and p4 consented to consider students’ social and financial circumstances in which they would not give homework that would spend money. making use of available resources and facilities. p1 and p2 were in agreement that they made use of available books in order to solve the shortage of k13 (curriculum of 2013) books. they also argued that they still use ktsp (school-based curriculum) books if the topic discussed was similar. furthermore, p2 preferred to use anything provided in the classroom i.e. chairs, whiteboard, window, and so on to be learning tools. on the other hand, since there was very limited device of sound system, p3 teaches listening only through her own voice. mishra (2015) that “rural areas lack in the required ambience, teachers can make much use of the easily available resources” (p. 42). providing motivational feedback. the way to improve students’ motivation in learning english was by giving them motivational feedback. three participants frequently did that. p2 said, “…regarding students’ interest towards english, i keep giving them advices to keep studying” (p2.21). p3 also added, “...for passive students, i often give them motivational feedback” (p3.40). likewise, p4 stated, “...the first thing i do for students whose motiva65 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 tion is low is motivating them orally” (p4.10). teachers’ self-reflection. christodoulou (2010) puts forward that one of the most important aspects of teaching are self-reflection and self-evaluation since they are included in essential teaching skill. p2 reflected that students’ interests toward english depended on her teaching methods. “i think students’ interests really depend on teaching methods and techniques that i use, yet the fact is i have limited teaching methods mastery” she said. in addition, since she realized that her technology ability was low, she would try to learn it independently. p1 and p3 concern more on their language proficiency in which they sometime spent time to listen to songs to improve their vocabulary mastery and took online toefl. conclusion this research has highlighted a wide range of issues faced in teaching english at mtsn taliwang, indonesia. this study shows that the teachers were challenged by their lack of training, limited mastery of teaching methods, unfamiliarity to it, lack of professional development, inadequate facilities and resources, and time constraint. on the other hand, the other challenges coming from students’ side including lack of vocabulary mastery, low concentration, lack of discipline, students’ boredom, and speaking problem. in order to face these issues, this study also found the strategies implemented by the participants of the research. each of them had his/her own strategies in overcoming their teaching challenges in classroom, such as reforming attitude that is done by the school and the teachers at mtsn taliwang, indonesia including holding study club and teachers’ training as well as improving facilities and resources. the other strategies implemented by the participants when teaching in the classroom were applying various teaching methods and techniques, matching students’ proficiency level and learning situation, managing classroom, making use of available resources, giving motivational feedback, and doing self-reflection. nevertheless, the readers should evaluate the results of this study. the findings of the present study cannot be generalized because the findings suggest localized challenges in teaching english, which is at mtsn taliwang, indonesia. even in the school’s context, each english teacher encounters different challenges. therefore, for teachers, the findings can be whether applicable in teaching process or not based on the readers’ real environment. in addition, the absence of one participant in the current study might affect the findings in which the researcher was unable to investigate broad perspectives of the teacher. furthermore, future investigation into challenges in teaching english might usefully focus on students’ attitude diversity in classrooms and training that participants have joined in. despite the fact that not all students have discipline issue in learning english, in this case, it is only encountered in class a, b, c, and d, as well as not all training support and empower teachers’ teaching ability in the classroom, i.e. some of the participants mentioned the teaching training of musyawarah guru mata pelajaran (mgmp) that, to some extent, does not support teachers in teaching english. this indicates that there are tendencies to be studied in more detail. references ajibola, m. a. (2010). confronting the challenges 66 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 of teaching english language as a second language in nigeria. journal of the nigeria english studies association (jnesa), 95-105. alexenoamen. (2010, september). way of motivating efl/esl students in the classroom. [web blog]. retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/alexenoamen/ways-motivating-efl-esl-students-classroom ansari, a. a. (2012). teaching of english to arab students: problems and remedies. educational research 3(6), 519-524. baker, j., & westrup, h. (2000). the english language teacher’s handbook. london, uk: continuum. brewster, j., ellis, g., & girad, d. (2002). the primary english teacher’s guide. china: penguin english guides. bulter, y. g. (2005). comparative perspectives towards communicative activities among elementary school teachers in south korea, japan and taiwan. language teaching research, 423-446. chung, h. v. (2016). a study of reading comprehension problems in english encountered by first year students of faculty of vietnamese studies at hnue (unpublished doctoral dissertation). hanoi national university of education, hanoi. copland, f., garton, s., & burns, a. (2014). challenges in teaching english to young learners: global perspectives and local realities. tesol quarterly vol. 48(4), 758-762. christodoulou, i. (2010). teacher self-reflection (unpublished diploma thesis). masaryk university, brno. derakhshan, a. (2015). the challenges of teaching english language: the relationship between research and teaching. international journal of linguistics vol. 7(1), 102-110. emery, h. (2012). a global study of primary english teachers’ qualifications, training and career development. elt research papers, 1-32. fatiloro, o. f. (2015). tackling the challenges of teaching english language as second language (esl) in nigeria. iosr journal of research & method in education (iosr-jrme), 26-30. garton, s., copland, f., & burns, a. (2011). investigating global practices in teaching english for young learners: project report. london, england: british council. hasan, l.-n. k. (2016). the effect of lack of vocabulary on english language learners’ performance with reference to english departments students at salahaddin university-erbil. øäù çñì òçäß ä èä òçä óêé ãñäùçíéêííéßçä (zanco journal of pure and applied sciences), 211-227. hoa, n. t., & mai, p. t. (2016). challenges in teaching english for specific purposes: empirical study at vietnam universities. canadian center of science and education, 154-161. holenšinská, a. (2006). teaching english as a foreign language to students with learning challenges (unpublished diploma thesis). masaryk university, brno. khajloo, a. i. (2013). problems in teaching and learning english for students. international journal of engineering research and development vol. 7, 56-58. khan, i. a. (2011). challenges of teaching/learning english and management. global journal of human social science vol. 11, 68-79. lie, a. (2007). education policy and efl curriculum in indonesia: between the commitment to competence and quest for higher test scores. teflin journal v.18(1), 1-14. https://www.teaching67 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 littlewood, w. (2007). communicative and taskbased language teaching in east asian classrooms. language teaching, 243-259. mishra, b. (2015). innovative ways of english language teaching in rural india through technology. international journal of english and literature vol. 6(2), 38-44. mukattash, l. (1983). the problem of difficulty in foreign language learning. amman, jordan: university of jordan. nunan, d. (2003). the impact of english as a global language on educational policies and practices in the asia-pacific region. tesol quarterly, 589-613. nurkamto, j. (2003). problema pengajaran bahasa inggris di indonesia. jurnal ilmiah masyarakat linguistik indonesia 21(2), 288-307. pande, v. b. (2013). problems and remedies in tea chin g en glis h as a s econ d la ngua ge. confluence, 416-421. rachmajanti, s. (2008). impact of english instruction at the elementary schools on the students’ achievement of english at the lower secondary school. teflin journal, vol. 19(2), 160-184. roberts, m. (2007). teaching in the multilevel classroom. pearson education, 1-4. salahuddin, a. m., khan, m. r., & rahman, a. (2013). challenges of implementing english curriculum at rural pri mar y sch ools of bangladesh. the international journal of social sciences vol.7(1), 34-51. teddlie, c., & yu, f. (2007). mixed methods sampling: a typology with examples. journal of mixed methods research, 77-100. virginia department of education. (2006). english: strategies for teaching limited english proficient (lep) students a supplemental resource guide to the k12 english standards of learning enhanced scope and sequence. richmond, virginia: division of instruction. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 300 article history: submitted: 27 june 2022 reviewed: 18 july 2022 edited: 23 july 2022 article accepted: 28 july 2022 promoting students’ reviewing skills in foreign language writing through genre-based activities in linguistics classes tam nguyen vietnam national university university of languages and international studies, vietnam author email: tamntm1982@vnu.edu.vn doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15231 abstract recently, genre studies have contributed not only to linguistic areas but also to language education. in language teaching and learning, developing learners’ awareness of various genres, especially those prevailing in their future job contexts, is essential because learners could be better prepared to produce texts of the same genres when required successfully. in this study, genre-based activities (gbas) were introduced to 40 third-year efl students in two linguistic classes where the teacher used english as a medium of instruction (emi). the data collection was conducted via class interaction, assignment analysis and informal talks. the data analysis revealed that, despite some limitations in the intervention, gbas had such positive effects on students’ development of reviewing skills in english writing as students could link their text evaluation and revision to the contextual features, and they tried to read extensively about the features of different genres, and accordingly, they could enhance their genre awareness, resulting in their better evaluation and revision of texts. however, unfamiliar genres might hinder the effects of gbas. texts elicited from students, and multimodal texts were more appropriate inputs for novice genre analysts. keywords: genre; genre analysis; genre-based activities; writing skills; reviewing skills =========================================================================== introduction the findings from recent studies of genres and genre application in teaching revealed that raising learners’ awareness of various genres is essential for their language skill development (devitt, reiff, & bawarshi, 2004; cheng, 2011, 2015; yayli, 2011; yasuda, 2011; cozma, 2014; johns, 2015; tribble, 2015; yasuda, 2015; nagao, 2019; dugartsyrenova, 2020). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15231 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i2.15231&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-07-30 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 301 the empirical studies of genre and genre analysis application in language skills development, as mentioned, were conducted in esl or elf classes (devitt, reiff, & bawarshi, 2004; cheng, 2006; ortega, 2010, 2012; yayli, 2011; yasuda, 2011; cozma, 2014; johns, 2015) or in esp classes (cheng, 2006, 2015). according to ortega (2010), students’ linguistic knowledge supports their writing development, which means their writing competence could be enhanced when they gain better linguistic knowledge of a certain language. accordingly, in english linguistics classes where english linguistic knowledge is the focused content of teaching, the english writing skills of the students could be developed along the way. however, none of the genre and genre analysis application studies were conducted in a linguistic class. this paper denoted a study on 40 efl students in two emi functional grammar (fg) classes, in which english writing skill was not the central focus of teaching but developed alongside linguistic knowledge and skills. gbas, consisting of genre analysis and follow-up activities, were employed to help students use the linguistic contents of the course in scaffolding their awareness of the construction of different genres, then develop their ability to evaluate and revise the texts produced in those genres. students’ skills of reviewing their writings with genre features could be promoted from this awareness and ability. literature review genre and genre analysis as a recurrent configuration of meaning, which enacts the social practices of a culture (martin & rose, 2008), a genre is defined by characterizing schematic and linguistic patterns typically found in all texts of the genre. these patterns allow text producers and receivers to distinguish texts in one genre from others. as there are constraints and conventions on the typical and specific lexico-grammatical and discoursal features of all texts in a genre (cozma, 2014), genre awareness is not biologically transmitted but must be acquired through exposure to the texts of the genre. in the systemic functional linguistics (sfl) view, different genres are identified based on their different functions. genres are defined by martin (1985) as staged, goal-oriented social processes of communicative events in which the same set of communicative purposes are shared among members. the construction of a genre is determined by the communicative purpose(s) that all texts aim to fulfill. since language is only a meaning-making resource https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 302 (halliday, 1970), analyzing the language features of the texts only serves as a resource to realize different communicative purposes. accordingly, the basis for categorizing texts into genres could be the communicative functions that the texts perform. knapp and watkins (1994) provided a two-level classification of genres. at a higher level, they classified genres in terms of such general processes as explaining, arguing, or narrating. at a lower level, they classified genres in terms of such specific products as information reports, commentaries, or expositions. in this paper, the term “genre” refers to a group of texts in the same subject area, with the same communicative purpose(s), and used in similar situations. therefore, communicative purpose identification should be the initial stage of any genre analysis, followed by key feature analysis of the texts in the same genre, then a thorough investigation into the interaction between these purposes and features. in this study, the focus of this analysis was on evaluating how much the language choices in the texts support the fulfillment of the text functions and genre goals. reviewing skills in writing writing is not an isolated product existing in a vacuum but as a mediated and dynamic social activity (canagarajah, 2002) because to write is to communicate, and writing is a way of getting things done (hyland, 2003). in flower and hayes’ (1981) views, “writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing” (p.366). as a text construction technology, writing requires different combined skills, which must be practiced and learned through experience (grabe & kaplan, 1996). therefore, writing skills must be taught in schools or other assisting environments, whether in one’s mother tongue or foreign languages (flower& hayes, 1981). the fg course in this study was an emi course for english majors, so it was supposed to be an assisting environment for students to further develop the reviewing skills in writing that they had already accomplished. taking the view of writing as a process, flower and hayes (1981) viewed that writing is made up of distinctive, goal-directed, and hierarchical cognitive processes and goal setting is a crucial feature of a good writer. this model also pays adequate attention to the role of a writer’s linguistic knowledge in writing. therefore, the model should go well with the functional approach to writing skill development when integrating students’ english writing skills with teaching the linguistic contents. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 303 flower and hayes’s (1981) writing model involves the task environment, the writer’s long-term memory, and the writing processes. any writing process should include the four subprocesses of planning, translating, reviewing, and monitor, and monitor controls the other three sub-processes. in this action research, the intervention was conducted in the sub-process of reviewing, which combines evaluating and revising. the term “reviewing skills” is used subsequently to refer to the skills of evaluating and revising the writings. genre analysis and writing skill development genre and genre analysis studies have been applied in writing classrooms for decades. according to sakari and hirose (1996), since language teaching often occurs in the confined foreign language classroom with unreal contexts, the language teaching focus is often on grammar practice or vocabulary exercises, in which language is only a medium of instruction. consequently, learners tend to be more aware of grammatical issues than pragmatic issues (alcon soler, 2005; koike &pearson, 2005). being taught in such a way, as mentioned, many of these learners the foreign language writers construct their writings with the belief that such texts are autonomous and context-free (yasuda, 2011) and accordingly fail to see writing as a process that is enacted dynamically, interacting with purpose, audience, and language choices. wang (2013) stated that the concept of genre in the linguistic sense had transformed people’s opinions on the nature of writing: writing is no longer perceived as static and monolithic but as a dynamic and flexible social process. recent studies on genre teaching and learning have proved the interaction between genre analysis activities and learners’ language skill development (bawarshi & reiff, 2010; cheng, 2006; cheng, 2011; yayli, 2011; yasuda, 2011; johns, 2015; cozma, 2014; tribble, 2015). there have been studies that specifically focused on applying sfl-based genre pedagogy to developing writing skills so that students can learn about genre-related contents and language concurrently, and the results showed positive effects that students’ language choices for constructing texts in a genre changed over time in optimistic manners (yasuda, 2015, 2017; nagao, 2019). this promotion is possible because genre analysis could condition the growth of learners’ linguistic knowledge of a certain language, which is in a reciprocally supportive relationship with their writing skills in that language (ortega, 2010). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 304 in writing classes, the teaching activities that focus on analyzing the prototypical texts of specific genres can raise students’ genre awareness and develop their ability to appropriately contextualize their writings according to the genre features (cheng, 2011). investigating how different resources involved in meaning-making processes might raise learners’ awareness of the various language choices available to fit the contextual situations (caffarel, 2006). such awareness is expected to orient the learners – the novice writers towards the genre goals they need to achieve (yasuda, 2011). in other words, once being fully aware of the social function(s) that they might encounter in a specific genre, these novice writers would be able to see “language as a meaning-making system” (martin, 2009, p.11), so that their language choices when writing in this genre could be more systematically goal-oriented. accordingly, the analysis of different genre features provides chances for learners better to understand the constraints and conventions behind the language choices. this understanding allows students to moderate the language choices for the best fulfillment of the functions of their writings. in the researcher’s fg course, genre analyses were where students’ genre knowledge was scaffolded, and their linguistic knowledge and skills were consolidated. the follow-up activities evaluated texts and revised them to enhance the agreement between the genre goals and features and language choices in the texts. in these activities, students reflected on their genre knowledge with the writing quality. in this paper, the term “genre-based activities” (gbas) denotes genre analysis combined with their follow-up activities. method the research was initiated with the hypothesis based on ortega’s (2010) position that once facilitated linguistic knowledge and language analyzing skills. students would be aware of the potential effects that language choices may have on writing purpose accomplishment and thus could moderate the language choices to enhance the quality of their writings. the context of the study the researcher conducted this action research in my fg course – an emi linguistic course, with the three major expected learning outcomes: (i) students could understand the linguistic contents in the slf approach and conduct linguistic analyses in the functional https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 305 approach; (ii) students could evaluate the texts based on these linguistic contents; and (iii) students could apply the linguistic contents to the development of their english skills. the linguistic contents of this fg course included sfl concepts and issues, including text-context relationship, field, mode, tenor, transitivity, mood, modality, theme, and cohesion, which were the inherent features of texts in functional linguistics. during this research, the researcher specifically highlighted the activities of analyzing the transitivity systems, the mood patterns, modality, thematic structures, and cohesion of the texts. in the follow-up activities, the language choices were evaluated in terms of how well they agreed with the communicative purposes of the texts. all revisions were needed to improve the language choices writing purposes agreements were made. the participants gbas were used in an fg class of 21 third-year students for the academic year 2019 and another fg class of 19 students for the academic year 2020. all these students were english majors, so one of the exit requirements for their completion of the program was a c1 (cefr) certificate, or 6.5 to 7.5 ielts, or level-5 certificate in vietnamese standardized test of english proficiency. all 40 students were in the same english language teacher education program, just of different cohorts; they learned the same subjects with the same schedules. during their first two years, these students took english proficiency courses (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) to be exposed to english in different genres, ranging from social to academic. at the beginning of this fg course, many students had reached the c1 (cefr) level, and others were at b2. the previous writing courses before taking the fg course, the students took four english writing courses designed to scaffold their english writing proficiency from a2+/b1 level (cefr) to b2+/c1 level (cefr). these courses allowed them to experience writing in different genres, divided into social genres (e.g., informal notes/ letters/ emails, informal instruction, a narration of a trip, or film review), and academic genres (e.g., course leaflet, statistical analysis reports, compare-and-contrast essay, argumentative essays, scholar article reviews or research proposals). however, students focused more on practicing the academic genres; the focus on these genres was also assumed by the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 306 course designers to avail in almost all contexts of students’ future jobs as teachers, teaching material developers, or even translators and interpreters. writing teaching in these courses was process-based; students went through all the sub-processes of planning, translating, reviewing, and monitor (flower and hayes, 1981), so they were familiar with reviewing. the intervention this two-cycle action research was conducted in kemmis and mctaggart’s (2000) model. the aim of gbas in the intervention was to explore how linguistic content and genre awareness could influence students’ development of reviewing skills in english writing. this aim was fulfilled in three stages: (i) familiarizing students with the typical language features of specific genres; (ii) providing students with tasks that required detailed textual and contextual analyses of texts of specific genres so that they could fully understand and evaluate the language choices-writing purposes agreements; and (iii) applying the linguistic contents (accumulated through the lectures) and the genre awareness (accumulated through gbas) on evaluating, then revising their writings. cycle-1 seven-session intervention was conducted in the second half of the course, with three lectures, three whole-class tutorials, and a midterm project presentation session, followed by two post-course weeks for take-home assignment completion. all cycle-1 sessions were in face-to-face mode. cycle-2 nine-session intervention included four lectures, four whole-class tutorials, and a midterm project presentation session, followed by two post-course weeks for take-home assignment completion. the first two cycle-2 sessions were in face-to-face mode. the other seven were all via zoom meetings due to the first covid-19 social distancing period in vietnam. cycle 2 intervention was revised from cycle-1 intervention to support students better in their gbas. in both cycles, the lectures provided the linguistic contents needed for the following gbas. students observed how the researcher applied the linguistic contents in my model text analyses. in the lectures on contextual features and cohesive devices, students participated in some short teacher-led gbas integrated into the lecture because the concepts taught in these lectures had been previously introduced in another subject. a detailed description of activities used in the intervention can be found in appendix 1. during the tutorials, the students practiced analyzing texts based on the linguistic contents from the lectures. at certain times, the researcher controlled the choice of input texts https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 307 for analysis to ensure that the input texts concentrated on a specific genre and that the practice allowed students to focus on the common features of the targeted genre only. the concentration guaranteed the emphasis on the targeted genre to be strong enough for students to shape a broad view of how certain language choices supported the text purposes systematically in this genre. the follow-up discussion activities were where the researcher guided the students in their investigation of the typical language patterns found across texts so that their conclusions on genre features could be made. the follow-up discussion activities were for students to further investigate the mutual interaction between these language patterns and the text purposes. the language modification tasks were assigned as in-class group work in cycle 1 but as the post-class group works in cycle 2 (as the breakout-room function was not supported for the researcher’s zoom id). after this group work, groups of students took turns to present their suggested modifications and evaluate the effects that other groups’ modifications might bring to the texts. the midterm project was for groups to evaluate the language choices-writing purposes in concord and suggest language modifications to achieve the targeted purposes better. the project instructions were sent to students two weeks before the project presentation session. after each group’s project presentation, the researcher initiated a follow-up discussion and circulated it among students. the discussion was designed for the students to shape more clearly their awareness of how language choices could affect the writing purpose. the final take-home assignment was for individual students to demonstrate how their reviewing skills in english writing might be influenced by the linguistic contents and genre awareness gained from gbas. in this assignment, students were required to choose one among their writing products to review the language choices based on the genre features and the linguistic knowledge and skills they learned in the course. the detailed requirements are described in appendix 1. though the intervention steps in the two cycles were not identical, they both originated from the same hypothesis about the reciprocally supportive relationship between genre awareness and writing competence, and both were oriented towards promoting students’ reviewing skills alongside linguistic knowledge and skills. the procedure is summarized in figure 1. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 308 figure 1. the intervention as presented in figure 1, students’ reviewing skills and linguistic knowledge, skills, and genre awareness were scaffolded. students started by learning the linguistics contents, applying what they learned in analyzing texts of specific genres, then familiarizing themselves with the typical linguistic features of texts of these genres. once aware of the characterizing linguistic features of these genres, they gradually scaffolded the awareness of the reciprocal relationship between language choices and the text’s communicative purposes and, even further, the goals of the whole genre. finally, they improved their skills in evaluating the language choices-writing purposes agreement and revised the texts so that the language choices supported their writing purposes more efficiently. in this combination, the lectures, the in-class tutorials, the midterm project, the final assignment, and online tutorials functioned as a three-step staircase for students to “climb upwards” based on their linguistic knowledge and skills to promote their reviewing skills in writing. the observation the observation of the intervention was conducted via three major modes. to observe students’ genre awareness development and their ability to evaluate the language choiceswriting purposes agreement, the researcher interacted with students during the lectures, genre analysis discussion, and post-presentation q&a to guide them through the activities and collect data. to observe how students’ reviewing skills were developed along with gbas, i analyzed the modifications students made to their writings and explained why the modifications were necessary. the analysis scheme in appendix 3 was used. also, informal talks with students, face-to-face and via zoom, during break time, before and after the lectures, allow https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 309 me to observe how gbas helped them in seeing the correlation between language choices and writing purposes and how such understanding might guide them in reviewing their writings in a well-informed way. findings cycle 1 the analysis of data in cycle 1 revealed four major themes: theme 1: in gbas, inadequate genre awareness hindered students’ identification of writing purpose achievement problems in tutorial 1, most students lacked adequate awareness of genre goals, the features shared by texts in the same genre and the relationship between language choices and writing purposes. figure 2. tutorial 1 gba requirement to address the requirement shown in figure 2, most groups focused their discussions on the accuracy of mood structures and modal verbs. the researcher observed that students successfully based themselves on the contents of lecture 1 to classify the mood types and modal devices. however, no attempts at analyzing the influences of the mood structures and modality devices on the text purposes and the genre goals were made. the question about the goals that the input texts shared took students a few seconds to find the answer, and eliciting questions about how the distribution of mood types and modal devices supported the text purposes also confounded many students. in response to this question, students intensively discussed the agreement between the choice of mood structures and modality devices and text purposes for about ten minutes, but their evaluation of the harmony between the mood, modality and text purposes was still underdeveloped. through my analysis of the groups’ comments and revision of the input texts based on appendix 2, students’ inadequate genre awareness was revealed the same problems as what alcon soler (2005), koike and pearson (2005), and dugartsyrenova (2016, cited in https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 310 dugartsyrenova, 2020) pointed out. the grammatical accuracy of the mood structures and modal verbs were the main focus of the comments. the comments were missing the mood choice and degree of modality following the genre goals and the communicative purposes of each text. only one out of four groups could suggest revisions that enhance the text’s communicative effectiveness. the modifications of the other three groups were scanty and defectively developed, which were unsatisfactory in task fulfillment but understandable since students had no experience with gbas before. during our break-time informal talks, the students explained that although they experienced different genres in language skill courses, they had never had assignments focusing on genre goals and features and language choices-text purposes agreement analysis. therefore, the alignment of language choices to the text purposes and the genre goals and features had never received much of their attention in writing. theme 2: gbas enabled students to better link the contextual features with text evaluation and modifications. students mentioned the genre goals and the shared features of texts in the same genres, to different extents, anytime they discussed the language choices realized through the transitivity system and cohesion (tutorials 2 and 3). tutorial-2 gbas, as shown in figure 3, included evaluating the language choiceswriting purposes agreement, detecting related problems, and resolving them. the students were required to recommend the language changes so that the texts matched the new contextual features – audience and mode – when the tourism website’s written entries were converted into tour-guide spoken commentaries. according to pasquarelli (2006), in genre pedagogy, the purposes and audience of the texts are two important variables that writers must consider when performing social actions. correspondingly, students’ awareness of and emphasis on the matching between language choices and contextual features promised that their writing reviewing would potentially be improved. figure 3. tutorial 2 and 3 gba requirements tutorial 2 tutorial 3 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 311 tutorial 2 shows that the genre awareness of nine students had been enhanced, which has also been observed by yasuda (2011). in the submitted word file of one group, students managed to relate many of their comments on language choices with the text purposes, the genre features, the recurring contexts in which the texts appeared, and the receivers of the texts. two out of four groups converted the written entries into the tour-guide commentaries, and students’ demonstrations of the commentaries were of good quality. the other two groups’ commentaries did not sound natural for spoken language, which might be due to students’ proficiency in english, but the comments and language modifications they gave revealed their attempts at assessing the transitivity realization with the text purposes and genre features. figure 4. an example of students’ comments on the texts figure 4 demonstrates various attempts a group made in converting the website entry into a tour-guide commentary. besides the suggestions of adding such new elements as lead-in parts, which were quite popular, the changes of clauses from existential to material processes or mental process clauses from the “like” type to the “please” type were good efforts students made to enhance the liveliness of the spoken language through transitivity system. other good https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 312 efforts of changing a written genre into a spoken genre were evidenced in the suggestions that verbal process clauses were inserted with projecting / quotation clauses, and some claused in declarative mood were transformed into the interrogative mood (rhetorical questions) to engage the audience better. the genre choices in tutorial 3 were not limited to those listed in the requirement (as shown in figure 3). the students were allowed to choose genres of their preference and at their convenience, so students appeared to be much more active and engaged in the task than in the previous tutorials. with their prior experience in gbas, students not only modified the small details at clause levels (changes in the cohesive devices or the thematic structures of the clauses) but became more confident and ambitious in their efforts to rewrite the texts, with major revisions suggested to above-clause level in the texts. creative revisions of language choices were observed, including changing the thematic progression in the texts or employing nominalization to enhance the cohesion of the texts. in this tutorial, almost no interaction between the students and me as the teacher happened, no guiding question was raised, but students’ task fulfillment was still productive. during the informal talks with students, the researcher figured out that once students understood that language choices could influence writing purpose accomplishment, they became more selective and critical in the choice of mood, modal devices, processes, and themes in the texts. students’ understanding of the linguistic contents was accumulated through the lectures, and their experience of applying them was gained through gbas. the quantity and quality of modifications they made and the level of complexity of the modifications were gradually promoted. it could be inferred that gbas were a helpful preparation for students in reviewing the texts inputted by the teacher and potentially producing their well-contextualized texts. theme 3: gba-structured assignments promoted students’ ability to evaluate and enhance their writing quality. the midterm assignment requirement was: groups of students to analyze three to five sample academic compositions in one academic genre based on their mood, transitivity, and theme systems. the final assignment requirement was: for individual students to choose one of their writings in the same genres as the midterm assignment to analyze and revise. in both assignments, students explained why certain modifications were needed or what effects might https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 313 be created from each change. in the final assignment, students also reflected on how much the revision affected their writings. my analysis of 21 assignments showed that students could review the writings in all interpersonal, conceptual, and textual aspects. in 19 final papers, the explanations of the changes were related to at least two aspects, but mostly to cohesion, communicative effectiveness, and tone of the writing. in six papers, students detailed analyses of the audience, purposes, and genre features so that their suggested modifications could resolve most of the conflicts between the language choices and those factors in the original writings. students’ modifications to their writings successfully improved the texts’ communicative effectiveness, tone, and cohesion. this finding is quite close to what is reported in yasuda (2015) and yasuda (2017) about the positive effects of sfl-based genre pedagogy on students’ language choices in such genres as academic texts. this finding also resonates with nagao’s (2019) conclusion that gba paired with a sequenced and well-structured teaching methodology can enhance students’ writing skills. students’ reflections or comments on how the modification had changed the writings, which were retrieved from two papers, are presented in figure 5. figure 5. samples of students’ reflections (cycle 1) as shown in figure 5, reflections demonstrate that students could assess their writing, spot problematic details, and improve their writing. however, in the revised versions of two students, only trivial changes were made with superficial justifications. noticeably, during a final assignment tutorial, sa (pseudonym) kept asking me again and again if there could be any possibility that no problems be detected in her original writing. the researcher encouraged https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 314 reviewing more critically, and imagine the change in audience and medium of the text, and linking those contextual changes to the language modifications. however, in sa’s submitted final assignment, only two trivial modifications were made to the conjunctions, and the explanation for these modifications was poorly developed. sa’s failure to connect the language choices and the contextual features might be caused by her inadequate understanding of the interaction between the contextual aspects and the language choices. theme 4: the choice of unfamiliar genres in gbas might hinder students’ genre awareness and text evaluating skill development. despite being an interesting text type in terms of composition and functions, tourism signs seemed not a good input choice for genre practice to some students. some students revealed during our short informal chat right before an online final assignment tutorial meeting that: tourism signs were not a friendly input to many of them, and identifying the genre features and purposes of these signs was a hard job for those unfamiliar with wellconditioned tourist complexes. not many students in the class had the chance to travel much, so in tutorial 1, their poor travel experience hindered their evaluation of the textual features and the significant purpose agreement. in the same way, many students found it hard to role-play as a tour guide in tutorial 2. the detected cause for this problem was: that these students had never observed any tour guides introducing a place to visitors, so the role-playing task was a big challenge for them. cycle 2 the revision of the intervention the intervention in cycle 2 started two weeks earlier than in cycle 1, and some revisions were made to the intervention plan. as mentioned in 4.1, in the early weeks of cycle 1, students focused too much on grammar and spelling and were almost unaware of the link between the language choices and the text purposes when reviewing the given texts. however, when the researcher gave students guided questions about the audience and the mode of the texts, students paid more attention to the language changes in interaction with the contextual features, and then one group was quite successful in their revision of the tourism website entry. the researcher figured out that students’ understanding of the interaction between the contextual aspects and the language choices was not good enough to assist them in their text https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 315 evaluation and revision, which was again seen in the case of sa. in addition, some cycle-1 students explained that they had never received assignments in which the genre goals and features were focused, so they almost lacked understanding about why a text belonged to certain genres, what a text should be like to be classified into these genres, or what made genres different. therefore, in cycle 2, the intervention started earlier, with the focus being extended to contextual aspects of the texts. for this reason, two more sessions, one lecture and one tutorial on the contextual aspect were added to help students identify the situations in which each genre was used (bawarshi &reiff, 2010, p.193). in the lecture on contextual aspects, students learned with various examples of how the field, mode, and tenor of the texts affect text producers in the ways they shape the communicative purposes of the texts and how the linguistic resources, as well as the multimodal resources, could be mobilized by the text producers to reach these communicative purposes. in the tutorials, students participated in a teacher-guided contextual analysis of the job advertising leaflets they collected from the job fair. during these two sessions, besides teaching the linguistic contents, the researcher tried to highlight genres as what was going on in specific situational contexts so that any genre could display the interaction between language and field, mode, and tenor to reach specific communicative purposes. this revision was an attempt to address students’ lack of genre awareness and limited understanding of the roles of context, so it prepared students better for gbas in the upcoming sessions. the second revision was: the texts for gbas were chosen among the ones students wrote in their previous writing courses, with the priority set on the genres familiar with students’ life experiences and interests. the tourism signs and tourist website entries, which might have confused those with little travel experience in cycle 1, were substituted by job advertisement leaflets that students collected from the job fair, two covid-19 precautionary posters collected from the propaganda channels, and samples of ielts writing task 1. as the job fair was the university’s annual event, the job leaflets were familiar to the students. in addition, writing the content for a course/ event leaflet was one of the tasks students had in their second year. therefore, the choice of leaflets was considered appropriate for contextual aspect analysis. when cycle 2 lecture on mood and modality was delivered, the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic was at its climax in vietnam; the emergence of new covid-19 cases https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 316 and treatment were among the number-one discussion topics on social media, and the government made use of all propaganda channels to educate people the protective measures against covid-19. thus, the choice of covid-19 precautionary posters posed almost no challenges to students in identifying the shared communicative purposes and the interpersonal features of the genre. in addition, since the tutorial on mood and modality was via zoom, which meant internet connection was available for everyone to search for supplementary input texts, the analysis of an additional input text the english lyrics of the song “ghen covy” (the washing-hand dance) was improvised along the analysis of the precautionary posters. finally, as ielts writing task 1 format – chart/diagram description was one of the content students had in their first year, ielts writing task 1 samples were a better choice than website entries in the sense that they were familiar to students, and the number of clauses could be more appropriate to in-class analysis. the third revision was: the text genres chosen as input for the midterm project and final assignment were diversified. the open choice of genres and subgenres allowed students to select the texts from genres. this revision was an attempt to address a case in cycle 1: two students could make almost no revision to the chosen writings. the data collected from the revised intervention reveals three other major themes. theme 5: multimodal texts in gbas were better for novice genre analysts to shape their genre awareness. the input texts used in the model analysis were monomodal and multimodal in the lectures on contextual factors and interpersonal metafunction. in the tutorials, students’ job leaflets for guided practice were monomodal and multimodal. two of them are shown in figure 6. figure 6. two sample job leaflets for analysis https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 317 it took students a shorter time to navigate the multimodal leaflets than the monomodal ones to identify the communicative purposes highlighted in each part and throughout the whole text, the contextual features of field and tenor and explore the linguistic patterns (mood types, modal devices). multimodal text samples, with their visual elements, more concise language, and well-structured format, seemed more reader-friendly to students. the multimodal elements could assist them in evaluating how the linguistic features supported the text purposes more effectively. one student shared: “this [multimodal leaflet] is easy to read. the audience are right there in the photos, and the relationship can’t be distant with such big smiles. […] look! these [phrases] are bigger in size – so this is the main purpose”. (personal communication, january 17th, 2020) from my observation of students discussing the agreement between the leaflet purposes and their contents, students made better use of the visual and design elements than the linguistic elements when grouping the texts into genres. the ability to group texts into the right genres could be very important for novice genre analysts like these students because their confidence in genre identification would motivate them to search extensively for texts of the targeted genres and analyze many texts of the same genres to demystify the common linguistics patterns appearing across texts. their genre awareness might be naturally constructed, and accordingly, their ability to produce, then evaluate and revise the texts of these genres would be enhanced. theme 6: the reviewing skill practice in gbas was more effective when the input texts were elicited from the students. it happened by chance that the annual job fair – a mandatory school event was organized on the same day as one class session of my fg course, which means the session had to be canceled to make way for the job fair. therefore, the researcher assigned students with home readings to compensate for the lost session and asked them to collect job advertising leaflets at this event. after the job fair, various job advertising leaflets were emailed to the researcher, so plenty of texts in the same genre as input for contextual analysis in tutorial 1 were available. however, to get students to practice distinguishing different genres, the researcher added some other leaflets, notices, and announcements from the internet to the collection, mixed them with the leaflets students collected, and divided texts of different genres https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 318 equally among the groups in their tutorial 1 genre identification discussion. the researcher could observe students focusing most of their attention on the job leaflets they collected, and most of their group discussion concentrated on what made the job leaflets and what might be problematic about their language and visuals. this discussion activity engaged students more than the previous sessions. in tutorial 2 on mood and modality, which was zoom-based, the analysis of the english lyrics of the song ghen covy (the washing-hand dance) was suggested by the students when the analysis of the two covid-19 precautionary posters had finished. as the song, the vietnamese singers, and the dancers in the video were popular and much loved by young vietnamese people, the researcher could, at times, hear some students singing softly along certain parts of the song, and the analysis of the lyrics seemed to attract more participation than the analysis of the two posters. the researcher could not see the students’ facial expressions when sharing the full screen in the zoom window but could distinguish about six or seven different voices stating the types of mood or modality of each clause along the analysis of the english lyrics, so the researcher could somehow figure out how motivated they were. the evaluation of how the language choices supported the purposes of the songs also attracted better participation from students; most of the comments were positive. no revision to the lyrics was suggested because, as the students explained, the lyrics perfectly match the melody already. theme 7: gba-structured assignments effectively entailed extensive reading of genre features and strengthened reviewing skills. it was quite unclear in cycle 1 but clearer in cycle 2 that to seek more guideposts in navigating the genre and fulfilling different tasks in gbas, especially in the midterm project and final assignment, students had to read extensively the texts of the genre they were exploring. a group of students shared in the lead-in of their midterm project presentation how hard they worked on reading substantially the academic writing guides and even scholarly articles analyzing the features of the genre they chose to analyze (argumentative essays). all other groups immediately echoed this sharing, saying that they all made the same efforts to find arguments to evaluate the language choices in the texts and justify the modifications they made. students’ extensive reading of texts in targeted genres was reported to help strengthen their awareness of genre features and goals, which was then combined with the linguistic https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 319 knowledge and skills accumulated from the lectures to promote their ability to detect the mismatch between language choices and communicative purposes of their texts, then revise the problematic details. from the final papers in cycle 2, the explanations students gave for the writing revision were more detailed and well-reasoned than those in cycle 1. an example of a student’s detailed explanation of the modifications is provided in figure 7. the extract of a final assignment presented in figure 7 provides evidence of the student’s welldeveloped reviewing skills. first, the detailed evaluation of her writing could be demonstrated through her ability to spot the problematic language choices in writing – the problems that might affect the flow of logical arguments and mislead the readers of her argumentative essay writing purpose. second, her ability to apply the linguistic knowledge (textual meaning) and language analyzing skills to revise her writing was demonstrated through the modifications in terms of cohesive devices and themes and her detailed justification of the effects the modifications could bring to the text. figure 7. a student’s modifications in the final assignment (cycle 2) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 320 discussion the seven themes presented revealed both the positive influences and the limitations of using gbas in fg courses on the students’ scaffolding development of reviewing skills in writing. despite students’ focus on grammatical accuracy at the beginning of the intervention, there was evidence during the intervention that the awareness of the language choices-writing purposes relation allowed students to relate the genre features and contextual features with the language choices, making language choices appropriate to the writing purposes and the genre goals. this finding strengthened the findings of ortega (2010) and ortega (2012) and the argument by caffarel (2006) that students’ understanding of how different resources could be involved in meaning-making processes might encourage them to seek various choices available at different language strata, allowing them to be more creative and competent in their language learning. the follow-up activities were designed for students’ application of genre awareness in text evaluation identifying the disharmony between the language choices and the writing purposes and seeking appropriate ways to better the concordance between them. in other words, gba-structured assignments were useful for students’ practice of reflecting on the communicative purposes and the overall writing quality, so the constructive impacts of gbas on students’ ability to evaluate writing products were observable. also, gbas motivated students’ extensive reading about genres to strengthen their genre knowledge and improve their ability to evaluate the concordance between the language choices and the genre features and goals. this finding echoed the reports by cheng (2015) that gbas could facilitate learners’ noticing and learning of genre-specific features and the underpinning purposes of those features. the quality of students’ linguistic features analyses and their text modification suggestions were quite clearly enhanced from group midterm projects to individual final papers, demonstrated through students’ task completion during cycle-1 tutorials. with revisions in the intervention duration and content and the efforts to use input texts which were more reader-friendly to students in cycle 2, the increase in complexity level of linguistic analyses and the quality of the modifications were even more seen. what could be inferred from this observation is: that gbas functioned as a helpful springboard that boosted students’ confidence in gba tasks and might, to different degrees, guarantee students’ successful evaluation and revision of the existing texts (midterm project) and improve the writing https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 321 products of their own (final paper). this finding also supported yasuda’s (2011) report that genre-based tasks in foreign language classrooms could result in clear gains in some aspects of their writing performance and genre knowledge development. this finding somehow resonated with yasuda’s (2015) and yasuda’s (2017) conclusions about the constructive changes in students’ language choices when writing in certain academic genres after applying sfl-based pedagogy. conclusions the analysis of students’ final assignments revealed a detectable enhancement in students’ writings, which were visible in different aspects of the texts. students’ genre awareness allowed them to choose the right writing pieces as input and re-determine the purposes of these writings to guide themselves in their analysis of language choices–writing purpose agreement; the linguistic knowledge functioned as the analytical framework for them in their evaluation of the language choices. this finding entailed that: once students’ genre awareness is emphasized, they can detect the writing problems related to communicative purpose achievement and resolve them, and their ability to evaluate and revise their writings was promoted. in addition, for vietnamese university students, and possibly in similar contexts, multimodal texts and the more familiar and reader-friendly texts might better assist students the novice genre analysts with limited linguistic and genre knowledge in the familiarization stage of gbas. there are some limitations to this study. first, the two cycles were conducted in two different classes. although the students in these classes took the same courses, of generally the same age and english proficiency levels, they are not identical in learning styles; so comparing students’ development of reviewing skills in two cycles may not be fully comprehensive. second, in cycle 2, seven of the nine intervention sessions were via zoom. the observation was less effectively employed than in cycle 1. references alcon soler, e. (2005). does instruction work for learning pragmatics in the efl context? system, 33, 417-435. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2005.06.005 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2005.06.005 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 322 bawarshi, a.s., &reiff, m.j. (2010). genre: an introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy. parlor press llc, west lafayette, indiana. caffarel, a. (2006). learning advanced french through sfl: learning sfl in french. in h. byrnes (ed.), advanced language learning: the contribution of halliday and vygotsky (pp. 204224). london: continuum. canagarajah, a. (2002). multilingual writers and the academic community: towards a critical relationship. journal of english for academic purposes, 1, 2944.https://doi.org/10.1016/s1475-1585(02)00007-3 cheng, a. (2006). understanding learners and learning in esp genre-based writing instruction. english for specific purposes, 25, 76-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.07.002 cheng, a. (2011). language features as the pathways to genre: students’ attention to nonprototypical features and its implications. journal of second language writing, 20(1), 69-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2010.12.002 cheng, a. (2015). genre analysis as a pre-instructional, instructional, and teacher development framework. journal of english for academic purposes, 19, 125-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.04.004 cozma, m. (2014). the concept of genre in the english language class: implications for the students’ intercultural competence. romanian journal of english studies, 11(1), 237243. https://doi.org/10.2478/rjes-2014-0027 devitt, a.j., reiff, m.j., & bawarshi, a. (2004). scenes of writing: strategies for composing with genres. new york: pearson education. dugartsyrenova, v. (2020). supporting genre instruction with an online academic writing tutor: insights from novice l2 writers. journal of english for academic purposes, 44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100830 flower, l., & hayes, j. r. (1981). a cognitive process theory of writing. college composition and communication, 32(4), 365–387. https://doi.org/10.2307/356600 grabe, w. and kaplan, r.b. (1996) theory and practice of writing: an applied linguistic perspective. longman, new york. halliday, m.a.k. (1970). language structure and language function. in lyons, j., (ed.), new horizons in linguistics, (pp.140-165). penguin, harmondsworth. hyland, k. (2003). second language writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. johns, a.m. (2015). moving on from genre analysis. journal of english for academic purposes 19, 113-124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.04.005 kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (2000). participatory action research. in nk. denzin &y.s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (2nd edition.) (pp. 567-607). thousand oaks, ca: sage knapp, p., &watkins, m. (1994). context-text-grammar: teaching the genres and grammar of school writing in infants and primary classrooms. nsw, australia: texts production. koike, d., & pearson, l. (2005). the effect of instruction and feedback in the development of pragmatic competence. system, 33, 481-501. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2005.06.008 martin, j.r. (1985). process and text: two aspects of human semiosis. in j.d. benson & w.s. greaves (eds.), systemic perspectives on discourse, vol. 1 (pp. 248-274). norwood, nj: ablex. martin, j.r. (2009). genre and language learning: a social semiotic perspective. linguistics and education, 20, 10-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2009.01.003 martin, j.r., & rose, d. (2008). genre relations: mapping culture. london: equinox. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1475-1585(02)00007-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.07.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2010.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.04.004 https://doi.org/10.2478/rjes-2014-0027 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100830 https://doi.org/10.2307/356600 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.04.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2005.06.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2009.01.003 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 323 nagao, a. (2019). the sfl genre-based approach to writing in efl contexts. asian-pacific journal of second and foreign language education, 46. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-0190069-3 ortega, l. (2010, may). exploring interfaces between l2 uniting and sla. plenary delivered at the 9th symposium on second language writing, university of murcia, spain. ortega, l. (2012). epilogue: exploring l2 writing–sla interfaces. journal of second language writing, 21(4), 404-415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.09.002 pasquarelli, s.l. (2006). teaching writing genres across the curriculum: strategies for middle school teachers. greenwich, connecticut: information age publishing. sakari, m., & hirose. (1996). explanatory variables for efl students’ expository writing. language learning, 46, 137-174. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1996.tb00643.x tribble, c. (2015). writing academic english further along the road. what is happening now in eap writing instruction? elt journal, 69(4), 442–462. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccv044 yasuda, s. (2011). genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: developing writers’ genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence. journal of second language writing, 20, 111-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2011.03.001 yasuda, s. (2015). exploring changes in fl writers’ meaning-making choices in summary writing: a systemic functional approach. journal of second language writing, 27(3), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.09.008. yasuda, s. (2017). toward a framework for linking linguistic knowledge and writing expertise: interplay between sfl-based genre pedagogy and task-based language teaching. tesol quarterly, 15(3),576-606.https://www.jstor.org/stable/44987012 wang, f. (2013). challenges of learning to write qualitative research: students’ voices. international journal of qualitative methods. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f160940691301200134 yayli, d. (2011). from genre awareness to cross-genre awareness: a study in an efl context. journal of english for academic purposes, 10(3), 121-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2011.02.001 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-019-0069-3 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-019-0069-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.09.002 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1996.tb00643.x https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccv044 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2011.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.09.008. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f160940691301200134 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2011.02.001 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 324 appendix 1: what the students and the teacher did in two cycles cycle 1 cycle 2 session what the students did what the teacher did session what the students did what the teacher did 0. the contents of the sessions before the intervention: language, context and function functional labels and ranks overview of functional grammar and the metafunctions contextual aspects of the texts (field, mode, tenor) 0. the contents of the sessions before the intervention: language, context and function functional labels and ranks overview of functional grammar and the metafunctions 1. lecture 1: contextual features learning the contextual aspects of the texts (field, mode, tenor) observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the concepts of field, mode, and tenor. modeling the analysis of the contextual aspects of the sample texts (new year postcards) 2. tutorial 1: practice with gbas collecting job advertisement leaflets at job fair analyzing the contextual features of job advertisement leaflets giving instruction on how to collect texts from the job fair facilitating students in their analyses observing students’ awareness of genre features and the language choicesgenre goals reciprocal relation 1. lecture 1: interpersonal meaning: mood & modality learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of mood and modality observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of mood and modality, their classification and realization modeling the analysis of mood and modality in sample texts 3. lecture 2: interpersonal meaning: mood & modality learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of mood and modality observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of mood and modality, their classification and realization modeling the mood and modality analysis of the sample texts 2. tutorial 1 analyzing the interpersonal providing the information signs 4. tutorial 2: analyzing the interpersonal meaning providing the input texts, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 325 practice with gbas meaning realization 3 information signs assessing the agreement of all the textual features and the purposes of the texts/ genre. suggesting the possible revision of language to enhance the text’s communicative effectiveness as input texts facilitating students in their analyses facilitating q&a observing students’ awareness of the genre features and the language choices-genre goals in relation practice with gbas realization in 3 texts, including 2 covid-19 precautionary measure posters (1 in english, 1 in vietnamese) and a vietnamese song with an english subtitle assessing the textual featurestexts purposes/ genre goals agreement suggesting the language modifications to enhance the text’s communicative effectiveness which are from covid-19 propaganda channels facilitating students in their analyses observing students’ awareness of genre features and the language choicesgenre goals relation 3. lecture 2: representati onal meaning: transitivity learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of processes, participants, and circumstances observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of processes, participants, and circumstances, their classification and realization modeling the transitivity analysis of the sample texts 5. lecture 3: representatio nal meaning: transitivity learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of processes, participants, and circumstances. observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of processes, participants, and circumstances, their classification and realization modeling the transitivity analysis in sample texts 4. tutorial 2: practice with gbas analyzing the transitivity systems of the website entries introducing the tourist spots assessing the harmony between transitivity realization in the texts and text communicative purposes or the genre goals converting these written texts into spoken commentaries to tourists, specifying all the modifications in interpersonal and representational aspects to fit the new contextual features acting as tour guides delivering the commentaries to the tourists providing the input texts and assigning the groups with the texts (2 texts for each group) facilitating students in their analyses. facilitating q&a observing the changes in students’ awareness of the genre features and the language choices-genre goals relation 6. tutorial 3: practice with gbas analyzing the transitivity system of a given explanatory text (ielt writing task 1 explaining a diagram/bar chart/pie chart) assessing the harmony between transitivity realization in the texts and text purposes/genre goals rewriting the text in the group, changing the process and circumstance types. commenting on the other groups’ revised texts in terms of how the changes made by other groups affect the text goals and genre features providing the input texts and assigning the groups with the texts (2 texts for each group) facilitating students in their analyses observing the changes in students’ awareness of genre features and the relation between language choices and genre goals https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 326 5. lecture 3: textual meaning: cohesive devices & thematic structure learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of cohesive devices, theme and rheme observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of cohesive devices, theme and rheme, their classification and realization modeling the analysis of cohesive devices, theme and rheme in sample texts 7. lecture 4: textual meaning: cohesive devices & thematic structure learning and discussing the concepts, the classification, and the realization of cohesive devices, theme and rheme observing and practicing the analyzing skills introducing the key concepts of cohesive devices, theme and rheme, their classification and realization modeling the analysis of cohesive devices, theme and rheme in sample texts 6. tutorial 3 analyzing the cohesive devices and thematic structure of texts of a familiar genre (each group chose 3 texts of one genre among the following: blog posts, product manuals, course information leaflets, travel brochures, book introductions, and academic compositions) assessing the harmony between cohesive devices, thematic structures, communicative purposes, and genre goals revising the language for the best accomplishment of writing purposes checking the input texts that groups of students collected for the approval facilitating students in their analyses facilitating q&a observing the changes in students’ awareness of the genre features and the relation between language choices and genre goals 8. tutorial 4 practice with gbas analyzing the cohesive devices and thematic development in texts of various genres: poems, children’s stories, factual reports, recounts assessing the harmony between cohesion and thematic structures of the texts and text communicative purposes as well as the genre goals revising the language for the best accomplishment of writing purposes providing and eliciting from students the input texts; assigning the groups with the texts facilitating students in their analyses. observing the changes in students’ awareness of genre features and the relation between language choices and genre goals 7. midterm project with gbas analyzing the realization of transitivity, mood, and thematic in 3 to 5 texts of the same genre (each group chose among the sample academic compositions of one of the following types: narrative, expository, or argumentative) assessing the harmony between checking the input texts that groups of students collected from english learning websites and other sources for approval facilitating students in figuring out how to do the midterm project facilitating q&a observing the changes in 9. midterm project with gbas analyzing the realization of transitivity, or mood, or thematic development in 3 to 5 texts of the same genre (each group one of the following: explanation essay, comparison and contrast essay, statistical analysis report, discussion essay, argumentative essay, review of scholar articles) checking for approval of the input texts that groups of students collected from english learning websites and other sources facilitating students in figuring out how to do the midterm project facilitating q&a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 327 all the textual features analyzed and the genre goals revising the language for the best accomplishment of writing purposes students’ awareness of the genre features and the relation between language choices and genre goals assessing the harmony between all the textual features analyzed and the genre goals revising the language for the best accomplishment of writing purposes observing the changes in students’ awareness of the genre features and the relation between language choices and genre goals 00. final assignment analyzing students’ writings (the same type as the one chosen in the midterm project) to see how much their language choices supported their writing purposes revising the language for best achievement of writing purposes reflecting: how all the revisions made might have improved the harmony between language choices and writing purposes online tutorials: how to do the final assignment comparing the original and the revised versions of students’ writing to see how their writings had been improved 00. final assignment analyzing students’ writings (the same type as the one chosen in the midterm project) to see how much their language choices supported their writing purposes revising the language for best achievement of writing purposes reflecting: how all the revisions they made might have improved the harmony between language choices and writing purposes through online tutorials, facilitating students in figuring out how to do the final assignment comparing the original and the revised versions of students writing to see how their writings had been improved appendix 2: the analysis scheme for gba practice in groups session group (members) number of comments how well could students evaluate the texts in terms of genre features, writing purpose and language feature concord, audience, spelling, and grammatical accuracy.) number of suggested modifications what are the modifications about? (mood, modality, transitivity, cohesive devices, thematic structure, thematic progression, spelling, grammatical accuracy) … … … … … … … … … … … … appendix 3: the project and assignment analysis scheme student number of modifications what the modifications are about (mood, modality, transitivity, cohesive devices, how well each modification enhances the writing purpose and language feature concord / demonstrates students’ linguistic knowledge how well students could spot the problems in their writing. how each of the explanations https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 2, july 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 328 thematic structure, thematic progression, spelling, grammatical accuracy). from the course). how genre goal-oriented / appropriate to the contextual features each modification is. demonstrates student’s grasp of linguistic knowledge and skills in fg and their genre awareness … … … … … … … … … … https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/908 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2 july 2017 abstract the current study investigated the experiences and linguistic self-concept of six efl teachers from indonesia in a study abroad (sa) program. the participants were six efl teachers who were in their first year of an sa program in the united states of america. all of them were enrolled as students in postgraduate programs in different universities in the u.s. when the data were collected. the data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews through videocalls. the study found that the participants encountered linguistics experiences related to certain linguistic features and culture. in addition to those experiences, certain forms of linguistic selfconcept were also found. participants’ linguistic self-concept showed that they perceived that they were not proficient enough in english, their english was very formal, they were proficient on certain area, and their struggle was not a unique experience. it can be concluded that as learners in an sa program, efl teachers experienced what were normally experienced by learners in an sa program in general. keywords: linguistic self-concept, study abroad, efl teachers. introduction the embassy of the united states in indonesia (2014) reported that in 2014, “7,000 indonesians [studied] in the united states” and that they aimed to double the number in the future (para.1). the embassy added that study abroad program is one of the ways to maintain bilateral relationship between the two countries. the opportunity to study abroad is offered through scholarship programs by priefl teachers’ linguistic self-concept in a study abroad (sa) program arifah mardiningrum received her u ndergraduate degree in en glish education from state university of yogyakar ta, and her master’s degree from indiana univ ersity of pen n sy lv an ia. s h e h as tau ght in en gl ish edu c at ion dep ar t men t of un iv er sit as mu h ammadiy ah yogy akar ta sin c e 2012. her teaching area includes reading, writing, speakin g, presentation (public speakin g), an d secon d lan gu ag e ac qu isition . her r esearc h in terest revolv es the area of c reativ e teach in g, ar tistic and narrative pedagogy, par ticularly in dr ama pedagogy, an d s ec on d lan gu age ac quisition , par tic ularly arou n d immer sion prog ra ms . 27-37 28 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 va te a nd g overnmen t f ound atio ns s uch as fulbright, a scholarship program sponsored by the u.s. government, and dikti (indonesian directorate of higher education) scholarship, sponsored by the indonesian government. for teachers, this program is hoped to be the space for quality improvement (kemendikbud dikti, 2014) studies showed that there was indeed a room for quality improvement from an sa program. in general, sa programs have been considered as the “context for language learning” (kinginger, 2013, p. 341). therefore, a myriad of studies was conducted to seek for an understanding of the impacts of sa programs, especially on language skills. a few of these studies investigated participants’ linguistic affordance (allen, 2010), individual differences (anderson, 2014), language gain/ acquisition (baró & serrano, 2011; themudo, page, & benander, 2007), speaking ability (kang, 2014), language practice (larzén-östermark, 2011), language learning (li, 2014; savage & hughes, 2014; sato, 2014), language proficiency (li, 2014; savicki, 2011), communicative competence (lockley, 2013), language pragmatics (li, 2014; reynolds-case, 2013; shively, 2011), and language identity (sato, 2014) to name a few. however, all of the above studies focused on investigating students, instead of teachers, which seemed to be the trend of scholarly studies in this area. in absence of studies focusing on teachers, there is a necessity to conduct a study in this area. what makes teachers might have a unique experience in an sa program is that they are both teachers in their home country, and students in the host country. in addition, sa programs for them are mostly intended to be a professional development project. therefore, more studies are needed to see whether the programs have really met their vision. this idea is shared by most studies of teachers in sa programs. of the few, the foci are on the impacts of sa programs on the teachers’ professional lives (allen, 2010), their language proficiency (allen, 2013), their experiences of living in the target country (bilash & kang, 2007), their learning context (mora & roux, 2010), and their self-perception on their proficiency (wang, 2014). it can be concluded that there needs to be more studies on teachers in relation to sa programs they attended. for the current study, the term “self-concept” is used to seek an understanding of how teachers in their sa programs perceived their own language proficiency during their program. the term “learners” is also used to refer to the participants since in the sa program, their status is students. the study can add to the scholarship on sa programs, teacher’s professional development, and the field of language teaching and learning in general. in addition, to meet the above aim, two research questions were formulated: 1. what linguistic experiences did efl teachers encounter in their first year of their sa program? 2. how was efl teachers’ self-concept of their english proficiency as the result of the linguistic experience? study abroad (sa) and language proficiency study abroad (sa) has been studied repeatedly in terms of its outcome and its process. kinginger (2011), reviewing the bulk of research on the subject, found that, in terms of outcome, one of the mostly discussed issues is related to language gain. the foci were mostly on the “proficiency as 29 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 operationalized in tests” and “components of communicative competence (grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, or strategic abilities)” (kinginger, 2011, p. 59). kinginger added that even though sa has been regarded as supporting improvement in language proficiency, studies show that individual differences might influence the outcome. this means that going on an sa program does not necessarily guarantee participants’ improvement in the target language proficiency. a research by anderson (2014), for example, supported kinginger’s (2011) conclusion on the matter. the study aimed to explore the learners’ individual differences in terms of cognitive and affective aptitude in relation to their oral proficiency gain in a four-week sa program. the study found that each of these learners showed diverse aptitude profiles and despite the same extensive four-week program they attended, they also showed different oral-proficiency gain. it was expected that the learners with high aptitude profile would gain more. however, in fact, it was not the case. one student who showed a high aptitude profile seemed to not make a significant improvement in oral proficiency gain. as stated by benson, barkhuizen, bodycott, and brown (2013), sa programs are not only aimed at the “improvement of language skills,” but they also “include enhanced personal independence, intercultural competence, and academic knowledge and skills” although many studies seem to indicate that it was not always the case (p.36). in fact, all participants in the current study were in a scholarship program, which is “available to indonesian citizens to undertake graduate degree study or advanced research at a us university in a variety of fields” (aminef, 2017, para.1). this implied that target language proficiency improvement is not the main goal, especially when the program itself requires a high level of target language proficiency of its participants prior to the program. in her analysis on studies on sa programs, kinginger (2011) found that the studies conducted quantitatively have proven that sa programs, have a significant correlation to their participants’ linguistic gain regardless of the individual differences. however, as kinginger (2011) reviewed, some case studies and ethnographic studies on sa programs revealed that “learning in study abroad is a complex, dialogic, situated affair in which the subjectivities of students and hosts are deeply implicated” (p.64). this means that there are many factors in an sa program needed to see to understand the process of learning during the program. for example, although two sa students experienced similar linguistic insecurity, their interaction with the host family and the way the host family treated them could shape a different perception about the target language (kinginger, 2011). as a result, the language gain might also be different. this underlines the necessity to understand more deeply the experience of each individual and how they perceive that experience. linguistic self-concept and sa mercer (2011) states that self-concept “consists of the beliefs one has about oneself, one’s self-perception” which are not necessarily facts, but more of “what one believes to be true about oneself” (p.14). in the current study, mercer’s term, foreign language learning (fll) is also suitable to refer to what the study aims to investigate. mercer defines it as “an individual’s self-descriptions of competence and evaluative feelings about themselves 30 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 as a foreign language (fl) learner (p.14). meanwhile, using the term “linguistic self-concept”, benson, barkhuizen, bodycott, and brown (2013) state that it refers to “how participants perceive themselves as second language learners and users (their reflexive identities), and the projection and recognition of imagined identities in the study abroad context” (p.80). summarizing from these definitions, the current study uses the term selfconcept in english proficiency to describe the participants’ perception on their linguistic experiences and how they perceive their proficiency in english based on their evaluation or reflection on those experiences. reviewing from arrays of studies on foreign language learner’s self-concept, mercer (2011) concludes that there is an extremely complex process influencing the formation of a learner’s self-concept and that this implies that “there is a need to be careful not to overestimate the potential effectiveness of educational approaches that aim at enhancing global self-concept or self-esteem” (p.167). in other words, when talking about a learner’s selfconcept, the uniqueness of each individual should be regarded. mercer (2011) adds that even though this means that self-concept is very unpredictable and there is no exact solution to inf luence a learner’s language self-concept, a non-threatening learning situation can be endeavored to give positive influence to the learner’s foreign language selfconcept. the challenge is; therefore, lays on the teachers in that learning environment since they need to maintain in mind that each student has his/her own complex and personal foreign language self-concept and that many factors influence that concept (mercer, 2011). in an sa program, self-concept can be influenced by various factors. wang (2014), investigating the self-perception of efl teachers on their language proficiency, found that the group of teachers who had stayed longer in an sa program tended to perceive their language proficiency improvement more highly than the one having stayed in a shorter time (six months). this shows that the length of time spent in an sa program influences the way its participants perceive their language proficiency. however, it is too fast to conclude that time is the only factor influencing someone’s linguistic self-concept. social interaction and environment where sa participants interact with others will also play a significant part. it is relevant to borrow aveni’s (2005) idea that in an sa program, “learners gather information about their sense of status, control, safety, and validation in an l2 interaction from multiple sources” (p.55). aveni (2005) added that the sources might come from “social-environmental cues” and “learner-internal cues” (p.55). the former refers to the factors such as interlocutors’ behavior, characters, age, genders, etc., while the former refers to the learner’s attitudes and beliefs about themselves, their foreign language ability, etc. another conclusion that can be drawn from studies of self-concept in an sa program is that self-concept is dynamic. aveni (2005) argues that in a program such as sa, participants “often report feeling as if those around them may perceive them to be unintelligent, lacking personality or humor, or as having the intellectual development of a small child” (p.9). this might be the result of what they believed about accents, grammar, intonation, or any linguistic system that they believed they should have to be addressed as proficient. however, aveni (2005) added that, in her rigorous 31 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 analysis of several sa participants in her study, that after certain length of time and more experience, these learners gained a better perception about their language ability and became less risk averse in using the target language. the finding of a naturalistic study by allen (2013) to several teachers in an sa program corroborates to this notion. using the teachers’ diaries, allen found several points showing how the teachers perceived their language proficiency. over time, these teachers, among others, believed that it is alright to not always understand all levels of the language and that language proficiency is a long process. methodology this qualitative study was conducted to six indonesian efl teachers who had spent approximately one year of sa programs in the united states of america (usa). all of them were under the same scholarship scheme and were english teachers in indonesia with a variety of experience of teaching students of different ages and institutions (school and university). all of them speak bahasa indonesia and have different vernaculars. one participant took a doctoral degree program, and the others took a master’s degree program. they took programs under the area of teaching english for speakers of other languages (tesol) and applied linguistics. prior to the program, to compete for the scholarship grant and to be enrolled in the university of their choice, these teachers were required to take an english proficiency test in the form of internet-based test of english as a foreign language (toefl ibt) and they had to achieve the score required by the scholarship grantor and the university. in this study, some participants refused to mention their score, but the fact that they were granted the scholarship and were enrolled in one of the universities in usa showed that they had reached the score for an advanced efl users and were considered by the scholarship grantor as capable to survive the academic life in the host country. the data collection was conducted after the current study had been reviewed by the institutional review board (irb), and participants had signed the consent form. the data were collected through semi-structured interviews using english as the medium of communication. because all participants lived in different states, the interviews were conducted online through video-calls. the interviews were recorded with the consent from the participants. the recorded interviews were then transcribed and coded. the coding process was conducted by first scrutinizing the data to collect the parts containing the foci of discussions, namely the participants’ experiences and linguistic self-concept. the next step was to scan the trends or overlapping phenomena, which then became the base for categorization of the findings. the categorized findings were then analyzed and related to past literatures. i need to inform that my positionality might encourage bias in my analysis of the data. at the time of data collection, i shared identities with the participants. i was also a grantee of the same scholarship as the participants. i am also an efl teacher in indonesia and was a tesol master’s student in a university in the usa. in addition, i also shared the same l1 with some participants and speak bahasa indonesia, the national language of the republic of indonesia. these shared identities might contribute to certain personal view, which 32 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 might influence my analysis. findings linguistic experiences the current study focuses on six efl teachers’ experiences in an sa program in the usa. the data showed that all participants experienced the struggles when interacting with other interlocutors. the struggles were caused by some linguistic features and by cultural aspects. struggle caused by linguistic features. all six participants stated that they had classmates or friends of various origins and nationalities (commonly called international students). they stated that at times, they felt that they could not understand their fellow international students in a communication. they mentioned that the causes were mostly around linguistic aspects such as accents, intonation, pronunciation, and different styles of english. the following excerpt from participant 2 showed the struggle. “my only problem is to understand their words. i got friends from china and saudi arabia who speak [english]. i don’t understand them because of their pronunciation” (r2.c2.23). the thought of accent as one factor that hindered understanding was also shared by participant 4, referring to accents of other international students, and participant 6, referring to her english native speaker professor. participant 5, on the other hand, focused more on the different style of english that she encountered as the factor to cause her struggle. “at first, it’s quite difficult when we talked about spoken english. spoken english is varied in the us. it depends on the context. it depends on the place where english is used, and it depends on the age of the speakers. so, when i was talking with undergraduate students, the spoken language is different from the graduate students because most undergraduate students are still young, and they just graduated from senior high school. they used non-formal english that sometimes i didn’t understand. but i’d ask what he or she means and they would explain it to me” (r5.c2.06). participant 4 added that pronunciation had also caused communication struggle, but this time, she referred to her own pronunciation. “may be because of this pronunciation. when i talk to people i forget if they’re americans or not they didn’t understand me, so i think i speak okay. so, i need to revise, rearrange all my words and practice again” (r4.c2.02). further, she explained that this experience made her less confident in speaking because such thing never happened when she was in indonesia. struggle caused by cultural aspects. the interviews with the participants also revealed that some of the struggles were caused by different cultural backgrounds of theirs and other interlocutors. participant 2, for example, stated that he encountered an experience where he felt lost with the conversation and humor in the classroom. he explained it in the following excerpt. “my classmates are very friendly and they like joking, but they like joking in american ways, which makes me uncomfortable” (r2.c2.15). “for me it’s not funny” (r2.c2.21). participant 3 also shared her struggle in understanding people from different countries or different cultural background as follows. she mentioned that it was difficult for her to understand other students from different countries other than us because they “don’t really share the same under33 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 standing behind” english (r3.c2.02). she explained what she meant by that different understanding as follows. “when, for example, i talk to a japanese, even if he’s not a native speaker, we both are not native speakers, we do not have the connection. the only connection we have is that we are not native speakers. but when we speak english, we should try to figure out what i mean and what he means” (r3.c2.04). both cases above show that sometimes, the struggle was not about to speak the language. it lied on the meaning of the spoken language in which interlocutors from different cultural backgrounds might understand it differently. linguistic self-concept after several experiences of struggling and surviving communications in an sa context for one year, participants showed their linguistic self-concept as follows. i am not completely proficient in english. all participants were basically quite confident with their english proficiency prior to their departure to the us as they said in the beginning of their interview. however, after encountering several experiences of struggle, most participants showed a little bit sense of inferiority regarding their english proficiency. participant 2 expressed it in the following excerpt. “when i spoke in the discussions [in class], for example, i was not very confident in giving my ideas although i had a good idea. i was worried that the way i explained or the way i delivered ideas were not very well managed or well organized. therefore, i spoke very slowly” (r2.c2.12). “i thought too much, which hindered me from speaking. may be, i was just worried they didn’t understand what i said” (r2.c2.13). interestingly, participant 2 stated that this feeling of inferiority only occurred when he had to interact with his american counterparts but not with other international students. similarly, participant 5 shared her lack of confidence of her proficiency in certain topics of conversation rather than issues pertaining to certain linguistic features or language skills. participant 1, on rather different take, shared her perception that she lacked proficiency in a certain language skill. she mentioned academic written english as her weakness. “in academic life, i don’t think i’m proficient enough because there are linguistic features i’m not quite familiar yet, and i don’t feel like i have used that properly. so, to me, in some cases, i feel i’m quite proficient, but in academic, i might be improving, but i don’t feel like i’m proficient enough yet” (r1.c4.02). participant 5, also mentioned specific area where she felt not as proficient after one year of studying in the us. she stated as follows. “i think, in terms of grammar, i don’t make much improvement because i feel that my grammar is still the same as previous years” (r5.c4.02). my english is very formal. two participants mentioned that they believed that the english that they used was different in that they felt that their english was very formal or standard even when they used it in an informal situation. participant 2, for example, stated that he felt that he spoke “very formally” and felt like “a textbook” (r2.c2.02). participant 5 also felt that her english was formal. “when i came here, there was a lot of differences. if we talk about other languages, i think, in indonesia, we mostly learned academic writing. but when we 34 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 came here, we heard people talking in english informally. and even in a formal [situation], they also insert some informal conversation, informal things” (r5.c2.04). i am proficient in certain area. whether the experiences sound negative or positive, all participants seemed to take something positive from them. they showed confidence on their english proficiency. some participants perceived that their english was good enough, at least for an oral communication. participant 3, for example, believed that her english was adequate for communication need. “even if i’m not perfect, these days, i can still communicate. i can survive a year in this state, so may be, i’m proficient enough” (r3.c4.03). this idea was also shared by participant 1 and 4. in addition, participant 4’s confidence was also a result of comparing her proficiency to her peers. she expressed that after a while, she convinced herself to be confident because she was still learning and that she found out that many people struggled with communicating too (r4.c4.01). she added as follows. “i mean, i find several friends from other countries outside u.s. speak english, but i feel i’m better. so, i f eel like “why should i b e discou raged?” (r4.c4.03). this idea of comparing self to peers is also implied by participant 2. participant 5, slightly different from the rest, felt that she was confident in the area of academic english. she stated as follows. “i would say that perhaps, i’m good at academic english, especially when somebody asked me to write a paper. it doesn’t mean that my writing is qualified for publication. [what i mean is that] when i do academic writing or academic talking, i can do better” (r5.c4.08). this likely came from her experience of struggling to cope with the topic of conversation outside classroom as she shared in the interview. my struggle is not unique. the last category of participants’ linguistic self-concept is related to their understanding that their experience was not something that they uniquely experienced. their occasional struggle to understand what other international students seemed to make them learn that they, were not the only one with linguistic boundaries, but also their counterparts, regardless their nativity. they showed more acceptance to their condition. participant 6, for example, believed that accent was not an issue in communication. “i would say that everybody, whether he is the socalled native speaker, or the so-called native speaker of english will definitely have accent. that’s what i learn about accent. i used to think that those coming from countries where english is spoken as the mother tongue, are free from accents. now, here i find that everybody, wherever she/he comes from, will have particular accent. i believe that accent is part of one’s identity to not necessarily to get the rid of” (r6.c2.04). participant 1, in addition, believed that everybody also struggles, at some point, in communication. she also mentioned her view on native speakers. “now i came here, i realized that it doesn’t only happen to non-native speakers like us. i realized that even my native speaker friends, they also sometimes face the kind of situation when we have to be able to find a way out of the communication trouble by using our strategic competence” (r1.c2.02). each of the category of self-concept above was 35 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 not always shared by all participants. however, there seemed to be a trend that the experiences involving people in the participants’ academic life played a part in their linguistic self-concepts although it might only be implied. discussion it can be concluded from the findings that the experiences of all participants took place when they interacted with the people in their academic environment. although in the interview, i never asked specifically about their academic life, the participants’ responses were mostly related to their interaction with their peers. this phenomenon is not unique. aveni (2005) stated that “learners set expectations for their own performance based on the presentations of others and look to other students who seem to perform better or worse than they [do] and shift their attitudes toward themselves accordingly” (p.91). in line with this, mercer (2011) argued that this attitude of comparing oneself to peers becomes the “external frame of reference” in the formation of self-concept among learners (p.128). the participants of the current study, despite their status as teachers back home, were learners in their sa program. therefore, the tendency to act like learners in general seems to be reasonable. further, mercer (2011) added that the comparison is usually done to peers that learners consider as holding similarities so that it will suggest a reasonable comparison. this was also the case with the six teachers who became the participants of this study. the finding suggests that they tended to compare themselves to other international students or other non-native speakers of english, most likely because for these international students, english is also a foreign language. there was also a mention of native speakers of english, but the context was still around classroom, which means that the peers compared still shared certain similar identity. another conclusion that can be made is that participants’ experience and their self-concept about their english ability came from the struggles that they experienced or they perceived as being experienced by their peers. such struggles are commonly experienced by participants of an sa program as a result of being “stripped of the comfortable mastery of their first language and of cultural and societal adroitness” (aveni, 2005, p.9). the struggles also mostly pertained to linguistic features such as pronunciation, accent, and style. in this sense, according to aveni (2005), an sa environment can contribute to the participants’ inferiority. however, although all participants experienced certain struggles, each perceived their experience in their own way. not all participants felt clear inferiority. in fact, in the end, all participants’ self-concept tended to be positive. aveni mentioned three factors that might be the explanation as to despite the negative experience that the participants had, they still showed self-affirming attitude that they actually made improvement. this attitude might take place because the participants’ “internal cues are positive”, they had the “wish to elevate their internal sense of security,” and “the importance of their communication goal outweighs their need to maintain their security” (aveni, 2005, p.118). conclusions and suggestions to sum up, the teachers’ linguistic self-concept in general revolves around the success in communicating with people from different background and in any given situation. their experiences are 36 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 commonly experienced by learners in any sa program. what is interesting is that there was a growing empathy to other speakers after they were exposed to the reality that english is not only as modeled by what they considered as native english speakers. i think it is safe to say that sa programs gave the benefit of professional development to a teacher in a way that it can be the space to reflect and learn about their own competence. although there has been a common belief that sa program is beneficial, at certain sense, it is still considered as an exclusive program which is only available for teachers in certain level of education. therefore, more socialization on various sa programs is needed to encourage more teachers. references allen, h. (2010). interactive contact as linguistic affordance during short-term study abroad: myth or reality?. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 19, 1-26. allen, l. q. (2010). the impact of study abroad on the professional lives of world language teachers. foreign language annals, 43(1), 93-104. allen, l. q. (2013). teachers’ beliefs about developing language proficiency within the context of study abroad. system, 41(1), 134-148. aminef. (2017). fulbright scholarships. retrieved from https://www.aminef.or.id/grants-forindonesians/fulbright-programs/scholarship/ anderson, s. l. (2014). individual differences & study abroad: four profiles of oral proficiency gain. journal of language teaching and research, 5(3), 477-486. aveni, v. a. p. (2005). study abroad and second language use: constructing the self. cambridge university press. baró, à. l., & serrano, r. s. (2011). length of stay and study abroad: language gains in two versus three months abroad. revista española de lingüística aplicada, (24), 95. benson, p., barkhuizen, g., bodycott, p., & brown, j. (2013). second language identity in narratives of study abroad. england: palgrave macmillan. bilash, o., & kang, j. (2007). living well in a changing world: what korean teachers of english say about a study abroad program in canada. the journal of educational thought (jet)/ revue de la pensée educative, 295-309. kang, d. m. (2014). the effects of study-abroad experiences on efl learners’ willingness to communicate, speaking abilities, and participation in classroom interaction. system, 42, 319-332. kementrian pend idik an d an kebud ayaa n, direktorat jenderal pendidikan tinggi. (2014). beasiswa luar negeri. retrived from http:// dikti.go.id/informasi-beasiswa/beasiswa-luarnegeri/?lang=id kinginger, c. (2011). enhancing language learning in study abroad. annual review of applied linguistics, 31, 58-73. kinginger, c. (2013). identity and language learning in study abroad. foreign language annals, 46(3), 339-358. larzén-östermark, e. (2011). intercultural sojourns as educational experiences: a narrative study of the outcomes of finnish student teachers’ language-practice periods in britain. scandinavian journal of educational research, 55(5), 455-473. li, l. (2014). language proficiency, reading development, and learning context. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 24, 7392. https://www.amin http:// 37 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 li, s. (2014). the effects of different levels of linguistic proficiency on the development of l2 chinese request production during study abroad. system, 45, 103-116. lockley, t. (2013). exploring self-perceived communication competence in foreign language learning. studies in second language learning and teaching, (iii-2), 187-212. mercer, s. (2011). towards an understanding of language learner self-concept (vol. 12). springer science & business media. mora, a., roux, r., arredondo, f., & victoria, c. (2010). mexican teachers of english studying abroad: their perceptions of their learning contexts profesores universitarios mexicanos de lengua inglesa en el extranjero: percepciones de sus contextos de aprendizaje. revista electrónica de investigación educativa, 12(2), 2. reynolds case, a. (2013). the value of short term study abroad: an increase in students’ cultural and pragmatic competency. foreign language annals, 46(2), 311-322. sato, t. (2014). the effects of study abroad on second language identities and language learning. turkish online journal of qualitative inquiry, 5(3), 28-41. savage, b. l., & hughes, h. z. (2014). how does short-term foreign language immersion stimulate language learning?. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 24, 103-120. savicki, v. (2011). relationship of foreign language proficiency to study abroad outcomes and inputs. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 21, 63-85. shively, r. l. (2011). l2 pragmatic development in study abroad: a longitudinal study of spanish service encounters. journal of pragmatics, 43(6), 1818-1835. themudo, d., page, d., & benander, r. (2007). student and faculty perceptions of the impact of study abroad on language acquisition, culture shock, and personal growth. aurco journal, 13, 65-79. u.s. embassy and consulates in indonesia. (2014). study in the u.s. retrieved from http:// jakarta.usembassy.gov/study.html wang, d. (2014). effects of study abroad on teachers’ self-perceptions: a study of chinese efl teachers. journal of language teaching and research, 5(1), 70-79. http:// indah puspawati 42-51 abstract teachers’ use of code switching in efl classroom and its functions is a lecturer in english educa�on department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she has been teaching english as a foreign language since 2002, and has taught various subjects such as material development, issues in language teaching and learning, language assessment and evalua�on, etc. her research interests include teaching methodology, cri�cal pedagogy, democra�c language assessment, students’ voices in language teaching and learning, and material development. the debate about the use of l1 (first language) in efl (english as a foreign language) classes has been around since the teaching as a foreign language itself. the arguments that support the use of l1 use in efl classes claimed that l1 can be a great tool for students for l2 (english) acquisition and learning. this claims lead to the efl teachers’ use of code switching (cs) in the classroom. this research aims at investigating the teachers’ belief about code switching and its function in efl classroom. three experienced teachers of english language education department in a private university participated in this study. the study used observation and interview as the data collection methods. the observation was done through video recording on class sessions, and the interview was done to confirm teachers’ use of cs based on the recording. the result reveals that the teachers have made informed decision on their teaching practice, especially on the use of cs as a teaching method to facilitate students’ learning. the teachers mostly used inter-sentential switching in cs. the reasons for using cs in the classroom were to help students learn, to facilitate students with low level of l2 proficiency and to teach efficiently. the functions of teachers’ cs were to construct and transmit knowledge, to manage the class, and to build interpersonal relation with the students. this study indicated that teachers in this research were aware of the use of cs in teaching and learning l2 to facilitate learning. keywords: code switching, code switching in efl class, teachers’ beliefs introduction codeswitching (hereafter cs) is “an individual’s use of two or more language varieties in the same speech event or exchange” (wooland, 2004, pp. 73-74). bullock and toribo (2009) defined cs as “the ability on the part of bilinguals to alternate effortlessly between their two languages” (p.1). this definition indicated that cs only occurs among people who master two or more different languages, and their practice of the use of these languages in communication. however, there journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 1, january 2018 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 43 are two opposing argument on the reasons why people code switch. the first argument stated that cs was a result of language incompetency by bilinguals that may indicate problems in the mastery of one of the languages (edwards & dewaele, 2007; wooland, 2004). for example, non-native speakers of english may switch to their first language because they forget the english words, or they do not know the english expression they want to use. on the contrary, another argument stated that cs is actually an evidence of bilingual/multilingual competence, which means that cs can be seen as an additional communication sources that bilinguals can use (bullock & toribo, 2009). the use of cs is a competence that bilinguals/multilinguals have, since to do cs speakers must have complex knowledge about the languages and the cross-cultural communication norms (kustati, 2014). the use of cs may also be found in a classroom context, especially in classrooms that consists of bilingual, or even, multilingual speakers, such as foreign language (l2) classes. although there is a tendency to impose the use of only l2 in such classes, cs phenomenon is unavoidable. especially in indonesia, as a multilingual and multicultural country where people speak more than one languages and dialects, the use of cs in english as a foreign language (efl) classes is inevitable. in the classroom context in indonesia where teachers and students share the same first language, research (kustati, 2014; nurhayati, 2014; widia, 2015; fatimah 2016; and fhitri, 2017) showed that cs was used by teachers in efl the classrooms. the research indicated that teachers used cs in teaching and learning process for various reasons. the main reason would be to facilitate students’ learning because by using cs teachers believed that they increase students’ understanding of the teaching materials (widia, 2015), and provide students with comprehensible input, especially for lower level students (fatima, 2016). the research by kustati (2014) also showed that when teachers used cs the classroom engagement was improved because the students understand the instruction better. on the other hand, research about the use of cs in efl classes in indonesian context also revealed some concern about the over-use of cs in the classroom that may affect negatively toward the teaching and learning process. teachers were also concerned that students may get used to cs, and it can decrease the willingness of the students to speak english (kustati, 2014). a study by fhitri (2017) also indicated that teachers’ use of cs was not a strategy that is consciously used by the teachers to facilitate learning. instead, teachers used cs because they were influence by the students who use first language, which was considered as a distraction when teachers used english (fhitri, 2017). sakaria and priyana (2018) also pointed out that excessive use of cs in efl classroom may make students overly dependent. they encouraged teachers to use cs cautiously, so that it can facilitate learning. thus, although the use of cs can be beneficial for efl classroom, cautions should be considered whether teachers use cs as a strategy to facilitate learning, or they just use cs as a sign of teachers l2 incompetency. this research investigated the use of code switching done by indonesian teachers in university context and explored the functions of those cs in teaching and learning process. two research questions that this research investigated are: 1. how are indonesian university teachers’ code switching functioned in efl classes? journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 44 2. how do indonesian university teachers perceive the use of code switching in their efl classes? this research is hoped to be able to give contribution to understanding about the teachers practice of the use of cs in the classroom as a strategy to facilitate classroom learning. besides, the result of this study can be used as a reflection for teachers on their practice of using cs in their classroom so that they can use cs effectively. litearure review types of code switching in terms of types of code switching, this research focused on the categorization proposed by poplack (as cited in jingxia, 2010). types of cs were divided into three categorized types of cs into three categories namely “tag switching, inter-sentential switching and intra-sentential switching” (p.11). “tag-switching is the insertion of a tag phrase from one language into an utterance from another language; inter-sentential switching occurs at a clause or sentence boundary” (jingxia, 2010, p. 11), while “intra-sentential switching occurs when words or phrases from another language are inserted into a sentence of the first language” (yletyinen, 2004, p. 15). among the three types of cs, the intra-sentential is considered the most complex one, and can only be used by fluent bi/multilinguals, while inter-sentential switching requires more fluency than the tag switching (jingxia, 2010). from the previous explanation, it can be inferred that intra-sentential is the most difficult to do, and tag switching is the least difficult functions of teachers’ code switching in efl classes research reported that teachers’ cs in efl classes functioned for three major purposes such as for constructing and transmitting knowledge (qing, 2010; jingxia, 2010; azlan & narasuman, 2013, shay, 2015, and fhitri, 2017), for classroom management (mugla, 2005; tien, 2010; shay, and 2015), and for affective functions (qing, 2010; widia, 2015; fhitri, 2017, and sakaria & priyana, 2018). first, research reported that teacher often code switch to first language when teachers explain complex concept to the students such as grammar, new vocabulary, and the content of the textbook. teachers were reported to use cs in this situation in order to help students understand the concept better and understand the english text better. when constructing and transmitting knowledge, teachers felt that it is important to use language that students understand, and using cs was sought as a strategy that teachers used to accommodate that purpose. second, the function of cs is for classroom management; teachers often used cs to give instructions, to regulate students’ behaviour and to maintain the flow of the class. teachers tend to use l1 to give instruction to the students to ensure that every student comprehend the instruction correctly and do the intended activity precisely (mugla, 2005). teachers typically use l2 for giving instruction but then give l1 translation to ensure all students have understood them and applied them correctly (mugla, 2005; and tien, 2010). the next function of cs in classroom management is to regulate students’ behavior. it is also speculated that when conflict and tension happened in the classroom, teachers often consciously used l1 to show their journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 45 authority (tien, 2009). similarly, fhitri (2017) also reported that teachers used cs to get attention from the students when they make noises when teachers explained the lesson. sakaria and priyana (2018) also reported that cs were often used for maintaining the flow of the class to keep the conversation going. lastly, teachers also use cs for affective functions such as building interpersonal relation with the students in the classroom. the use of cs in the classroom may contribute to creating a more supportive language environment that enables teachers to build solidarity and intimate relations with the students (qing, 2010; widia, 2015). fhitri (2017) reported that teachers often use cs to create relaxed and informal classroom situation, which may encourage students to participate in the classroom activity (sakaria & priyana, 2018). a study by tien (2009) also revealed that when teachers were engaged in informal conversations with students, they switched to l1 raschka et al. (2009) emphasize that teachers often use l1 before starting the formal lesson to establish a closer relationship with the students. teachers’ perception toward the use of cs in esl classrooms some research reveals that teachers hold positive attitude toward using cs in esl classrooms. for example, a research by jingxia (2010) reported that teachers agreed that the use of cs in the classroom gave a great benefit for classroom teaching and learning process. the teachers in her research explained that the use of cs helped the teachers in explaining grammar and vocabulary which facilitated the students’ learning. although the teachers in this research claimed that they used cs unconsciously cs came naturally – the teachers were aware that cs that they did have certain functions that could help their students learn l2 effectively and efficiently. another study by songxaba, coetzer, and molepo (2017) which investigated the teachers’ perception on the use of cs as a strategy in second language teaching in afrika. this study also revealed that teachers also hold positive perception about the use of cs in this study. their study also revealed that teachers were aware that the use of cs in second language learning is a good strategy for l2 learning, and they all expressed that they did not use only l1 when teaching l2 because they believed that it cannot improve the students’ communication skills. these studies revealed that despite the controversies on using l1 in teaching efl classes in the form of cs, teachers have had to be aware that cs has to be sought as a strategy in teaching and learning, not be sought as a tool to conceal their incompetence in using l2. this study was carried out to find out whether the teachers in this study have made informed decision in using cs in the classroom as a strategy in efl classes. research methodology this study used a descriptive qualitative research design which explored the function of teachers’ code switching in efl classes and the teachers’ perception on the use of code switching in their efl classes. based on the aims of the research, descriptive qualitative is an appropriate design because descriptive qualitative research design is usually used to explore the participants opinion, believes, and/or thoughts. the participants of the research were three (3) teachers who teaches efl classes in university level in indonesia. the teachers taught in an english language education department that prepares the students to become efl teachers starting from journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 46 elementary school to senior high schools. pseudonym is used to describe the participants to protect participants’ identity. the participants in this study were mr. alvin, who had taught efl classes 7 years, and had masters’ degree in english education, ms. dina, who has experience in teaching efl classes in university level starting from 2003 (15 years) and masters’ degree in innovative technology in education, and ms. pamela, who had five years of experience in teaching efl classes and hold master’s degree in teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol). these teachers were selected for some reasons. first, the teachers have, at least, five-year experience in teaching efl classes. the experience in teaching efl classes is important consideration in this research since with their experience, the researcher believed that the teachers can offer their professional opinion about their practice in the classroom, in this case, the use of cs. this research used observation and interview to collect the data. the observation was carried out by video recorded the teachers’ class sessions focusing on the teachers’ use of classroom code switching. the video recorded was done without the presence of the researcher to maintain the natural flow of the class. each class of the teachers was a four-credit class which lasted about three hours and twenty minutes, so the researcher decided to only record one session of the class because she thinks that the data collected from one session of the class was plentiful to collect the data about the use of cs from the participants. the researcher recorded mr. alvin’s class of listening and speaking for career development, mr. dina’s class of listening and speaking for daily conversation, and ms. pamela’s class of listening and speaking for daily conversation. these classes were offered to first year students of university and aimed at developing students’ speaking and listening skills. the video recordings, then, were analysed by the researchers to note on the use of cs and to categorize the functions of the cs that the teachers used. the researchers noted the events sampling where teachers used cs throughout the class then categorizes the events into types of cs and functions of cs. then, the note and the category, then, was used as a guideline to interview the teachers to ask about their perception of their use of cs in their classroom. the researcher used a semi-structured interview where she asked the participants about what they think about the use of cs in efl classroom, if they were aware when they use cs, and what were the functions of their use of cs in the classroom. the interviews were tape recorded for the purpose of data analysis. the recordings, then, were transcribed and analysed by coding the data to find the emergence themes from the interview related to the teachers’ perception on the use of cs and its function. findings and discussions this section explained about the findings both from the observation and the interview. for the first part, researchers described the data from the video-recorded observation on the events sampling where the participants used cs in the classroom, then followed by the interview that explained why the teachers used cs in those instances. the next session discussed about the teachers’ perception on the use of cs in their efl classes which resulted from the interview. journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 47 functions of cs in efl classroom to understand the functions of teachers’ cs in the classroom, the researcher recorded three class sessions. each class was recorded for about 200 minutes or 3 hours and 20 minutes. the recordings were, then, analysed to see the functions on the teachers’ cs. the recorded class session revealed that the teachers used cs for many purposes. first, it is recorded that cs was used when teachers introduce new vocabulary and language expressions, explain grammar points, and explain content (function of telephoning). for example, in the beginning of the class, ms. pamela required the students to read verses of the quran and their translation. she then used cs to introduced vocabulary in the english translated version of the verses of the quran. mr. alvin also used cs when introducing new words, phrases, and expressions used in making phone call. besides for explaining new vocabulary and explaining, the recorded showed that cs was used for explaining content. in the interview ms. pamela argued that using l1 for introducing new vocabulary and grammar point is more efficient, and students seemed to understand the words or grammar point quicker that when she explained them in l2. when explaining about how to make phone conversation, mr. alvin also used cs. he switched from l2 to l1 and vice versa because he claimed that to do phone conversation correctly, students must know about the cultural aspects about phone conversation, so explaining the cultural aspects is easier to be done in l1. the finding of this research is similar to the research done by sakaria and priyana (2018) who suggested that cs can facilitate teachers to communicate complex concept in l2 and can also be used to increase students’ understanding and comprehension. jingxia’s (2010) research also revealed that teachers used cs to translate unknown vocabulary items, explain grammar, and to emphasizing some explanation points. on the contrary, ms. dita did not use cs in explaining grammar. in the interview, ms. dita argued that she thought that she did not have to switch to l1 in explaining the grammar points because the grammar she explained on the day the class was recorded was simple, and she also stated that the students seemed to understand her explanation in l2 well. from this finding, it can be seen that the use of cs was not only determined by the concept that the teachers wanted to deliver, but also determined by the students’ needs. this finding is supported by stylianou-panayi (2015) who argued that teachers’ use of cs should be done for the better result of the students, and the amount of cs used by teachers should also decided to cater the students’ need. next, there were some instances in this research where teachers used cs for classroom management purposes. the most frequent that the teachers did was using cs for giving instructions, introducing lesson’s objective, and repeating questions. there were many events in the recording that showed when teachers gave instruction to the students they often use cs to make sure that the students understood what they have to do for their classroom activity. besides for giving instruction, there was one even recorded that mr. alvin also used cs to introduce that day’s lesson objective, and in the interview, he claimed that he used cs to ensure that students understand the objective of the lesson so that he and the students can work together to achieve the objectives. in addition, teachers also used cs for repeating questions. questions are journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 48 considered important in teaching and learning process. mostly, teachers used questions to facilitate learning and comprehension. that is why it is very important that students understand the question in order for them to learn. the result of this research about the use of cs for giving instruction is similar to the studies by mugla (2005), and tien (2010). mugla (2005) also confirms that the teachers typically use l2 for giving instruction but then give l1 translation to ensure all students have understood them and applied them correctly. tien (2010) seems agree with those statements by stating that teachers switch from l2 to l1 to give explicit classroom instructions such as directing students to be engaged in pair or group discussions or to perform certain classroom activities. the use cs to repeat questions was supported by mugla (2005) who argued that the teacher uses l1 to present the question that is easier to understand by the learners, so that the teacher can elicit appropriate answers. the last function of the cs that was shown in the recording was for affective purposes. in this research, the teachers used humour to build interpersonal relation with the students. in many incidences, ms. pamela switched from l2 to l1 when she told jokes to students. in the interview, ms. pamela stated that she used l1 to tell jokes because the jokes would be understood easily when it is done in l1. when asked about what the function of the joke in her class was, she argued that it functioned to build a friendly and relaxed atmosphere with the students because she believed that when students feel close with the teacher and feel relaxed in the classroom, they will learn better. this statement is supported by tien (2009) who stated that teachers also employed l1 to bridge the gap between themselves as the authority figures and the students, in order to express a degree of solidarity or a jocular relationship between the teacher and students. that use of cs may enable the teachers to build up solid relationships with students in classrooms (tien, 2009). raschka et al. (2009) also emphasize that teachers often use l1 prior to the start of the formal lesson to reduce distance between them and their learners; and when the distances are reduced, teachers may establish solidarity and a close relationship with their students. humour that the teacher used in this study can be a way to reduce distance and gap between the students and the teacher. teachers’ perception on using cs in efl classroom in terms of language of instruction, mr. alvin mainly used l1 (bahasa indonesia) as the language of instruction, he sometimes used english in the observed class session. the observation revealed that mr. alvin code switching happened mostly from l1 (bahasa indonesia) to l2 (english). ms. pamela and ms. dina used english (l2) as the language of instruction. ms. pamela sometimes used cs in her teaching, and the cs happened between l2 (english) and l1 (bahasa indonesia), while ms. dina never use l1 during the observed class session. these research findings about the practice of using cs in efl classroom may reflect the controversies whether teachers should or should not use the l1 while teaching the l2 (stylianou-panayi, 2015). those who believe to use l1 in teaching l2 argued that l1 gives a powerful influence on the learning process, since learners tend to use l1 as a starting point when they learn a new language (mugla, 2005). while those who disagree of using l1 argued that teachers can avoid using l1 in efl classroom by using certain techniques (stylianou-panayi, journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 49 2015). however, no research or theories suggested the use of l1 only or over use in an l2 classes. as ghobadi & ghasemi (2015) recommended that careful use of l1 in foreign language learning should be considered, so that the use of l1 can be beneficial to speed up the process of l2 learning. in terms of types of code switching, the most frequently used of cs was the inter-sentential switching where the teachers switch between clauses or sentences. the second mostly used types of cs was the intra-sentential switching when the switching happened within clauses and sentences, and the tag-switching was the least cs types that the teachers used. the findings of this research about the types of cs that the teachers used is similar to studies conducted by jingxia (2010), azlan and narasuman (2013), and hayati (2014). the interview with the teachers revealed that all teachers mentioned that they are aware or conscious that they use cs. so, the use of the cs in their classrooms was something that the teachers do deliberately, not something that they do unconsciously. this research result is contradictory with the research by jingxia (2010) that revealed that teachers code switching occurs automatically or unconsciously. however, the conscious use of cs may indicate that the teachers in this research were aware of the function of l1 to help the learners learn l2. this is indicated by the reasons on why they do the cs. the first reason why the teachers in this research used cs in the classroom is to help students learn. two teachers argued that the use l1 and l2 in turns to help students understand the materials that they explained, so that the students can learn from the class. they also expressed that sometimes they can see that the students are lost when they use l2 only and they use l1 to clarify their explanation or their instructions. ms. pamela also argued that she used l1 as the last resource when using l2 seemed to be too confusing for the students. this result of the interview was also supported by the observation result that showed that the teachers did code switch to l1 after several receptions of explanation in l2. apparently, l1 was used unless the teachers thought that the students had not understood the teachers’ explanation or instruction. in other words, the use of cs by the teachers indicated that the teachers were aware that cs is a beneficial instruction technique in teaching l2 (sakaria & priyana, 2018). the second reason of using cs was when the teachers thought that the students’ english competence is low. during the interview all the teachers expressed that they will immediately switch to l1 when they saw that the students’ l2 competence is still low that the use of l2 only in the classroom would not facilitate learning. as bullock & toribo, (2009) argued that learners, especially in the early stages of learning, often use their first language (l1) due to their temporary or permanent gap in language knowledge or a process referred to as crutching. the teachers use of cs from l2 to l1 were meant for crutching for the students. fatimah’s (2016) research also supported that teachers used cs when they taught students with low level of proficiency. the third reason expressed by the teachers to use cs in the classroom was for efficiency consideration. the teachers expressed that sometimes it is time consuming to give complex instruction or to explain complex concept using l2 because they must repeat the instruction and the explanation several times to make ensure journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 are two opposing argument on the reasons why people code switch. the first argument stated that cs was a result of language incompetency by bilinguals that may indicate problems in the mastery of one of the languages (edwards & dewaele, 2007; wooland, 2004). for example, non-native speakers of english may switch to their first language because they forget the english words, or they do not know the english expression they want to use. on the contrary, another argument stated that cs is actually an evidence of bilingual/multilingual competence, which means that cs can be seen as an additional communication sources that bilinguals can use (bullock & toribo, 2009). the use of cs is a competence that bilinguals/multilinguals have, since to do cs speakers must have complex knowledge about the languages and the cross-cultural communication norms (kustati, 2014). the use of cs may also be found in a classroom context, especially in classrooms that consists of bilingual, or even, multilingual speakers, such as foreign language (l2) classes. although there is a tendency to impose the use of only l2 in such classes, cs phenomenon is unavoidable. especially in indonesia, as a multilingual and multicultural country where people speak more than one languages and dialects, the use of cs in english as a foreign language (efl) classes is inevitable. in the classroom context in indonesia where teachers and students share the same first language, research (kustati, 2014; nurhayati, 2014; widia, 2015; fatimah 2016; and fhitri, 2017) showed that cs was used by teachers in efl the classrooms. the research indicated that teachers used cs in teaching and learning process for various reasons. the main reason would be to facilitate students’ learning because by using cs teachers believed that they increase students’ understanding of the teaching materials (widia, 2015), and provide students with comprehensible input, especially for lower level students (fatima, 2016). the research by kustati (2014) also showed that when teachers used cs the classroom engagement was improved because the students understand the instruction better. on the other hand, research about the use of cs in efl classes in indonesian context also revealed some concern about the over-use of cs in the classroom that may affect negatively toward the teaching and learning process. teachers were also concerned that students may get used to cs, and it can decrease the willingness of the students to speak english (kustati, 2014). a study by fhitri (2017) also indicated that teachers’ use of cs was not a strategy that is consciously used by the teachers to facilitate learning. instead, teachers used cs because they were influence by the students who use first language, which was considered as a distraction when teachers used english (fhitri, 2017). sakaria and priyana (2018) also pointed out that excessive use of cs in efl classroom may make students overly dependent. they encouraged teachers to use cs cautiously, so that it can facilitate learning. thus, although the use of cs can be beneficial for efl classroom, cautions should be considered whether teachers use cs as a strategy to facilitate learning, or they just use cs as a sign of teachers l2 incompetency. this research investigated the use of code switching done by indonesian teachers in university context and explored the functions of those cs in teaching and learning process. two research questions that this research investigated are: 1. how are indonesian university teachers’ code switching functioned in efl classes? 50 comprehension. then, teachers argued that switching the instruction and explanation to l1 will be time efficient. this reason was also expressed by shay (2015) who argued that by using cs to give instruction, to clarify meaning and to stress importance of the l2 content may result in efficient comprehension. in addition, by simplifying the comprehensible input for learners, the use of l1 for this purpose may sometimes encourage students to participate and produce the desired l2 responses (mugla, 2005; raschka, sercombe, & chi-ling, 2009). these reasons of using cs from the teachers clearly showed that the teachers participated in this research showed that they made informed decision on their teaching to use cs as a tool to help them teach effectively and efficiently that may lead to students learning. conclusion and recommendations the results revealed that all the participants in this study used cs in their efl classrooms, and they sometimes switched from l2 to l1, and vice versa, and they consciously used cs in their classroom. the cs that the teachers used happened in inter-sentential, intra-sentential, and tag switching. the most frequently used switching is inter-sentential level where teachers switch codes in the clauses and sentences level, and the least was the tag switching. for the reasons why teachers used cs were to help students learn, to facilitate students with low level of l2 proficiency and to teach efficiently. the teachers believed that cs can be a tool for them to facilitate teaching and learning process in the classroom. this showed that teachers in this research have made informed decision regarding cs in their teaching and learning process. regarding to the functions of using cs, teachers used cs for constructing and transmitting knowledge such as introducing new introduce new vocabulary and new language expressions, explaining grammar points, and explaining content. cs used by the teachers in this research also function as a tool to manage the class or classroom management. the teachers used cs when giving instruction and repeating questions. the use for cs was meant to facilitate students understanding in the classroom. the last function was for maintaining interpersonal relation between teachers and students through humor to maintain a close and friendly atmosphere for the students. the recommendations from this research are that teachers need to be aware of the functions and reasons on the use of cs so that cs can be used as a great tool to facilitate students learning. cs is not an escape for teachers whose language proficiency is low, but it is a teaching and learning facilities when it is used correctly and appropriately can help students learn better and help teachers teach more effectively. in foreign language classes, code switching is encouraged to be used since it can promote students’ learning. however, precautions should be taken when using l1 in the classroom so that it may not overtake the target language. references azlan, n. m., & narasuman, s. (2013). the role of code switching as a communicative tool in an esl teacher education classroom. procedia: sosial and behavioral science, 90, 458-467. bullock, b. e., & toribo, a. j. (2009). the cambridge handbook of linguistic edwards, m., & dewaele, j.-m. (2007). trilin journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 51 gual conversations: a window into multicompetence. international journal of bilingualism, 221-242. fatimah, d. n. (2016). why is there code switching in efl classroom? : a case study in a vocational school in cimahi, west-java. jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra, 16(1), 70-77. ferguson, g. (2009). what next? towards an agenda for classroom codeswitching research. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 231-241. fhitri, w. (2017). code switching used by english lecturers during teaching as found in padang state university. jurnal arbitrer, 4(1), 1-9. gearon, m. (2006). the use of code-switching among teachers of french as a foreign language in lessons focusing on the development of grammar. the canadian modern language review, 449-467. ghobadi, m., & ghasemi, h. (2015). promises and obstacles of l1 use in language classrooms: a state-of-the-art review. english language teaching. 8 (12). 245 – 254. jingxia, l. (2010). the teachers’ code-switching to the l1 in efl classroom. open applied linguistics journal. 3, 10-23. kustati, m. (2016). an analysis of code-mixing and code-switching in efl teaching of cross cultural communication context. research gate. 21(3). 174-182. liu, d., ahn, g-s., baek, k-s., & han, n-o. (2004). south korean high school english teachers' code switching: questions and challenges in the drive for maximal use of english in teaching. tesol quarterly. 28(4). 605-638 mugla, e. u. (2005). why that, in that language, right now? code-switching and pedagogical focus. international journal of applied linguistics , 303-325. nurhayati, s. r. (2014). teacher’s code-switching to l1 in an english as a foreign language classroom in a senior high school in banten. paper presented in 61st teflin international conference. retrieved may 3, 2018. qing, x. (2010). to switch or not to switch: examine the code-switching practices of teachers of non-english majors. canadian social sciences , 109-113. raschka, c., sercombe, p., & chi-ling, h. (2009). conflicts and tentions in codeswitching in a taiwanese efl classroom. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism , 157-171. sakaria, s., priyana, j. (2018). code-switching: a pedagogical strategy in bilingual classrooms. american journal of educational research, 6(3), 175-180. shay, o. (2015). to switch or not to switch: code-switching in a multulingual country. procidia: sosial and behavioral sciences, 209, 462-469. songxaba, s. l., coetzer, a., molepo, j. m., (2017). perceptions of teachers on creating space for code switching as a teaching strategy in second language teaching in the eastern cape province, south africa. reading & writing journal of the reading association of south africa. 1 – 7. stylianou-panayi, n. (2015). code switching in an efl environment. linguistics and literature studies, 3(6), 259-263. tien, c.-y. (2009). conflict and accommodation in classroom codeswitching in taiwan. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism , 173-192. widia, a. r., (2014). code switching for english language teaching and learning in efl classroom. jurnal ilmiah teknologi dan informasia asia (jitika), 9(2), 15-17. wooland, k. a. (2004). codeswitching. in a. duranti, a companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 73-94). oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. yletyinen, h. (2004). the functions of codeswitching in efl classroom discourse. unpublished dissertation. university of jyväskylä. journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no. 2 july 2017 abstract the purpose of the study is to discover the role of teacher and peer in helping the students orally participate in an efl classroom. i applied a three-month qualitative case study on 24 first-year university students. i employed observation, open-ended questionnaire, and in-depth interview to collect data. further, i applied inductive analysis to decode the data. the results of the study revealed that first, the teacher played an important role to help the students orally participate in both class and group discussions through the inquiries provided during the class discussion, and feedbacks given after the group discussions. second, results of the study indicated that peers also significantly contributed to motivating the lower-achieving students to improve their oral participation, particularly in group discussions. in this circumstance, the data revealed that the students showed learning enthusiasm which helped creating a positive learning athmosphere in which this positive learning athmosphere can be perceived when they motivated one another through feedbacks given to solve their difficulties finding appropriate english terms and pronounciation, arranging their sentence structure, and developing their ideas. in addition, the students motivated one another through fun activities such as talking about movie quotes, and words of encouragement. in short, both teacher and peer helped encouraging the students to orally participate in both class and group discussions. keywords: students’ oral participation; the role of teacher; the role of peer introduction the article reports a qualitative case study that investigated the role of teacher and peer in helping students orally participate in an efl speaking class. in particuthe role of teacher and peer in helping the students orally participate in an efl classroom triubaida maya ardianti was born in blora, 16 ju ly 1990. currently a lec tu rer in en glish diploma program, fac u lty of vocational edu cation, universitas airlan gga, su rabay a. her researc h interests in clu de secon d langu age acquisition, teachin g and learning english as social practic es, an d learnin g motiv a tion . 38-53 39 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 lar, the present study observed the dynamics of the students’ oral participation throughout three month-qualitative case study in a class where the theory of socio-constructivism by vygotsky (1978) was applied in the teachinga and learning process. particularly in the present study, students were encouraged to orally participate in both class and group discussions. the teacher gave the students freedom to communicate with their peers about their difficulties orally participating in the discussions within the framework of zone proximal development (vygotsky, 1978; lake, 2012) where the high-achieving students helped the lower achieving the students. further, the teacher provided a series of social practices within the framework of guided participation (rogoff, 1990) where students socially interacted with their peers and teacher in class and group discussion in which the teacher guided them to comprehend the materials better through inquiries, and improve the students oral participation by providing feedbacks after roleplays. in the end, this finding is expected to give an insight to better understand the students’ oral participation development in the efl setting. factors affecting students’ oral participation in communicative language learning, students are highly encouraged to be able to use second or foreign language to communicate with others (littlewood, 1981; richards & rodgers, 2001) rather than merely mastering the language structures. in this case, students are facilitated to be the center of learning who actively explore their potentials instead of merely receiving knowledge. therefore, students are encouraged to produce meaningful sounds and interaction to achieve particular social goals; for example, asking product prices when shopping, asking and giving opinion when negotiating, etc. thus, students are supposed to actively engage themselves in oral classroom interactions. particularly for efl students who learn english as foreign language, their success in learning english could be indicated through the use of the language in spoken and written modes fluently and accurately. nevertheless, for efl students who particularly learn english as foreign language, learning english in clt context tends to be challenging due to several factors such as (1) self-confidence (derakhsan et al., 2015; cutrone, 2009); (2) motivation (bahous et al., 2011; diaz-ducca, 2014; huang et al., 2015; kang, 2005; khatibi & zakeri, 2014; leger & storch, 2009); (3) lack of understanding on the materials due to language barriers (ferris & tagg, 1998; rao, 2002); (4) personal characters (chen, 2003; gan et al., 2004); (5) diverse sociocultural backgrounds (aghazadeh & abedi, 2014; chen, 2003; ho & crookall, 1995; jones, 1999; liu, 2002; rao, 2002); and (6) teachers’ domination in learning (liu & littlewood, 1997). in a particular situation, those six factors were inextricably interwoven that they may affect the quality of students’ negotiating participation in class. self confidence. several studies discovered that self-confidence became a factor affecting the dynamic of students’ oral participation during the teaching and learning process (abuseileek, 2012; derakhsan et al., 2015; cutrone, 2009; mak, 2011; zhang & rahimi, 2014). mak (2011) conducted a quantitative study on 313 freshmen in a university in hong kong with the purpose of investigating factos that may influence students’ anxiety in speaking in english in class. mak employed a question40 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 naire, semi-structured interview, and observation to collect data. by applying factor analysis to analyze the data, mak discovered five factors influencing the students’ anxiety to interact orally in efl speaking class; those were (1) the speaking anxiety and the fear of negative evaluation; (2) feeling uncomfortable when speaking to native speakers; (2) negative attitude to english class; (4) negative personal evaluation; and (5) the fear of failure in class. besides, mak explained that there were some additional factors that might contribute as the causes to the low self-confidence when speaking english particularly when speaking in front of the class without preparation, being corrected when speaking, and being not allowed to use their mother tongue at all in class. cutrone (2009) reviewed literature on the japanese efl students’ anxiety in speaking english. cutrone explained that lack of confidence was not the only factors causing anxiety to students. he elaborated that the lack of confidence was also caused by the students’ silence, the difference between japanese culture which tended to be passive and western culture which tended to be active, and the negative reaction from the teacher on the students’ arguments. in short, the context of the class plays a role in affecting the quality of the students’ negotiating participation. a study by zhang and rahimi (2014) about the students’ perception on the grammatical correction given by teachers when they were speaking. zhang and rahimi conducted a survey on 160 students consisting of 80 male and 80 female students in three language institutions in iran. zhang and rahimi investigated the correlation between correction done by teachers when students were speaking and the students’ anxiety levels. according to the data collected, zhang and rahimi elaborated that although students still had high anxiety levels when speaking english, they were aware of the importance of the grammatical correction given by the teacher when they were speaking after getting an explanation about the purposes and types of the correction given. motivation. the second factor is motivation. a number of previous studies indicated that motivation could be a highly influential factor in determining the students’ success in learning english (bahous et al., 2011; diaz-ducca, 2014; huang et al., 2015; kang, 2005; khatibi & zakeri, 2014; lee, 2014; leger & storch, 2009; murakami et al., 2012; paker & karaagac, 2015; peng, 2012; wang, 2014). a willingness to communicate is the most basic component for communication (khatibi & zakeri, 2014); thus, students should feel highly motivated to actively participate in oral class interaction (huang et al, 2015). peng (2012) conducted a case study on four efl students in a university in china. peng concluded that students’ motivation to participate in class negotiation is closely related to several factors such as: (1) linguistic knowledge including vocabulary and grammar, (2) interest in materials discussed, and (3) class atmosphere. besides, two studies indicated that the use of mother tongue can motivate students to be more active to orally participate in class. mcmillan and rivers (2011) conducting an online survey about various issues in english language teaching and learning on freshmen in 2008 revealed that mother tongue that used to be seen as an impediment for students to actively participate in oral discussion had become an effective support to help students improve their speaking skills if used appropriately and optimally. paker and karaagac (2015) who 41 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 employed mixed-methods to investigate students’ motivation in orally participate in class discussion indicated that the use of mother tongue and english learning are inextricably interwoven. paker and karaagac emphasized that mother tongue functions as “rapport building purposes, making the topic/ meaning clear (by giving examples, explaining, making extra explanations, etc.), explaining difficult concepts or ideas, etc” (p. 117). in short, mother tongue plays an important role to help students understand the teaching and learning process, so that they can feel more motivated to orally participate in class. cultural backgrounds. the third factor influencing the quality of students’ negotiating participation in class is culture. there are some cultural problems such as culture affecting personal characters (chen, 2003; gan et al, 2004), diverse cultural background (aghazadeh & abedi, 2014; chen, 2003; ho & crookall, 1995; jones, 1999; lee, 2014; liu, 2002; rahimian, 2015; rao, 2002), and teaching method which teachers tend to dominate (liu & littlewood, 1997) which cause students tend to be reluctant to orally participate in class. aghazadeh and abedi (2014) conducted a survey on freshmen in a university in iran about their perception of oral participation in class. they indicated that there were some factors causing silence in class; those were (1) students’ personal characters, (2) students’ perception to give logical opinion, and (3) teachers who tend to provide negative evaluation. marlina (2009) conducting a case study on east asian students in an efl class in a university in australia showed that most of east asian students in that class learned the language passively in which it may be caused by the classical teaching of confucius which obliged the students to obey superiors, in this case teachers. marlina underlined that it made them reluctant to deliver their opinion to the class. chen (2003) conducting a case study for a semester on two international students in an esl class in a university in the united states of america indicated that their passiveness to participate in oral discussion might have been caused by (1) students’ diverse cultural backgrounds which demanded them to adapt to the environment in which this process made the students tend to feel uncomfortable in conveying their thoughts, and (2) students’ personal characters which tend to be quiet. in summary, cultural issues are inextricably intertwined with english teaching and learning in which they plays a significant role to the quality of students’ negotiating participation in the class. the role of teacher and peers teacher and peers play a significant role in the development of student’s language skills, including their oral participation quality in the class. in line with sociocultural theory by vygotsky, teacher positively contributes to the quality of students’ oral participation by becoming (1) a lesson planner including determining teaching methods and strategies needed, (2) a guide through learning activities, critical inquiry, and fair opportunities to participate in discussion, and (3) a monitor of teaching and learning process (atas, 2015; bejarano et al, 1997; duff & uchida, 1997; khaliliaqdam, 2014; kumazawa, 2013; lee & liang, 2012; li, 2011; salahshour & hajizadeh, 2013; sani, 2014). this argument is supported by duff and uchida (1997) who carried out an ethnographic study for six months on four efl teachers. duff and uchida indicated that teacher must be aware of and un42 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 derstand their roles in four aspects: (1) understanding each class’ complexities, (2) always updating her understanding of class situation, (3) strongly controlling the teaching and learning process in relation with diverse students’ characters, and (4) always holding contextual learning by integrating students’ diverse backgrounds. consequently, duff and uchida elaborated that teacher could make students comfortable to participate in oral discussions. beside teachers, peers play a vital role to the quality of students’ oral participation in efl class. several studies suggested that by giving students opportunities to interact orally with their peers, the students with lower level of speaking skill could learn moore from the students with higher level of speaking skill; therefore, at the same time, both parties could foster their speaking skills to be more ac cura te a nd f luen t (k hali liaq dam, 2014; murakami et al, 2012; murphey et al, 2014). falout, fukuda, and fukada (2014) carried out a class action research on freshmen in japan for four years. murphey et al discovered that exchanging thoughts and ideas in discussing a topic could motivate students to engage in class discussion. in accordance with the study, khaliliaqdam (2014) conducted a case study on 25 students of efl speaking class in an iranian language institution. khaliliaqdam uncovered that vygotsky’s theory of zone proximal development that emphasized the role of peers in teaching and learning process could be a potential alternative to improve students’ speaking ability. khaliliaqdam added that students found a comfort to express their difficulties in speaking english and ask for help to solve them. based on the previous studies, it can be concluded that the quality of students’ oral participation in class is inseparable from the roles of teacher and peers. practically, both aspects are inextricably interwoven. methods a qualitative case study was conducted on 24 first-year university students majoring in english diploma program. among those 24 students, 10 were males, 14 were females. the class was determined based on convenience. in this case, teacher could not choose their own students in the class. she was assigned to a certain efl speaking class. the case study was conducted for three months or 11 meetings. the meeting was held once a week according to the university academic calendar. open-ended questionnaire, observation, and indepth interview were employed to collect data. in terms of the questionnaire, 5 item open-ended questionnaire was constructed by taking previous studies into consideration. those five items consisted of students’ topic interest, anxiety, self-confidence, and their perceptions upon the role of teachers and peers in the classroom. in particular, this open-ended questionnaire was employed as a replacement of interview in order to obtain particular information from students in the eighth meeting. then, an in-depth interview was conducted as a follow-up in response to the results of open-ended questionnaire in the eleventh meeting. in this circumstance, a random sampling was drawn from one-fourth of the class for the interview to further investigate the role of teacher and peer in helping the students orally participate in the classroom. further, burns’ (1999) ref lective and analytical observation notes was used to decode data acquired from observation. in the end, patterns of the three 43 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 data acquired from open-ended questionnaire, indepth interview, and observation were searched to yield conclusive analyses about the role of teacher and peer in helping the students orally participate in an efl classroom. findings the present study attempted to discover the role of teacher and peer in helping students orally participate in an efl classroom. data collected from open-ended questionnaire, in-depth interview, and observation yield a pattern that describes the role of teacher and peer regarding the students’ motivation to orally participate in the class. in particular, the description of the results of the study is broken down into two sub-topics including (1) social context of the classroom, and (2) evaluation of student learning. social context of the classroom. in general, the students were chatty when they were allowed to speak in their native languages. the class would be very noisy talking about their private lives. but, things were different when they had to interact in english. at the beginning of the course, the students tended to be shy to participate in a class oraldiscussion. in this case, class discussion was voluntary. many students tended to be silent throughout the discussion. when being asked to introduce themselves, all students kept their introduction short. they hardly interacted with their peers, and kept silent after fulfilling the task. as the time went by, a few particular students were actively orally participating in the discussion; whereas, others were quiet. five of them were females, and two of them were males. six of them, five females and one male, always sat in the front rows; and one of them which was male always sat down in the back. throughout the eleven meetings, these seven students were the only students who consistently participate orally in the class discussion. the rest of them orally participated in the class discussion once a while, but mostly they were passive. when discussing the materials, the teacher inquired them to help them understand the materials. only the students sitting in the front rows and one male student sitting in the back actively answered the questions; whereas, others were quiet. for encouraging these quiet students, the teacher pointed a student sitting in the back, and inquired her to provide an opinion regarding the topic which was being discussed. surprisingly, the student was able to deliver an opinion fluently. we may take a look at the following excerpt. (all names are pseudonyms) teacher : melia, what is your favorite thing? melia : i love watching movies. i usually download the movie, or watch the movies in the cinema. or, i get them from my friend. discovering this good news, the teacher pointed another student next to her, and asked her the same question. however, this student performed di fferentl y. s he s aid , “uh uh uh. ..., i love......cooking, ma’am.” in a soft voice and nervous gesture. then, the teacher asked another student next to her with the same questions. this student was answering with very softer voice that her friends and the teacher barely heard what she was talking about. in short, throughout eleven meetings, this pattern repeats. most of the students sitting on the back tended to be quiet, whereas, the students sitting in the front rows tended to be actively participating in the class discussion. doing roleplays were obligatory for each student 44 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 in every meeting. however, at the first three meetings, instead of doing roleplays, the students had to demonstrate their oral skills individually such as introducing themselves, talking about their daily activities and favorite things. since introduction is basic, most of them did well. nevertheless, they kept their introduction short. secondly, when talking about their daily activities and favorite things, the students still tended to keep their monologue short. they ran out of ideas, and many of them spoke softly with many grammatical and pronounciation errors. starting from the second and third meetings, there were some particular students that showed better speaking skills than the others, and some particular students whose speaking skill was the lowest of all. then, throughout the next two meetings, the difference was getting visible. the students with better speaking skill could speak english fluently. even though they were still dealing with grammatical errors, they did not have any problems with their pronunciation, vocabulary choice, and sentence structure. these students were also the ones that consistently participated orally in the class discussion although they sometimes mixed english with their native language when expressing ideas. we may take a look at the following excerpt. (all names are pseudonyms) rendi : ma’am, what is shredded? teacher: anyone knows about it? mila: slicing in thin sizes? rendi: mengiris? teacher: what about the others? do you agree? or do you have different opinion? some students: i think mengiris. zaki: slicing in a very thiin size. teacher: what is the term in bahasa indonesia? (the students seemed thinking about it, thus the class was quiet.) teacher: rosa (pseudonym), have an idea? rosa: no, ma’am. dosen : others? (the students shook their heads.) teacher: what is the appropriate term in indonesia for slicing very thin? talita&mirna: mencincang? despite using mixed language when expressing their ideas in the class discussion, they perfomed roleplays very well. beside fulfilling what should be in the roleplays, these students also added a scenario and highlighted the expressions according to the contexts which they presented. for instance, when talking jobs, the students set a scenario in which they accidentally met in front of hospital. one of them was a nurse who was getting a break in a cafe in front of the hospital; whereas, another one played a role as a truck driver who also went to a cafe. then they accidentally had a small talk there. whereas, the students with the lowest speaking skills tended to be passive during the class discussion, and they always sat in the back. one of them, named rosa (pseudonym), hardly spoke. once she spoke, she spoke incredibly soft, and mostly avoided answering the question by saying ‘no’. another one, named lala (pseudonym), had very little english vocabulary. thus, she always kept her speech short and monotone. besides, there was another one, named zaki (pesudonym), who was struggling to maintain a good sentence structure. in this circumstance, his sentence structure was mostly messy, and he was confused to differentiate which one is subject, predicate, and object. further, these three students seemed to be the most nervous during 45 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 the speaking class compared to the other students. it was the students’ first semester in the college. thus, the students just started to get familiar with one another. starting from the sixth meeting, it was apparent that the students got used to one another, and they started to help one another to utter ideas fluently. the class dicussion was getting more dynamic that some students other than the seven active students started to participate orally once a while. as the students were allowed to use native language when they got confused finding the english terms, they also looked more relaxed delivering their opinion in the class discussion. based on the data collected, the students looked the most comfortable and sounded the noisiest when they talked about their topic interests. they admitted that it was easier to participate orally in the class or group conversation if talking about their favorite subjects such as hobbies, sports, music, foods, etc. in particular, they felt the most relaxed to talk about familiar subjects. in general, the class was supportive. the more experienced students were willing to help the weak ones. for the convenience, they tended to mix l1 and l2 to convey clearer messages. we may take a look at the following excerpt. (all names are pseudonyms) kristo : eh.. dipanggang bahasa inggrise apa rek? danu : grilled. kristo : oh ya. ‘grilled, please. medium.’ bener ora rek? mario : bener rek bener. nek isa digawe luwih dawa luwih apik. ben suwe percakapane. kristo : piye rek? ‘i want the chicken grilled. medium.’ ngono? mario : iya, kuwi rada dawa. eh, koen mengko aja lali mendeskripsikan menune. danu : ohh.. misal kristo pesen grilled chicken, aku njelaske kui kaya apa ngono ya rek? mario : yoi. this kind of interaction frequently happened during the preparation stage before performing roleplays. however, the three students with the lowest speaking skills were seen to be passive in this stage. they frequently looked insecure and down to see their friends to be actively and cheerfully communicating with their groups. the two females of the three were often in the same group. when they worked in pairs, they kept their conversation short. on one hand, lala frequently shied away from working harder to generate english expressions. when she faced difficulties generating longer explanation, she directly cut her words. on the other hand, rosa frequently gave up with the situation, so when lala barely talked, she ended the conversation. thus, both of them frequently looked desperate after doing roleplays. zaki mingled with the other boys in the class. even though he was the weakest in group for not being able to construct sentences in the correct order, his friends never complained, and kept the conversation flow well. nevertheless, in the questionnaire and interview, zaki admitted that he was uncomfortable when working in groups because he felt being left out. in this case, he was shy to ask for help from his peers, and once he asked for help, his male friends did not sufficiently help him, and told him to just calm down. beside those three students, the majority of the students looked comfortable interacting with their friends in l1 and l2. although they had diverse levels of speaking skill, they always looked enthusiastic and optimistic. some of the students admit46 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 ted in the interview that their peers gave them motivation to always improve their confidence to speak. we may take a look at the following interview excerpt with lita (pseudonym). teacher: what is the thing which helps you improve your confidence in speaking english? lita: speaking in front of my friends was not my thing. it was also hard to participate in the class discussion. so, when i did roleplays, i felt nervous. but, i find a friend with whom i interact the most comfortably. so, so far i enjoy the class very much. it showed that peers played an important role to motivate students orally participate in the class. considering the data collected from three data sources, peers played an important roles in creating a positive learning athmosphere by motivating one another through feedbacks, jokes, and words of encouragement. nevertheless, the students instinctively grouped with the students they felt the most comfortable to interact with. therefore, the groups always consisted of the same members. it did good for the students with high level of speaking abilities, but it did the worst for the students with the lowest level of speaking abilities had no chance to improve their oral participation due to their low confidence and limited abilities. after the sixth meeting, the teacher started to mix the students into different groups every week. in this circumstance, she paired the high-achieving students with the low-achieving students for peer-tutoring. the class was getting chaotic because they had to adapt with different partners. in the end, this instruction yielded a good effect for the low-achieving ones. based on the data collected from interview, they admitted that they felt less nervous when performing with the high-achieving ones. they elaborated that the high-achieving students tutored them patiently during the preparation stage. from the observation, it was apparent that when performing roleplays, lala who tended to avoid longer talk could speak a little bit longer and did not cut the sentences in the middle. rosa who always gave up with the situation could elaborate her explanation and even make a scenario together with her high-achieving partner. in this case, she looked particularly more confident. whereas, zaki showed an improvement in the sentence structure, and started to get bigger portion in the roleplays. despite challenges which the high-achieving students received, they admitted that they felt happy to help the low-achieving students improve their oral participation. we can take a look at the following of interview with eliza (all names were pseudonym). teacher: what do you feel about changing partners every week? eliza: at first, i did not feel comfortable with it. i think i could have done better with my original partner. i am paired once with zaki. hmm.. it is pretty good because i can help him a little. he doesn’t like to get help from others. semacam gengsi. but, i told him to get help from other friends. he is a hardworking person. so, he can improve his participation in the conversation. the excerpt above showed that peers can motivate one another to get more confident and open to receive help from the others, and more courageous to apply the feedbacks to improve their oral participation. evaluation of student learning. secondly, in terms of evaluation of student learning, the stu47 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 dents were highly encouraged to actively participate in class discussions, and demonstrate roleplays based on a given topic. in the end of the course, the students are expected to be able to actively participate in interpersonal and transactional conversations. throughout 11 meetings, the topics varied, and the students were provided by a teaching module, so that they could learn the materials including particular expressions used in certain topics before the class. during the meetings, the teacher usually provided supplementary materials to help the students attain broader knowledge of a given topic. the results of the study indicated that most of the students reluctantly read the materials before the class. thus, the teacher had to allocate certain time to help them comprehend the materials before doing roleplays. in this circumstance, the teacher facilitated them to get familiar with the topic through a class discussion. she provided a series of inquiries to scaffold the students’ understanding, and a conversation modelling to give a clear picture of what the conversation was about. when doing the class discussion, only a few students consistently participated orally in the discussion. the other several students sitting in the front rows sometimes orally participated in the discussion, whereas, the students sitting in the back were mostly quiet. nevertheless, some of the quiet students had a good speaking skills. from the questionnaire and interview, it was discovered that they were not comfortable to speak in a big forum. thus, they chose to be quiet. based on the data acquired from the observation, these students participated well during roleplays in which the groups were much smaller, and it was obligatory for each student to participate in the roleplays. after doing the roleplays, the teacher always provided every student with feedbacks. these feedbacks aimed to inform the students their performance strengths and weaknesses, and advise them what to do to deal with their weaknesses. throughout the eleven meetings, the students gradually applied the feedbacks to their oral participation even though each of them had different rates of improvement. besides, some of them sometimes were stuck in their situations because they did not what and when to start applying the feedbacks. responding this situation, the teacher paired these low-achieving students with the higher-achieving students for peer tutoring. moreover, she personally approached the students to help them discover their barriers and a solution to solve the barriers. the data gathered from questionnaire and interview revealed a pattern that the students felt motivated through the inquiries, and the feedbacks given. we may take a look at the following excerpt taken from questionnaire. 1) the teacher’s been very helpful by speaking english every day in the class and asking our opibion about anything in english. 2) my teacher always gives us practice (speaking practice) that we have to do with our friends every week. so it very improve our english, firstly we still shy to speak in english but so far.....we can speak english more and more fluently. 3) give a feedback but actually the teacher already good because she’s never getting mad and very patiently. and its really help me. because before i love the lesson, i love the lecture first. 4) actually i admire her for being my lecture because she always give me a feedback after we have an assessment and it’s really help me be48 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 cause from the feedback i know on which point i’ve go wrong. 5) actually, i love her teach us. because after we practice our practice, she will give us feedback and make us to get more spirit to learn our speaking skill. 6) by giving a feedback for a good future. 7) my teacher always help me to improve my speaking skill. every subject my teacher make conversation for students. it’s great! then, from an excerpt taken from the interview, the students also admitted that the teacher positively affected the development of oral participation. take a look at the following excerpt taken from the interview with marina (pseudonym). teacher: m enurut k amu kela s sp eaki ng i ni menyenangkan atau susah?(what do you think about this speaking class, is it fun or not?) marina: menyenangkan ma’am. saya menyukainya karena sering praktek dan dapat feedback setelahnya. (it is fun, ma’am. i love it because we get to practice our speaking skill a lot, and get feedbacks after the practices.) beside the teacher, based on the data collected indicated that the peers also contributed to motivating the students to improve their oral participation in the class. we may take a look at the following excerpt taken from the questionnaire. 1) really good, they say the correct answer and help me correct the wrong one. 2) very helpful. sometimes when my pronounce is wrong my friends comment and correct my pronounce. 3) help by giving me the meaning of words. 4) gives another sentence for me which is more right that mine. helping translate a word that i don’t know. 5) my friends always help me to improve my speaking skill. they always talk to me if my speaking pronunciation is wrong. 6) helping me how to pronoun word; give a feedback. 7) helpful. because my friends and i always sharing about how to improve my speaking or my friend speaking. and, we always support each other. and, sometimes, my friends comment if i have wrong, they will correctly my pronunce. 8) (1) they give me a comment when i’ve wrong in pronoun something; (2) they show me the easiest way to have speaking with their way, sometimes they like to have a sharing. 9) (1) helping me about pronoun; (2) give a feedback 10)sometimes my friend talking with me in english and it helps me to improve my english. 11)honestly, we seldom speak english to teach each other unless it comes when we talk about movie we’ll mention our favorite quotes from the movie and suddenly we speak in english after that. 12)my friends is very help me too. like they are always give me a motivation and supports me when i was doing a mistakes when i try to improve my speaking skills. it was strengthened by the data taken from an interview with zaki and maryam (pseudonyms) teacher : selama ini teman – teman membantu nggak dalam perkembangan partisipasi kamu di dalam kelas dan kelompok? (so far, did your friends help you improve your participation in class and group?) 49 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 maryam: sangat membantu ma’am. mereka anaknya asik – asik. kalau ada kesusahan saya minta bantuan mereka. misalnya tidak tahu bah asa ingg risn ya a tau kala u ad a to pik pembicaraan yang lagi hot. (they are very helpful, ma’am. they are fun friends. i ask for their help whenever i find difficulties. for example, when i don’t know the english vocabulary or the hot-button topics.) teacher: seri ng membant u a t au men eri ma bantuan? (which one does you more frequently do? giving help or receiving help?) mary am: sama – sama si h m a’a m. s ali ng membantu. hehehehe (tersenyum) (both of them, ma’am. we help one another.) teacher: biasanya zaki minta bantuan sama temen nggak? (do you usually ask for your friends’ help?) zaki: iya bu. (yes, ma’am) teacher: dibantuin? (do they help you?) zaki: iya bu. (yes, ma’am.) teacher : contoh bantuannya apa? (give me examples.) zaki: misalnya kalau tidak tahu kata – kata dalam bahasa inggris. (for example, when i did not english terms for particular words.) teacher: ada lagi? (anything else?) zaki: mengoreksi kalimat saya yang salah. (correcting my incorrect sentences.) teacher: struktur kalimat? atau bagaimana? (the sentence structure or what?) zaki: ya, strukture kalimat. (yes, the sentence structure.) both data sources were strengthened by data collected from observation. the three students with the lowest speaking skills seemed less nervous, and they showed an improvement in their group oral participation. the highest-achieving students consistently demonstrated a good oral participation in both class and group discussions, but they obtained an added value by helping their friends with lower speaking skills. the rest of the students in the middle rate of achievements continuously showed enthusiasm to improve their oral participation in both class and group discussions. from the three data sources, it can be concluded that teacher and peer play an important role to help the students orally participate in the class for both class discussions and group performance. discussions according to the findings, the progress of students’ oral participation throughout the threemonth qualitative case study could be influenced by some factors such as (1) personal characters (chen, 2003; gan et al., 2004), in this case being passive and quiet during class discussions, (2) anxiety (cutrone, 2009), (3) self-confidence (derakhsan et al., 2015; cutrone, 2009); and (4) motivation (bahous et al., 2011; diaz-ducca, 2014; huang et al., 2015; kang, 2005; khatibi & zakeri, 2014; leger & storch, 2009), particularly when teacher and peers were involved. by taking all aspects into account, students demonstrating active oral participation and students demonstrating less active oral participation may yield a causal relationship in terms of oral participation in the classroom. in this case, students possessing quiet personality tended to be passive during class discussions, but some of them were active during group roleplays. it showed that they became more motivated to participate orally in group roleplays because they would get certain feedback 50 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 on their oral performance. that evidence showed that scaffolding through teacher’s feedback positively motivated the students to actively participate in oral interactions (bahaous et al., 2001; diazducca, 2014). besides, based on the data acquired from the obsrevation and interview, the students that stayed passive in both class and group interactions tended to have an issue of anxiety and low-confidence. first, they were not confident with their speaking ability, so they tended to be passive in class discussions. when they were forced to participate orally in the classroom, they were anxious demonstrating their oral participation. for instance, when rosa was asked by the teacher what her opinion was regarding a certain topic, she directly say ‘i have no opinion’ to save herself from talking longer. another example was when lala was asked, she said ‘uh..uh...uh...uh....’ and kept her response short because she was panic and could not generate longer response. in the next meetings, when their friends were getting more enthusiastic participating orally in both group and oral discussions, they felt intimidated and more anxious to participate orally. in this circumstance, instead of joining different groups, they tended to team up for group discussion for six weeks. consequently, two of them kept struggling to show improvement every week. they tended to shut themselves down, and give up in every performance. the phenomenon showed that students’ personal characters contributed to the students’ progress in oral participation (aghazadeh & abedi, 2014; chen, 2003; cutrone, 2009; gan et al., 2004). it was solely based the students’ choice to move forward or get stuck. within the phenomena of students’ oral participation, teacher and peers played a significant role in providing a positive learning athmosphere for the students to foster their oral participation. on one hand, based on the socio-construstivism theory (vygotsky, 1978), the teacher as the more experienced one became a lesson designer in choosing appropriate methods and strategies to be applied in the classroom. in this circumstance, the teacher provided a set of social practices for the students to participate orally such as mini-lesson, class discussion, and group roleplays. moreover, along with vygotsky’s zone proximal development, the teacher provided scaffolding through feedback after group roleplays to help the students reflect on their practices. it was also the teacher’s way to monitor the students’ progress in participating orally in the classrooom (atas, 2015; bejarano et al, 1997; duff & uchida, 1997; khaliliaqdam, 2014; kumazawa, 2013; lee & liang, 2012; li, 2011; salahshour & hajizadeh, 2013; sani, 2014). on the other hand, among students, the more experienced ones helped the less experienced ones to solve problems in the process of participating orally in the classroom such as providing feedbacks on their peers’ performance, and informing the accurate pronunciation of certain vocabulary. the students’ positive responses to help their peers cope with their problems could motivate them to actively involve themselves participate orally in the classroom (murphey et al., 2014). oral interaction throughout three-month qualitative case study revealed the use of l1 in facilitating the students grasp better understanding of the materials being discussed. in the obsrevation excerpt, bahasa indonesia as the students’ mother tongue was frequently used between students to understand particular vocabulary. in this circumstance, the use of l1 had shown positive contribu51 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 tion to the students’ learning process (paker & karagaagac, 2015; rivers, 2011) because it provided comprehensible input (krashen, 1985) for the students to get better understanding of the context being discussed. as a result of understanding the context, the students felt more confident to participate orally in the classroom. conclusions in summary, students’ personal characters and feelings played a significant role in the progress of their oral participation in the classroom throughout the three-month qualitative case study. in this case, the role of teacher and peers was inextricably intertwined with the students’ oral participation in classroom. first, a teacher played a significant role as the more experienced one by providing a set of social practices for the students to demonstrate their knowledge (atwell, 1998), giving feedback on the students’ oral interaction as the way to monitor their learning progress (atas, 2015; bejarano et al, 1997; duff & uchida, 1997; khaliliaqdam, 2014; kumazawa, 2013; lee & liang, 2012; li, 2011; salahshour & hajizadeh, 2013; sani, 2014), and providing scaffolding by inquiring the students to monitor their understanding upon particular subjects (vygotsky, 1978). second, peers may positively contribute to the progress of the students’ oral participation in the class by motivating them through feedbacks of performance, fun activities, and words of encouragement. in the student-student interaction, by getting positive responses from their peers when communicating their problems, it made students more comfortable and uplifted their confidence to participate orally in the classroom (peng, 2012). references abuseileek, a.f. (2012). the effect of computerassisted cooperative learning methods and group size on the efl learners’ achievement in communication skills. computers & education, 58, 231 – 239. aghazadeh, s., & abedi, h. (2014). student reticence in iran’s academia: exploring students’ perceptions of causes and consequences. social and behavioral sciences, 98, 78 – 82. atas, m. (2015). the reduction of speaking anxiety in efl learners through drama techniques. social and behavioral sciences, 176, 961 – 969. atwell, n. (1998). in the midde: new understanding about writing, reading, and learning (2nd eds.). portsmouth, nh: heinemann. bahaous, r., bacha, n.n., & nabhani, m. (2011). motivating students in the efl classroom: a case study of perspectives. english language teaching, 4(3), 33 – 43). bejarano, y., levine, t., olshtain, e., & steiner, j. (1997). the skilled use of interaction strategies: creating a framework for improved smallgroup communicative interaction in the language classroom. system, 23(2), 203 – 214. burns, a. (1999). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york, ny: routledge. chen, t. (2003). reticence in class and on-line: two esl students’ experiences with communicative language teaching. system, 31, 259 – 281. cutrone, p. (2009). overcoming japanese efl learners’ fear of speaking. language studies working papers, 1, 55 – 63. derakhsan, a., tahery, f., & mirarab, n. (2015). helping adult and young learners to communicate in speaking classes with confidence. medi52 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 terranean journal of social science, 6(2), 520 – 525. diaz-ducca, j.a. (2014). positive oral encouragement in the efl classroom, a case study through action research. revista de lenguas modernas, 21, 325 – 346. duff, p.a., & uchida, y. (1997). the negotiatio of teachers’ sociocultural identities and practices in postsecondary efl classrooms. tesol quarterly, 31(3), 451 – 486. ferris, d. & tagg, t. (1996). academic listening/ speaking tasks for esl students: problems, suggestions, and implications. tesol quarterly, 30(2), 297 – 320. gan, z., humphreys, g., & hamp-lyons, l. (2004). understanding successful and unsuccessful efl students in chinese universities. the modern language journal, 88(2), 229 – 244. ho, j. & crookall, d. (1995). breaking with chinese cultural traditions: learner autonomy in english language teaching. system, 23(2), 235 – 243. ho, m. (2011). academic discourse socialization through small-group discussions. system, 39, 437 – 450. jones, j.f. (1999). from silence to talk: cross-cultural ideas on students’ participation in academic group discussion. english for specific purposes, 18(3), 243 – 259. kang, s. (2005). dynamic emergence of situational willingness to communicate in a second language. system, 33, 277 – 292. khaliliaqdam, s. (2014). zpd, scaffolding, and basic speech development in efl context. social and behavioral sciences, 98, 891 – 897. khatibi, m.b., & zakeri, j. (2014). iranian efl learners’ willingness to communicate across different contextand receiver-types. social and behavioral sciences, 98, 932 – 939. kumazawa, m. (2013). gaps too large: four novice efl teachers’ self-concept and motivation. teaching and teacher education, 33, 45 – 55. lake, r. (2012). vygotsky on education. new york: peter lang publishing, inc. lee, e.j. (2014). motivation, investment, and identity in english language development: a longitudinal case study. system, 42, 440 – 450. lee, y., & liang, j. (2012). using video technology to diagnose efl students’ cognitive learning difficulties in public speaking. social and behavioral sciences, 64, 671 – 680. leger, d.s., & storch, n. (2009). learners’ perceptions and attitudes: implications for willingness to communicate in an l2 classroom. system, 37, 269 – 285. li, l. (2011). obstacles and opportunities for developing thinking through interaction in language classrooms. thinking skills and creativity, 6, 146 – 158. liu, j. (2002). negotiating silence in american classrooms: three chinese cases. language and intercultural communication, 2(1), 37 – 54. liu, m. (2006). anxiety in chinese efl students at different proficiency levels. system, 34, 301 – 316. liu, n., & littlewood, w. (1997). why do many students appear reluctant to participate in classroom learning discourse? system, 25(3), 371 – 384. mak, b. (2011). an exploration of speaking-in-class anxiety with chinese esl learners. system, 39, 202 – 214. marlina, r. (2009). “i don’t talk or i decide not to talk? is it my culture?” – international students’ experiences of tutorial participation. international 53 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.2 no.2 july 2017 journal of educational research, 48, 235 – 244. marzano, r.j. (2010). when students track their progress. educational leadership, 67(4), 86-87. mcmillan, b.a., & rivers, d.j. (2011). the practice of policy: teacher attitudes toward “english only”. system, 39, 251 – 263. murakami, c., valvona, c., & broudy, d. (2012). turning apathy into activeness in oral communication classes: regular selfand peer-assessment in a tblt programme. system, 40, 407 – 420. paker, t., & karaagac, o. (2015). the use and functions of mother tongue in efl classes. social and behavioral sciences, 199, 111 – 119. peng, j. (2012). towards an ecological understanding of willingness to communicate in efl classrooms in china. system, 40, 203 – 213. pourfarhad, m., azmey, f.l.a., & hassani, l. (2012). perceptions of international students on academic literacy focusing on speaking and listening skills in malaysia. social and behavioral sciences, 69, 197 – 205. rahimian, m. (2015). identity issues among postsecondary nonnative students in an english speaking country. social and behavioral sciences, 174, 305 – 312. rao, z. (2002). chinese students’ perceptions of communicative and non-communicative activities in efl classroom. system, 30, 85 – 105. reznitskaya, a., anderson, r.c., mcnurlen, b., nguyen-jahiel, k., archodidou, a., & kim, s. (2001). influence of oral discussion on written argument. discourse processes, 32(2/3), 349 – 361. rogoff, b. (1990). apprenticeship in thinking: cognitive development in social context. new york: oxford university press. sani, s.n. (2014). i want to talk! social and behavioral sciences, 98, 1346 – 1355. salahshour, n., & hajizadeh, n. (2013). characteristics of effective efl instructors. social and behavioral sciences, 70, 163 – 173. vygotsky, l.s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. wang, y. (2014). using wikis to facilitate interaction and collaboration among efl learners: a social constructivist approach to language teaching. system, 42, 383 – 390. zhang, x. & head, k. (2010). dealing with learner reticence in the speaking class. elt journal, 64(1), 1 – 9. 01 sri rejeki.cdr sri rejeki murtiningsih 1-8 is currently a teacher at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia. she teaches in english language education department and her current research interests are teaching efl reading and writing, feedback, reective practice and motivation in efl. abstract this focus of this study is to explore an english as a foreign language (efl) student's perspectives on the characteristics of effective teachers that helped her develop her linguistic competence. this case study was conducted in an english education department in a private university in indonesia. the data were obtained through two conversations with aliyah, a third year efl student. the analysis considered her learning experiences, reection on her own learning, linguistic development, and factors inuencing her linguistic development – all of which related to english. the ndings show that reecting from her past learning experiences, pedagogical and content knowledge are considered important characteristics of effective teachers. most importantly, efl teachers' personal traits, e.g. moody or knowledgeable were deemed to be a strong characteristic of effective efl teachers as it inuenced students' personal growths, such as motivation, attitude toward the course, and personal feelings. implications of the study were also discussed. key words: effective teachers, efl teachers, pedagogical knowledge, personal trait background moody teachers ruin my motivation: an efl student's voice on effective efl teachers one of the most inuential factors of students' success in language learning is teachers. teachers not only merely transfer their knowledge and skills to students, but also are responsible in changing students' behavior and improving students' learning. however, the characteristics of teachers that can have major contribution to students' success need to be explored. while a plethora of research have been conducted in the area of roaches to help students succeed (farrell, 2015).effective teachers (demiroz & yesilyurt, 2015; celik, arikan, & caner, 2012; hajizadeh & salahshour, 2013; alimorad & tajgozari, 2016), scholars offer different perspectives of what constitutes effective teachers that can help students' success. this is mainly because each person has different concepts of success and different app 2 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 cultural background has been mentioned as one of the aspects that causes the distinctions in point of views (richards, 2010). what might be called effective in one culture may not be considered as such in different cultures, e.g. the teacher-centered and student-centered approaches in teaching english. one culture might consider having a teacher who can sternly control the class as being helpful to help students' success, but it might not be acceptable in the other culture. the other reason is individual differences. for example, farrell's (2015) study on native english speakers and non-native english speakers provide an excellent example of this particular issue. farrell (2015) stated that a school administrator may think that students who are   taught by a native english speaker may be effective for his students. however, the other one may think otherwise, because a non-native english speaker can explain and understand their students well because they speak the same language and come from the same culture. existing literature shows that effective teachers in different cultural and educational contexts have been researched quantitatively. alimorad and tajgozari (2014), for example, distributed questionnaires to 202 students and 75 teachers of high school using convenient sampling. similarly, demiroz and yesilyurt (2015) and celik et al. (2012) used quantitative method to investigate the opinion of 404 and 998 university students respectively towards effective teachers' characteristics. chen and lin (2009) also involved 198 junior high school students in china to nd out the characteristics of good english teachers. qualitative research in this particular area has been surprisingly scant. in addition, in what way these effective teachers inuence students' success in language learning has not been revealed. this article investigates the answer to the following questions: what characteristics of teachers are considered effective to an efl student? and in what way do these characteristics help her improve her english? in reporting, i weaved aliyah's perspectives, my personal experiences and classroom observations, and scholars' stance into a sound piece of narrative. different perspectives of effective teachers’s characteristics scholars offer different viewpoints of effective teachers' characteristics, and often these qualities overlap one another. richards (2010) argued that to be effective teachers, efl teachers need to have ten characteristics, which include language skills, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, contextual knowledge, language teacher identity, student-centered teaching techniques, specic expertise, theorizing of practice, being a member of community of practice, and professionalism. from these many characteristics, some of them are also included in the study of several scholars whose denitions are sometimes more uid than richards's. language skills, for instance, which refers to a high level of linguistic prociency from which students can learn the language features given in the feedback by the teacher, is also in line with barnes and lock's (2013) study. linguistic prociency here refers to teachers' language skills when giving comments to students' work. a study conducted by barnes and lock (2013) found that korean university students preferred english teachers who can give direct feedback to students' grammatical error. this is unlike demiroz and yesilyurt (2015) who stated that students in turkey preferred indirect feedback from their teachers when dealing with their error. this goes without saying that english teachers need to possess a high level english prociency so that they can give proper feedback to their students. the other characteristic of effective teachers relates to content knowledge. unlike richards (2001) who highlighted strong differences between content and pedagogical knowledge, other researchers like rodriguez (2013), birjandi and rezanejad (2014), and celik et al. (2012) incorporated these two bodies of 3 knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge (pck). the pck refers to the ability to teaching the subject matters effectively. rodriguez (2013) explained that english teachers with a high degree of pck are those who can apply the theory of effective teaching into practice. mean-while, richards (2001) referred content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge as teachers' mastery of the english subject and “ability to restructure content knowledge for teaching purposes, and to plan, adapt, and improvise” (p. 210) respectively. teachers' effectiveness in terms of pck can be seen from, as birjandi and rezanejad (2014) assert, how the english teachers encourage their students to actively participate in classroom activities. with regard to involving all students in class work, richards (2010) emphasizes that maintaining active student involvement to effectively teach the students. theorizing form practice, according to richards (2010), is the ability to contemplate on their own practices “to better understand the nature of language teaching and learning” (p. 116). the contemplation can serve as reection to english teachers to help students develop their linguistic competence. farrell (2015) maintained that reection is “an important part of effective teaching and effective teachers systematically examine their beliefs and practices” (p. 83). the reective practice is the key factor to improve english teachers' effectiveness in the classroom because they can look back on what they have done in class and why they do what they do. although this particular skill is considered important in being effective teachers, this characteristic surprisingly almost never appears in many studies in the area of effective teachers and teaching which involved either students, teachers, or both. one characteristic that is not raised by richards (2010) but has become the focus of numerous studies is the personal characteristic. personal characteristic of effective english teachers, such as fairness, kindness, maintaining teacher-student relationship, reducing students' anxiety, and showing appreciation towards students, have become the ndings of studies conducted by barnes and lock (2010), celik et al. (2012), chen (2012), chen and lin (2009), and lee (2010). these scholars mentioned that an english teachers' personal characteristic became one of the most important qualities indicated by their participants, ranging from junior high school students to efl teachers. barnes and lock (2010), for example, asked their participants to efl students to write down the qualities of what they perceive as effective teachers in korean language. the results of the research showed that english teachers who were friendly, developed teacherstudent relationships, open, understanding, and humorous were considered to be effective teachers. meanwhile celik et al. (2012) reported that efl teachers that were approved by their participants were those who were able to reduce students' anxiety and make them feel relaxed in class. similarly, english teachers who showed kindness, fairness, lenience, and responsibility were favored by thai university students (chen, 2012). lee (2010) also looked at the uniqueness of efl teachers in japan. his study found that efl teachers should have positive attitude and enthusiasm to be considered effective among japanese freshmen. in short, what the section explains is that what is perceived to be effective efl teachers differ from one context to another, which means that what is considered to be a favorable characteristic in one context may be seen otherwise in the other. this heavily depends upon the cultural contexts and individual preferences. having this kind of beliefs in mind, i did not set any limitations on what my participant considers as effective teachers during the conversations. as a matter of fact, the effective teachers topic was one of the topics that came up in the conversations. theoretical framework the theory underpinning the study comes from dewey's (1916) education theory which says that “education is thus a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. all of these words mean that it implies attention to the conditions of growth” (p.10, para 1). this implies that being a teacher journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 4 requires someone to do more than delivering the materials; it also refers to being a role model, giving attention to students, and providing them with positive experience so that they can develop their potential, which is their language competence. in his book democracy and education dewey (1916) also asserted that social environment needs to be created to shape and mold the immature members which in this study refers to students. the social environment consists of not only other students, but also teachers. thus, teachers, as the older members, in the social environment bear a bigger responsibility for shaping students' attitude and competence, which can be shaped “by operating steadily to call out certain acts” (pp.12-13, para 1). operating steadily here means that teachers need to establish a habit for themselves which can be a stimulus to the students. they could be models to their students which can garner students' attention, and eventually they would imitate the teachers' habit. setting this theory into the context of the study, this study discusses effective teachers as role models for their students, who nurture, foster and cultivate their students. the context of the study is an english as a foreign language teacher training institution, which produces future teachers. thus, effective teachers can motivate these future teachers to become effective teachers for their future students because they learn being effective teachers from their teachers. from the students' point of view, they can learn from their social environment and build their habit and characters. interviewing aliyah aliyah – a pseudonym was a third year female student. during her six semesters studying in the english education department, aliyah was enrolled in a variety of courses i taught for ve semesters. thus, i had vast opportunities to observe her attitude to her study, her personal development, and most importantly, her linguistic development. i kept some of her written assignments from when she was in the rst semester for different purposes. i also had some of her journals from the last class she was enrolled in my class. i brought these artifacts to one of our meetings in which we spent approximately one hour for each meeting, and she also brought some of the journals that she kept as i requested. while the conversation might have been considered short and semi structured, barkhuizen, benson, and chik (2014) maintained that for narrative inquiry, data obtained from short interviews may be “supplemented by a longer period of classroom observation or artifact examination” (p. 25). aliyah was selected as a respondent for several reasons. the main reason was because, based on my inside and outside classroom observation, aliyah was one of the students who made a steady progress on her linguistic development. she also showed good attitude toward the lessons i gave. for example, she read prior to the class, submitted assignments on time, and did not miss any classes. in addition, based on the interaction i have had with her, i considered aliyah as an articulate person; thus, she would likely be able to provide thorough information. aliyah and i met on campus – as she requested – twice. because both of us were multilingual, we used several languages during the conversations which owed quite naturally for both of us. this had allowed aliyah to freely express her feelings and opinions. due to this issue, the excerpts used in this study were translated into standardized english. the conversations we had raised a vast array of topics, ranging from aliyah's learning experiences, reasons to take english education department, her perspectives of her own language competence, her teachers, and teaching. for this particular study, i coded and selected excerpts that answered the proposed research question. aliyah’s perpectives of effective efl teachers based on my observation, aliyah was a shy student in the rst semester of her program. she was almost quiet for all the meetings, but she was an attentive student. in all courses i teach, i assign my students to read a number of pages of t journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 5 knowledge, and personal characteristics. book, either a novel or textbooks and give them a question to answer in writing. from some of the artifacts from her rst semester, aliyah used her native language to answer the question, and she wrote only a few sentences. when we discussed her writing when she was in the sixth semester, i asked her how she felt about it. aliyah stated that she was happy with her linguistic development. we went on discussing supports she obtained related to her linguistic improvement, which then she mentioned friends and teachers. these two factors were included in social environment, which can contribute to students' development because they learn from each other and establish a habit of learning (dewey, 1916). to answer the proposed research questions, aliyah asserted that she approved efl teachers who hold pedagogical knowledge, conten. pedagogical knowledge richards (2010) referred pedagogical knowledge as 'pedagogical reasoning skills' which concerns efl teachers' cognition or “specialized kind of thinking that teachers posses and make use of in planning and conducting their lessons” (p. 114). this knowledge manifests in the way efl teachers design and plan their lesson. richards (2010) proposed aspects that an effective efl teacher has to be able to “analyze potential lesson content” (p. 115). aliyah also found that having a teacher who could plan the class well and be consistent with the plan helped her succeed in class. she remarked, “if a teacher cannot remain as planned, i don't know. the students will go 'i've prepared something for a class, but why would the teacher change it?'” teachers who did not have any plans, according to aliyah, would be underestimated by students and gain low trust from their students because those teachers were considered as unreliable. aliyah maintained that she needed to know the teachers' plan in running the class because it helped her to be organized and prepared for the lesson. teachers' plans or teachers' preparation is also highlighted in barnes and lock's (2010) study in which korean university students attributed lecturers' enthusiasm and preparation. in addition to be well-planned and consistent, aliyah also mentioned that effective efl teachers should be able to employ teaching strategies that accommodate students' individual differences. aliyah believed that teachers' ability to run and utilize a variety of teaching strategies would improve students' motivation, which lead to participation in the class activities. like aliyah who was a student, teachers also agreed that involving the whole class participations in class activities is included in effective teachers' criteria (birjandi & rezanejad, 2014). content knowledge for aliyah, efl teachers needed to understand and master the lessons they taught because she called teachers as the fountain of knowledge to whom students could nd the answers of their questions. she also added that effective efl teachers not only understand the content of the lessons, but also become procient – the term that aliyah used – in the issue. she continued on explaining that becoming procient for teachers means that efl teachers have a good grasp of the materials of the course they teach. she remarked, “if a teacher is procient, she would know what kinds of questions would come up from the topic.” aliyah's opinion with regard to efl teachers' content knowledge is, in fact, similar to many studies conducted by celik et al. (2012), demiroz and yesilyurt (2015), and lee (2010). apart from becoming procient, aliyah also mentioned that being effective efl teachers need to be up-to-date with the current development of the subjects they teach, because this would inuence the quality of knowledge she would learn from the teacher. this characteristic would make teachers understand their students' way of thinking. this particular point of effective teachers' characteristic is in line with almahrooqi, denman, al-siyabi and maamari's (2015) study in oman in which they state that their high school participants also preferred upto-date teachers. they, however, did not think that their teachers needed to have a professional journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 6 development program. personal traits aliyah deemed effective teachers as those who do not bring personal matters to class. she explained you know some teachers are young, and in that age range, some of them have mood swings. for example, something might have happened before they came to class, and they became very moody. it should not have happened. they have personal problems alright, but they do not need to bring it to class (interview excerpt, 2017). aliyah called the characteristic that describes an ability to leave personal problems out of the class room as professional. unlike the denition in western culture that refers 'professional' as being competent in a particular activity (new oxford american dictionary, 2017), 'professional' in the indonesian language may mean the ability to keep personal feeling away when working. if a teacher is professional, for instance, she is required to remain composed even if she has personal problems. aliyah continued on by saying that a professional teacher should be able to hide her personal feeling when teaching or that a professional teacher should treat all of her students fairly. the example that she gave was that one of her teachers confronted a student for being misbehaved. however, to aliyah, even after the student apologized to the teacher, the student kept being left out by the teacher in many classroom activities. teacher-student relationship was also mentioned by aliyah as effective english teachers. she stated that effective teachers are the ones that nurture their students, apart from delivering materials in class. this is also in line with dewey (1916) who stated that education is a series of process that provides nurturing, fostering, and cultivating environment from older members to younger members of society. in addition, studies reveal that many efl students in different contexts consider personal characteristics are the key to efl teachers to be effective. personal characteristics found in these studies varied from one study to another. barnes and lock (2010), for example, found that efl teachers who appreciated students' efforts, respected students, and called them by names were considered effective. lee (2010) maintained that the personal characteristics attributed by japanese students were positive attitude and enthusiasm. aliyah’s impacted growths linguistic development in relation to the growth, aliyah asserted that her writing ability improved much better than the other skills. she remarked, “i did not know how to write properly at the time i came to this department. now, i know how to organize my ideas and how to form a sentence.” she also told me that once her friend from a different department was amazed with her current english competence. her linguistic competence developed through the activities by the teachers. she provided example of her teacher who assigned her to read and write every week and who asked her to give opinion and argument based on the reading. these activities, along with the feedback given, had heavily inuenced her linguistic development. personal growth with regard to efl teachers' pedagogical knowledge, aliyah stated that she was demotivated to follow the lesson because the class seemed to be poorly designed. she remarked an organized teacher would be consistent when running the class. this lets me know what is going to happen. on the other hand, inconsistent teachers would be different. she would just abruptly change the lesson. this makes me think. why would i prepare for the class? the teacher is going to change plan anyway. i feel like what i have prepared is useless. well, not really useless actually. but, i feel unappreciated (interview excerpt, 2017) dealing with a teacher who possessed this characteristic, aliyah felt that she became less organized and that she could have done better if the teachers had performed the lessons as planned. she also felt that she would have participated more actively in the class. in other words, she would have learned more had the efl teachers been well-planned. we did not discuss if journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 7 her grade in the class was affected by the teacher. in the courses in which aliyah was enrolled, i noticed that she was always enthusiastic when she had to work in small group discussion or individual work. while she appeared less verbally active in class discussions, aliyah was not shy to ask questions to me, although this did not happen very often. she always sat at the front rows and performed the required tasks in timely fashion. with regard to personal characteristics, aliyah stated that a moody teacher affected her motivation. she continued on saying, “moody teachers really ruin my motivation. once i was on re with one course. when i found out that the teacher was quite moody, i was not as excited anymore with the course.” aliyah also shared her feelings when she observed that one of her efl teachers treated some of her peers unfairly. although she was not the one who was in the situation, she believed that the situation should not have happened. aliyah's growth impacted from efl teachers' ineffectiveness she met might not have been clearly visible because other aspects might have played stronger roles on her academic success. it is worth noted that aliyah's development, including her linguistic development, might have been better if teachers' ineffectiveness can be minimized. alimorad and tajgozari (2016) stated that understanding students' expectations can help bridge the gap by addressing the ineffectiveness shown by some teachers. students' expectations of effective efl teachers should be heard and met as much as possible, which means that listening to a student like aliyah's voice with regard to her feelings or disappointment of several ineffective teachers. while this research may be a case study in which the generalizability is quite limited, other students, whose self-esteem is not as high as aliyah's might have the same feelings as her, but have not received opportunities to express their opinion. there has been very little research conducted on the impacts of ineffective efl teachers toward students' linguistic development and personal growth. however, it is believed that effective teachers would be able to improve students' learning achievement, change students' behavior, and increase student learning (almahrooqi et al., 2015; birjandi & rezanejad, 2014; hajizadeh & salahshour, 2013; alimorad & tajgozari, 2016). conclusion aliyah's growth was reected from her experiences dealing with some of her teachers she encountered during her study whom she considers ineffective. from her experiences, she learned that effective teachers were the ones who had the opposite characteristics that she described. for example, she was taught by a teacher or two who showed problems with their pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and personal traits. characteristics like being inconsistent between lesson plans and practice and having less variety of teaching strategies in class were considered as ineffective. wellplanned efl teachers was deemed effective because they helped students develop their habit and linguistic competence by giving them a considerable amount of time to prepare for the class. in addition, efl teachers' personal traits are also regarded as one of the most important characteristics of effective teachers. aliyah, however, provided examples of personal traits that demotivated her to join the class. personal traits, such as emotional maturity, showing respects to students' efforts, and treating students fairly, were considered as aspects that inuence students' learning. this study implies that to create social environment that can enhance student's learning and change their behavior can be done by improving efl teachers' effectiveness. this can be done by listening to students' voices followed by facilitating teachers to join teacher professional development programs to minimize teachers' lack of pedagogical and content knowledge. while it might be considerably challenging to work on teachers' personal traits, it is not impossible if the issue is consistently addressed to meet students' expectations of effective teachers. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 8 references alimorad, z., & tajgozari, m. (2016). a comparison of iranian high school teachers' and students' perceptions of effective english teachers. retrieved from sage open : doi: 10.1177/2158244016679212 al-mahrooqi, r., denman, c., al-siyabi, j., & almaamari, f. (2015). characteristics of a good efl teacher: omani efl teacher and student perspectives. retrieved from sage open: doi: 10.1177/2158244015584782 barkhuizen, g., benson, p., & chik, a. (2014). narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research. new york, ny: routledge. barnes, b., & lock, g. (2010). the attributes of effective lectures of english as a foreign language as perceived by students in a korean university. australian journal of teacher education, 35(1), 139-153. birjandi, p., & rezanejad, a. (2014). how can i teach effectively when...: an exploration of factors affectivng willingness to teach effectively among efl teachers. international journal of applied linguitics & english literature, 3(4), 168-177. celik, s., arikan, a., & caner, m. (2013). in the eyes of turkish efl learners: what makes an effective foreign language teacher? porta linguarum, 20, 287-297. chen, j. (2012). favorable and unfavorable characteristics of efl teachers perceived by universities students of thailand. international journal of english linguistics, 2(1), 213-220. chen, y. j., & lin, s. c. (2009). exploring characteristics for effective efl teachers from the perceptions of junior high school students in tainan. stut journal of humanities and social science, 2, 219-249. demiroz, h., & yesilyurt, s. (2015). effective foreign language teaching: perceptions of prospective english language teachers. universal journal of educational research, 3(11), 862-870. dewey, j. (n.d.). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education [ereader version]. farrell, t. s. (2015). it's not who you are! it's how you teach! critical competencies associated with effective teaching. relc journal, 46(1), 79-88. hajizadeh, n., & salahshour, n. (2014). characteristics of effective efl instructors: language teachers' perceptions versus learners' perceptions. international journal of applied linguistics & english literature, 3(1), 202-214. lee, j. j. (2010). the uniqueness of efl teachers: perceptions of japanese learners. tesol journal , 1(1), 23-48. richards, j. c. (2010). competence and performance in language teaching. relc journal, 41(2), 101-122. rodriguez, a. d. (2013). bilingual and esl preservice teachers learn about effective instruction for ells through meaningful collaboration. gist education and learning research journal, 7, 12-34 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 02 ika lestari.cdr ika wahyuni lestari 9-17 i s a f a c u l t y m e m b e r o f english language education department of universitas m u h a m m a d i y a h yogyakarta, indonesia. her research interest is in the areas of teaching speaking skills including individual differences in it, teacher e d u c a t i o n a n d  i p p e d teaching. abstract demotivation has been an issue in many efl countries as revealed by many prior studies. however, limited studies were conducted to investigate it in indonesian context, particularly in indonesian higher education level. this qualitative study was done to investigate demotivators perceived by efl teachers in indonesia. to collect the data, three non-english department teachers were involved in a semi-structured interview. they were asked to share their perceptions and experiences on what demotivated them as teachers. the results showed nine factors causing demotivation among indonesian college teachers. teachers' poor physical tness, students' negative attitudes, responses and behaviors, unxed curriculum and school systems, poor salary, poor quality of school facilities, abundant administrative tasks, poor relationship among colleagues, inappropriate teaching materials, and lack of opportunity for professional development were reported as demotivators undergone by the teachers. the study was concluded by offering some implications to cope with demotivators. keywords: motivation, demotivation, demotivator background demotivating factors among indonesian efl teachers teacher motivation is an integral part in second language learning. it encompasses areas regarding career choice that teachers choose, complexities during the teaching process, and factors inuencing the relations between teachers and students. those three factors contribute to the motivation teachers have. dörnyei (2001) highlighted that teacher motivation involves some aspects, one of which is motivation to teach. it implies that teacher motivation can affect not only teachers but also students in the long run. teachers who have lack of motivation or are demotivated in teaching will not make sufcient preparation for their teaching and might not perform well. this situation can inuence students and their learning 10 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 achievement negatively (dörnyei, 2001). therefore, it is noteworthy to maintain teachers' motivation in teaching. by doing so, demotivation a condition where teachers lose their motivation can be avoided. the notion of demotivation is dened as “specic external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action” (dörnyei, 2001, p.139). second language demotivation particularly the one undergone by teachers are enacted by various factors. from teacher-related aspects, it can be caused by teachers' workloads (dornyei, 2001; dinham & scott, 2000; spear, 2000), self-efcacy, and autonomy (dornyei, 2001). other factors such as curriculum (dinham & scott, 2000), the image of the profession, and salary (spear, 2000) were also reported as contributing factors to teacher demotivation. these ndings echo to those of other studies conducted in efl context (baniasadazad & ketabi, 2013; hettiarachchi, 2013; kim, kim, & zhang, 2013; sugino, 2010). compared to the ndings in other contexts, the most salient aspects leading to teacher demotivation revealed in these studies are related to students' attitude and motivation toward english learning, students' lack of interest, and poor english prociency. these common factors can possibly emerge in indonesia as a country where english is a foreign language. in indonesian higher education, english becomes a compulsory subject as mandated in the national standard of education no. 19/2005, article 9, paragraph (2). it indicated that all universities should hold english classes, including non-english department programs. even though it is regulated that all departments must offer english to their students, english classes in nonenglish department are conducted in limited contact hours. in the setting of this study, for instance, english for non-english department students is offered as a non-credit or one-credit course in which the teaching and learning process lasts from 100 to 200 minutes a week. consequently, students do not get much exposure to english learning and teachers do not have adequate time to teach english. besides time, students' attitudes also become a challenge for non-english department teachers. when the researcher herself taught in the setting of the current study, many students showed negative attitude on english learning and tended to overlook the importance of attending english classes. these problems may cause demotivation among non-english department teachers. if it is not properly addressed, it can affect english teaching-learning in indonesian higher education, especially in non-english department programs. the aforementioned issues indicate that actually many factors can make non-english department teachers feel demotivated in teaching. identifying those factors is mandatory in order that negative impacts of teacher demotivation can be avoided. however, only few studies were conducted to investigate the demotivators in indonesian context, particularly in higher education. this study was conducted to investigate the demotivating factors perceived by indonesian efl teachers. this research is limited to identify the factors from non-english department teachers' perspectives in university context. demotivation the notion of demotivation as the opposite of motivation is dened as “specic external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action” (dörnyei, 2001, p.139). unlike motivation which might bring signicant impacts on a foreign language learning, demotivation tends to bring detrimental impacts to those who undergo it. if teacher motivation is regarded “infectious”, teacher demotivation will likely inuence students' learning negatively (dörnyei, 2001). demotivation can be analyzed from activity theory perspective rst proposed by leont'ev (as cited in kim & kim, 2013). it was then developed by engeström, (as cited in kim & kim, 2013) in which the element of community was added from the initial model proposed by 11 leont'ev. therefore, in engeström's model, activity theory consists of mediational tool, subject, object, rule, division of labor, and community. of the ve elements, kim and kim (2013) asserted that mediational tool is mandatory as it drives someone to focus on something. mediational tool can be in forms of people or nonliving beings. in the context of instruction, it can be students, teachers, teaching materials, teaching strategies, and many others (kim & kim, 2013). the occurrence of teacher demotivation can be analyzed from engeström's activity theory perspective. teacher demotivation occurs due to the gap between two elements of activity theory, i.e. mediational tool and community (kim & kim, 2013). seeing this phenomenon from teachers' perspective, teachers are demotivated as the beliefs in their instruction serving as the mediational tool are not supported by their community. in this case, the community which can be either students, colleagues, school authorities, or others do not react as what teachers have expected, so they feel demotivated. to overcome demotivation, this gap should be lled in. previous studies on demotivation in efl context studies investigating demotivating factors in efl context have been conducted in various countries, one of which is a study by sugino (2010) in japanese context. questionnaires were distributed to 97 lecturers in japan. the study revealed some factors causing demotivation among english teachers. the teachers felt demotivated due to students' negative attitude, unclear curriculum goals, teaching materials, students' ability, and school factors. another study on demotivating factors was also conducted by kim, kim, and zhang (2013). kim, kim, and zhang compared the demotivating factors perceived by chinese and korean english teachers by conducting a mixedmethod study. questionnaires were distributed to 58 chinese and 94 korean english teachers. the ndings showed that the number of students in each class became a factor demotivating both chinese and korean english teachers. chinese english teachers were also demotivated by the high expectation parents had. korean english teacher, on the other hand, felt demotivated due to high demands of administrative tasks and students' lack of interest in english learning. in iranian and japanese context, baniasadazad and ketabi (2013) did a comparative study to examine the demotivators among iranian and japanese english teachers. the data were obtained by using questionnaires followed by semi-structured interviews. the results showed that demotivators emerged differently in each context. iranian english teachers were demotivated in regards with curriculum, bonus, appreciation, unstable employment system, students' lack of interest, and minimum research funds. meanwhile, in japanese context, students' negative attitudes, long contact hours, overabundant paperwork, and lacked variety of teaching methods became demotivators in teaching. hettiarachchi (2013) also investigated aspects of motivation and demotivation among english language teachers in sri lanka by doing surveys to 54 sri lankan teachers and interviewing ve of them. the research has found that the major demotivating factors among sri lankan efl teachers were insufcient learning facilities, inefciency of “school administration and zonal education ofces “ (p.8), difculties in obtaining teacher transfers, the gap between the english curriculum and students' english prociency, and the poor relationship among colleagues. the aforementioned related studies were all conducted in efl context which is in line with the nature of english in indonesia. as efl teachers, indonesian teachers can possibly undergo demotivation in teaching. they may also deal with demotivators which can hamper their teaching if it is not well-addressed in the long run. however, there have not been many studies conducted in indonesian context aimed to identify demotivating factors perceived by indonesian efl teachers, particularly those teaching at tertiary educational level. therefore, journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 12 a study to investigate demotivating factors perceived by indonesian efl college teachers should be conducted. research methodology this study aims at examining a phenomenon of demotivation undergone by non-english department teachers. thus, qualitative method was suitably employed as it studies “phenomena that occur in natural settings” (leedy & ormrod, 2005, p.133). this study involved three full time english teachers employed in a language center of a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia, as the participants. the three female participants possessed the same characteristics as participants; they were full time teacher teaching non-english department students, had been teaching in the institution for more than ve years, and were willing to participate in the current research. later, in the data presentation, their names were changed into pseudonyms as diana, siska, and lina to maintain their privacy. this research was conducted in october 2016. to collect the data, semi-structured interview was conducted to the three participants. the interview was audio-recorded and done in some steps. first, the researcher checked the concept of demotivation to the participants by asking them to dene what demotivation was. it was done to ensure that both the researcher and the participants had the same concept of demotivation. the participants were also asked whether they had undergone demotivation in their teaching. next, the participants were asked to explain factors they perceived causing demotivation. lastly, the research restated all factors the participants mentioned to check the validity of the data. the obtained data were then analyzed qualitatively through coding to nd the themes and patterns. results based on the interview done to the three participants, all of the participants had the same concept of demotivation. being connected to teaching, they believed that demotivation was a state where teachers lost their motivation or had no motivation to teach. it was also found that all of the participants had ever undergone demotivation in their teaching. two of the participants, lina and diana, confessed that they sometimes felt demotivated. to siska, although teaching was like “a sanctuary” to her, she did not deny that many factors impinged her motivation to teach. the interview also revealed nine factors the three participants perceived as demotivators. the summary of the emerged demotivators was summarized in table 1. table 1 : emerged demotivators categories demotivators teacher-related factors poor physical fitness abundant administrative tasks poor salary student-related factors students÷ negative attitudes and behaviors other factors unfixed curriculum and school system poor quality of the school facilities inappropriate teaching materials poor relationship among colleagues lack of professional development programs journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 13 teachers' physical tness teaching is an activity which requires good physical condition. if this physical tness is not fullled, it might result in demotivation like what was revealed from one of the participants. diana claimed that she felt demotivated in teaching when she was not feeling well. she said, “poor physical tness makes me feel demotivated”. students' attitude, responses, and behaviors the result of the interview indicated that all of the participants felt demotivated due to students' negative attitude and lack of responses. diana claimed that one of the demotivators she perceived was when “students' responses to what we teach is not as what we expected, like when students feel bored, lose their interests in learning, be passive in the teaching and learning process, and lack motivation to learn”. siska has shared belief with diana's on students' attitude and responses as demotivating factors in teaching. she added that it forced her to put extra efforts to deal with the students. besides students' attitude and responses, students' behaviors were also reported as being a demotivator for teachers. lina reported that “trouble makers in class who tend to demand more, dominate other students, and love showing off” made her feel reluctant to teach. this result was also supported by siska who said that “students who are difcult to control and always make jokes” demotivated her. curriculum and school system in the institution where the three participants worked, students were grouped based on their prociency level measured through an english prociency test (ept). the students were then put into classes based on those who have the same range of ept score, for example those whose ept score is lower than 395 went to level 1. with the currently-applied system, many students stayed at the same level as they could not increase their ept score signicantly. as a result, they would get the same module and materials. two of the participants, diana and lina put her concern on this curriculum and system. they claimed that this system demotivated them as a teacher as well as their students. diana said that “many students lose their interests and enthusiasm in attending english classes because they learn something similar”. consequently, she had to put more efforts to liven her class to improve her students' motivation. diana and lina, who had shared experience teaching students at the same level for more than two semesters, also said that within this curriculum and system, they had to “work harder to prepare teaching materials” as their students had learnt the same materials from the same module in the previous semesters. these challenges demotivated them in teaching under the current curriculum and system applied in their institution. teaching materials teaching materials are one of the prominent aspects in teaching. teachers usually have their considerations and expectations on the materials they select for their students. however, their considerations sometimes are not in line with that of their students which results in demotivation. this result was found from lina's interview. she asserted that she felt demotivated because the materials she gave to her students did not meet students' needs and expectations. she gave an example, “my students want to learn toefl but they get general english here”. another demotivating factor is when the students did not show their enthusiasm with the materials she had prepared. she said, “materials i provided did not make them feel enthusiastic, it was too easy for them, not challenging”. the discrepancy between teachers' and students' expectation on teaching materials leads to teacher demotivation. salary financial rewards can inuence teachers' motivation in teaching. if the nancial rewards teachers get are not in accordance with efforts they make, demotivation can highly occur. two of the participants perceived that salary became a demotivating factor for them though it did not journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 14 affect their professionalism when teaching. diana, for instance, stated, “teaching honorarium i get and the efforts i have made are imbalance, and it sometimes demotivates me”. in line with diana, lina added that “no salary raise within the past few years and the low amount of the salary” became a contributing factor leading to demotivation. school facilities another reported demotivator is school facilities. siska felt demotivated when “the room is warm because the air conditioner does not work properly”. similarly, lina stated that “the air conditioner and the projector are out of order” in some of the rooms she used. consequently, students kept complaining to her. this facility problems also diminished students' concentration, and shortened their attention span which eventually demotivated her as the teacher. administrative tasks besides teaching, many teachers have to take care of administrative tasks. as full-time staffs, the three participants were also in charge of some tasks where they became the coordinators. lina, who was in charge of syllabus and material development for the english classes, pointed out that sometimes she felt demotivated due to “abundant demanding non-teaching tasks”. she also said, “the need to meet the deadline of these administrative tasks disrupts my preparedness in teaching and preparing materials”. these nonteaching tasks may impinge teachers' motivation as teachers since they will have more workload. relationship among colleagues. another demotivating factor found in this research is in terms of relationship among colleagues. when the relationship between teachers and their colleagues it can be other teachers or staff does not work, it can possibly demotivate teachers in their teaching. this result was found from the interview conducted to lina. she stated, “if it has something to do with job, like there is a problem with colleagues, it can affect me in my teaching in a negative way”. this factor demotivated her in that she became less enthusiastic in teaching. professional development for teachers, the opportunity for a professional development program they get can inuence their motivation to teach. one of the participants, lina said that she felt demotivated because of limited opportunities to join professional development programs she got in her institution. she stated, “there is no training or close supervision which evaluates whether my teaching is good or bad”. it demotivated her as the school authorities might not notice if she performed well as a teacher. compared to her previous institution, she claimed that professional development programs in her current institution were very limited. whereas, she believed professional development is important for teachers. discussion the results of this study were discussed based on three categories, i.e. teacher-related factors, student-related factors, and other factors, as shown in table 1. the rst result in the teacher-related factors indicates that teachers' physical tness becomes a demotivator in teaching. similar nding was also found in sugino's (2010) study in which the participants reported that health condition became a factor demotivating them in teaching. it is inevitable that when teaching, teachers are required to do some energy-draining activities, like standing for hours, moving around to monitor students' work, or dealing with misbehaved students which consume teachers' energy. therefore, doing these activities can demotivate teachers if they are not physically well. another factor demotivates teachers in teaching found in this study is the abundant administrative tasks teachers need to accomplish. these non-teaching-related tasks can interfere with teaching especially when teachers have limited time to prepare their teaching due to the overwhelming tasks. this factor varies in china and korea (kim et al, 2013). korean teachers tended to deal with similar problem in which they have to deal with administrative tasks. unlike indonesian and korean efl teachers, chinese efl teachers tend to have more journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 15 freedom to focus on their teaching as they do not have to deal with administrative tasks. the current study also reported that salary becomes a demotivator for teachers in teaching. though the participants argued that the unsatisfactory salary they got did not interfere with their teaching, they admitted that it demotivated them. this nding can be analyzed with engeström's activity theory in which the discrepancy between teachers' expected salary and the actual salary they earn causes teacher demotivation. however, this result contradicts what hettiarachchi (2013) found. in these two studies, to sri lankan and turkish efl teachers, salary does not inuence their motivation as teachers. though ndings differ in these three studies, the unsatisfactory salary indonesian teachers perceived is worth taking into account, so demotivation teachers undergo due to this factor can be overcome. beside demotivators coming from teachers, students also play a big role in causing demotivation to teachers. this study showed that the participants were demotivated by the negative attitude their students had towards english learning. when students do not show their interests and motivation in the english teaching and learning process and give insufcient responses to teachers' instruction as what teachers have expected, teachers can feel demotivated. this result can be explained using engeström's activity theory. teachers' expectation on students' positive attitude towards english learning serving as an activity theory's mediational tool is not met in the real practice as students show negative attitude, instead. consequently, teachers feel demotivated. as teaching is a reciprocal activity between teachers and students, the failure of one party in fullling the role can demotivate the other party. students who do not show positive attitude or make responses to teachers' instructions, for instance, can demotivate the teachers. besides students' negative attitude and lack of responses, the way students behave in class also contributes to teacher demotivation. students who become trouble makers or behave negatively tend to consume teachers' attention in the teaching and learning process. other students who behave positively, tend to be overlooked or feel intimidated by this negatively-behaved students. this nding is in agreement with what sugino (2010) found in his study. one or two rebellious students tend to make others and teachers feel uncomfortable during the teaching and learning process. the issues in terms of curriculum and school system, teaching materials, and school facilities turn out to contribute to demotivation teachers have. the results indicate that within the new curriculum and school system, both students and teachers feel demotivated as neither the curriculum nor the system support the learning progress students should have made. many students stayed at the same level; therefore, they felt they did not learn something from the teaching and learning process. teachers, consequently, have to deal with these disappointed students and their complaints. this situation somehow demotivated them whenever they were going to teach. this issue echoed what baniasad-azad and ketabi (2013) found in their study where teachers are demotivated when they are forced to follow a particular curriculum. in addition to curriculum and school system, this study also revealed that teaching materials become a demotivator for teachers in teaching. when selecting materials, teachers usually have made adequate considerations that materials they choose meet students' needs. however, sometimes teachers' expectation is not in line with their students'. this discrepancy nally demotivates teachers. baniasad-azad and ketabi (2013) also found that when teachers do not nd relevancy on materials they use and students' needs, they will feel demotivated. besides curriculum, school system, and teaching materials, school facilities were also reported as a demotivator in this study. unlike the nding of hettiarachchi (2013) which reported that sri lankan efl teachers were demotivated due to lack of facilities they have in their school, the classes where the indonesian efl teachers teach are actually well-equipped with facilities like airconditioners and projectors. however, they journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 16 claimed that those facilities sometimes did not work. this problem demotivates them as usually students complain on these technical problems and it eventually distracts the ow of the teaching and learning process. the last demotivators perceived by indonesian efl teachers found in this study were related to relationship among colleagues and professional development programs. the teachers perceived that poor relationship they have with other colleagues sometimes inuence their teaching. this is in line with the ndings of hettiarachchi (2013). lack of teamwork (hettiarachchi, 2013) can lead to teacher demotivation. in terms of professional development, many teachers are motivated when they have opportunities to develop themselves professionally by joining professional development programs. however, it was found that this kind of opportunity was not obtained by the teacher involved in this study and it demotivates her. besides, it was also gured out that monitoring to teacher performance can also affect their motivation in teaching. they will be demotivated if the efforts they make to perform well is not noticed by other faculty members due to unavailability of a teacher monitoring program. conclusion and implications this study aimed at identifying demotivators perceived by indonesian efl college teachers in teaching. the results revealed nine demotivators categorized into teacher-related factors, student-related factors, and other factors as factors demotivating indonesian efl teachers in teaching. in teacher-related factors, teachers' poor physical tness, abundant administrative tasks, and poor salary become factors demotivating the teachers. besides teachers, students also contribute to teacher demotivation when they show negative attitudes towards english learning and give insufcient responses in the class. other factors, i.e. unxed curriculum and school system, poor quality of school facilities, inappropriate teaching materials, poor relationship among colleagues, and lack of professional development programs were also reported as demotivators for indonesian efl college teacher in teaching. the results of the current study lead to some implications for indonesian efl teachers and school authorities. firstly, it was revealed that teachers feel demotivated due to poor physical tness, abundant administrative tasks, and poor salary. therefore, school authorities should consider reducing the number of administrative tasks assigned to teachers, so they can manage their time for teaching, accomplishing the administrative tasks, and taking care of themselves including their health. the result also indicates the need to evaluate the salary for teachers as it was reported that that they should have received bigger salary with the efforts they made, and there has been no raise in the past few years. secondly, the results indicate that teachers do not get many opportunities to attend professional development programs and get supervision in their teaching. hence, more regular professional development programs and teaching supervision should be provided to improve teachers' teaching performance. by doing so, it is expected that teachers have more knowledge and skills in selecting materials which meet students' needs and expectation as well as coping with different characteristics of students. lastly, the study showed that there is an issue with the existing curriculum and school system applied in the setting of this study. though it is limited to a particular institution, the results have shown that this curriculum and system demotivate not only the teachers but also the students. it was also found that students do not have opportunities to signicantly proceed to a higher level. thus, evaluation to the existing curriculum and school system should be administered, so further steps to better it can be taken. the present study is limited to a few participants and the use of single data collection method which is interview. also, it was conducted to an institution which applies a specic curriculum and school system which might not be implemented by other institutions. therefore, generalization cannot be done for the journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 17 results of the study as the results might not represent the whole indonesian efl college teachers. to gain more representative results, it is recommended to involve more participants and multiple data collection methods in further studies on demotivating factors. also, it is suggested that future studies can be conducted in more higher education institutions. references baniasad-azad, s. &ketabi, s. (2013). a comparative study of iranian and japanese english teachers' demotivational factors. panpacic association of applied linguistics, 17(1), 39-55. dinham, s. & scott, c. (2000). moving into the third, outer domain of teacher satisfaction. journal of educational administration, 38(4), 379-396. dörnyei, z. (2001). new themes and approaches in second language motivation research. annual review of applied linguistics, 21, 43-59. hettiarachchi, s. (2013). english language teacher motivation in sri lankan public schools. journal of language teaching and research, 4(1), 1 – 11. doi:10.4304/jltr.4.1.1-11 kim, t.y.,& kim, y.k.. (2013). reconceptualizing l2 learning demotivation from a vygotskian activity theory perspective. english teaching, 68(4), 141-163. kim, t.y., kim, y.k., & zhang, q.m. (2014). differences in demotivation between chinese and korean english teachers: a mixedmethods study. asia-pacic education research, 23(2), 299 310. doi: 10.1007/s40299013-0105-x leedy, p.d., and ormrod, j.e. (2005). practical research: planning and design (8th edition). new jersey: pearson merrill prentice hall spear, m., gould, k., & lee, b. (2000). who would be a teacher? a review of factors motivating and demotivating prospective and practicing teachers. slough: nfer. sugino, t. (2010). teacher demotivational factors in the japanese language teaching context. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 3, 216 – 226. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 page 9 05 puput arfiandhani.cdr puput arfiandhani 44-54 is a lecturer in the department o f e n g l i s h l a n g u a g e e d u c a t i o n a t u n i v e r s i t a s muhammadiyah yogyakara. she received her master's degree in tesol from the university of nottingham, uk. p r i o r t o s t a r t i n g h e r p o s t g r a d u a t e s t u d y , a s a fulbright foreign language teaching assistant, puput assisted indonesian language classes at yale university, u.s. her research interests include l a n g u a g e p o l i c y , t e a c h e r m o t i v a t i o n , a n d t e a c h e r possible-self. abstract the more-connectedness of the world has raised a need to have a successful communication across cultural background. as a consequence, intercultural communicative competence (icc) plays a more pivotal role. one of the means to proliferate icc is through living abroad, or can be called as doing a sojourn. this qualitative study aims to explore language teachers' sojourn experiences during their two-semester assisting language classes in u.s. universities. specically, this study focuses on how their sojourn experiences may affect their perspectives toward their own culture and culture other than their own. there are 19 english language teachers of 12 different nationalities who voluntarily participated in the present study. in analyzing the data, byram's model of icc (1997) was utilized to make sense of their experiences. the data was analyzed using nvivo11 application. the nding showed that three out of ve aspects in byram's model of icc (1997), including intercultural attitudes (savoir être), knowledge (savoirs), and critical cultural awareness (savoirs' engager) emerged in the data. two aspects, skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre) and skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire) did not emerge in the data. keywords: sojourn, culture, intercultural communicative competence, language teachers background investigating language teachers' sojourn experiences: perspectives on culture as the world has become more globalized and the affordability to visit other places and countries increases, the ability to interact successfully and effectively with people of various culture and speech communities has become more pivotal. in succeeding these intercultural interactions, intercultural communicative competence (icc), which entails verbal communication, i.e. language skills (timpe, 2014), needs to be fostered. byram (2012) dened icc as the ability to act between languages and cultures, and to mediate different 45 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 perspectives between different cultures. in line with this, bouchard (2017) proposed that individuals mastering icc are able to navigate among different languages and cultures, and thus, act as linguistic and cultural mediators. it can be concluded that icc needs to be proliferated to promote successful intercultural encounters. one of the channels to proliferate icc is in language classes. language classes provide opportunities for students to learn not only the target language, but also the socio cultural context in which it is spoken. byram (2012) advocated the view that intercultural competence can be included as one of the purposes of language teaching as an educational endeavor to embrace deeper understanding of other cultures' value system. observing the importance of language classes in promoting icc, language teachers, thus, play a key role in succeeding this goal. as a consequence, language teachers need to enhance their intercultural competence. one of the chances for language teachers to be more interculturally competent is by living abroad or doing a sojourn. some studies conrmed this idea. lee's (2009) empirical study on hong kong preservice teachers' 6-week immersion program in new zealand indicated that upon completion of their sojourn experience, participants' cultural awareness and understanding of the host country was elevated. yielding a similar result, a narrative study of two finnish pre-service teachers' language practice periods in britain conducted by larzén-östermark's (2011) pointed that a heightened level of intercultural awareness predominated participants' stories of their intercultural encounters throughout their sojourn. these potential benets of language teachers' sojourn experiences draw my interest in conducting a study on english teachers' sojourn experiences. there have been many studies conducted on the topic of sojourn and icc, including focusing on the aspect of sojourn experiences impact on icc (lee, 2009; larzeń östermark, 2011), and on assessing icc among language learners and teachers (fantini, 2009; dervin, 2010). however, not many studies collected the data among english language teacher-sojourners of various nationalities. looking at perspectives on sojourn experiences of teachers with different nationalities may give insights on how people with various cultural backgrounds may share commonalities on how they perceive their sojourn experiences. as opposed to sercu's (2006) study of multi-national foreign language teachers across europe which focuses on their self-concept and teaching practices that can envisage a prole of intercultural foreign language teacher, this study aims to ll the gap by investigating the sojourn experiences of english language teachers with different nationalities. the participants of this study have experienced a teaching assistantship program for two semesters in language classes in the u.s universities. the investigation focused on how they saw their own culture and culture other than their own upon completion of their sojourn experiences. as an additional note, in this article the term 'sojourn experience' is specically used to refer to language teachers' experience of living in the u.s. while doing their teaching assistantship program. to answer the research question of how language teachers' may perceive their own culture and culture other than their own throughout their sojourn experiences, this paper is organized as follows. the literature on intercultural encounter while living abroad, intercultural competence and the relationship between language and culture is critically reviewed. afterwards, the methodology of the study will be elaborated. finally, the research ndings and discussion will be presented. literature review language and culture l a n g u a g e a n d c u l t u r e h a v e a c l o s e relationship, of which according to house (2007), timpe (2014) and bouchard (2017) one is related with the other. this close relationship is elaborated in risager's (2007) remark, which stated that as a cultural practice, language embodies various types of meaning within it. in line with this, house (2007) stated that as a means of communication that t r a n s f e r s i n f o r m a t i o n a s w e l l a s c o n n e c t individuals, language is an important 46 part of culture. as a consequence for this close relationship between language and culture, soler (2007) argued that language teaching is inseparable from knowledge of the target culture. resonating a similar view, celce-murcia (2007) proposed that language teaching must include cultural and cross-cultural instruction. observing the interconnectedness of language teaching and cultural instruction; therefore, language teachers play a pivotal role as gatekeepers to target language and culture. according to byram, gribkova and starkey (2002), to develop intercultural dimension in language classes, teachers should be aware of the aims which include proliferating both intercultural and linguistic competence; preparing learners for intercultural encounters that they may experience; and appreciating and considering other people of other cultures as having unique viewpoints, values and behaviours. additionally, they mentioned that another aim is to support learners to be able to consider these intercultural encounters to be enriching. achieving these aims could help language teachers develop intercultural dimension in their classes. as a consequence, to enable them designing language teaching in which intercultural dimension is incorporated, teachers need to be familiar with the target language and culture. sercu's (2005) ndings from her survey of language teachers from various european countries revealed that teachers' degree of familiarity and contact with foreign culture correlate with their frequency on addressing cultural topics in their classes. to sum up, teachers need to familiarize themselves with the culture of the target language to enable them building up intercultural dimension in their language teaching. intercultural encounters while sojourning intercultural encounters happened to sojourners have many potential benets. much research has been conducted to investigate the transformational effects of sojourn on the sojourners (e.g. jackson, 2008; lee, 2009; larzeń östermark, 2011; gleeson & tait, 2012). brown (2009) remarked that exposure to a new culture, including what sojourners have experienced, has transformational potentials. one of these transformational potentials, as conrmed in jackson's (2008) nding is a heightened intercultural sensitivity among sojourners. in addition, brown's (2009) empirical study ndings conrmed that intercultural encounters while sojourning could facilitate the development of intercultural competence as well as a shift in selfunderstanding. another transformational potential is highlighted in gleeson and tait's (2012) ndings, which include teacher-sojourners' new perspectives on their pedagogical system gained upon completing their sojourn program. these ndings provide support to the notion that intercultural encounters contribute transformational potentials towards sojourners. these potentials that intercultural encounters facilitate could consequently develop sojourners' intercultural communicative competence. according to holmes and o'neill (2012), intercultural encounters play an important role as a space where sojourners could interact with other cultures through communication with individuals of various backgrounds they meet. further stated, this interaction could facilitate self-understanding towards sojourners' own and other cultures which as a consequence could trigger the sojourners to critically reect on their intercultural competence. observing the link between intercultural encounters while sojourning and icc, therefore, it is especially important for to investigate language teachers', as the gatekeepers for the targeted language and culture, sojourning experiences. frameworks of intercultural communicative competence (icc) icc has been extensively studied by communication studies scholars (e.g. ruben, 1976, 1989; gudykunst, 1995, 1998; ting-toomey, 1993; kim, 1995, 2012; howard-hamilton et al., 1998; bennet, 2009) as well as language education scholars (e.g. byram, 1997; deardoff, 2006; prechtl and lund, 2007; risager, 2007; bouchard, 2017) (arasaratnam & doerfel, 2005; timpe, 2014; journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 47 bouchard, 2017). these scholars have also developed various models of icc which vary in what they emphasize, depending on the various disciplines they stem from. despite the different foci of the models, they have a similar elemental aspect, communication (timpe, 2014). consequently, research on icc in english language class contexts should take communication aspect into account. review of frameworks on both communication studies and language education eld may give wider perspectives on viewing icc. however, in this article, only two frameworks from the eld of language education, on which this current study is grounded, are reviewed. these two frameworks are byram's (1997) and bouchard's (2017) model of icc. while the former is a seminal work on the eld of icc, the latter is the most current one. according to byram (1997), foreign language teaching aims at enabling learners to use the language they learn to interact with people for whom it is preferred as a 'natural' medium of experience, whether in 'native speakers' context or in lingua franca context. icc can be a tool to reach this aim. byram's model is a useful tool to analyze the communicative aspects when individuals encounter foreign culture (bouchard, 2017). the aspects that contribute to icc acquisition are summed up in byram's (1997) model of icc as follows. knowledge (savoirs) of social groups and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre) include to the ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents or events from one’s own. critical cultural awareness (savoir s'engager) refers to the ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries. skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire) include the ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of realtime communication and interaction. intercultural attitudes (savoir être) refers to curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own. figure 1. byram's model of icc (1997) journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 48 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, of 2017 a more current model, bouchard's (2017) model of icc, is specically designed to be integrated into efl educational practices in japanese junior high school level. the model is developed due to observing the need for a specic model which can be applied specically in japanese efl school contexts. whereas, the existing models have been mainly developed based on european and american contexts which may not suit the japanese school context. the model is built on the fusion of icc-oriented elements in japan's ministry of education policies and pedagogical components based on byram's (1997) model of icc. bouchard's model of icc includes three main components: critical thinking, language and culture, and culture components (bouchard, 2017). the critical thinking components emphasizes on individuals' awareness on various aspects which can promote successful intercultural communication such as of multilingualism and multiculturalism, stereotypes, and the importance of cultivating multiple vision in intercultural citizenship. the second components, language and culture components cover individuals' awareness regarding to language and culture such as awareness of language varieties, cultural diversity, strategies to present one's native culture and inquire about other culture and uncertainty and the importance of risk-taking. the culture components include the awareness of culture as an observable concept in the real world, awareness of various values and awareness of similarities and differences between cultures. among various models of icc, byram's seminal model of icc is used as a framework for this current study for several reasons. firstly, byram's model of icc has been the foundation of and referred to by more current models of different contexts (timpe, 2014). this implies that byram's model may include basic components of icc which could be exible and sufciently adaptable for various contexts. the current study includes participants with various cultural backgrounds, and thus an icc model which consider various contexts, like byram's, can be an appropriate tool for the data analysis. some other models like bouchard's, for example, is specically designed for japanese contexts. as a result, though more updated, the model may not suit the current study. second of all, in his model, all of the ve aspects of icc, i.e. intercultural attitudes, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness, are related with each other (timpe, 2014; bouchard, 2017)). this interconnection means that a successful intercultural interaction requires skills that are inseparable of each other. accordingly, bouchard (2017) remarked that byram's model of icc considers that intercultural speakers should be able to use the target language effectively by being aware of the link between languages and cultural ramications. this element of interconnectedness among aspects in byram's model of icc, is important to ensure that participants' sojourn experiences are considered as a unity that contribute towards how they interculturally interact. for these reasons, byram's model of icc is used as the framework for data analysis. methodology the participants of this qualitative research were english teachers sojourners who joined a two-semester (9-10 months) teaching assistantship program in u.s. higher institutions. during the program, with the responsibility of up to 20-working hours, they performed a task as a teaching assistant or a main instructor of their native language classes. in addition to that, they were required to enroll in 2 classes of their interest per semester in the higher institution they were placed. during april 2015, around 10 months after completing participants' teaching assistantship program, an online questionnaire was distributed via a social media group where potential participants voluntarily took part in the study. participants were asked to give their opinion in english on two statements, including: 'my teaching assistantship experience affects the way i see my own culture' and 'my teaching assistantship experience affects the way i see 49 culture other than my own in general'. for the nal item of the questionnaire, participants were asked to give additional opinion, if any, on other differences (e.g. career, identity, and perspectives) that their teaching assistantship experience may have made in their life. in developing this openended questionnaire, feedback from a senior researcher specializing on intercultural communicative communication was taken into account. there were 19 english teachers of 12 different nationalities (afghan, brazilian, egyptian, french, indian, indonesian, israeli, libyan, mexican, russian, tunisian, and turkish) who volunteered to take part in this study. upon gaining the data, the data was then exported to nvivo11 to be qualitatively analyzed. in making sense of the data, byram's model of icc which was explained earlier in this article, including intercultural attitudes (savoir être), knowledge (savoirs), skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre), skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire), and critical cultural awareness (savoir s'engager), was used as the framework of the analysis. the data was themed based on these ve aspects of the icc model, if relevant. when there are other emerging themes besides the ones listed in byram's icc model, a relevant new theme is assigned to the data. to hinder the data interpretation from my personal judgment, in discussing the ndings, relevant extracts are presented. findings and discussion in intercultural encounters, individuals' cultural backgrounds may interplay in their interaction. according to byram et al. (2002), when people are talking to each other their social identities are unavoidably part of the social interaction between them. differences in these social identities may potentially determine how these intercultural encounters may happen. in mediating these cultural differences, icc can play as a intermediary. as stated by bouchard (2017), icc enables individuals to deal with differences by managing one's own value judgment when facing differences. therefore, it is important to look at different aspects of icc in order to gain insights on how individuals' intercultural encounters through their sojourn may affect the way they see their culture and other cultures. as observed from participants' responses, the data revealed that three out of ve aspects of byram's model of icc emerged in the data. these three aspects included intercultural attitudes (savoir être), knowledge (savoirs), and critical cultural awareness (savoirs' engager). they emerged in participants' responses on how their sojourn experiences may affect the way they see their own culture and culture other than their own. intercultural attitudes (savoir être) one of the themes that emerged from the data was intercultural attitudes. the transformation on intercultural attitudes emerged in participants' responses on how their sojourn experiences may affect the way they see both their own culture and culture other than their own. these intercultural attitudes were reected on how they admitted to be more understanding, appreciative and open-minded, both towards their own culture and other culture they encountered. there are 16 participants who reported that their encounters with people from different culture had made them more curious and open with differences of other cultures. a tunisian participant (p.2) mentioned that he had never been exposed to so many cultural differences before, and the exposure that he had then made him become more appreciative of the difference. this exposure made them to be more openminded and understanding of both their own culture and other culture. as an egyptian participant put it, i became more open minded and more understanding once i had to deal with other cultures. (p.1.b, egypt) these attitudes reect that there was a degree of openness among the participants. this is in line with morgan's (1998) research on crosscultural encounter within his involvement in durham-paris team that showed the collaboration between team members consisting of various journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 50 nationalities could facilitate members' process of reassessing any judgments. this then led to potential fruitful intercultural communication gained within the process. in line with this, muzaini in brown (2009) stated that sojourners gained openness, exibility and tolerance from their experiences. open-mindedness and understanding did emerge not only on how participants perceived other cultures, but also on how they perceived their own culture. twelve out of 19 participants admitted that their understanding of their own culture widened due to their sojourn experiences. a mexican participant (p.7) noted that being a spanish teaching assistant had helped her understand and value her own culture more. this is in line with an egyptian participant (p.17) who remarked that her sojourn experiences had made her become more appreciative about some aspects of her culture such as hospitality and kindness. the process of understanding their culture and american culture had led them to detach from both cultures. as a result, they were able to critically examine their experiences. the process led them to recognize the similarities as well as the differences among culture. this realization led them to perceive themselves as a part of larger world. i feel that i have become a part of world citizen. i have met lots of people coming from different cultures and backgrounds. this has made a signicant change[s] in the way i see things. (p.16.b) their views on seeing themselves as a part of larger community showed a development of stronger relationship with other cultures. worldmindedness was considered to be one of the benets of being a sojourn according to brislin in morgan (1998). some sojourners may appreciate and embrace both their local and global identities through honing their intercultural communicative competence, growing in self-condence and being a more intercultural self (jackson, 2012). additionally, as stated by byram et al. (2002), it was the hope that language learners who thus become 'intercultural speakers' will be successful not only in communicating information but also in developing a human relationship with people of other languages and cultures. this resonated brown's (2009) remarks on how the international sojourn has the power to affect a growth in intercultural competence, as well as a shift in selfunderstanding, with long-term implications for personal and professional life. the way sojourners saw themselves as a part of larger world therefore indicates a positive effect of their experiences. knowledge (savoirs) this aspect of byram's icc model involved the knowledge of their own culture as well as other cultures they interact with (byram et al., 2002). through the teaching assistantship experience, 15 out of 19 participants learned about value system, ideology as well as traditions and customs of both their own culture as well as other cultures they encounter. reportedly, they also gained an increased understanding about their own culture. this could owe to their responsibility as language classes teaching assistants in which they were responsible to teach or assist their students to learn about their native language and culture. additional duties such as organizing a culture table in international festivals had also increased the demand for them to better understand their own culture. besides, many people, including their students and people they met, tended to ask questions about participants' culture. in order to be able to give a sound explanation, they learned more about their own culture. the excerpts below may illustrate participants' increased knowledge, the whole experience living in the united states and being a staff member at an american university enabled me to understand many aspects of the american culture ranging from holidays and history, to different conventions that take place within the classroom settings. (p.7.b.) i did not really use to care of my culture before the program. but i had to prepare myself including to enlarge my knowledge about my culture before joining the program because it was my responsibility to introduce it especially to my students. at rst i was kind of being forced to learn more about my culture, journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 51 but then i realized how rich my country is to have so many cultures that i did not really know before. (p.10.a.) it [the sojourn experience] has helped me to gain a better knowledge about the degree of openness of other cultures and how they can interact with mine. (p.18.b.) participants' responses showed that they had gained more understanding both of their own culture, and other cultures, especially american culture where they lived in. this nding conrmed lee's (2009) study on immersion program of english pre-service teachers of hongkong in new zealand, which indicated that participants gained a deeper understanding of new zealand's culture through various activities that the program offered. this conrmed gao's in gleeson and tait (2012) ndings that the participants of his study had become more aware of their cultural background upon the completion of their sojourn experiences. in line with this, engle and engle's in jackson (2008) study revealed that the participants of their study, consisting of american students taking part in a study abroad program in france, admitted to have an increased level of cultural understanding and cross-cultural communication. critical cultural awareness (savoirs' engager) out of 19 participants, 8 participants reported that their sojourn experiences provided them with a chance to critically compare their own culture with other cultures. interestingly, except one brazilian participant (p.12) who talked about how her sojourn experiences made her realize some aspects of the united states were not as perfect as she had imagined, all other seven participants who showed their critical cultural awareness mainly talked about their own native culture. this might happen due to, as a turkish participant (p.19) noted, that her role as a teaching assistant gave her a chance to compare her native culture and the host country culture in order that she could explain to her students the differences and similarities between the two culture clearly. she additionally mentioned that in so doing, she developed a 'foreign' perspective to the issue and subsequently questioned many aspects of her native culture that she had taken for granted before her sojourn experiences. nevertheless, this resonated holmes and o'neill (2012) nding that self-evaluation could contribute towards the development of critical cultural awareness. the process of evaluating and comparing cultures could both positively and negatively affect how the participants view their own culture as well as cultures other than their own. the negative outlook may come from the differences found which leads to the dissatisfaction of one's own culture. the excerpt below illustrated participants' critical cultural awareness. i can now clearly see how judgmental and narrow minded [our nation] can be! (p.8.a., libya) beside that, my experience also affected the way i see work ethics and professionalism. while my colleagues in the states were more casual and relaxed normally, they became really serious when it came to work. what made it very different with [my nation] culture of work is, with [my nation], i feel that they care for what's more articial. for example, we paid a lot of attention to how we should dress properly if possible, wear uniform, to always be present at the ofce although not doing any work. in contrast, my workplace in the states focused more on productivity and efciency. (p.14.a., indonesia) on the other hand, the positive outlook may come from the similarities found which became the common ground to feel satised about their own culture, as could be seen in the excerpt below. seeing my culture from another cultural perspective made me realize how many good things we have here and even with the differences that somehow may make us different in a bad way (i don't know, like recycling for example) could make me clearly see my culture as something special and unique. (p.12.a, brazil) it was a beautiful experience, in the sense that now i perceive myself and my own culture in a different light, i'm more critical of my country's educational system now, it's not that it's bad but it's up for improvement. (p.2.a, tunis) as explained by brown (2009), this outlook shift in understanding sojourners' own culture could journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 52 be the result of exposure to diversity and of the geographical and emotional distance from the home environment. participants reported that their sojourn experiences affected the way they saw both their own culture and other cultures in terms of critical cultural awareness. this nding was in line with larzen-ostermark's (2011) qualitative study on two finnish students' study abroad program in scotland and london, which showed that, upon the completion of the program, both participants gained an increased level of cross-cultural awareness by means of informal conversations with both local and other foreigners. kaikkonen in larzen-ostermark (2011) resonated the same idea that intercultural sojourns could call forth critical cultural awareness. holmes and o'neill's (2012) nding pointed out that sojourners' interaction with foreign culture they came across in the host country challenged, and broke their stereotyping, and consequently made them reassess their assumptions about other cultures. in short, intercultural encounters that they experienced facilitated the growth of participants' critical cultural awareness. conclusion to sum up, the participants reported to perceive that their sojourn experiences of teaching assistantship in the u.s. have helped them to learn more about their own culture as well as other cultures they encountered. specically, participants' sojourn experiences affected their intercultural attitudes (savoir être), knowledge (savoirs), and critical cultural awareness (savoirs' engager). additionally, they also learn to be more understanding, more appreciative of their native culture and other cultures they encounter. moreover, they also found the common ground and focused more on the similarities as opposed to differences they encountered. they also became more critical towards both their own cultures and cultures other than their own. however, interestingly, participants talked more about how they become more critical of their native culture as opposed to other cultures or the host country's culture. their sojourn experiences also helped them build a global identity as being part of bigger world. observing these intercultural communicative competence affected by language teachers' sojourn experiences, it is hoped that, as sercu (2006) put it, could help them explain similarities and differences between culture to their students. meanwhile, this study has several limitations. firstly, the result of this study is not generalizable due to the small number of participants. secondly, the questionnaire used is as a pilot project, and thus a providing vivid method to triangulate will be a good benet for future studies. thirdly, while providing the breadth of the insight represented by the different nationalities of the participants of this study, the questionnaire may have lack of in-depth information on the area of the study. therefore, future research on the same topics may benet indepth data generated through interview. additionally, further research with a more rigorous methodology and triangulation is needed to give broader and more in-depth understanding on the area of investigation. references bouchard, j. (2017). ideology, agency, and intercultural communicative competence. singapore: springer. brown, l. (2009). the transformative power of the international sojourn: an ethnographic study of the international student experience. annals of tourism research, 36(3), 502-521. byram, m. (1997). teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. clevedon: multilingual matters. byram, m., gribkova, b., & starkey, h. (2002). developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching. a practical introduction for teachers. strasbourg: council of europe. byram, m. (2012). language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness–relationships, comparisons and contrasts. language awareness, 21(1-2), 5-13. celce-murcia, m. (2008). rethinking the role of communicative competence in language journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 53 teaching. in intercultural language use and language learning, pp. 41-57. dodrecht, netherlands: springer. dervin, f. (2010). assessing intercultural competence in language learning and teaching: a critical review of current efforts. new approaches to assessment in higher education, 5, 155-172. fantini, a. e. (2009). assessing intercultural competence. in the sage handbook of intercultural competence, 456-476. gleeson, m., & tait, c. (2012). teachers as sojourners: transitory communities in short study-abroad programmes. teaching and teacher education, 28(8), 1144-1151. holmes, p., & o'neill, g. (2012). developing and evaluating intercultural competence: ethnographies of intercultural encounters. international journal of intercultural relations, 36(5), 707-718. house, j. (2008). what is an 'intercultural speaker'?. in intercultural language use and language learning, 7-21. dodrecht, netherlands: springer. jackson, j. (2008). globalization, internationalization, and short-term stays abroad. international journal of intercultural relations, 32(4), 349-358. jackson, j. (2012). education abroad. in routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication, 449-463. larzén-östermark, e. (2011). intercultural sojourns as educational experiences: a narrative study of the outcomes of finnish student teachers' language-practice periods in britain. scandinavian journal of educational research, 55(5), 455-473. lee, j. f. (2009). esl student teachers' perceptions of a short-term overseas immersion programme. teaching and teacher education, 25(8), 1095-1104. morgan, c. (1998). cross cultural encounters. in language learning in intercultural perspectives: approaches through drama and ethnography, byram, m. and flemming, m. cambridge: cambridge university press. sercu, l. (2005). foreign language teachers and intercultural competence : an international investigation. clevedon, gbr: multilingual matters. sercu, l. (2006). the foreign language and intercultural competence teacher: the acquisition of a new professional identity. intercultural education, 17(1), 55-72. timpe, v. (2014). assessing intercultural language learning : the dependence of receptive sociopragmatic competence and discourse competence on learning opportunities and input. language testing and evaluation, 31. frankfurt am main, deu: peter lang ag journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 page 9 page 10 mir abdullah miri 14-29 abstract writing anxiety in an afghan efl setting: voices from five afghan students is a professor of english at the english department, herat university, afghanistan. he has been teaching at the english department since 2011. he holds a master’s degree in teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol) from indiana university of pennsylvania, usa. his research interests include second language wri�ng, language pedagogy, nnest issues, and topics related to access and equity. jamhor joia earned a bachelor’s of arts in english language and literature from herat university, afghanistan in 2017. he has taught english for specific purpose (esp) courses on volunteer basis at herat university for almost one year. currently, he is an adjunct instructor of english at asia higher training center, herat, afghanistan. his research interests include second language wri�ng, language teaching methodology, and esp. language writing anxiety is a phenomenon that majority of efl students, particularly afghan english language learners, experience. to address this issue, this qualitative study explored the reported experiences of five afghan undergraduate english majors, studying at an afghan university, with writing anxiety. after collecting data through semi-structured interviews, the data was transcribed verbatim, and four major themes were constructed. the results revealed that anxiety has both positive and negative effects on students. the findings also showed that participants’ little exposure to writing activities was the major reason behind their writing anxiety. the participants reported that receiving feedback from teachers, doing extensive reading, developing their vocabulary knowledge and practicing writing were the major strategies they had used to overcome writing anxiety. keywords: efl writing, writing anxiety, afghan efl learners, students’ reported experiences journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 1, january 2018 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 15 anxiety is a natural feeling that may happen in different situations, such as preparing for a job interview, speaking in a public place for the first time, or taking an exam. this phenomenon is crucial in education, particularly in language learning process. according to kara (2013), anxiety is considered as “one of the factors that affect the process of learning” (p. 104). besides, chin lin (2009) noted that anxiety is a type of feeling that provides positive attitudes; for example, it warns us to think critically about issues that seem serious to us. he also noted that these emotions and feelings help us to evaluate potential threats and respond to them in an appropriate way, perhaps by paying attention. writing is one of the main language skills which requires visual memory, attention, study process and good performance (boniface, candria & contento, 2008). however, anxiety is something natural that we all have in common, regardless of the way we perceive and respond to it. in the same vein, negari and rezaabadi (2012) noted that writing is a crucial skill which requires too much time. they argued that some students prefer teachers who are strict and require students to write accurately, while some students prefer to work with peers as well as their teachers to improve their writing skill. anxiety is a familiar emotion because it is part of everyone’s life, especially in education settings. it is inevitable that how students feel affects their learning process. for example, although teachers postulate that there are students who have positive attitudes toward writing, some english teachers assert that students’ negative attitudes toward writing negatively affects their written production. for instance, in some of our courses, when teachers asked students to write, students were concerned with making mistakes and performed poorly. we believe teachers’ reaction towards students’ writing anxiety affects students’ progress in writing. that is, if they keep blaming the students, students’ anxiety might increase. however, according to our experience, some teachers with positive feedback and comments could help students to improve their writing skill dramatically. since anxiety is common among efl learners, this qualitative report is concerned with the reported experiences of students with writing anxiety. besides, research suggests that instructors should seek effective ways to ease anxiety that students might feel while learning and writing a language to support successful language learning experiences. consequently, as we come to understand anxiety better, there is much that we can do as individual to take steps to reduce it and learn to appreciate our emotions without fear which will help us more. by focusing on the role of anxiety in writing performance among students of writing classes, we hope to provide some genuine understanding of anxiety and how it can be addressed to successfully support writers in our context. although there is a rich body of literature on writing anxiety, there is a gap in literature on this topic in the context of afghanistan. therefore, this qualitative study explores the reported experiences of afghan english students regarding writing anxiety. on the hand, it seems that the topic of anxiety works as a serious/critical issue for some efl students at schools and universities in afghanistan, as the culture of writing is so low in afghanistan. thus, as published research on second language introduction journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 16 writing anxiety in afghanistan context is rare, there is an urgent need for further research to understand its nature and influences on efl students’ writing skill. this study is highly significant as it gives voice to afghan english language learners and investigates their reported experiences with writing anxiety when writing a text. the study will also allow teachers to learn from students’ perceptions regarding learning anxiety, and perhaps modify their teaching philosophy to address students’ needs. literature review language anxiety anxiety can play a great role in giving negative or positive feeling for learning progress as well as writing achievements of students. there is a close relationship between the levels of anxiety and how students perform in their language learning as horwitz (2001) found that language anxiety is something related to students’ achievement, even anxiety can hide students’ performance. he claimed this because there is significant negative relation between students who are anxious and their writing achievement. in the same vein, ningsih and kusumaningputri (2015) also noted that when the students score is low for their achievement in their writing classes they were affected negatively. this negative effect of writing anxiety may occur to many students, even those who have a low-level anxiety. thus, anxiety can affect writing students and their performance, no matter if their level of anxiety is high or low. some researchers postulate that anxiety even exists among advanced adult students of foreign languages (see ewald, 2007; marcos-llinas & garau, 2009). for example, ewald (2007) and marcos-llinas and garau (2009) pointed out that foreign language anxiety is common among advanced learners and it increases when their language and linguistic ability are not improved. gregersen and horwitz (2002) discovered that students suffer from high levels of foreign language anxiety that is typical for intelligent students as well, because, they start to make great expectations of themselves and underestimate towards presenting. this shows that those students are over concerned about others’ opinions and they will pay too great attention to errors that will damage their concentration on their lessons. lightbrown and spada (2006) defined language anxiety as “feelings of worry, nervousness, and stress that many students experience while learning a second language” (p. 61). according to this definition, it can be argued that learners who experience anxiety may feel stressed, and they might decide not to participate in their class discussions, or may not do their homework on time. anxiety can be considered as one of the major factors of academic performance. for instance, tanveer (2007) indicated that “students’ feeling of stress, anxiety and nervousness may impede their language learning and performance abilities” (p. 1). this implies that anxiety avoids us from doing language tasks correctly. according to the previous studies in language learning, anxiety has the fundamental role in language learning due to its negative relationship to learners’ language learning performance (atay & kurt, 2006, p. 127). consequently, the role of anxiety in learning can be clearly understood. writing anxiety as previously stated, anxiety itself is one of the important and controversial issues journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 17 ineducation, specially in writing learning. in advanced american english longman (2005), anxiety is defined as a feeling of being worried about something that may happen, or it is a feeling of desiring something very much, but being worried that you will not succeed. this anxiety can have great impact on writing skill as karakaya (2011) defined anxiety as a critical and effective imagination and thought in language learning and writing process. but, these effects can be positive and negative. mcload (1987) also defined writing anxiety as a type of anxiety related to some situations in which a person has difficulty during the writing process, (as cited in bayat, 2014, p. 1134). according to banga (2016), anxiety is something general and public for different irregularities that causes nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worrying. hassan (2001) also described writing anxiety as a general obstacle of writing activity in a context which is observed by the individuals who necessarily need some amount of writing skill for evaluation of that writing (as cited in negari & rezaabadi, 2012, p. 2). from this finding we can predict that writing anxiety is a considerable point in educational fields and language learning skills like writing. the results of al-sawalha, salem, chow and foo’s (2012) study showed that majority of the jordanian efl students experienced high level of writing anxiety. from the above-mentioned literature on writing anxiety in efl context, it can, therefore, be argued that there are students who experience writing anxiety when composing a text. writing anxiety in efl context according to rodríguez, delgado and colón (2009), being nervous, stressed or anxious seem to be typical for efl learners. however, it is not always the same. writing anxiety is a considerable challenge that mostly happens when efl students want to write something (al-ahmad, 2003). he pointed out that writing anxiety in efl creates many challenges as it often negatively affects the learners’ writings, so something should be done to reduce students’ anxiety and stress. likewise, latif (2007) studied writing anxiety in foreign language contexts and discovered that arab students were not able to write in english at schools and university levels because writing tasks and activities were less than what was needed. besides, erkan and saban (2011) asserted that many of the turkish efl students in their study did not like to write at all since they had experienced writing anxiety. on the other hand, zhao et al. (2013) argued context directly affects the level of writing anxiety. they found out that anxiety was less common among those students who had visited the country in which the target language was spoken and written as the first language. to illustrate, cheng et al. (1999) also investigated a study related to second language (l2) writing anxiety in relation to second language writing achievement. the result yielded that l2 anxiety and l2 writing anxiety can impact students negatively in different ways. besides, he found that low level students were more anxious while writing compared to high level students. lin, chin and ho, shuan (2009) described that students’ writing ability is very important because it can impact their future, particularly careers which require jobseekers to have high english communication skills. these scholars also found that when students were asked to write a formal text, they could not perform very well because they were anxious as they were limited with the journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 18 writing genre. learning strategies are considered to have a powerful effect on foreign language anxiety. students who are confident about their learning strategies are likely not to experience high level of anxiety (yan & horwtiz, 2008). however, according to negari and rezaabadi (2012), when we put students under low and high anxiety situations, they will try to perform better in high anxiety situations; they will care more about grammar and vocabulary choice and other skills while taking a writing test. likewise, rezaei and jafari (2104) argued that efl students face more problems during the writing process since they experience writing anxiety, such as fear of making mistakes, generating ideas, etc. finally, they suggested that educational services should care about the needs that efl learners have in educational field because iranian students need to have a clear understanding of their writing to reduce the fear of being checked of writing ability and proficiency. sources of writing anxiety different factors contribute in causing writing anxiety among english language learners. kara (2013), for instance, noted that the course materials which do not contain appropriate and adequate explanations and writing tasks can cause students to experience writing anxiety. besides, chin lin (2009) claimed that academic or formal writing could cause anxiety because students mostly think that their freedom and creativity of writing might be limited. writing anxiety affects students’ motivation and their willingness to participate in writing courses (martinez, kock, and cass, 2011). in the same vein, özbay and zorbaz (2011) argued that “writing anxiety can be manifested emotionally as sadness, anger, and fear; or physically as various cramps when a person is required to write” (p. 36). according to bruning and horn (2000) and schweiker-marra & marra (2000), writing anxiety occurs because of language complexity in general and complexity of writing as a skill (as cited in kara, 2013, p. 104). students’ weak performance also may affect their writing and cause them to be anxious about their performance. as tsai and cheng (2004) explored, writing anxiety is related to students’ poor performances in english writing exams and the writing that is needed for a job, (p. 101). the results of negari and rezaabadi (2012) suggested that the students felt less nervous in writing when the teacher announced that their papers will not be scored in contrast to the time when their papers were to be scored by the teacher. so, we can say that lower score of writing tasks can affect students’ writing performance negatively. in shang’s (2012) study, students reported that their english writing anxiety was caused by their fear of making mistakes in language structures such as grammar and vocabulary (p. 60). in term of causes of writing anxiety, abdul latif (2007) indicated the following factors as the reasons for high english writing apprehension “lack of linguistic knowledge, low foreign language self-esteem, poor history of writing achievement and perceived writing performance improvement, low english writing self-efficacy and instructional practice of english writing tutors” (p. 73). moreover, the findings of rezaei, jafari, and younas (2014) showed that iranian efl students experienced high level of writing anxiety. also, he reported that fear of teacher’s negative feedback, low self-confidence in writing and poor language knowledge were reported as the main causes of second language writing anxiety (p. 7). all these journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 19 present the reasons of anxiety and concluded that anxiety is an unnatural phenomenon that will need to take some steps to decrease and avoid it. generally, it can be argued that there are many different factors that cause writing anxiety. the impacts of anxiety on students’ writing there are several factors which indicate that anxiety negatively affects students’ writing. many studies have described that students with higher anxiety received lower grades on essays, written exams, and their writing tests (daly, 1985; lee & krashen, 1997). boniface, candria, contento (2008), in their observation discovered and saw that the children who experienced high level of anxiety made more errors in dictation and spelling tasks. this result indicated that students who had stress made more spelling errors in dictation of words in comparison. on the other hand, negari and rezaabadi (2012) claimed that when students were experiencing higher level of anxiety, in their final exam their marks weren’t just better in one part of their writing but it was good in all parts. the results of this study demonstrated that these students may be able to improve their concentration in general and their writing skill in particular. thus, anxiety can affect students’ writing performance positively and negatively. the negative effects happen when students cannot overcome their writing anxiety. according to ningsih and kusumaningputri (2015), anxiety, even low-level anxiety, can negatively affect students’ grades if they do not overcome it. this means that anxiety can function as a controller to avoid the error as well as mistake, if the students try to overcome and use from their anxiety and concern in a useful way they will accomplish a better result. writing anxiety is experienced through testing due to students’ worry that they will perform poorly during an examination or they will fail after finishing their test, as the research revealed (e.g., herwitt & stephenson, 2011), “the quality of students’ performance is poorer and they get worth grades than non-anxious examinees” (p. 9). therefore, it can be argued that writing anxiety is a common challenge among efl learners, which causes them to be worried throughout their learning process. students’ attitudes toward writing anxiety some educational studies show that when anxiety affects students, they will show reaction toward it. for example, yaman (2010) discovered that “as students’ writing anxiety increased, their attitudes about turkish courses changed negatively” (p. 271). also, uçgun (2011) found that the writing anxiety levels of the students differed in terms of the number of books they read, (p. 546). kurt and atay (2007) reported that students who received peer feedback significantly reduced their levels of writing anxiety, became more aware of their mistakes, used their peers’ opinions to improve their essays, and looked to writing process from a different perspective, (as cited in rodríguez, delgado, & colón, 2009, p. 24). this shows that having writing skills and techniques has positive effects on the writing anxiety. if the students use from each other’s opinions and ideas, they can perform better and better and we think it will help them to decrease their writing anxiety. according to oğuzhan (2013), students express their ideas freely and feel less anxious when they write in the environments journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 20 where they can carry out their creative ideas without limitation. finally, the students may show their reactions toward writing through nervous and unexpected attitudes. for example, tsai and cheng (2004) discovered that students with somatic (physical) anxiety show physiological reactions, such as unpleasant feelings, and nervousness, etc. to anxiety. however, there would be some students who have another presumption of writing and anxiety; for example, alico (2016) discovered that for some of the students, writing is a lot of fun and they enjoy writing when they are writing down their ideas, they do not fear of being checked and evaluated and feel confident in their ability to clearly express their ideas in writing. from these finding we can guess that the skill of writing is not an overall concern that we have in our daily classes. also, there are some other aspects and factors that help students to reduce their level of anxiety in their writing performance. for example, ezhdehakosh’s and zamanian (2013) pointed out that e-mail appears to have the potential effect to decrease students’ anxiety in their writing tasks because it motivates them and rises their interests about their learning. this shows that when the students use online writing, they feel more comfortable and enjoy from their writing online than writing by their hand and this method can be helpful for decreasing writing anxiety. strategies for overcoming writing anxiety writing is an important issue in which many people including professional writers like professors experience usual concerns about writing. during studying and taking writing courses, students might experience writing anxiety. therefore, they need to think about some ways that can help them remove or at least decrease that anxiety. based on some scholars, there are some strategies that can help students prevent and decrease such anxiety from their academic performance. as rezaei, jafari, and younas (2014) said, teachers should guide their students to minimize their writing errors. they said that through positive reinforcement writing anxiety can be lowered as well (p. 7). thus, when students face writing anxiety in writing classes, the writing teacher ought to consider the students and take steps to prevent writing anxiety. furthermore, tsai and cheng (2004) suggested that teachers should pay more attention to help and show their students a positive and realistic perception of their writing performance for the development of their writing skills; they should help students learn to face difficulties, even failures without losing confidence. as the result of these ideas, writing teachers are advised to assess students’ writing performance according to the standards they use while assessing their students’ writing performance. in respect to that, teachers should know that some students may become highly anxious about second language writing, and this is associated with the class environment. for instance, negari and rezaabadi (2012) suggested that it is essential for teachers to look for effective ways to decrease writing anxiety in a way which does not make students so carefree that they do not concentrate on their tasks, especially in the case of l2 writing. also, alico (2016) made it clear that to make english writing successful, english teachers should explore first the writing anxiety of learners as well as their language learning motivation to serve as the measure for better teaching and learning of english composition writing. besides, alico said that journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 21 teachers are recommended to apply writing tasks frequently because it forces the students to participate in the learning process more. this can be another way to increase the students’ writing performance and decrease their anxiety for further writing. beside the mentioned strategies and ways of overcoming writing, we also will do this study to find out what the students will suggest as their recommendations for decreasing writing anxiety. methodology the current research employs a qualitative research design to explore the perceived reported experiences of five afghan english language majors regarding writing anxiety. merriam (2009) argued that questions related to perceptions and reported experiences could be investigated only through qualitative research design. she specifically noted, “qualitative researchers are interested in understanding how people interpret their experiences, how they construct their worlds, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (p. 5). besides, gay and airasian (2000) asserted that qualitative research design allows researchers to collect “holistic perspective which preserves the complexities of human behavior” (p. 56). the term qualitative research is also associated with arrangement of different methods, perspectives and approaches. for instance, mason (2002) pointed out, “qualitative method searches whatever it might certainly represent a unified set of techniques or philosophies, and indeed has grown out of a narrow range of intellectual and disciplinary traditions” (p. 53). the participants for this research were five afghan english language majors; three males and two females. purposeful sampling was used for choosing the participants. the recruited participants for this study were all efl learners at the english department, faculty of language and literature, peace university (pseudonym). they all had the experience of taking at least one writing course in their program. the following table briefly demonstrates the demographic information of the participants. table 1 participants and demographic information participants (pseudonym) gender cohort age hamid ali zahra sara mohammad male male female female male senior senior senior senior senior about 22 about 23 about 22 about 22 about 24 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 22 semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the participants. that is, follow-up questions were asked during the interview to collect in-depth description about what is happening on the ground regarding students’ writing anxiety. after conducting the interviews, the data were transcribed verbatim. with the research questions in mind, the transcripts were read several times to code the data. after coding the data, the codes were combined into some categories, and finally the categories were put into four major themes. in order to check the validity of the data, the findings were shared with the study participants to check whether they were accurate. besides, another research-scholar was requested to conduct a complete review of our study and highlight the major strengths and weaknesses of our research. in the next section, we discuss and interpret the major themes in detail. results and discussion this study attempted to explore the perceived reported experiences of the participants with writing anxiety. after coding the data, the codes were divided into the four following major topics: (a) students’ perceptions of writing anxiety (b) why writing anxiety? (c) the impact of writing anxiety on students’ writing, and (d) how to overcome writing anxiety? students’ perceptions of writing anxiety all participants in this study have reported that writing is one of the pivotal skills of a language, which helps learners to share their ideas and communicate with others. for example, sara, one of the participants stated, “writing is like talking with others.” however, if students experience anxiety before or during writing, the quality of their writing will be decreased. atay and kurt (2006) argued that anxiety has the fundamental role in language learning due to its negative relationship to learners’ language learning performance. like many published research on anxiety, the participants in this study all reported that anxiety is something natural in language learning (see ewald, 2007; marcos-llinas & garau, 2009). they described writing anxiety as being worried and anxious when producing a written text. similarly, karakaya (2011) defined anxiety as a critical and effective imagination and thought in language learning and writing process. however, these effects can be positive and negative. banga (2016) highlighted that anxiety is something general and public for different irregularities that causes nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worrying. besides, marcos-llinas and garau (2009) asserted that foreign language anxiety is common among advanced learners, and it increases when their language and linguistic ability is not improved. however, according to the participants’ perceived reported experiences, anxiety is something that stands against the improvement of language skills, especially writing. they all argued that anxiety negatively affects language learning, expect mohammad, who claimed that a little anxiety is good for students because it makes learners focus on their writing. in the same vein, gregersen and horwitz (2002) found that second language learners suffer from high levels of foreign language anxiety that is typical for intelligent students as well because they start to make great expectations of themselves. this indicates that students are over-concerned with the opinion of others and will pay great attention to errors that will help them to be careful journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 23 while writing and the outcome of that is good for students. the attitudes of students toward writing anxiety are different as our participants had different perspectives toward writing. they mostly had negative attitudes toward writing anxiety; for example, zahra and hamid reporting that they used to get anxious when experiencing anxiety in writing. zahra specifically noted that writing anxiety undermines her productivity. she usually kept thinking about making mistakes or not writing correctly. she postulated that she used to hate writing because of experiencing anxiety— “i used to start crying just because of not being confident about my writing skill and believing that my writing is poor.” one of our participants reported that he did not want to share his ideas and feelings in his writing because of feeling anxious. this finding provides conclusive supports for oğuzhan’s (2013) argument about writing anxiety and students’ productivity. according to oğuzhan (2013), when students are not experiencing anxiety, particularly in their writing, they invest more and show creativity in their work. likewise, tsai and cheng (2004) discovered that the students who have somatic (physical) anxiety they show physiological reactions to anxiety, such as unpleasant feelings, and nervousness. attitudes of mohammad and sara toward writing anxiety were like those of other participants. they also resisted against writing anxiety even though to some extent they felt anxious about their writings. this indicates that there are some students who strive for overcoming writing anxiety. for example, alico (2016) discovered that writing is a fun process for some students even though they experience anxiety. it is enjoyable for them because writing allows them to express their ideas. they try not to think about being judged or evaluated by others; they trust their writing skill and treat writing as a way to express their emotions. therefore, it can be argued that writing, although it can create anxiety among students, is perceived as a critical skill in language learning. reasons for writing anxiety published research on writing indicates that that are several factors affecting writing anxiety. for instance, kara (2013) found that the coursebook may cause some students to fail as they do not provide numerous opportunities to practice the language. for instance, most textbooks lack sufficient explanations or exercises. they also do not provide students with chances to practice various stages of writing process, which cause students not to be prepared for the final product, resulting in experiencing writing anxiety. the findings of this study yielded that there are some other reasons that follow kara’s findings. the participants mostly noted that low proficiency in writing skill, inappropriate knowledge of grammatical structure and vocabulary have been the major reasons behind their writing anxiety. for some of them like ali and hamid, it had been difficult to choose a topic because they did not have enough information about the topics; they had difficulty generating ideas. the participants also reported that not having detailed knowledge of the rules and strategies for composing an academic text (e.g., an essay) had caused anxiety in them, which is corroborated by kara (2013). besides, writing anxiety occurs because of language complexity in general and complexity of writing as a skill (see bruning & horn, 2000; schweiker-marra journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 24 & marra, 2000). another factor which contributes to writing anxiety, according to all our participants, is fear of making mistakes. they reported that being afraid of making mistakes made them reluctant to compose a text. the results of negari and rezaabadi (2012) suggested that when students were assured that their writing will not be scored, they performed better comparing to the exam situations. likewise, shang (2012) showed that fear of making grammatical and vocabulary mistakes were the major causes of writing anxiety among english learners. although lack of ability of students’ performance may also have effect on their writing, sara, one of our participants, claimed that students who had low self-confident would be anxious about their writing process. moreover, tsai and cheng (2004) asserted that writing anxiety is related to students’ poor performances on english writing exams and writing that is needed for a job. according to abdul latif (2007), the following factors are the reasons for high english writing apprehension: “lack of linguistic knowledge, low foreign language self-esteem, poor history of writing achievement and perceived writing performance improvement, low english writing self-efficacy and instructional practice of english writing tutors” (p. 73). also, the findings of rezaei, jafari, and younas (2014) showed that fear of teacher’s negative feedback, low self-confidence in writing and poor linguistic knowledge were reported as the main causes of second language writing anxiety. as an exception, two of our participants, zahra and sara, claimed the teacher’s knowledge and qualification affected students’ level of anxiety because if a teacher does not equip students with the required writing skills, they will feel frustrated and worried about their writing as they lose the opportunity to learn writing techniques. the impact of writing anxiety on students’ writing all the participants, except mohammad, argued that anxiety has had a negative effect on their writing skill. according to mohammad, anxiety caused him to focus more on his writing skill and produce a text with fewer mistakes. on the other hand, one of the major findings of the current study is students’ fear of losing scores because of anxiety, especially writing anxiety. this is corroborated by herwitt and stephenson (2011). according to these scholars “the students whose quality of performance is poorer and get worth grades than non-anxious examinees” (p. 9). in addition, ningsih and kusumaningputri (2015) found that even those students who have very low level of anxiety also received low scores if they are unable to bring changes in their anxiety. on the other hand, we found that except ali, all the other participants reported that anxiety has caused them to be afraid of losing their scores because it had prevented them from expressing their ideas as they wanted. the other effect that our participants mentioned due to anxiety was making mistakes when writing a text. this happened when they could not generate ideas or remember information. boniface, candria, contento (2008) described that children who experienced high level of anxiety made more errors in dictation and spelling tasks. besides, our participants reported that they have experienced anxiety during exams as well. their reported experiences are like negari and rezaabadi’s (2012) findings, which indicate that learners who had journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 25 participated in their study did not have high level of anxiety during their final exam. likewise, ningsih and kusumaningputri (2015) argued that when students’ writing scores were low, they become more anxious; that is, the result negatively affected their attitudes toward their writing. this negative effect of writing anxiety may occur to all students even for the learners who may have a very low anxiety. that is, anxiety can function as a controller to avoid making error if students try to overcome and use from their anxiety as a tool to accomplish a task. how to overcome writing anxiety? the participants in this study mostly have practiced different writing activities and vocabulary exercises to overcome their writing anxiety. they also reported that the number of writing courses helped them to learn more strategies for decreasing their anxiety level in writing courses. mohammad, one of the participants, mentioned extensive reading as a strategy he used to reduce his writing anxiety. he noted that reading various texts has helped him to learn more lexicons, collocations and sentence structures, resulting considering the words usages when composing something. in the same vein, uçgun (2011) found that the writing anxiety levels of the students differed in terms of the number of books they read, (p. 546). sara and zahra, two of our participants, claimed that a skilled and experienced writing teacher can significantly help students decrease their writing anxiety level and improve their self-confidence. this argument is corroborated by rezaei, jafari, and younas’ (2014) study, which indicated that teachers should guide their students to minimize their writing errors. they asserted that “through positive reinforcement, writing anxiety can be lowered” as well (p. 7). moreover, tsai and cheng (2004) suggested that the teacher should pay more attention to help and show their students a positive and realistic perception of their writing performance for the development of their writing skills; they should help students learn to face difficulties, even failures without losing confidence (p. 109). besides, there is a need for an intelligent teacher who can help the students as it is supposed to. this had been useful for participants as well, as sara and zahra told that a good teacher who knows about writing will guide us on the right way as we need to understand and learn writing skill in language learning process. negari and rezaabadi (2012) suggested that it is essential for teachers to look for effective ways of decreasing writing anxiety in a way in which does not make students so carefree that they do not even concentrate on their tasks, especially in the case of their l2 writing. conclusion and implications this study explored the reported experiences of afghan english learners with writing anxiety. it specifically investigated the challenges students perceived with writing anxiety and the strategies they employed for overcoming those challenges. afghan students’ recommendations towards ways for helping students with writing anxiety were described as well. the current study has several implications for teaching, research and higher education. in the light of the findings of this research, english teachers in afghanistan need to treat writing as a process and incorporate variety of in-class writing activities. they can use formative assessment to journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 decrease students’ anxiety. this allows teachers to provide students with constructive feedback, help them with generating ideas, and utilize words and grammatical structures correctly. moreover, there is a conspicuous lack of writing support centers (e.g., writing center, writing lab) in afghan university settings. afghan higher education authorities can establish writing support centers where students get free consultations on their writing. as the findings revealed, afghan english students in writing courses do not receive regular feedback on their writing since large heterogeneous courses and workload prevent teachers from doing so. thus, establishing writing studious, writing lab or centers can highly help students improve their writing in general and reduce their level of writing anxiety in particular. since this is a qualitative study, the results cannot be generalized to all afghan english language teachers. other researchers can conduct a quantitative study and collect data from a larger sample. besides, teachers’ perceptions and reported experiences are not explored in this study. further research should be conducted to explore teachers’ voices, their challenges and recommendations toward students’ writing anxiety. future research can also describe the effects of writing anxiety on students’ mental and physical states. it is also needed to compare the level of anxiety male and female english learners experience in writing courses. 26 references abdul-latif, m. (2007). factors accounting for egyptian efl university students’ negative writing affect. essex graduate student papers in language and linguistics, 9, 57–82. al-ahmad, s. (2003). the impact of collaborative learning on l1 and l2 college students' apprehension about and attitudes toward writing. unpublished doctoral dissertation, indiana university of pennsylvania. al-sawalha, salem, m. a., chow. f., & foo, v. t. (2012). the effects of writing apprehension in english on the writing process of jordanian efl students at yarmouk university. literacies and translation university sains malaysia. international interdisciplinary journal of education, 1(1), 6–14. alico, c. j. (2016). writing anxiety and language learning mo¬¬tivation: examining causes, indicators, and relationship. communication and linguistics studies. 2(1), 6–12. atay, d., & kurt, g. (2006). prospective teachers and l2 writing anxiety. auckland, new zealand. asian efl journal: english language and research, 8(4), 123–141. banga, l.c. (2016). academic anxiety of adolescent boys and girls in himachal pradesh. himachal pradesh university shimla. journal of new horizons in education, 6, 7–12. bayat, n. (2014). the effect of the process writing approach on writing success and anxiety. akdeniz university. educational sciences: theory & practice, 14(3), 1133–1141. boniface, p., candria, l., & contento, s. (2008). reading and writing: what is the relationship with anxiety and depression? department of psychology. university of bologna, viale berti pichat 5, bologna 40127. read writ, 21. 609–625. bruning, r., & horn, c. (2000). developing motivation to write. educational psychologist, 35(1), 25–37. journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 27 cheng, y., horwitz, e., & schallert, d. (1999). language anxiety: differentiating writing and speaking components. language learning, 49(3), 417–446. chin lin, g.h. (2009). an exploration into foreign language writing anxiety from taiwanese university students’ perspectives. department of foreign languages and literature, national sun yat-sen university. annual conference on language, 7, 307–318. daly, j.a. (1985). writing apprehension. in m. rose (ed.), when a writer can’t write: studies in writer’s block and other composing-process problems. new york: guilford. (n. j) 43–82. erkan, d. y., & saban, a. (2011). writing performance relative to writing apprehension, self-efficacy in writing, and attitudes towards writing: a correlational study in turkish tertiary-level efl. the asian efl journal quarterly, 13(1), 164–192. ewald, j. d. (2007). foreign language learning anxiety in upper-level classes: involving students as researchers. foreign language annals, 40(1), 122–142. ezhdehakosh, m., & zamanian, m. (2013). the effect of conventional tools and e-mail on writing anxiety of iranian efl students. department of english languages, shiraz branch, islamic azad university shiraz, iran. journal of studies in learning and teaching english, 1(4), 51–69. gay, l. r., & airasian, p. (2000). educational research: competencies for analysis and application (6th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill, prentice hall. 12–152. greenhalgh, t., and taylor, r. (1997). how to read a paper: papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research). department of primary care and population sciences, university college london medical school: 315,740–743. gregersen, t., & horwitz, e.k. (2002). language learning and perfectionism: anxious and non-anxious language learners’ reactions to their own oral performance. the modern language journal, 86 (4), 562–570. griffee, t. d. (2012). an introduction to second language research methods design and data. university of california, berkeley. 1–213. hassan, b. a. (2001). the relationship of writing apprehension and self-esteem to the writing quality and quantity of efl university students. mansoura faculty of education journal. retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed459671.pdf [2014]. herwitt, e., & stephenson, j. (2011). foreign language anxiety and oral exam performance: a replication of phillips’s mlj study. the modern language journal, 00, 1–20. horwitz, e. k. (2001). language anxiety and achievement. annual review of applied linguistics, 21, 112–126. kara, s. (2013). writing anxiety: a case study on students’ reasons for anxiety in writing classes. anadolu üniversitesi, türkiye. anadolu journal of educational sciences international, 5,103–111. karakaya, i. (2011). developing a writing anxiety scale and examining writing anxiety based on various variables. ondokuz mayıs university. educational sciences: theory & practice 11(2), 703–707. kurt, g. & atay, d. (2007). the effects of peer feedback on the writing anxiety of prospective turkish teachers of efl. journal of theory and practice in education, 3, 12–23. latif, m. a. (2007). the factors accounting for the egyptian efl university students’ negative writing affect. essex graduate student papers in language & linguistics., 9, 57–82. lee, s.y., & krashen, s.d. (1997). writing apprehension in chinese as a first language. review of applied linguistics, 13(3), 27–37. lightbrown, p. m., & spada, n. (2006). how languages are learned (3rd edition). new york, ny: oxford university press. theory journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 28 and practice in language studies, 2(12), 53–68. lin, chin. h. g., & ho, shuan. m. m. (2009). an exploration into foreign language writing anxiety from taiwanese university students’ perspectives. department of foreign languages and literature, national sun yat-sen university. ncue fourth annual conference on language, teaching, literature, linguistics, translations and interpretation. 307–318. longman advanced learner's dictionary (2nd edition). (2005). longman university press, longman. marcos-llinas, m., & garau, m. j. (2009). effects of language anxiety on three proficiency level courses of spanish as a foreign language. foreign language annals, 42(1), 94–111. martinez, c. t., kock, n., & cass, j. (2011). pain and pleasure in short essay writing: factors predicting university students’ writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 54(5), 351–360. mason, j. (2002). qualitative researching. london: thousand oaks mcload, s. (1987). some thoughts about feelings: the affective domain and the writing process. college composition and communication, 38(4), 426–435. merriam, s. b. (2009). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. negari, g. m., & rezaabadi, o. t. (2012). too nervous to write? the relationship between anxiety and efl writing. theory and practice in language studies, 2(12), 2578–2586. negari, g.m., & rezaabadi, t.o. (2012). too nervous to write? the relationship between anxiety and efl writing. university of sistan & baluchistan, iran. theory and practice in language studies, 2(12), 2578–2586. ningsih, t. a., & kusumaningputri, r.w. (2015). foreign language writing anxiety in relation to students' achievement. english department, faculty of letters, jember university. jln. kalimantan, 37, 1–15. oğuzhan, s. (2013). effects of creative drama technique on writing anxiety of the students. adiyaman üniversitesi. türkçenin eğitimi öğretimi özel sayisi, 6,976–992. özbay, m., & zorbaz, k. z. (2011). daly miller’ in yazma kaygisi ölçeği’nin türkçeye uyarlanmasi. mustafa kemal üniversitesi. sosyal bilimler enstitüsü dergisi, 8(16), 33–48. rezaei, m., & jafari, m. (2104). investigating the levels, types, and causes of writing anxiety among iranian efl students: a mixed method design. english department, hafez institute of higher education. international conference on current trends in elt, social and behavioral sciences, 98, 1545–1554. rezaei, m.m., jafari, m.s., & younas, m. (2014). iranian efl students’ writing anxiety: levels, causes and implications. shiraz university of medical sciences. shiraz, iran. english for specific purposes world, 42(15), 1-10. rodríguez, y., delgado, v., & colón, j. m. (2009). foreign language writing anxiety among pre-service efl teachers. lenguas modernas, 21–31. rodríguez, y., delgado, v., & colón, j.m. (2009). foreign language writing anxiety among preserves efl teachers. universidad de oriente, venezuela. lenguas modernas, 33, 21–31. schweiker-marra, k. e., & marra, w. t. (2000). investigating the effects of prewriting activities on writing performance and anxiety of at-risk students. reading psychology, 21, 99–114. shang, h. f. (2012). the relationship between writing anxiety and efl university students’ writing proficiency. uk, london. manuscript of 19th international conference on learning, 9, 57–82. tanveer, m. (2007). investigating of the factors that cause language anxiety for efl/esl learners in learning speaking and journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 29 the influence it casts on communication in the target language. scotland, university of glascow. unpublished phd dissertation, 5, 1–13. tsai, p., & cheng, y.s. (2004). the effects of rhetorical task type, english proficiency, and writing anxiety on senior high school students’ english writing performance. national taiwan. normal university. english teaching & learning, 3(33), 90–131. uçgun, d. (2011). the study on the writing anxiety levels of primary 6, 7 and 8th year students in terms of several variables. turkish education department, faculty of education, nigde university. nigde/turkey, 6, 542–547. yaman, h. (2010). writing anxiety of turkish students: scale development and the working procedures in terms of various variables. sakarya university, faculty of education. international online journal of educational sciences, 2(1), 267–289. yan, j. x., & horwitz, e. k. (2008). learners’ perceptions of how anxiety interacts with personal and instructional factors to influence their achievement in english: a qualitative analysis of efl learners in china. language learning, 58(1), 151–183. zhao, a., guo, y., & dynia, j. (2013). foreign language reading anxiety: chinese as a foreign language in the united states. the modern language journal, 97(3), 764–778. appendix a individual interview protocols thank you for your willingness to participate in this study. the purpose of this research is to investigate your perceived reported experience with writing anxiety. this interview will take approximaly 30–45 minutes of your time. the structure of the interview is semi-structured; that is, follow-up questions might be asked during the interview based on your responses to the questions. section i: background questions • how long have you been studying english? • how many writing courses have your taken? section ii: reported experiences of efl writing students regarding writing anxiety • do you like writing skill? how do you feel about your writing skill? • how you ever face any challenges during the writing courses you have taken? • have you experienced anxiety or stress in your writing courses? • what do you do when you have anxiety during your courses? • what were the reasons or causes behind the anxiety you felt or experienced? do you think those reasons are very important in writing skill? why? • what are the effects of writing anxiety on your writing or your daily life? • what were the signs of your anxiety while you were writing in writing classes? • do you think the anxiety you experienced affected your writing? • what strategies did you use to overcome to your anxiety in writing courses? were they efficient and useful? why? section iii: recommendations and of the writing students • are you interested in taking more writing courses? why? • would you like to encourage other students to take writing courses? • what are your suggestions and advice for those students who want to take writing courses in the future? • do you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding the topics we discussed? 04 eko purwanti.cdr eko purwanti 30-43 is an english lecturer at english l a n g u a g e e d u c a t i o n d e p a r t m e n t o f u n i v e r s i t a s muhammadiyah yogyakarta. s h e e a r n e d h e r p h d f r o m monash university, australia in november 2016. her research i n t e r e s t s i n v o l v e t e a c h e r professional learning, reective practice, collaborative reective p r a c t i c e , l e s s o n s t u d y a n d p r o f e s s i o n a l l e a r n i n g c o m m u n i t y ( p l c ) additionally, she is interested in linguistics, especially issues related to sociolinguistics and pragmatics. abstract the establishment of teacher and lecturer law no. 14/ 2005 has an implication that all lecturers in indonesia should maintain their professionalism in order to improve the teaching and learning process. in an attempt to be professional, lecturers are expected to carry out on-going professional learning. this study aims to seek the perceptions of english as a foreign language lecturers about their professional learning in a language training centre of a private university in indonesia. underpinned by interpretive paradigm and naturalistic design, the study employed qualitative methods using focus group interviews by which seven efl lecturers were included as the participants. the nding of the study reveals that professional learning activities conducted by the participants are perceived as a compulsory activity, a result of their experiences, their learning orientation, their learning passion, and their internal motivation. these ndings, in fact, corroborate the principles of adult learning theory of malcolm knowles called andragogy which is based on the learning principles such as self-concept, readiness to learn, orientation to learning, adult learner experience, and motivation to learn. keywords: andragogy, adult learning, professional learning, teaching competencies background understanding the efl lecturers' beliefs about their professional learning from the lens of malcolm knowles theory of andragogy the profession of teachers and lecturers in indonesia has an important role to improve the quality of human resources in indonesia. this role has been strengthened by the issuance of the teacher and lecturer law no.14/2005 in which all teachers and lecturers in indonesia are stipulated as profession (supriatna, 2010). thus, to be regarded as professionals, all 31 lecturers in indonesia should full some requirements comprising appropriate qualications, sufcient competencies, and teaching certications. in terms of qualication, all lecturers should hold at least a graduate degree, and they are expected to pursue higher study up to doctoral degree, while in terms of competencies, there are four competencies that should be possessed by all lecturers such as pedagogical, personal, social, and professional. finally, all lecturers are required to achieve teaching certication, and without which they cannot be regarded as professionals. these requirements are intended to improve the capacity of indonesian lecturers, and thus the establishment of the teacher and lecturer law no.14/2005 becomes the need of indonesian government to improve the quality of teaching and learning process. the improvement of teaching and learning process in indonesian schools is inevitable due to some reasons. first, the development of knowledge and technology in the world has rapidly changed and people are required to equip themselves with sufcient education or otherwise they will be left behind. similarly, the quality of education in indonesia should be increased in order to make indonesian people able to cope with rapid changes of global information and development of knowledge (supriatna, 2010). second, having high quality of education, indonesian people are ready and capable of facing massive competition in the global job market among people in the world. in so doing, universities as the highest level of education in indonesia are expected to improve their quality simultaneously since one of their roles is to become the agent for producing qualied human resources in the future. as the consequence, all lecturers in a university level as one of the main factors inuencing graduates' quality should maintain their professionalism by improving their competencies. in responding to the need of improving teaching competencies, lecturers commonly conduct a series of activities called professional development or professional learning, and so do the efl lecturers of a language centre of a private university in indonesia. the need to improve teaching competencies by conducting various professional learning activities was experienced by the efl lecturers of the smash language centre (slc) (pseudonym). while some efl lecturers in the slc pursue their higher study, some others try to involve themselves in both formal and informal activities such as attending seminars, workshop, training, as well as doing mentoring program and having informal discussion, informal peer consultation, and so forth. some authors argue and state that the notion of professional development and professional learning are similar and thus can be used interchangeably  ; however, the latter is preferable and used in this study because of the basic tenet attached to it, improvement. it is interesting to note that while the activity of professional learning is often motivated by external factors such as remuneration, policy, or career opportunity, there are no such things in the slc. indeed, the efl lecturers who teach compulsory english for students from almost all faculties in the university are unique because they are recruited as efl instructors by the director of the slc, and therefore their duty is different from the common lecturers in general. normally, based on the national education law no. 20/2003, all lecturers have an obligation to conduct tri dharma perguruan tinggi by which they have three responsibilities involving educating students, conducting research, and carrying out community services (purwanti, 2016). however, these efl lecturers in the slc have no such obligation as their status is regarded as instructors rather than lecturers. being efl instructors in the institution, they are responsible for teaching efl subject in the classroom, and they are not obliged to conduct research or community service as lecturers are. thus, their intention to conduct their professional learning is likely driven by their own initiatives. the phenomenon by which the efl lecturers initiate their own learning can be viewed from the perspectives of adult learning journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 32 theory of malcolm knowles called as the theory of andragogy (knowles, 1984). based on his theory, adult learning is commonly characterized by ve principles such as 1) self-concept, 2) adult learner experience, 3) readiness to learn, 4) orientation to learning, and 5) motivation to learn. these ve principles of andragogy theory may underpin adult learners' motivation in conducting their professional learning. however, detailed information about the reasons underlying their intention to conduct professional learning should be investigated more thoroughly. this study then aims at seeking the efl lecturers' beliefs about their professional learning from the lens of malcolm knowles theory of andragogy. reviews of literature teacher professional development vs teacher professional learning professional development and professional learning are often used to refer to any activities conducted by professionals to improve their capacity in their work place. some experts argue that professional development is similar to professional learning, while some others think as vice versa. while the notion of professional development and professional learning has frequently been used interchangeably  , these terms are often used to refer to activities emphasizing on improvement. take for an example, pursuing higher study, presenting a paper at seminars, attending workshops, joining academic trainings, and so forth can be included as such activities. however,   stated that when referring to the literature, these terms have actually different meanings. professional development is dened as any activity that is intended partly or primarily to prepare paid staff members for improved performance in present or future role in the school districts ' . other scholars such as day and sachs '  asserted that professional development is activities by which teachers engage during the course of a career which are designed to enhance their work. moreover,   urged that professional development has a purpose to advance people as professional practitioners. since then, the term 'development' was introduced, and the word professional development was used by people to describe an activity done by someone to someone else, or what someone does to others (easton, 2008). based on these above denitions, one thing characterizes the notion of professional development, improvement. this is in line with  , who stated that the word "development" may be an improvement. however, easton said that the term development itself is not sufcient, especially in education, as educators need to change what they do, on a daily or sometimes hourly basis, as they respond to the needs of the learners they serve. in so doing, the educators need to learn. also, professional development is often merely seen as participation, thus there is scarcity in empirical facts that it has an impact on teachers' practices or on students' outcomes. therefore, the term “professional learning” is more preferable than “professional development”  . on the other hand, professional learning is something most teachers and educators do every day as they reect on their professional practice, work together and share ideas to improve students' outcomes  . professional learning implies an internal process in which individuals create professional knowledge through interaction with this information in a way that challenges previous assumptions and creates new meanings ( . also, professional learning requires teachers to be seriously engaged in their learning. thus, professional learning should be continuously and thoroughly carried out by teachers and school stake holders. based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that professional learning is teachers' routine and on-going activities which are derived from their own motivation. in addition, professional learning can be conducted both formally and informally. in this context, the characteristics of professional learning t the activities conducted by the efl lecturers of the slc. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 33 malcolm knowles theory of andragogy people learn in different ways, and so do children and adults. to understand children or adult learning, theories of learning should be presented as they can explain how people learn and what factors are included in the complex processes of learning. since this study is focused on efl lecturers or adult learners in relation to their professional learning, the theory used in the study is also focused on adult learning. according to  , there are three different types of adult learning. theory of andragogy and theory of self-directed learning (sdl) are earlier theories of adult learning. both theories emphasize on the difference between child learning and adult learning. emerging in 1968, malcom knowles made a distinction between pedagogy which is referred to a child learner, and andragogy, on the other hand, is used to describe an adult learner. this theory of adult learning, the theory of andragogy by malcom knowles is used in the study as it is suitable to analyse the practice of efl lecturers' professional learning in the slc. principles of andragogy according to knowles, as cited in alkadhi (2008), in relation to adult learners, teachers of a higher study should pay more attention to adult learners' interests; not to what they believe as the learners' interests. thus, teaching and learning process in a classroom context should be cooperative, and having guided interactions between the teacher and the learners with various resources to develop their own potential. also, the relationship between the teacher and the learners should be based on equal partnership rather than having subordinate and superordinate interactions. based on that opinions and his own observations, knowles developed a set of four principles of andragogy in 1980, and later in 1984 he added another principle. the ve principles of adult learner (andragogy) which are different from child learner (pedagogy) are elucidated in the following section. self-concept initially having dependent personality, a person shifts to be more independent and selfdirected human being as he/she becomes mature. in relation to learning, adult learners have more responsibility for their learning process, and respond to a modied type of teaching  . the adults' independent self-concept brings implications that they are autonomous, selfreliant, independent, and self-directed in achieving their learning objectives  . consequently, adult learners need to be free to direct themselves (lieb, 1991, as cited in cercone, 2008). to enable this to occur, adult learners must play active roles in their learning activity. yet, not every adult learner can be expected to be independent, and some of them really need assistance from other adult learners to become more self-directed. in this case, scaffolding should be given to promote self-reliance and help them become more self-directed. in addition, selfconcept also has a meaning that the relationship between adult learners and their teachers or lecturers should be equal  , thus results in learnerteacher equal partnership. adult learner experience the more mature a person is, the more experienced he/she is, and so are adult learners  . having wide range of experience, adult learners are able to connect what they learn at present to their various past experiences. thus, their past experiences become a valuable resource in their learning, or in other words, adult experience becomes invaluable resource for learning. as merriam and caffarella (2012) mentioned, “an adult accumulates a growing reservoir of experience, which is a rich resource for learning” (p. 84). how adult learners develop their knowledge is by relating new information to past events and experience  . thus, it brings an implication that teachers are expected to be able to understand students' experience because experiential learning is powerful to teach adult learners. the learners' experience or what the learners already know and already experience becomes the foundations of the current learning situation. this information is important for teachers to give appropriate treatment to the journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 34 learners so that the situation in which the teachers give too sophisticated materials or too imbecile materials can be avoided. readiness to learn adult learners are eager to learn and to further develop their skills. also, adult learners are having awareness of the value of new knowledge as a means to develop in all respects. thus, adult learners are more inclined to apply new knowledge and skills without postponing  . readiness to learn from adult learners should be related to their changing social roles  . adult learners usually know what they want to learn, why they want to learn, and how they want to learn. knowing what they want to learn encourage adult learners to have personal goals in their learning. also, having reasons of learning something makes them aware with their learning orientation. orientation to learning adult learners have learning orientation from subjectcenteredness to problem centeredness. as learners becomes mature, they often nd opportunities to expand their knowledge by solving the problems they have because they realize that every problem brings a learning situation for them. thus, they learn something or new knowledge by solving the problems they have. in the real learning context, adult learners are encouraged to be prepared for more challenging tasks and responsibilities than current tasks in order to develop their knowledge and skills. motivation to learn motivation to learn tends to be internal as a person matures. this implies that motivation, either internal or external characterizes adult learners. however, it is the internal motivations that prove to be most compelling for adult learners  . in addition, adult learners need to know why they need to learn, what they are learning, or whether the reasons of learning correlate with their external and internal motivations. thus, the adult learners should know the reasons of their learning and the consequences of what they are learning or not learning. adult learners' internal motivation drives them to undertake new learning. there are several factors inuencing adult learners to take initiative learning such as increasing job satisfaction, self-esteem, and quality of life (cercone, 2010). in fullling their motivation to learn, adult learners are willing to conduct trainings or courses that will positively affect their job performance andragogy and teachers' professional learning the emphasis of andragogy which is focused on adult learner and the principles of andragogy such as self-concept, experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learn and motivation to learn are applied in this study to explain the phenomenon of professional learning conducted by the efl lecturers of the slc. understanding the characteristic of adult learners, an effective professional learning can be established based on these characteristics. as asserted by the principles of andragogy, good and appropriate professional learning should be autonomous, self-reliant, independent, and selfdirected. also, the professional learning for the efl lecturers should acknowledge their existing knowledge and experience to facilitate learning, and thus triggers these efl lecturers to develop their skills. another consideration is that the efl lecturers should be challenged into problems to give them opportunities to learn in order to encourage their internal motivation to learn. reviews on related studies research on adult learning theory, or andragogy, has been done by many researchers. of various topics of andragogy, the discussion about its relationship with teacher professional development has been blossoming in a couple last decades. the followings are some of the examples. a case study on teachers' professional development was conducted by gregson and sturko (2007) in which the assumptions of malcolm knowles' andragogy were applied. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 35 based on these assumptions, six principles of adult learning emerged, such as (a) make a situation that makes the teachers feel respected; (b) strengthen active involvement; (c) share their experiences; (d) apply inquiry collaboratively; (e) guide learning for immediate application; and (f) encourage the teachers to do reection and action based on their learning. using these principles, the teachers took an active role in their professional development which is suitable for their own needs to be better teachers. the study also revealed that teachers could review their reective practice, build their professional knowledge, and establish collegiality with their peer teachers. another study on professional learning using adult learning theory was carried out by terehoff (2002) in a school in the united states. exploring the notion and philosophy of the adult learning, andragogy, this study examined the role of the school leader in structuring appropriate learning environment for adult learners, or the teachers. adopting the principles of malcom knowles principles of adult learning, the school principal should be able to structure a professional development process which has characteristics: 1) setting up an environment for adult learning, 2) involving adult learners in mutual planning, 3) attending to the adult learners' needs and interests, 4) involving adult learners in setting the program's goals and objectives, 5) involving adult learners in designing an effective program, 6) involving adult learners in implementing the program, and 7) involving adult learners in the programs' evaluation. these principles could create enthusiastic atmosphere of mutual inquiry and growth among the teachers as well as mutual accountability for student achievement. the nding showed that the establishment of adult learning environment and the involvement of school staff in mutual planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of professional development learning experiences, and the process of school-based teacher professional development were successfully increased by the school leader. in this study, the school leader let the teachers participate actively in the process of their learning by solving their problems based on their needs. thus, the ability for the school leader to build communication with the teachers regarding their goals and objectives of their professional development became the key success of their learning. the other study focussing on andragogy theory which stated that the adult learning theory contributed to a good design for evaluating training services was carried out by karagiorgi, kalogirou, theodosiou, theophanous, and kendeou (2008). located in cyprus, the study investigated adult learning which was attached to optional seminars as the primary form of formal in-service teacher training. using quantitative research design, the study employed a nationally representative number of participants. the nding showed that teachers regarded adult learning as multidimensional consisting of characteristics of adult learning theory such as orientation to learning, readiness to learn, accumulated experience and self‐concept. in addition, the nding revealed other characteristics of adult learning such as organization of seminars and dissemination of results. the teachers in cyprus had positive attitudes towards optional seminars as a part of their adult learning, and therefore activities such as training the trainers, restructuring organizatinal aspects, and enhancing dissemination practices should be conducted. based on these previous studies, it is shown that the theory of andragogy is able to uncover how adult people learn and maintain their professional development. similarly, this study investigated how the efl lecturers in an english training centre conducted their professional learning through the lens of malcolm knowles' andragogy theory. however, the study is different from those mentioned above in that this study is conducted in which professional learning is not a compulsory activity and that doing professional learning does not result in any rewards for these efl leacturers. thus, professional learning carried out by these participants is based on their own initiatives, and therefore it is called as bottom-up approach journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 36 journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 professional learning. this situation makes this study unique. methodology this study was conceptualised within an interpretive paradigm. an interpretive paradigm is based on the knowledge of reality; making sense of the world is socially constructed by human beings and these meanings are subjective, rather than objective  . thus, interpretivism is a way to understand human behaviour in relation to their actions in their social world  , and in this case, human beings are understood as 'agents' instead of as 'objects'. while human beings create their meanings in their social worlds, at the same time their interpretations of meanings are inuenced by their worlds  . in this study, developing understandings about how these efl lecturers in the slc make sense of their professional learning require subjective interpretations. a naturalistic, interpretivist approach was then used as the research design of the study. qualitative methods are central to interpretive research and were used in this study in order to incorporate the interpretivist approach explained earlier. in addition, qualitative methods encourage subjective information to be gathered , and this is important in this study because it allowed me to investigate people's interpretations resulting from their interactions with their world and their experiences using qualitative methods, there were seven efl lecturers in the slc involved in the focus group interviews. of these seven lecturers, three lecturers were permanent lecturers and the other four were non-permanent ones. most of them were included as young lecturers, ranging from twenty-ve to fty year old. in order to cover their identity, their pseudonyms, namely erin, isla, uta, agin, john, aria, and amaris were used in the nding instead of their real name. these efl lecturers were responsible for teaching general english skills as a compulsory subject for students of almost all faculties in the university. the use of focus group interviews in this study allow the participants to hear each other's responses and to make additional comments beyond their original responses as they hear what other people have to say (patton, 2002) several criteria were used in the study in order to nd participants appropriate for the study. these participants were purposively selected to participate in this study because they had efl education background, had a minimum of ve years teaching experience in the slc, and had an interest in professional learning activities. their participation in the study was signicant because they provided insights about how they conducted their professional learning in the slc. the data collected from these participants were then transcribed, and analysed using qualitative data analyses model (seidel, 1998). to maintain the objectivity of the research, trustworthiness is obtained using member checking. finding and discussion being lecturers in a university needs a lot of preparation and work to do, and so as the efl teachers in the slc. the reason is because university students have been commonly regarded as adult learners who are able to study independently or autonomously. with the massive development of information technology such as internet, university students can always update new knowledge by searching or browsing information related to their study from the internet. this condition creates greater opportunities for university students to learn autonomously, and thus the efl lecturers in the slc must be aware of this situation and anticipate it by conducting learning activity as a way to become professional efl teachers. based on the focus group interviews among seven efl lecturers of the slc, it was revealed that there were ve themes emerging from this nding, which included 1) learning as a compulsory work for teachers, 2) learning as a result of teachers' experience, 3) learning as teachers' passion, 4) learning as teachers' orientation, and 5) learning as teachers' internal motivation. these features of learning type, indeed, shares similarities with the theory of andragogy from malcolm knowles (1984) in 37 which adult learning is characterized by ve principles such as self-concept, experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learning, and internal motivation (merria,2001) how these efl lecturers' learning in the slc is aligned with the theory of adult learning of malcolm knowles is described in the following paragraph. learning as compulsory work for lecturers the slc serves compulsory efl subjects to students from almost all faculties in the university. in an effort to give the best service to the students, the slc requires all of the efl lecturers to have not only good efl knowledge, but also good teaching skills. in addition, these efl lecturers have also awareness that they teach university students who are much updated to knowledge development. thus, they must always keep learning in order to cope with the vast development of knowledge. as a consequence, learning becomes a compulsory job for every lecturer. they have to keep learning because their profession as efl lecturers requires such things, or otherwise they will be left behind. they keep learning because they realize that it is important for their career. one of the efl lecturers mentioned: “we have to be more prepared here [in the slc], or at least preparing our teaching a night before” (erin). the statement above shows that the erin is eager to prepare her teaching because she has a belief that as a lecturer, she should be more knowledgeable than her students. thus, she can be ready whenever her students ask about information or anything related to the subject. as a consequence, she said that she had to prepare the material well prior to teaching, even if she had to prepare it a night before. in indonesian society context, teachers or lecturers have high social status and become a role model for the society. they are also regarded as having high intelligence and therefore people put high trust on them. therefore, they have to be able to respond to students' questions, or even random questions from the society. indeed, the word teacher or lecturer in indonesian language is literally translated as 'guru' which in javanese language and javanese philosophy means 'digugu' and 'ditiru'. thus, the word 'guru' means someone who should bein school contexts, the teachers or the lecturers are trusted because they are expected to transfer their knowledge and skills which are needed for their students, both academic and personal skills. in addition, the teachers or the lecturers should behave well according to their religion and local customs  . it means that people who have these professions in indonesia, regardless the beliefs and religion they have, should always worship god by keeping all his commandments and abandoning all his restrictions. also, these teachers and lecturers are supposed to always commit acts in accordance with the prevailing traditions in which they live. violating the values of religion and local customs might lead to mistrust from the students and students' parents. referring to these facts, erin prepares her teaching because she is aware of her identity as a lecturer. being a lecturer, erin has to maintain her life long learning such as taught by her religion by doing various learning activities, with or without nancial support from the institution. this way, erin realizes learning should become a compulsory activity so that she can maintain her professionalism. trusted and imitated. in school contexts, the teachers or the lecturers are trusted because they are expected to transfer their knowledge and skills which are needed for their students, both academic and personal skills. in addition, the teachers or the lecturers should behave well according to their religion and local customs  . it means that people who have these professions in indonesia, regardless the beliefs and religion they have, should always worship god by keeping all his commandments and abandoning all his restrictions. also, these teachers and lecturers are supposed to always commit acts in accordance with the prevailing traditions in which they live. violating the values of religion and local customs might lead to mistrust from the students and students' parents. referring to these facts, erin prepares her teaching because she is aware of her identity as a lecturer. being a lecturer, erin has to journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 38 maintain her life long learning such as taught by her religion by doing various learning activities, with or without nancial support from the institution. this way, erin realizes learning should become a compulsory activity so that she can maintain her professionalism. acknowledging the importance of learning in maintaining their career, the participants view their role as equipping their students with efl skills. as adult learners, they are also able to achieve this by exposing themselves to different learning situations. thus, learning becomes an autonomous activity for many of them. erin mentioned she became aware of her duty to keep learning so that she was able to deliver well prepared teaching practices in front of her students. thus, her learning is driven by her profession as an efl lecturer. in this case, she fully understands her self-concept as an efl lecturer, and this situation correlates with malcolm knowles' andragogy theory which mentions that as adults mature, learning is caused by self-concept (1984). this nding is also similar to the case study conducted by gregson and sturko (2007) in which teachers took initiatives in their professional development in order to become better teachers. similar ndings related to teachers' awareness about their self-concept in terms of professional development are also found in karagiorgi, et.al (2008) study. learning as a result of lecturers' experience the efl lecturers in the slc have various backgrounds of english study such as linguistics, english literatures, and english education, and they have various experiences of teaching english subject in other places. these different backgrounds of study and different teaching experiences enrich them with new knowledge and teaching pedagogy when they immerse themselves in various informal learning activities in the slc. the most common ways for them to conduct their learning is by having sharing experiences in terms of sharing teaching practices and sharing english knowledge among their colleagues. through this informal activity, these efl lecturers used to share teaching media, games, icebreaking activity, as well as tricks and tips in teaching. many of them believed that these sharing activities on their teaching experience equipped them with new knowledge about teaching regardless the source was from junior or senior lecturers. many things were shared including teaching materials and pedagogies. as mentioned in the following excerpts, many believed that this sharing experience could benet their teaching and provide them with different learning resources, strategies to solve different student problems as well as anticipation to their students' responses in teaching. they also believe that sharing on their experience is the best way to empower efl lecturers' learning. one of the participants said: “ …yeah, cos sharing [experience] is very helpful, even as a senior [lecturer], i learn a lot from novice [lecturers], either from their eld [teaching practice] or from their new theories…” (isla). isla agreed that experiences brought by different lecturers, regardless they are senior or junior, bring valuable knowledge for the efl lecturers in the slc when they are shared. in other words, these experiences will be useful if these efl lecturers learn something from them so that they can complete each other. therefore, isla added “ ...cos we can learn each other, complete each other, share good things [experiences], and learn from other's mistakes”. another participant stated about the benet of sharing experience in a simpler way by saying “yes, sharing [experience] develops my knowledge and teaching” (uta). therefore, learning happens due to sharing activities among these participants. another interesting concept that was discussed in the interviews was how the process of sharing experiences was an activity which occurred not only among peer colleagues, but also between the lecturers and the students. although many rmly believed that it was their role to be wiser and more resourceful than their students, a small minority held vastly different opinions. these lecturers believed that students should have equal positions to their teachers. as one participant stated in her interview journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 39 conversation, “ [being lecturers] does not mean to outweigh [the capacity] the students, rather to become a partner and facilitator for students. also, because lecturers are normally older than the students, they are expected to be more resourceful” (erin). the efl lecturers as adult learners develop their knowledge and teaching skills by having previous experience in teaching and by sharing their experience with their colleagues. this is in line with one of the principles of andragogy of malcolm knowles (1984) which mentions that adults learn new knowledge because of their previous experience. however, while the theory of andragogy states that adult learners use their previous experience to learn new knowledge, the nding of the study showed that adult learners did not only use their experience to develop new knowledge, but also shared their experience to improve more knowledge within their learning community. this is an interesting nding from the study. learning as lecturers' passion besides having the habit of sharing experience among peer colleagues as their daily informal learning, most efl lecturers in the slc are eager to always improve their knowledge and their skills. they usually welcome any type of professional learning offered by the institution as they have a passionate of readiness to learn. one of the participants stated: “[we joined] seminars and workshop [carried out in the slc], at least twice a year” (agin). he explained that the institution usually conducted formal activity of professional learning, and it was commonly in the form of seminars or workshop. besides, they also have routine professional learning when they review their curriculum or syllabus. another participant, john added “…involving in training, syllabus design, curriculum design, and so forth around four times ... even more [every year]”. in fact, one of the lecturers' responsibilities in the slc is to review the english curriculum and syllabus, and together with their team, they revise them when necessary. having these activities, they are challenged to know more about how the curriculum and syllabus in the slc are designed. in addition to the above nding, they are also ready and willing to conduct informal learning such as stated in the following excerpts: “ …in terms of informal professional learning, the lecturers here usually have informal discussions [during break time] about their teaching practice. in addition, [the slc] supports [the lecturers] to continue their study, and support them to get scholarships as well as give a subsidy on the english prociency test and document delivery” (aria). based on the excerpt, an interesting fact emerges. as aria has a position of the director of the slc, she knows about the policy of giving supports to the lecturers such as mentioned above. thus, while this institution does not give career path to the lecturers, there is a good policy to support the lecturers' teaching competence by allocating nancial assistance for them to have english language prociency tests and documents related to the requirements of obtaining a scholarship. this policy, however, corroborates the teacher and lecturer law no 14/2005. in line with the third principle of knowles' andragogy concerning 'readiness to learn', the participants in the study expressed the different passions for learning they have during their career. as well as fullling a requirement as part of meeting the indonesian government standard related to lecturer's requirements issued in 2014 of their role as lecturers at the slc, the participants also viewed their learning as their needs to accomplish their tasks. moreover, the lecturers' intention to carry out their professional learning in the slc was fully supported by the head of the institution. indeed, the role of the head of the institution in encouraging the lecturers to conduct various types of professional learning is paramount as terehoff (2002) found out that the role of the school leader in structuring appropriate learning environment for adult learners, or the teachers, had been proven to be effective in promoting teacher professional development. learning as lecturers' orientation the efl lecturers in the slc are journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 40 demanded to be able to deliver english basic skills to all students from almost all faculties in the university. these include reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. having various levels of students' english skills ability, these efl lecturers should be able to respond appropriately by using their best method of teaching practices. this method of teaching practices should t either the low level or the high level of students as treating students inappropriately may lead to problems. there is a need in the slc that high level of students should be taught by a good efl lecturer too. erin said “one of the best study programs such as international relation needs better qualied lecturers. the head of the study program wants only the best treatment of english subject [in the slc], …” in this context, erin knows the situation better than the other lecturers because she holds the position of the academic manager in the slc. she added that being an academic manager, she always tried to assign only the best lecturers to the high level of students. thus, it is expected that the students are able to get the most benet of teaching and learning process in the slc. in addition to the previous problems, the efl lecturers in the slc occasionally nd more challenges such as limited knowledge of efl, lack of teaching strategies, lack ideas of teaching media, teaching innovation, as well as classroom management. they realize these problems, and they also know the impacts to their students. one of the participants asserted: “students now tend to nd a replacement to their lecturers who are regarded as incompetent, or having unacceptable jokes, or those who teach them like elementary school students. if a lecturer gets such complaints, he/she can be shocked. all lecturers may have such complaints” (amaris). thus, as adult learners, these lecturers in the slc should be ready to face problems in their work, and therefore focus their orientation from their individual centeredness to problem centeredness. in other words, they must be ready to turn their problems into learning. as erin stated, “the good thing [about such situation], it becomes a trigger [for them] to become better [lecturers]”. the situation when the lecturers turn their problems into learning occurs when they get feedbacks on their teaching performance from their students in the end of the semester. it is the time when students evaluate the lecturers. one of the participants mentioned: “…there is a situation when i found the new lecturers got score [of students' evaluation sheet] 3 or 2 [out of 5], they became depressed. they thought they were not good lecturers, and they [thought] were very bad” (amaris). based on that statement, it is understandable that the lecturers in the slc have to perform well in front of the students, otherwise they can be regarded as incompetent and the students can give low scores of their teaching evaluation. in addition, the students can sometimes report this case to the academic manager in the slc, and they may ask for a replacement for another lecturer. the efl lecturers are aware of this situation, and therefore they should have their on-going orientation to learning. in other words, sustainable learning becomes the lecturers' orientation. this has an implication that learning results from the problems and the solution to the problems. the situation when adult learners, in this case the efl lecturers, develop their knowledge as their response to their current problems and apply solutions to the problems is what malcolm knowles identied as 'orientation to learning'. this nding is also similarly found in the study conducted by gregson and sturko (2007), terehoff (2002), and karagiorgi, et al. (2008), in which teachers are encouraged to learn because they face problems and thus they are challenged to nd the solutions. being adult learners, this type of learning becomes possible to do for these participants. learning as lecturers' internal motivation being adult learners, most of the efl lecturers' willingness to improve their knowledge by attending formal and informal professional learning is basically driven by their internal motivation. however, as mentioned earlier, the journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 41 case of the lecturers' motivation in the slc is quite unique because the lecturers will not have any remuneration or higher structural status when they complete their professional learning. unlike lecturers in the study program or the faculty, the efl lecturers in the slc have no academic career, and the lecturers are paid based on their work only. they do not have xed monthly salary. yet, most of them have internal motivation to keep learning through various ways of professional learning. one of their motivation is stated by one of the participants: “we have responsibilities other than teaching. when we contribute our knowledge to other colleagues, we can strengthen and support each other, …” (erin). erin's statement indicates that one of the internal motivation that directs the lecturers to keep learning is caused by their responsibilities as lecturers. she acknowledges that lecturers' role is not limited to teaching practices in the classroom, but it covers more than that. it was also revealed in the interview that most of the participants were motivated to carry out their professional learning for various personal reasons. among these reasons are to give the best teaching practice to students, to be ready when facing problems in teaching, to be updated with the development of knowledge and technology, to be professional, and so forth. this situation is distinctive because the efl lecturers in the slc are eagerly participating and attending various professional learning despite the lack of rewards from the institution such as mentioned earlier. this phenomenon is probably caused by their maturity status such as explained by malcolm knowles' andragogy theory (1984), which stated that mature people such as these efl lecturers in the slc conduct learning because they want to and because they need to. thus, with or without rewards, they will continue their learning activity along with their teaching career in the institution. related to this context, aria concludes the topic by giving relevant statements: “i think you [the researcher] come to the right place because you can see [the lecturers'] motivation [to have professional learning] is stronger in this slc than in the study programs. in the study program, the lecturers have clear path [of career]. they will have good reward when doing research, and they will have good remuneration and nancial reward when pursuing higher study, and when they ignore about such things, they will have their consequences. however, as this slc functions only as a supporting unit, the lecturers have no career path. it means that these lecturers conducted [professional] learning because they want it and they want to survive [as lecturers]. thus, it is clear that professional learning conducted by the efl lecturers is mostly caused by their internal motivation. similar case is also found in gregson and sturko (2007) in which teacher professional development took place because the teachers took their own initiatives in learning. conclusion the establishment of teacher and lecturer law no 14/2005 has mandated that all teachers and lecturers in indonesia have proper teaching qualication and teaching competencies such as pedagogy, professional, personal, and professional. having completed such requirements, it is expected that the quality of teaching and learning process in indonesia is improving, and therefore indonesian human resources are competent and ready to face a erce and tough competition in the job market in the world. the teacher and lecturer law no.14/2005 is thus regarded as a means for teachers and lecturers in indonesia to maintain their professionalism by conducting continuous professional learning, and the efl lecturers as the main agent of transferring efl knowledge to students in the slc are no exception. despite the lack of remuneration, interestingly, these efl lecturers are willing to keep updating their knowledge and teaching skills by conducting various professional learning, either informally and formally. even though unique, this phenomenon is reasonable if viewed from the perspectives of adult learning theory of malcolm knowles, andragogy. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 42 the ndings from the study have implications that professional learning should be rooted from the teachers' initiatives. in other words, professional learning among efl teachers should employ a bottom up approach rather than a top down one so that the types of professional learning activity t their needs, and therefore its sustainability can be maintained. however, the active involvement from the school leader also plays an important role in supporting teacher professional learning. therefore, the teacher professional learning should consider both bottom up and top down approach so that the result can be optimum. this study is limited to seven efl teachers as the participants. having more participants, the study will perhaps portray more phenomena on teachers' experiences in relation to their professional learning. however, this limited number of particants gave an advantage in which the interviewer was able to investigate more indepth information from the participants. thus, the data richness can be achieved. references alkadhi, s. (2008). learning theory: adult education: andragogy. unpublished manuscript, california state university, monterey bay, california, ca. beavers, a. (2009). teachers as learners: implications of adult education for professional development. journal of college teaching and learning, 6(7), 25-30. bryman, a. (2012). social research methods. oxford: oxford university press. cercone, k. (2008). characteristics of adult learners with implications for online learning design. aace journal, 16(2), 137-159. department of education, & northern territory of australia. (2005). professional learning in effective schools. melbourne: leadership and teacher development branch ofce of school education. easton, l. b. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan, 89(10), 755-761. gregson, j. a., & sturko, p. a. (2007). teachers as adult learners: re-conceptualizing professional development. journal of adult education, 36(1), 1-18. hardy, i., & wagga, w. (2009). teacher professional development: a sociological study of senior educators' pd priorities in ontario. canadian journal of education, 32(3), 509-532. jasper, m. (2006). reection, decision-making and professional development (vital notes for nurses): blackwell publishing, oxford. karagiorgi, y., kalogirou, c., theodosiou, v., theophanous, m., & kendeou, p. (2008). underpinnings of adult learning in formal teacher professional development in cyprus. journal of in‐service education, 34(2), 125146. kessels, j. w., & poell, r. f. (2004). andragogy and social capital theory: the implications for human resource development. advances in developing human resources, 6(2), 146157. knowles, m. s. (1984). andragogy in action: applying modern principles of adult education. san francisco: jossey-bass krueger, r. a., & casey, m. a. (2014). focus groups: a practical guide for applied research. new delhi, india: sage publications. little, j. w. (1987). teachers as colleagues. in v. richardson-koehler (ed.), educators' handbook:a research perspective (pp. 491518). new york: longman. mayer, d., & lloyd, m. (2011). professional learning: an introduction to the research literature. melbourne: australian institute for teaching and school leadership. merriam, s. b. (2001). andragogy and self‐directed learning: pillars of adult learning theory. new directions for adult and continuing education, 2001(89), 3-14. merriam, s. b., caffarella, r. s., & baumgartner, l. m. (2012). learning in adulthood: a comprehensive guide. san francisco, ca: john wiley & sons. patton, m. q. (2002). qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publication. purwanti, e. (2016). building professional learning: lesson study as a model of collaborative reective practice in english as a foreign language teaching in indonesia.(unpublished doctoral thesis). monash university, victoria, australia. schwartz-shea, p., & yanow, d. (2012). interpretive research design: concepts and processes. new york: routledge. seidel, j. v. (1998). qualitative data analysis. qualis research, 1-15. supriatna, a. (2011). indonesia's issues and challenges on teacher professional development. paper presented at the cice �� 4 africa-asia university dialogue for educational development report of the international experience sharing seminar (2): actual status and issues of teacher professional development. hiroshima university. thorne, s., kirkham, s. r., & o'flynn-magee, k. (2004). the analytic challenge in interpretive description. international journal of qualitative methods, 3(1), 1-11. timperley, h. (2011). realizing the power of professional learning. berkshire: mcgrawhill international. walsham, g. (2006). doing interpretive research. european journal of information systems, 15(3), 320-330. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 43 patton, m. q. (2002). qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publication. purwanti, e. (2016). building professional learning: lesson study as a model of collaborative reective practice in english as a foreign language teaching in indonesia.(unpublished doctoral thesis). monash university, victoria, australia. schwartz-shea, p., & yanow, d. (2012). interpretive research design: concepts and processes. new york: routledge. seidel, j. v. (1998). qualitative data analysis. qualis research, 1-15. supriatna, a. (2011). indonesia's issues and challenges on teacher professional development. paper presented at the cice �� 4 africa-asia university dialogue for educational development report of the international experience sharing seminar (2): actual status and issues of teacher professional development. hiroshima university. thorne, s., kirkham, s. r., & o'flynn-magee, k. (2004). the analytic challenge in interpretive description. international journal of qualitative methods, 3(1), 1-11. timperley, h. (2011). realizing the power of professional learning. berkshire: mcgrawhill international. walsham, g. (2006). doing interpretive research. european journal of information systems, 15(3), 320-330. journal of foreign language, teaching & learning vol.2 no. 1, january 2017 page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 page 9 page 10 page 11 page 12 page 13 page 14 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/581 1tiara kusuma fitriana received her bachelor’s degree in english language education department, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. her research interests include teaching media, teaching strategy, and language assessment. 2ika wahyuni lestari a faculty member of the english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia. her research interest is in the areas of teaching speaking, including individual differences, teacher education, and flipped teaching. the use of lembar kerja siswa as a learning medium among indonesian high school students 1tiara kusuma fitriana, 2ika wahyuni lestari 1sd it permata hati, jayapura 2universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta 1tiara991997@gmail.com 2ikawahyuni_11@umy.ac.id doi: 10.18196/ftl.4242 abstract one of the learning media used by indonesian high school students to support their learning is in the form of a student worksheet, commonly called lembar kerja siswa (lks). this study aims to examine the reasons why indonesian high school students used lks as their learning media and the challenges they faced in using lks both during the teaching and learning process in the classroom and in their independent learning. this research was conducted at one public school in yogyakarta, indonesia. four students who used lks during their english lesson and in their autonomous learning were purposefully selected as the participants of the study. to obtain the data, one-on-one in-depth interviews were administered. the results of the study revealed that the reason for using lks was to support their learning due to its content, usefulness, handiness, and affordable price. nonetheless, the participants also found that lks was challenging to use because of its short explanation, lack of questions, the ambiguity of answers, and poor face validity. at last, suggestions to improve the use of lks as a learning medium were addressed. keywords: lks, reasons for using lks, challenges of using lks journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 127 =========================================================================== introduction media are needed in the teaching and learning process as they assist students in understanding the material delivered by the teacher. learning media has many types. according to purwono, yutmini, and anita (2014), the types of learning media are printing technology, audio-visual technology, computer-based technology, and combined technology. the use of learning media can help teachers to deliver material well. therefore students are able to receive learning materials more effectively. the most often used type of learning media is printing technology, such as books, modules, drawings, and student worksheets. most schools in indonesia utilize lembar kerja siswa (lks) or student worksheets as learning media as regulated by the indonesian ministry of education and culture regulation no. 87 of 2013 regarding the development of a comprehensive learning device, including learning implementation plans, teaching materials, learning media, evaluation, and lks. hence, this regulation underlies the use of lks as a learning medium in indonesian schools. lks is commonly used by students and teachers in the teaching and learning processes. teachers use lks as students can answer various kinds of questions and review what they have learned. by using lks, it is easier for students to understand the contents of the material. the use of lks becomes intense when students will face exams because it has a variety of questions, helping students to practice or prepare for their tests. lks has been adjusted to the current curriculum. therefore, it is unnecessary for teachers to make their own worksheets. however, the use of lks faces various problems. based on a prior interview with an lks user, it was found that some students like to use lks because it provides detailed material, lots of practice questions, and can save time. however, some others were not interested in using lks as they assumed that the contents are monotonous. furthermore, some teachers only gave assignments without discussing them together, resulting in some students becoming less familiar with the content of the material. based on the regulation mentioned above, lks is the media used in most indonesian schools. some students like to use lks as their media for learning, while some others do not. therefore, this study wants to find out why students in indonesia choose to use lks as their journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 128 learning media and the challenges they faced in using it. lembar kerja siswa arsyad (2005) states that one of the well-known and widely used teaching materials in teaching and learning activities by many indonesian schools is lembar kerja siswa (lks). for teachers, the function of lks is to determine which students progress according to their respective speeds so that the subject matter can be designed in such a way as to meet their needs, both those who are fast and slow in understanding teaching material. definition of lembar kerja siswa. according to majid (2008), lks refers to sheets of paper containing assignments for students. it usually has instructions to work on the problem. it also clearly states the learning objectives to help its users achieve the desired goals. any subjects can use lks. barus, siagian, and saragih (2017) explain that lks is a package sheet containing material that has instructions, allowing students to learn actively. it is more interesting because it has challenges for students in writing a descriptive text. in addition, prastowo (2015) defines that lks is a printed teaching material in the form of sheets of paper containing material, summaries, and instructions for the implementation of learning tasks that must be done by students who refer to basic competencies. thus, it can be concluded that lks is a set of content materials and assignments for students in the form of sheets of paper to achieve the desired learning outcomes. the function of lembar kerja siswa. according to vebrianto (1985), the purpose of lks is to achieve learning goals that have been formulated, namely to streamline the teaching and learning process (as cited in jumairi, 2015, p.11). meanwhile, arsyad (2005) claims that the function of lks is divided into two, namely for teachers and students. for students, it functions to facilitate their understanding of the subject matter. for the teacher, it functions to guide students in various activities in it. the benefits of using lks for students are allowing them to be more active, improve their motivation to learn, help them to achieve learning goals and facilitate them in the learning process. according to wahdah (2016), lks can be used to evaluate periodic learning outcomes whose status is not formal. therefore, it can be concluded that the function of the lks is to streamline the learning process and facilitate students in learning. other advantages of using lks are students can previously learn the material to be journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 129 discussed at school, and the teaching and learning process becomes more effective because its learning activities, such as question and answer, discussion and group work, can save time. according to fatimah (2012), the characteristics of lks meeting the requirements to achieve learning goals are (1) the material is in accordance with the basic competencies in the syllabus, (2) the submission of material is quite clear, and (3) the language use is good and appropriate (as cited in wahdah, 2016, p. 7). lks material is sufficient to cover all aspects of the lessons needed by students. moreover, the material is able to meet students’ learning needs. however, it is less able to cover the shortcomings of teacher manuals. it provides learning assignments in a directed, integrated, and dynamic way. students’ way of learning arranged in the lks facilitates them in the learning process as it can direct students’ learning activities to solve problems. according to fitriana (2019), the use of lks has the advantage of making the learning becomes more varied than using a textbook alone. lks is easy to use. besides, it can optimize learning and improve students’ interest in learning. for example, by designing it to be more systematic, colorful, and illustrated to attract students’ attention in studying the material in it. the challenge of using lembar kerja siswa. lks can be used to facilitate students in learning. it plays an essential role in directing students to learn and find concepts through their activities because, with the rapid development and progress of science, it is impossible for a teacher to convey all knowledge to students. however, many of them faced challenges in using it. according to fitriana (2019), students found a little difficulty in understanding the contents as they are incomplete, and they felt as if it is not in accordance with the school curriculum. in other words, students are worried that their achievement would decrease if they use the lks due to its incomplete content. therefore, it should be relevant to the curriculum so that the teaching and learning process can run optimally, and learning achievement can increase. lismawati (2010) mentions several challenges in using lks, such as it is unable to present the movement, expose linear material, and unable to present events in sequence. it is difficult to guide students who have difficulty in understanding certain parts. furthermore, it is also hard to provide feedback for the questions asked because they have many possible answers that sometimes are ambiguous. it tends to journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 130 be used as memorization for students. some teachers demand students to memorize the material, facts, and figures contained in it to restrict them from using it only as a memorizing tool. ardhiantari, fadiawati, and kadaritna (2015) describe several challenges in using lks; namely, it is commercial and not in accordance with the order of indicators of competency achievement. furthermore, it uses an opaque type of paper, which is less colorful, making it seem boring and unattractive. the language used is convoluted and sometimes ambiguous. hence, it is hard for students to understand the contents. context of the studies this study was conducted in indonesia. based on the indonesian ministry of education and culture regulation no. 87 of 2013 regarding the development of a comprehensive learning device, including learning implementation plans, teaching materials, learning media, evaluation, and lks, each school is required to use lks as a learning media. lks is based on the applicable curriculum, yet if the teachers need additional material, they can add their own material. it is also distributed from elementary to high schools. having the supply of lks, then, the schools sell it to students. lks here is seen as an additional source of knowledge or material, besides textbooks, to help students learn and practice. the results also found that one of the schools in yogyakarta also used lks as the learning media. therefore, as a research school, this study was conducted at that school. methodology this study aims to explore why indonesian high school students use lks as their learning media. this study employed a qualitative method. cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) state that a qualitative study is based on researchers’ interpretation. this study involved four 12th grade students as participants. the four participants were purposefully selected based on their initiative in using lks outside the class. prior interviews with some candidates were conducted to find out how they used it outside the teaching and learning process. the participants’ names were changed to mawar, nana, hana, and dito. the participants used the lks at home and when they would face the examination. this study was conducted in december 2018. this study utilized interviews to retrieve data and in-depth interviews to obtain detailed data and appropriate journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 131 information. in conducting this study, the researcher used several tools such as a voice recorder to interview the participants, a pen, and a note. there are several steps to retrieve data. first, asking for permission from the school to collect data. second, looking for participants who meet the criteria. then, conducting the interviews with participants with a duration of five minutes for each of them. the language used for the interviews was bahasa indonesian. several questions were asked to the participants during the interviews. the first question was why they used lks. the questions included what constraints they faced in using lks as the learning media. after collecting the data, the researcher transcribed it. then, the researcher sent the script to the participants via whatsapp to check the correctness. the activity is called member checking. results and discussion after conducting interviews with four students, several reasons on why they used lks as the learning media and the challenges they faced in using it were discovered. reasons for using lks. the first reason for using lks found in this study was due to the concise materials it provided. lala said that the content in the lks was concise and directly aimed at learning material. hence, it was easy for students to understand the material. this opinion is in accordance with a study conducted by adi (2016), discovering that lks is a practical tool assisting both teachers and students. the term practical refers to the efficient worksheet as it provides material without a long explanation. thus, it can be concluded that the reason for indonesian students in using lks was because of its concise content, making students easier to understand the learning material. another reason for using lks is that it is easy to carry. as said by didi, “bringing an lks is lighter compared to carrying printed books”. based on the excerpt, lks is lighter compared to printed books, which means it is easy to carry. this opinion is in accordance with the research conducted by lismawati (2010), revealing that worksheets were media easy to carry anywhere. it can be concluded that the lks is lightweight, making it easier for students to bring them because of the nature of worksheets, containing only sheets of material and questions. the next reason is that lks can be used to predict the questions that will come out in the examination. nana said, “lks can be used to practice questions and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 132 predict the questions to be tested”. in other words, it can be used to predict what questions will appear in the exam because it has many practice questions, allowing students to learn from them. this opinion is also in accordance with research conducted by lismawati (2010), stating that using lks means facilitating students to answer questions about subjects taught so they can understand the material as a whole. in conclusion, the use of lks containing practice questions could help students to practice and study before the examination. therefore, students have preparation before facing the examination. the last reason is of using lks is because of the affordable price. lala said, “lks is cheap”. compared to printed books having quite high prices, lks is cheaper. this opinion is also in line with the study conducted by lismawati (2010), stating that the price of lks was economical. having an affordable price, students can buy it. challenges in using lks. the first challenge of using lks found in this study was that the material contained was not comprehensive. didi said that “lks contains practice questions without any explanation”. some agreed with didi by saying, “the material contained in the lks was unclear that it confused the students”. due to the short material, some students confused with the purpose of the material. therefore, the teachers should help them learning and understanding the material by providing more explanation. caca said, “the students need an additional explanation from the teachers to understand the material in the lks”. it was found that some teachers rarely explained the material in the lks. they only gave questions. sometimes, students summarized the material without discussing it with the teachers, resulting in them not being able to understand the material. some teachers used lks as a substitute, namely when they could not attend the class. therefore, students could not obtain enough knowledge from lks. in short, the lks content was incomprehensive. students sometimes did not understand the purpose of the material. it was also caused by several teachers who did not provide an explanation or discussion when using lks. these results are in accordance with a study of lismawati (2010), stating that sometimes the content in the lks is concise, causing students having difficulty in understanding the material. therefore, students required assistance from their teachers. the second challenge is related to the ambiguity of questions in the lks. it journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 133 has less varied types of questions. the ambiguous answer means two overlap answers, causing students being confused to choose which answer is correct. lala said that “sometimes, finding the correct answers to the questions in the lks is difficult”. another participant also stated such a similar opinion. nana also said that “the questions contained in the lks are less varied”. even though by doing the exercise in the lks, students will get to know various types of questions, the overlapped answers indeed challenge them. these findings are supported by ardhiantari, fadiawati, and kadaritna (2015), asserting that the discussion in lks was sometimes ambiguous and difficult to understand. the last challenge of using lks was its lack of face validity. the obstacle faced by the students when using lks was thin paper and blurred images, causing it difficult for the students to understand the lks content. nana said that “the images in the lks are blurry so it is difficult to understand”. lala added by saying, “ thin opaque paper makes students less comfortable in reading it”. students found it difficult to read the pictures because some of them were unclear. ardhiantari, fadiawati, and kadaritna (2015) state that the use of opaque paper and the less attractive color caused students to be less interested and bored in using lks. conclusion the purpose of this research is to find out why indonesian students prefer to use lks as their learning media and the challenges they faced in using it. there are four reasons underlying the use of lks and three challenges they experienced in using it. the reasons are the concise contents, the usefulness predicting the types of questions, easy to carry anywhere, and a low price. meanwhile, the challenges are its short explanation, the ambiguity of questions, and poor face validity. the present study showed that lks offered an opportunity for students to learn autonomously as it can be additional material. therefore, it is suggested that teachers should encourage students to use lks to support their learning. however, this study also revealed some challenges might hamper students in learning from lks. it is recommended for lks designers to consider the challenges for further improvement. the lks designers should improve the face validity and complete the contents. by doing so, students can take benefits from the use of lks as the source of learning. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 134 the study was limited in terms of the number of participants as well as the setting. thus, a generalization of the findings of the study should be made. despite the limitation, the findings of the present study can give an initial overview of the use of lks among indonesian senior high school students. since many indonesian high schools use it as a learning medium, further studies should investigate the same topic by involving more participants from different schools and more data collection methods to gain a deeper understanding of the use of lks in indonesian schools. references adi, t. w. (2016). penggunaan lks sebagai tindakan rasionalitas guru dalam proses pembelajaran. surakarta: universitas sebelas maret . arsyad, a. (2005). metode pembelajaran. jakarta: pt. raja grafindo persada. ardhiantari, w., fadiawati, n., & kadaritna, n. (2015). pengembangan lks berbasis keterampilan proses sains pada materi hukum-hukum dasar kimia. jurnal pendidikan dan pembelajaran kimia, 4(1), 312-323. barus, s., siagian, s., & saragih, a. h. (2017). the use of student worksheet to improve writing ability of descriptive text. advances in social science, education and humanities research, 104, 344-347. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7 ed.). london: routledge. fitriana, t. k. (2019). senior high school students' perception on the use of lembar kerja siswa in english learning. yogyakarta: universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. jumairi. (2015). pemanfaatan bahan ajar lembar kerja siswa (lks) untuk meningkatkan efektifitas pembelajaran bahasa indonesia kelas ix smp negeri 5 tenggarong. jurnal cemerlang, iii(1), 9-18. lismawati. (2010). pengoptimalan penggunaan lembar kerja siswa (lks) sebagai sarana peningkatan prestasi belajar pendidikan agama islam di sma raudlatul ulum kapedi-sumenep. malang: universitas islam negeri maulana malik ibrahim. majid, a. (2008). perencanaan pembelajaran (mengembangkan standar kompetensi guru). bandung: pt remaja rosdakarya. purwono, j., yutmini, s., & anitah, s. (2014). penggunaan media audio-visual pada mata pelajaran ilmu pengetahuan alam di sekolah menengah pertama negeri 1 pacitan. jurnal teknologi pendidikan dan pembelajaran, 2(2), 127144. putra, k. k., wuisan, p., & listiani, t. (2016). penggunaan lembar kerja siswa (lks) untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar kognitif materi bangun ruang sisi lengkung pada peserta didik kelas ix-b smp xyz sentani papua. a journal of language, literature, culture, and education, 12(2), 42-59. wahdah, n. (2016). efektivitas pemanfaatan lembar kerja siswa (lks) dalam meningkatkan hasil belajar pendidikan agama islam peserta didik kelas v sdn 21 temban kec. enrekang kab. enrekang. makassar: universitas islam negeri alauddin. volume 3, no. 2 2018 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 rio laksamana prastya was a teacher in self access center, language training center, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. moreover, he was also a journalist as his article was published in the jakarta post. currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree in english education department of yogyakarta state university. related to his research background, rio is interested in writing issue where specific issue is feedback in writing. student’s reactions and preferences to teachers’ feedback on weekly journal activity at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta rio laksamana prastya universitas negeri yogyakarta riolaksamana86@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3229 abstract the objective of this research was to reveal students’ reactions and preferences to teachers’ feedback on weekly journal activity. this study was qualitative research that the data were compiled from six students batch of 2015 at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta through in-depth interviews. the results showed that the reactions of the students were satisfied with teachers’ feedback, showed enjoyment in learning, felt curious in learning, and got demotivated in learning. the result also showed that the students preferred written feedback to oral feedback as they were easier to identify their errors, and oral feedback became the second choice to comment on their work. the students also believed that the language and behavior of the teachers became the strongest effect creating the reaction of the students. on giving feedback, the teacher sometimes used casual language that made the students easy to understand it. sometimes the teacher also used funny words to enhance students’ enthusiasm to learn. keywords: weekly journal activity, feedback, students’ reactions, preferred feedback =========================================================================== mailto:riolaksamana86@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3229 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 53 introduction recently, to teach foreign language learners by adapting student-centered learning (scl) is more recommended than teacher-centered learning (tcl). some teachers think that student-centered learning is easier to develop students’ motivation in learning, such as encouraging the students to be more active (garrett, 2008). garret (2008) revealed that teachercenter learning creates the students to be more passive to engage in discussion in the classroom. in student-centered learning, the function of a teacher is important such as delivering feedback to the students. feedback is the appropriate steps to educate the students. this relates to hattie and timperley (2007). they argued that feedback is a step of the teachers to affect the students in their study and achievement. it also contributes a negative or positive effect for the students. therefore, by giving feedback on students’ activities, the teacher can understand where and which aspect must be developed step by step. in setting up student-centered learning, in teaching writing to the students, there are many strategies, and weekly journal activity is an example. based on tuan (2010), weekly journal activity is a significant step to increase students’ writing ability. the procedures of weekly journal activity in this study are by ordering the students to comprehend some journal articles or novels and instruct them to answer some questions provided by the teacher. weekly journal activity adapts stimulating task to establish students’ encouragement to read more particularly to give fundamental knowledge for the students on writing (guthrie, et al., 2006). weekly journal activity is applied as an activity by some teachers at english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. based on the observation after doing weekly journal activity at the english education department, feedback, which is done by the teacher, possesses important role to improve student’s ability especially on the writing aspect. for example, the students will be aware of how to write correctly. usually, after getting the feedback, the students have to read and check the suggestion of the teacher. they also are allowed to ask a question to the teacher if the feedback does not make sense. however, each teacher has diverse methods of giving feedback creating journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 54 different reactions to each student. that is why the main core of this study is to reveal what kinds of feedback students prefer and what students’ reactions are after receiving the feedback in weekly journal activity. from some classes at the english education department (eed) of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (umy) adapting weekly journal activity as students’ activity, most of the teachers use the feedback in students’ work without giving additional feedback such as oral feedback. one of the teachers at the english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta said that delivering oral feedback one by one to the students will spend too much time. the teachers revealed that giving feedback without delivering additional feedback, such as oral feedback, is a step to teach the students to be autonomous learners. however, the language of the feedback that teachers write sometimes is mixed language such as using local language (javanese language) where half of the students are from outside of java and may not understand javanese language. sometimes, most of the students just put the feedback in their bag without reading and checking their errors. to sum up this, those students still get the same errors as previously. based on the background of this study, this study has two research questions.  what are students’ reactions toward feedback on weekly journal activity at the english education department of unversitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta?  what kind of feedback do the students english education department of unversitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta prefer to receive for their writing on weekly journal activity? the main point of this study is exploring students’ reactions toward feedback on weekly journal activity used by the teacher at the english education department unversitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. it is because the finding can help the teacher to reveal the psychology of the students after receiving feedback. another point is to identify kinds of feedback preferred by the students on weekly journal activity. literature review there are many kinds of theory of feedback. according to leibold (2015), he said that feedback is an ability of the teacher to comment on students’ work. in this case, the teacher has to make a method of how to deliver an opinion to make the students journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 55 easier to get the point of what the teacher means. hattie and timperley (2007) also added the explanation of leibold (2015). they revealed that feedback is such an activity of the teacher especially to send correct information or alternative strategy to the students. types of feedback used to criticize students’ writing is a fundamental part to make the students understand the procedures of academic writing. this study concerns on written feedback which puts direct feedback to comment on students’ work and oral feedback. those feedback are written in this study as they are often used by the teacher in weekly journal activity especially at the english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. formative feedback is feedback trying to modify students’ thinking and behavior by encouraging the students to participate in certain discussion (shute, 2010). shute (2010) argued that formative feedback should be no evaluative, supportive, specific, and timely. the step of formative feedback, the teacher gives an issue, then the students solve the case. awe, dixon, & watson (2009) stated that students’ participation will help the teacher to be responsive to identify what students need in the learning and teaching process. direct feedback is feedback which focuses on improving students’ accuracy in learning a foreign language, but in this feedback, the teacher has been flexible to deliver students’ project (pham, 2015). pham (2015) also stated that the feedback of the teacher must relate to students’ proficiency. giving feedback on writing and paying attention to grammar and accuracy are the most basic aspects that should be considered, such as “rio eat banana” and the correct one is “rio eats banana”. diverse feedback or external feedback applies if the teacher wants to build up a self-directed learning model. toro and hurd (2013) said that the feedback should consist of relevant objective, understanding, responsibility, and self-confidence. the example of diverse feedback is the teacher transfers the main points of the material, and then the students look for the additional material on their own. to make sure the understanding of the students, the teacher tests them in the next meeting. ghani and asgher (2012) explained that giving feedback to the students by applying a combination of teacher’s feedback and peer feedback; it will give precious impact to the students in increasing students’ knowledge. peerfeedback will teach the students, who have low understanding, to identify, observe and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 56 correct their work in the same way. the example of combination feedback is directing the students to create an essay, then the students must swap the work to their friends and comment. after doing those activities, the works are given to the teacher to obtain additional feedback from the teacher. that is the way peer feedback and teacher’s feedback affect students’ writing. oral feedback is feedback given to the students based on emotion and students’ feeling, and this feedback should be conducted by peers (mendez and cruz, 2012). however, in delivering oral feedback, teacher is suggested to pay attention to some factors such as length of treatment and age (saito, 2010). in this context, saito (2010) said that the teacher must measure the effectiveness of the feedback which will be delivered orally since the longer feedback is delivered, the more risky the students forget what the teacher says. reactions of the students after receiving comments are diverse. now and then, the response from one student to the others is different. lee (2008) stated that to pay attention to the reaction of the students, usually the teacher put aside the students who have low proficiency, it goes without saying, the students will be difficult to catch the materials. the worst effect, the students have negative attitudes such as getting demotivation and ignoring the feedback. moreover, another respond that students show after having feedback, according to xuelian and won (2014), the students are satisfied if corrective feedback is delivered to the students who have good proficiency. there is no specific term about weekly journal activity. thus, in this paper, this study compiles and cites some activities which are similar to weekly journal activity. the similar activities encompass of schemata theory, stimulating task, and reading comprehension. schemata theory is designed for the students to practice how to arrange their paragraph (gilakjani & ahmadi, 2011). then, a weekly journal can be named as a stimulating task because the teacher also stimulates the students to give an argument, and criticize what they read. so that is why this method motivates the students to be more vigorous to participate in the discussion (guthrie, 2006). weekly journal activity can be nearly comparable to reading comprehension because of the procedures. for example, reading comprehension directs the students to answer questions based on what the students read (eidswick, 2009). journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 57 methodology this research was qualitative research in which the data were gathered from six students batch of 2015 at the english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta by using in-depth interviews. to calculate the data, this research was transcribed, then the data was put into the table. to obtain clear and valid data, this research was analyzed by using coding consisted of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. to make sure the data was valid, this research held a member-checking to the participants by making an appointment with a mobile phone, and the findings of the data were in line with what the participants argued. findings after interviewing the students, this study found that the reactions of the students after receiving feedback consisted of three points. there were students showed demotivation in learning, students felt satisfied with the feedback, and students showed their enjoyment in learning. those reactions came up because of several factors. alamis (2010) said that the students would be enthusiastic to learn if they got advice and suggestion in their work. moreover, feedback gave a positive effect, if the students found the enjoyment inside the feedback such as a joke, funny word, or interesting delivering. all the findings above were supported by students’ opinions below. “i can laugh aloud and realize upon my mistakes due to the feedback. moreover, the feedback make me easy to comprehend the correct form (nana.2)”. delivering feedback sometimes was the best step to make the students capable to improve their skills. however, based on lee (2008) stated that feedback sometimes could be a barrier for the students to catch the materials. for example, the students got demotivated because of the suggestion of the teacher or the result beyond his/her expectation. then, they also said that the characteristic of the teacher also determined student’s reaction after receiving feedback. moreover, giving uncompleted feedback was also disliked by them. this is one of the participants’ arguments “i do not like feedback which is uncomplete because it will make me confuse to understand the materials. (nana.10)”. based on lipnevich and smith (2008), they stated that students could have satisfaction in learning if the teacher took through the feedback clearly. first participant was happy to receive the feedback as the participant had a reference to improve the ability. this finding was journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 58 supported by one of the participants saying that “i am glad with feedback as when i make mistake, i feel so easy to find out a correct example. (nini. 3)”. based on the finding, the most favorite feedback to check their works are written feedback and oral feedback placed on the second rank. the reason why many students preferred to accept written feedback as the feedback made the students easy to identify their mistakes. according to chandler (2003), giving feedback by underlining the errors of the students was the most suitable way to make the teacher easy to comment. mahdi and saadany (2013) said that oral feedback was effective to be used to give additional feedback after giving written feedback to the students. mahdi and saadany (2013) also explained that oral feedback was not proper to be given in front of many people because it can make the students shy. the participants in this study revealed that they like oral feedback since oral feedback was easy to ask for more feedback to the teacher. conclusion and implication to conclude this study, the students were sure that feedback from the teacher made the students enjoy learning certain materials. the second is the students also showed demotivation after getting feedback. the students stated that feedback made them demotivated in learning since the feedback was not appropriate to their expectations. one of the findings found that feedback in the weekly journal activity gave them satisfaction on learning. students argued that feedback given by the teacher facilitated them to increase their skills especially on writing as they had a reference showing their mistakes that should be improved. furthermore, regarding types of favorite feedback of the students, there were two kinds of feedback preferred by the students, those are oral feedback and written feedback, but the most favorite feedback of the students was written feedback. references alamis, m. p. (2010). evaluating students' reactions and responses to teachers' written feedbacks. philippine esl journal, 5, 40-57. cchandler, j. (2003). the efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in the accuracy and fluency of l2 student writing. journal of second language writting, 12, 267-296. eidswick, j. (2009). the influence of interest on reading comprehension in efl journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2 2018 59 students. annual reseach report of the language center, 12, 25-38. garrett, t. (2008). student-centered and teacher-centered-classroom management: a case study of three elementary teachers. journal of classroom interaction, 43(1), 34-47. ghani, m., & asgher, t. (2012). effects of teacher and peer feedback on students' writing at secondary level. journal of educational reseach, 15(2), 1-13. gilakjani, a. p., & ahmadi, s. m. (2011). the relation between l2 reading comprehension and schema theory: a matter of text familiarity. international journal of information and education technology, 1(2), 1-8. guthrie, j. t., wigfield, a., humenick, n. m., perencevich, k. c., taboada, a., & barbosa, p. (2006). influences of stimulating tasks on reading motivation and comprehension. heldref publication, 99(4), 232-246. hattie, j., & timperley, h. (2007). the power of feedback. review of educational reseach, 77(1), 81-112. hawe , e., dixon, h., & watson, e. (2009). oral feedback in the context of written feedback. australian journal of language and literacy, 31(1), 43-58. icy, l. (2008). student reactions to teacher feedback in two hong kong secondary classrooms. journal of second language writing, 17, 144-164. leibold, n., & schwarz, l. m. (2015). the art of giving online feedback. the journal of effective teaching, 15(1), 34-46. llipnevich, a. a., & smith, j. k. (2008). response to assessment feedback: the effects of grades, praise, and source of information. ets, 57(1), 1-65. mahdi, d., & saadany, n. e. (2013). oral feedback in the efl classroom. malmo hohskoala, 63, 11-27. mendez, e. h., & cruz, m. d. (2012). teachers' perceptions about oral corrective feedback and their practice in efl classroom. bogota, 14(2), 63-75. patton, m. q., & cochran, m. (2012). a guide to using qualitative research methodology. medicins ssns frontieres, 7(3), 1-36. saito kazuya, & lyster, r. (2010). oral feedback in classroom sla. studies in second language acquisition, 10, 265-302. saito, h. (1994). teachers' practices and students' preferences for feedback on second language writing: a case study of adult esl learners. tesl canada journal, 11(2), 46-69. shute, v. j. (2008). focus on formative feedback. review of educational research, 78(1), 153-189. toro, m. f., & hurd, s. (2014). a model of factors affecting independent learners’ engagement with feedback on language learning tasks. open and distance learning association of australia, 35(1), 106-125. tuan, l. t. (2010). enhancing efl learners' writing skill via journal writing. canadian center of science and education, 3(3), 81-88. xuelian, l., & jeong-won, l. (2014). efl college students’ reactions to their writing teachers’ corrective feedback. english teaching, 69(3), 81-103. volume 4, no. 1, 2019 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/579 david sulistiawan aditya is an english lecturer at universitas ‘aisyiyah yogyakarta. his current project is investigating the use of mobile technologies in tertiary education. his research interests are in the area of educational technologies and mobile assisted learning. “bem” an android application model to enhance midwifery students english speaking competence david sulistiawan aditya universitas ‘aisyiyah yogyakarta davidsaditya@unisayogya.ac.id doi: 10.18196/ftl.4137 abstract the lack of exposure and practice in learning english due to the short meeting hours is the main factor contributing to the low level of midwifery students’ english-speaking competence in indonesia. mobile-assisted language learning can be one of the ways to cope with this problem. a plethora of learning speaking applications is available in the app store and play store. however, midwifery students need more specific english to meet their needs. this study aims at developing a model of android application to enhance the speaking competence of midwifery students and anchors in the instructional design model. the design was in the five stages, namely: analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate. twenty-one midwifery students and two experts of material development and information technology were participants for product implementation and evaluation. the researchers obtained the necessary data through observations, questionnaires, and interviews. the finding of this study was that an android application model named bem (basic english for midwives) developed in this study could enhance the midwifery students speaking competence. keywords: android application; speaking competence; mobile assisted language learning =========================================================================== mailto:davidsaditya@unisayogya.ac.id journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 44 introduction english competence is still a problem for indonesian healthcare professionals. the indonesian minister of health, in republika.co.id, states that the demand for nurses and midwives from outside countries is immense. the indonesian government has signed an mou with some countries such as saudi arabia, japan, netherlands, and qatar. they need around 20.000 health professionals from indonesia, philippine, and vietnam. however, she mentions that indonesian health professionals still have problems with language, especially english. most countries require migrant health professionals to meet their language competence standard as regulated by every countries' government, and it is a barrier for most international health workers including from indonesia, to work outside countries. thus, “language competence has become a priority as health care workers need to be able to communicate safely with patients and coworkers, help patients make informed decisions, and keep clear patient records” (rumsey, thiessen, buchan, and daly, 2015, p.5). the low english proficiency of indonesian healthcare professionals was the effect of the lack of exposure from english learning in colleges (maharani, 2013). even though english has been a compulsory subject at most indonesian health schools, it is not as the language of instruction taken at the beginning of the course within one or two semesters with small credits. in most indonesian health colleges, english subject normally has 14 meetings in one semester. the number of interactions in meaning that students participate in language learning will influence language acquisition success (kusmaryani, 2019). as a consequence, when students have less time to use the language to interact and participate, the acquisition of the language is also limited. current innovation in mobile technology presents learning innovation for efl learners, which is learning beyond the classrooms (kukulska-hulme, norris, and donohue, 2017). language educators have started integrated mobile technology as a solution to current problems in efl teaching and learning. several previous studies showed the effectiveness of the integration of mobile technology in english instruction. in indonesia, wulandari (2019) made use of instagram vlog to enhance speaking skills, enrich vocabulary, and build students’ confidence and motivation in learning. in another study, mobile applications had proven optimizing journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 45 students’ speaking skills and critical thinking in english learning (kusmaryani et al., 2019). accessing english monolingual dictionary (emd) through mobile phones could boost students’ listening skills (yudhiantara & saehu, 2017). other mobile-assisted learning namely businessapp (calle, pomposo, & parejalora 2015), visp or videos for speaking (moreno & vermeulen, 2015), ant or audio news trainer for english (barcena & read 2015) were other mobile assisted language learning which successfully gave contribution to the success of english learning for various purposes. android is one of the operating systems widely used in indonesia. android is considered a suitable platform to be integrated into classroom instruction and well developed in the mall. a plethora of applications in the android play store is accessible for learning english speaking. however, midwifery students need more specific english to meet their learning objectives. app inventor is an online android application developer provided by google which enables teachers with little knowledge of programming to create an android application as it does not use a lexical language program. this study focuses on developing a mobile-assisted language learning media, particularly designing a model of android application as a media to enhance the english speaking competence of midwifery students' in the first-semester at universitas ‘aisyiyah yogyakarta. this study answers these two research questions:  what is an android application model to enhance english speaking competence of midwifery students at universitas ‘aisyiyah yogyakarta?  what are the impacts of the model on the speaking competence of midwifery students? literature review mobile technology for learning mobile technology has been discussed recently to support learning in various contexts. mobile learning is associated with learning opportunities served through interactive mobile devices, and the learner accesses resources provided at a fixed location or while on the move (abidin, mathrani, hunter, & parsons, 2017). mobile devices allow the learner to choose the time, location, and a comfortable pace for learning while helping teachers to provide personalized and motivating learning experiences to suit the learning location and context (sivakumar, 2014). in recent decades, mobile technologies have dramatically improved concerning its use for journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 46 learning in various subjects. sung, chang, & liu (2016) reviewed a hundred publications related to the use of handheld devices for learning. they revealed that the publication related to the integration of mobile technologies in learning situation from 2004 to 2008 was less than 20 publications and increased significantly to more than 60 publications within 2009 to 2013 and most of the innovation was taken to formal education and on languages and arts subject then followed by science and mathematics. it seems to keep growing until now in various educational contexts and subjects. many previous types of research related to technology-enhanced learning, particularly in the area of mobile-assisted learning, have made a positive contribution to the development of teaching and learning (kusmaryani, mustafa, & purnawarman, 2019). wulandari (2019) made instagram enhance students’ english-speaking competence. awan et al. (2019) integrated learning with a mobile game in radiology education, and yudhiantara & saehu (2017) optimized the access of the english monolingual dictionary (emd) through mobile devices to help learners to enhance their listening skills in english teaching. however, the growth of mobileassisted learning has faced challenges in some countries, including indonesia. france, started september 2018, has banned mobile phones at schools due to its negative impact on students claiming that the students use it for adult access, cyber-crime, and violence content. however, it seems that they have not conducted a deep study of factors contributing to its negative impact and do not consider its potential for students learning. the same situation happens in indonesia, although there is no official government regulation yet related to the ban of mobile technologies at schools coming from teachers and school managers. in the meantime, mobile learning has become fashionable nowadays. mobile-assisted language learning the innovation of mobile technology for the development of teaching and learning english has been studied since the last decades and mostly in the area of languages and arts. utilizing mobile technologies in language learning is well known with term mall or mobile-assisted language learning. the studies of mall tended to focus on formal learning contexts and seek enhancements in language skills and competencies such as reading, writing, speaking, listening, and vocabulary acquisition (kukulska-hulme, 2016). although most of the kinds of literature in journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 47 mall have not proven to give better results on student's language skills compared to face to face class, it provides a lot of opportunities for students to have more exposure in learning and well-suited media for current learning problems and situation. some principles need to consider in designing mall media. elias (2011) has analyzed eight general principles in designing mall and interprets those principles for mobile learning. four of them are considered to give value to the mall: o equitable use, “deliver content in the simplest possible format;” o flexible use, “package content in small chunks;” o tolerance for error “scaffold and support situated learning methods;” o instructional climate, “push regular reminders, quizzes, and questions to students.” besides, stockwell (2013) formulates the other principles. he proposes ten principles of designing instruction in mall. they are 1) mobile activities, tasks, and apps in mall should consider the affordances and limitations of the mobile device and the environment where the device implemented, 2) reduce the need of multi-tasking and distractions to the environment, 3) can motivate as well as show boundaries, 4) provide equity, 5) be aware of and accommodate the differences of the language learner, 6) consider used devices and the cultures, 7) provide short and succinct tasks and activities, 8) fit the tasks with the technology and the environment with the task, 9) provide assistance and training to use the mobile devices for effective learning, 10) recognize and accommodate varied stakeholders. methodology this study developed and examined a model of android application as learning speaking media for the midwifery students and investigating the impact of it on the students’ speaking competence. it employed an instructional design approach as guidance to work on product development and qualitatively investigated for its impact. instructional design is the development of instructional theory through the systematic procedure to ascertain the instruction quality (berger and kam, 1996). the instructional design consists of addie that shows the phases of the design, namely 1. analyze, 2. design, 3. develop, 4. implement, and 5. evaluate. the design is as follows. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 48 figure 1. instructional design model (rogers, 2002) the product development started with the analysis of learners’ target and learning needs. the analysis process reviewed the first-semester english curriculum document for the midwifery program in the university and also the context and language situation that they needed to use in the midwifery context through a focused group discussion with the midwifery lecturers and the english teacher to specify the language focuses and terms for the learners. after the learning materials had identifications, the storyboard was then designed based on the activities of the material to accommodate the speaking tasks in the platform. the researcher used app inventor to developing the storyboard into an application. when the platform was ready, the experts evaluated it. revision and improvement were made based on the experts' evaluation before implementing the product. the researcher implemented the final version to the research subjects for one semester teaching period of an english class from november 2016 – february 2017, and 21 midwifery students in the first semester were the participants for the product implementation. the samples taken were through total sampling. pre-test and post-test of english-speaking were conducted to uncover the impacts of the platform on learners’ speaking competence. finally, interviews and questionnaires were posed to understand further the impacts. figure 3 gives a clear description of the study process. figure 2. the description of study process journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 49 findings description of the product “bem” the output of the study was a mobile application model as a learning media of english speaking for midwifery students at the beginner level. the application was named basic english for midwives or “bem” with android as its operating system. the size of the app was 10.9 mb. bem contained five topics and five english speaking activities within every topic as the core of speaking activities conveyed in the application. in the first activity, the learners listened to an audio of conversation based on the context of the topic, learned language functions and expressions being used by the speakers in the context. the second activity provided the learners with pronunciation practice of single words. the learners could listen to the correct way of pronouncing some words related to the topic and check their pronunciation quality through the platform. in the third activity, the learners were still having practices on pronouncing words but more into sentences and expressions in english. meanwhile, activity four gave the learners more exposure to discourse situations by completing a dialogue. finally, the last activity would allow the learners to explore speaking practices through a video project of monologue or dialogue context in english. the content of bem is as follows: figure 3. the parts of bem the chart illustrates the sections and features of the model of bem. as the product features were planned carefully in the initial process, only a few changes were made on the prototype to get the final product. there was a change made in activity 4 of the product, which was before jumbled words activity. after getting feedback in the expert evaluation, the researcher modified activity in the form of discourse analysis activities through multiple choices. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 50 figure 4. the user interface of bem the activities of bem adapted the frame of the cycles of teaching speaking proposed by goh & burns (2012) and principles in teaching speaking in efl formulated by nunan (2003). while to construct the product as a mobile-assisted learning media, the researcher grounded the construction on the principles of mobileassisted language learning (stockwell, 2013), and well-designed software (elias, 2011). discussions the product’s accountability development was through the experts' evaluation in terms of media and material. the researcher gathered evaluation through questionnaires in the forms of the likert scale, and the open-ended questions were also employed to get vivid and valuable feedback. the result of the mean score of the learning material in the product was 1.9. the score denoted that the learning resources in bem were appropriate to facilitate the teaching and learning of english-speaking skills, particularly to midwifery students. from the open-ended questionnaire data analysis, the expert concurred that the learning recourses in bem were worthwhile to provide students with activities to enhance their englishspeaking skills. furthermore, the expert also acknowledged that the learning activities in bem were easy to understand, interesting, and fun for learning. it indicated that the first phase in the cycles of teaching speaking applied in the product as it focuses on guiding the learners' attention in speaking practices. also, the activities provided that are interesting and fun will internalize students’ motivation and promote attention to practice their speaking. the expert added up that the learning resources in bem provide activities that guide the language learners in learning english sentence stress and speech sounds. the resources were also considered to enrich the students' range of vocabulary. for instance, the activity one and two provide learners with vocabulary and pronunciation drills. yet, the product journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 51 set the learners in learning of language functions and expressions. finally, the materials in bem served in specific terms and contexts of the purpose of learning english. all in all, the materials in bem were appropriate to sanction the learning of english-speaking skills to midwifery students. meanwhile, in terms of quality as a learning media, the result of data showed that the mean score was 0.6. it indicated that the expert's opinion on bem as a mobileassisted learning media was positively high. the application worked as good media for learning. the expert admitted that the bem was practical and interesting for learning the language. in terms of its user interface, he acknowledged that the application was easy to operate, and it accommodates the varied technical knowledge of both teachers and students. however, some parts of the product required improvements. first, background color and text color required adjustment since some of them similar. contrast color was the suggestion for improvement. second, buttons on the interface seemed not consistent in its location on some screens. orderliness was the requirement for the quality of the user interface. third, initial authentication, such as the "login" component, was required to be able to build a system to record learner's progress in doing the activities. fourth, the back button needed to be created to make navigation easier for the learners. finally, the experts found that some features in the app did not work when installed on certain devices. the version of the operating system in the devices, the android developer application (app inventor) version, and screen size or resolution affect the product’s compatibility. after the product was improved based on the experts’ evaluation, the researcher implemented it in the field. one of the english classes of the midwifery department became the research subject randomly. the class consisted of 21 midwifery students considered as beginner learners. the researcher guided the teacher in product integration in the teachinglearning process. it found out that two students were unable to use the product because their mobile phones belonging to the ios operating system. the product had consistent integration into both the classroom instruction and as supplementary outside the classroom through self-learning project instructed by the teachers. at the end of the class, the speaking competence of the participants indicated improvement through the implementation of the product. the improvement was a denotation through a speaking test in the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 52 pre and post of the teaching and learning process within a semester. table 1 delineates the results of the score of the pre-test and post-test of speaking skills within the study, which covers four components, namely vocabulary range, pronunciation, grammar, and fluency. the researcher conducted himself and not the class teacher to avoid subjectivity in the scoring processes. it was face to face speaking test. figure 3. the result of pre and post speaking test the score of the pre-test denotes that the participants had a low speaking competence. the students' average score of their speaking test was 31.9. after the product was employed and integrated into the process of english teaching and learning by the teacher within a semester under the researcher's assistance, the participants english speaking average scores increased to 63.1. it indicated that the product influenced the students speaking competence. the researcher also gathered participants' perceptions to obtained feedback and the leverage of the product to participants. the data taken through openended questions and semi-structured interviews signified that learners had a positive perception of bem. they pointed out that bem was a practical tool to help them to improve their speaking skills. the app was also practical to be installed by the learners independently. they stated that bem was a proficient media to facilitate them in learning english speaking both in the classroom instruction and outside the classroom as supplementary learning resources as bem provided them with fun activities, opportunities to have more english-speaking practices, and also constructive feedback. the participants also acknowledged that bem helped assist them in learning to pronounce words and enriching vocabulary. they admitted that they had difficulties in pronouncing english words. thus bem was worthwhile to help them out with that problem. similarly, the product was also giving them a comfortable situation in practicing their english speaking. as english is not the 0 50 100 speaking competence speaking competence journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 53 second language that indonesian people use in their daily and academic situations, it culturally impacted the students’ selfconfidence in practicing it in public/open situation. the students argued that they felt more comfortable to have their englishspeaking practices through the phone rather than in the class. they added that doing speaking practice through the bem individually gave them no anxiety, especially when they made mistakes. they could do it over and over again without worrying about their friends making fun of it. finally, they described that doing vlog as the last project of the platform activities was such a hobby for them. making a video project as the final project of the platform in every theme could arouse their motivation to learn to speak. however, they also reiterated that teacher’s control and guidance were necessary to learn english speaking through bem. the appropriate policy should be designed to avoid the negative impact of mobile technology (machmud, 2018). some of them admitted that they were distracted to access social media when they were learning using their mobile phones. a few were doing the activities in a short time and close to the deadline merely to fulfill the class requirement. they also mentioned technical problems when they access it outside the class. the students‘ mobile phone data space limitation and data internet connection were problems the teacher should consider to integrate this app in their english speaking class. conclusion and implication bem is an android application which is accountable to be a tool to provide opportunities for speaking practices and as supplementary material to learn english speaking skills for current midwifery students both in the classroom and mobile situations to solve the short meeting hours problem. it consisted of five themes in which the researcher designed five speaking activities by considering the teaching speaking cycles and principles of designing mall. the product received evaluation and modification based on experts’ validations in terms of both media and material. in its implementation, the students speaking competence showed improvement, and the researcher measured it using pre and posttest within a one-semester learning process from the initial average score of 31.9 to 63.1. also, most of the students had positive perceptions of using bem to learn english speaking. bem was a practical tool to help them to improve their speaking skills. yet, it provided them an ease situation to learn and practices english speaking. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 54 future researchers need to consider some technical problems if they are going to implement a similar topic. teacher control is needed to make sure that the students do the learning as phone access will direct them to access social media. other variables might also influence the results of this study, namely motivation, learning intensity, teaching method, students’ socio-economic background, culture, and other variables. possible influencing variables need consideration for future study. thus, an experimental study needs to explore the product’s effectiveness in enhancing language learners’ speaking competence. references abidin, z., mathrani, a., hunter, r., & parsons, d. (2017). challenges of integrating mobile technology into mathematics instruction in secondary schools: an indonesian context. interdisciplinary journal of practice, theory, and applied research, 0(0), 1-16. doi. 10.1080/07380569.2017.1344056 awan, o. et al. (2019). making learning fun: gaming in radiology education. academic radiology, 26 (8), 1127-1136. doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2019.02.020 bárcena, e. et al. (2015). state of the art of language learning design using mobile technology: sample apps and some critical reflection. critical call – proceedings of the 2015 eurocall conference, padova, italy, 36-43. doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2015.000307 berger, c. & kam, r. (1996). definitions of instructional design. retrieved from http://www.umich.edu~ed626/defin/html on september 14, 2015. calle, c., pomposo, l., & pareja-lora, a. (2015). businessapp: una aplicación para el aprendizaje del inglés mediante dispositivos móviles en el campo de los negocios. e-aesla, 1. retrieved from http://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/eaesla/p df/01/19.pdf elias, t. (2011). universal instructional design principles for mobile learning. international review of research in open and distance learning, 12(2), 143-156. retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ej9207 38.pdf goh, c. c. m. & burns, a. (2012). teaching speaking: a holistic approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. handayani, l. s. (2018). menkes dorong perawat kerja di luar negeri. retrieved from https://www.republika.co.id/berita/nas ional/umum/18/12/20/pk1g0a430menkes-dorong-perawat-kerja-di-luarnegeri kukulska-hulme, a. (2016). mobile assistance in language learning: a critical appraisal. in: palalas, agnieszka and ally, mohamed eds. the international handbook of mobile-assisted language learning. beijing: china central radio & tv university press co., ltd. kukulska-hulme, a., norris, l., & donohue, j. (2015). mobile pedagogy for english language teaching: a guide for teachers. elt research paper. london: british council. kusmaryani, w., musthafa, b., & purnawarman, p. (2019). the influence of mobile applications on students’ speaking skill and critical thinking in english language learning. international conference of computer and informatics engineering (ic2ie). journal of physics. conf. ser. 1193 012008,1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2019.02.020 http://dx.doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2015.000307 http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ej920738.pdf http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ej920738.pdf https://www.republika.co.id/berita/nasional/umum/18/12/20/pk1g0a430-menkes-dorong-perawat-kerja-di-luar-negeri https://www.republika.co.id/berita/nasional/umum/18/12/20/pk1g0a430-menkes-dorong-perawat-kerja-di-luar-negeri https://www.republika.co.id/berita/nasional/umum/18/12/20/pk1g0a430-menkes-dorong-perawat-kerja-di-luar-negeri https://www.republika.co.id/berita/nasional/umum/18/12/20/pk1g0a430-menkes-dorong-perawat-kerja-di-luar-negeri journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 55 doi:10.1088/17426596/1193/1/012008. kusumawardhani, a. (2017). kebutuhan perawat: kawasan asia timur meningkat. retrieved from http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170 726/12/675208/kebutuhan-perawatpermintaan-kawasan-asia-timurmeningkat machmud, k. (2018). the smartphone use in indonesian schools: the high school students’ perspectives. journal of arts & humanities, 7(03), 33-40. dx.doi.org/10.18533/journal.v7i3.1354 maharani, d. f. (2013). moodle learning model for nursing students of poltekkes. a thesis. yogyakarta: sanata dharma university. moreno, a. i. & vermeulen, a. (2015). using visp (videos for speaking), a mobile app based on audio description, to promote english language learning among spanish students: a case study. procediasocial and behavioral sciences, 178 (2015), 132-138. doi.10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.169 nunan, d. (ed.). (2003). practical english language teaching. new york: the mcgraw-hill companies. rogers, p. l. 2002. designing instruction for technology-enhanced learning. hershey. pa: idea group publishing. rosalina, e. (2016). indonesia alami kelebihan tenaga kesehatan. retrieved from http://www.bnp2tki.go.id/read/11779 /deputi-kln-dan-promosi-bnp2tki-:indonesia-alami-kelebihan-tenagakesehatan rumsey, m., thiessen, j., buchan, j., & daly, j. (2016). the consequences of english language testing for international health professionals and students: an australian case study. international journal of nursing studies 54 (2016), 95–103. doi.or/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2015.06.001. sivakumar. (2014). 3g mobile technology in education. cognitive discourses international multidisciplinary journal, 2(1), 49-53, retrieved from http://cdimj.naspublishers.com stockwell, g. & hubbard, p. (2013). some emerging principles for mobile-assisted language learning. monterey, ca: the international research foundation for english language education. page 1-15. retrieved from http://www.tirfonline.org/english-intthe-workforce/mobile-assistedlanguage-learning. on november 20th, 2014 sung, y, chang, k & liu, t. (2016). the effects of integrating mobile devices with teaching and learning on students' learning performance: a meta-analysis and research synthesis. journal of computer and education, 94 (2016), 252275. doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.11.0 08 tylor, j. (2011). appinventor for android. west sussex: john wiley & sons, ltd. wulandari, m. (2019). improving efl learners’ speaking proficiency through instagram vlog. llt journal: a journal on language and language teaching, 22 (1), 111-125. doi.org/10.24071/llt.2019.220111 yudhiantara, r. & saehu, a. (2017). mobile-assisted language learning (mall) in indonesian islamic higher education. ijeltal (indonesian journal of english language teaching and applied linguistics), 2(1), 21-31. retrieved from http://ijeltal.org/index.php/ijeltal/arti cle/download/52/pdf http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170726/12/675208/kebutuhan-perawat-permintaan-kawasan-asia-timur-meningkat http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170726/12/675208/kebutuhan-perawat-permintaan-kawasan-asia-timur-meningkat http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170726/12/675208/kebutuhan-perawat-permintaan-kawasan-asia-timur-meningkat http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170726/12/675208/kebutuhan-perawat-permintaan-kawasan-asia-timur-meningkat http://www.bnp2tki.go.id/read/11779/deputi-kln-dan-promosi-bnp2tki-:-indonesia-alami-kelebihan-tenaga-kesehatan http://www.bnp2tki.go.id/read/11779/deputi-kln-dan-promosi-bnp2tki-:-indonesia-alami-kelebihan-tenaga-kesehatan http://www.bnp2tki.go.id/read/11779/deputi-kln-dan-promosi-bnp2tki-:-indonesia-alami-kelebihan-tenaga-kesehatan http://www.bnp2tki.go.id/read/11779/deputi-kln-dan-promosi-bnp2tki-:-indonesia-alami-kelebihan-tenaga-kesehatan http://www.tirfonline.org/english-in-tthe-workforce/mobile-assisted-language-learning http://www.tirfonline.org/english-in-tthe-workforce/mobile-assisted-language-learning http://www.tirfonline.org/english-in-tthe-workforce/mobile-assisted-language-learning https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.11.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.11.008 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 titis wisnu wijaya earned his bachelor degree on 2012 and master degree on 2015. for the next years, he joined universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta as an english lecturer at information technology department. now, his expertise and interests are in educational technology and english education. the effectiveness of songs for teaching speaking titis wisnu wijaya universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta titiswisnuwijaya@umy.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3231 abstract the primary motive for comprehending language is to create a communication. speaking becomes a difficult thing to do for indonesian learner when the learner wants to increase the speaking ability to the learner. most learners are good in theory, yet bad in practice. whereas speaking is the purpose of learning english. in this case, innovation in speaking skill must be innovative. teaching speaking ability is not only delivering the material but also giving something different way to make learner interested. the research subject was the fourth-semester students in the academic year of 2013/2014. the students would be in two classes, i.e., the experimental and control group. the classes started with pre-test. the post-test fourth-semester in the last meeting after treatment. the researcher obtained the data from a speaking test and continued to analyze by inferential analysis. the research findings showed that the research had a gap in the students’ speaking ability in the experimental group and the control group. from the data analysis, the scores in experimental and the control group increased. moreover, the increase in the experimental group was better than the control group. in the experimental group has three categories, i.e., good (2 students), fair (18 students), and poor (1 student). post-test mean (17.47) was higher than the pre-test (10.19). the control group had three different categories, i.e., fair (5 students), poor (12 students), and very poor (3 students). post-test mean (13.85) was higher than the pre-test (10.05). the data showed that post-test mean in the experimental group (17.47) was higher than the post-test mean in the control group (13.85). therefore, the hypothesis “it has a high score in learning to speak using a song for students in the experimental group” was accepted. keywords: songs, teaching speaking, speaking ability =========================================================================== mailto:titiswisnuwijaya@umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3231 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 75 background of the study students’ difficulties in speaking are visible from their product. the challenges are related to their speaking ability. the students might have fewer vocabularies to arrange sentences to speak. the other challenge comes from the lack of knowledge in mastering grammar. those difficulties may emerge due to the differences between indonesian and english. speaking is an essential skill to communicate. cameron (2001) states that speaking is the use of language to indicate meaning to the others can make feeling (p. 40). speaking is a production in using the language. speaking also has another purpose that is an activity to use the language to communicate among members in society as a manifestation of one’s language competence. the common speaking issues are profound experiences, lacking selfconfidence, not being fluent, having little motivation, etc. the students’ ability is essential for their speaking skill. in the case, the students require to overcome their speaking problem so that they will get excellent speaking achievement. speaking ability urrutia and vega (2010) find that most students consider speaking as the most difficult ability to learn. also, the researchers saw merely few the students spoke english during the class. also, nunan (2003) states that speaking consists of making systematic verbal expressions to bring sense (p. 48). first, speaking must be listened. it has temporary and prompt acceptance. listening to others has stress, rhythm, and intonation. it should be intermediate feedback for direct communication. in the speaking activity, the speaker must be able to plan and edit channel. according to luoma (2008), to develop students’ communicative in speaking, a facilitator can combine language input, structured output, and communicative output (p. 87). first, language input comes from teacher talk, listening activities, reading texts, and the language heard. it gives students the material need to produce language. second, structured output focuses on correct form. in this part, students have options to response, yet all options require them to apply the structure that the teacher has already presented. it is designed to make students comfortable producing language items introduced, some while in combination with learned items. the teacher uses journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 76 structured output exercises as a transition between the presentation stage and the practice stage of a lesson plan. third, the communicative output mentions that the students' purpose is to complete a task. students may take the language that the teacher has just presented, but they also may know and draw on vocabulary, grammar, and communication strategies. in this part, the success criterion is whether the student gets the message across. the researcher concludes that speaking ability consists of linguistic performance and linguistic competence. that is the ability to manage meaningful words and sounds. the speaking interest as a social creature, human always communicates to others. it is a process of interchange of interactions, i.e., telling information, asking help for the needs, etc. it implies that speaking action has a significant role in human life. in urrutia and vega (2010) research study, speaking is the most challenging skill to develop. students usually present a lack of vocabulary and shyness. thus, the researcher can measure students’ speaking ability. speaking ability can be measured not only from the performance but also, from their competence in language use. the language purpose is communication, and the context of speaking objective is to promote communicative efficiency. it is essential to master writing, speaking, listening, and reading, but this research will focus on “speaking.” teaching speaking speaking english is neither an easy nor a fast process to learn. the facilitator should have a technique to increase student’ speaking skill. teaching speaking is not merely asking the student to speak up. nunan (1991) states that speaking is the ways of how to deliver information and express idea (p. 40). the classroom is one of venue to children can increase linguistic competence. furthermore, speaking requires that learners not only comprehend how to gain a specific point of language, e.g., grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary but also, they must understand the way to produce the language speaking is a productive oral skill. speaking in a foreign language is a complex effort which implicates adopting all the different language levels. the researcher needs to try several strategies for teaching speaking that can help language learners to gain speaking practice speaking (nunan, 2003, p. 64). journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 77 evaluating speaking hughes (2003) gives an extensive explanation summarized into five factors that should be involved in assessing speaking ability (pp. 131-133). those are as follows; (1) accent contains a vowel, segmental feature, and intonation pattern. the listener should apply it correctly. (2) grammar is the role in spoken language and written language. to get a good result in speaking ability, learners should obey the rules of grammar. in writing, learners can also find the grammar role in pronunciation, morphology, and syntax. (3) vocabulary is one of the linguistics factors in which the words number make up vocabulary. it is essential because the speaker cannot speak more if he or she has a limited vocabulary. hornby (1974) defines vocabulary is a row of words applied in communication (p. 979). if learner master many vocabularies, it will be convenient to show ideas. (4) fluency, a good criterion in speaking english well and fluently. speaking fluently here means the speed of speaking. however, speaking fast does not always mean speaking correctly. someone can be said fluent in speaking if he or she can say the words fluently with a proper grammar with high speed. english fluency, of course, makes the people communicate their ideas, thought, and feeling quickly in any situations. songs in language teaching the essential part for learners is to choose the material. song has great value among the materials used in the teaching-learning process. song should be utilized as an effective teaching tool and it plays an essential part for psychological and emotive youth development (rukholm, 2015, p. 178). supporting learner to improve their intelligence, according to simpson (2000), linguistic knowledge and musical intelligence have advantage one another by having wellplanned teaching-learning (p. 40). revealing students to text multeity and genres that contain multiple supposition as sound may not entertain them. yet in the teaching learning process, facilitator help students to know themselves as benefactor who are led by inquiry, inspired by curiosity, and steadily reimagining the treatment from recent perspective (carlson 2010, p. 70). first, song makes relaxing and entertaining the classroom e in which learners more open to studying. second, song in the classroom has a cheerful way to learn english. song is one of media that worthwhile to apply. the facilitator can explain grammatical with lyric of songs for it is easier to clarify in english article. in conclusion, motivation is an essential part of learning, and creative idea in teaching is the way to develop learning motivation. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 78 consequently, english popular songs applied in the study center as a motivational factor. songs provide opportunities for real language use sharpe (2001) believes that song sets a chance in language use in a fun way (p. 56). young children are often singing and playing with rhymes and shortly imitate the sound. the significant elements of music are melody and lyrics applied to develop speaking skill. keeping rhythm and patterns of sound can be taught. in developing language and literacy, music presents a terrific role (woodall & ziembroski 2002, p. 1). the use of song facilitates learning process by reducing pressure. the state of affective depends on apprehensible degree of receptivity. it appoints to students’ emotional of exposure to the language input. song is expressive, conveys love and emotion, tells a memorable story, realizes the dream, and reminds the past. to echo in the learner’s heart, a song has plentiful in themes and expressions. bolitho et al., (2003) state that song is “meaningful and repeated exposure to comprehensible input affect language acquisition” (p. 253). methodology this study belongs to experimental research. it concerns studying the effect of specified and controlled treatments given to the subjects belonging to different groups. the sampling technique shows the procedure, the researcher adopted in selecting items to the selection process which is known sampling technique (kothari, 2004, p. 55). the sampling technique applied to take the representative sample from the population in this study was random cluster sampling. the sample took two classes from twenty-seven classes in the fourth semester of ‘aisyiyah health sciences college of yogyakarta in the academic year 2013-2014. the researcher picked the class observation randomly. first, the researcher chose one to three classes randomly. the second step was taking the first out was experimental, and the second out was the control group. thus, the selected classes were english 4.b2 as an experimental group and english 4.a1 as a control group. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 79 table 1. the sample of the physiotherapy class no. class students subject of study 1 nursing 4.b2 21 the experimental group (using songs) 2 physiotherapy 4.a1 20 the control group (without using songs) the samples in this research were nursing english class 4.b2 which had 21 students as the experimental group and physiotherapy english class 4.a1 which had 20 students as the control group. this study applied a test as the research instrument. according to (suharsimi, 2010: 32), a test needs for people in or group of people to be held to measure the skill, intelligence, or ability. there were two types of test, i.e., pre-test and post-test. the pre-test was conducted to know how far the students’ speaking ability before treatment. the posttest was conducted to find out how far the treatment had influenced the students’ speaking ability. the instrument used in this research was a speaking test. the researcher scored the test result using these categories based on hughes, et al. (2003, pp. 131-133) below: table 2. proficiency descriptions no the aspect evaluated score criterion 1. dialect/accent 1 2 3 4 5 6 inexplicable pronunciation. bold accent is difficult to understand. foreign accent takes strong listening, and mispronunciation leads to stray misunderstanding and grammar or vocabulary mistakes. marked foreign accent and mispronunciation that do not obstruct understanding. have no striking mispronunciation yet would not be brought to foreign accent. have native pronunciation 2. grammar 1 2 slipshod grammar. have errors of very few major patterns and avoiding journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 80 no the aspect evaluated score criterion 3 4 5 6 communication. have errors showing similar patterns and causing occasional misunderstanding. stray errors showing imperfect patterns, yet it is not a weakness that leads to misunderstanding. few errors and have no failure patterns. no more than two errors during the interview. 3. vocabulary 1 2 3 4 5 6 insufficient vocabulary in simple sentence. limited vocabulary to basic knowledge. have several inaccurate words and vocabulary limitation in several comments. have vocabulary to discuss interests, general vocabulary in discussion with some circumlocutions. have vocabulary broad and precise; make sentences with complex practical and varied situations. vocabulary as accurate and comprehensive like a native speaker. 4. fluency 1 2 3 4 5 6 have hesitant speech and have an incomplete conversation. have more pacing and pausing for even long or short sentences. speech is often halting sentences, sometimes have meager sentences. have occasionally hesitant of speech, with some unevenness by rephrasing words. have forceless and smooth speech. have fluent, effortless, and clear speech as a native speaker. 5. comprehension 1 2 3 4 5 6 comprehend little for short conversation. understand and answer slowly; have a short speech on common topics. conceive simplified in dialogue but have substantial repetition and rephrasing. understand carefully educated speech in dialogue but have an occasional recurrence. understand everything in conversation except for speak unclearly. understand in formal and informal speech to be expected as a native speaker. data collecting technique in this research, there are many ways to collect the data. according to suharsimi (2010), there are some data collecting methods to the data collecting, i.e., testing, questioner, observation, and documentation (p. 126). to obtain the data, in the speaking test, the researcher applied testing. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 81 in collecting the data, there are three steps which are conducted by the researcher, i.e., pre-test, performing treatment, and posttest. 1. giving pre-test creswell (2008) states that pre-test makes a specific measurement that evaluates the participant in before having a treatment (p. 301). the researcher conducted pre-test by giving a test to both groups; the experimental group (nursing english class 4.b2) and the control group (physiotherapy english class 4.a1). the form of the test was an open question at least five questions in speaking. it needs 90 minutes to complete it. the material was chosen based on daily activity; (future activity). the pre-test was done to measure the speaking ability of the student before conducting the treatment. the researcher administered the test at the beginning of the research. 2. giving treatment there was treatment after pre-test. the researcher conducted the treatment in 8 meetings. the treatment applied songs for teaching speaking. the researcher used songs as the treatment in the experimental class 4.b2 for teaching speaking. meanwhile, in the control class 4.a1, the researcher taught speaking without song as the treatment. 3. giving post-test the post-test is a specific measurement that evaluates the participant in after having a treatment (creswell, 2008, p. 301). it is to know the speaking ability after getting the treatments to measure the differences in the speaking ability of students. the researcher then saw the effect of the treatments given during the treatment process. then, the researcher gave the post-test to both groups. it had three steps in data collection, such as pre-test, treatment, and post-test. the instrument validity and reliability the instrument can be applied to get the data of the research before the test of validity and reliability. to find out the applicable instruments, the researcher tested in the tryout and gave it to respondents out of the research (respondents included in experimental and control group). the researcher applied the try-out result to verify the validity and reliability of the instrument. 1. validity validity is the instrument extension to measures what it is supposed to measure (nurgiantoro, 2004, p. 336). item validity was implied to find out the correlation between the total score to each item and the overall test score. the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 82 technique to analyze the quality as the validity of the test is a coefficient of point biserial. the formula that is used to know the item validity is the correlation formula: rpbi = 𝒙͞𝒑−𝒙͞𝒒 𝑺𝑫 √𝒑𝒒 where: rpbi = coefficient of point biserial ͞xp = the score mean for right answering item ͞xq = the score mean for wrong answering item sd = the standard deviation p = the student proportion for right answering item q = the student proportion for incorrect answering item 2. reliability a test cannot measure anything well unless it is measured consistently. in this study uses the kr-21 formula (kuder richardson). 𝒓₁₁ = 𝒌 𝒌 − 𝟏 {𝟏 − 𝒙͞ (𝒌 − 𝒙͞) 𝒌 . 𝑺𝑫² } where: r = the test reliability k = items number x = total mean of score sd = standard deviation table 3. the value of the reliability coefficient no. the coefficient of reliability category 1. 0.800-1000 very high 2. 0.600-0.790 high 3. 0.400-0.599 average 4. 0.200-0.399 low 5. 0.000-0.199 very low result and reinforcement the test was conducted to collect data. the researcher implied an interview to measure the speaking ability of the students. from the frequency distribution of the students in the experimental pre-test, the researcher found the results in several categories; 8 students (38.1%) poor, 13 students (61.9%) very poor, and none (0%) to fair, good and very good. the students in control group pre-test, the researcher, found the results in some categories; 4 students journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 83 (20%) poor, 16 students (80%) very poor, and none (0%) to fair, good and very good. the researcher conducted the treatment in eight meetings and used as the treatment in the experimental group. meanwhile, the researcher taught speaking without songs as the treatment in the control group. the learning process passed in three steps, namely, pre-test, treatment, and post-test. in the pre-test, the researcher gave several questions to stimulate students’ during the class. the treatment included the following kind of techniques: songs by mp3, comprehend songs, missing lyrics exercises, and oral composition. meanwhile, the main activity of teaching speaking without using songs included as follows; doing the exercises in the students’ guidebook, speaking assignment, and homework. summarizing and evaluating was given in the post-test. based on the frequency distribution of the experimental post-test, the researcher found 0 students (0%) in the very good and very poor category, 2 students (9.5%) in the good category, and 18 (85.7%) belong to fair and 1 student (4.8%) in the poor category. in the control group post-test, the researcher found 0 students (0%) in very good and good category, 5 students (25%) in fair category, and 12 students (60%) in who belong to poor category, and 3 students (15%) in who belong to very poor category. discussion the findings include the test result and effectiveness. the objective of this study is to find out whether there is a difference in the speaking ability of student in the experimental and control class. song might play a role in lexical remembrance, when melody repeats verses as the simple part of fact. this makes the student closer with the melody fast. it also translates to the text familiarity which is connected to the melody. this means that retention and lexical acquisition result from the close relation between text and its accompanying melody (rukholm, 2015, p. 184). the teacher can clarify grammatical through lyric of song for it’s easy to comprehend and to teach english. the researcher proved these expert statements through the research held. the techniques become the factors that have a vital role in enhancing the teaching learning activity more effectively and efficiently. therefore, teaching speaking by using songs is applicable to teaching english. it is one of the appropriate media in teaching speaking for the beginner or slow learner. the lecturer can use the songs to increase the students’ speaking ability because this has the effectiveness for teaching speaking. music can be an effective way to teach with esl student when it is implemented intensively, and the use of song makes the efficacy in journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 84 esl classroom (li & brand, 2009, pp. 8283). the researcher found a statistical difference in the student speaking achievement in speaking ability between the experimental and control group. the alternative hypothesis (h1) stated in this research that was accepted, whereas the zero hypothesis (h0) was rejected. the value of (p) was lower than the level of significance (0.001<0.05), so the hypothesis was stating that teaching speaking using song was more effective than teaching speaking without using song was accepted. the researcher can conclude that teaching speaking by using songs is effective. table 4. the experimental and control group data description data experimental control pretest posttest pretest posttest number of classes (n) 21 21 20 20 mean (m) 10.19 17.47 10.05 13.85 standard deviation (sd) 2.421 2.064 1.877 2.601 maximal score 15.00 23.00 15.00 20.00 minimal score 7.00 14.00 7.00 11.00 conclusion in conclusion, there is a significative difference in the speaking ability between teaching speaking by song and teaching speaking without a song. the data show that post-test mean in the experimental group (17.47) is higher than the post-test mean in the control group (13.85). it has advantages in developing students’ speaking ability by using songs. the suggestion is hopefully a great use to improve english teaching, especially in english speaking skill. there are some recommendations; (1) using songs in teaching can give benefit to develop students’ speaking ability. thus, the facilitator is suggested to apply media songs in the english teaching and learning process. (2) the researcher suggests other researches to design a similar topic of study or to develop other skill. the researcher wishes that this article will help guide and stimulate additional research on teaching english. 85 references bolitho, r., carter, r., hughes, r., ivanic, r., masuhara, h. & tomlinson, b. 2003.ten questions about language awareness. lancaster: elt journal. brown, h. douglas. 1994. principles of language teaching and learning. 3rd edition. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall regents. cameron, lynne. 2001. teaching language to young learners. cambridge: cambridge university press. creswell, j. w. 2008. educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. third edition. new jersey: pearson education. ltd. hughes, arthur. 2003. testing for language teachers. united kingdom: cambridge university press. luoma, s. 2008. assessing speaking. cambridge. uk: cambridge university press. nunan, d. 2003. practical english language teaching. new york: mcgraw hill. nurgiantoro. 2004. metode penelitian pendidikan pendekatan kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan r & d. bandung: alfabeta. schoepp, k. 2001. reasons for using songs in the esl/efl classroom. the internet tesl journal, vii(2). retrieved 20.12. 2012 from http://iteslj. org/articles/schoepp-songs. html. sharpe, k. 2001. modern foreign languages in the primary school: the what, why and how of early mfl teaching. london: kogan page. sheldon, l. k. 2004. communication for nurses: talking with patients, new jersey: slack inc. simpson, j. m. 2000. practice multiple intelligences in efl class. tesol journal. creative classroom practice. new york: longman. suharsimi arikunto. 2010. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: rineka cipta. urrutia, w., & vega, e. (2006). encouraging students to improve speaking skills through game in a colombian school. profile issues in teacher’s professional development, (212). woodall, l and ziembroski, brenda. 2001. song for teaching. london: cambridge university press. http://iteslj.org/articles/schoepp-songs.html http://iteslj.org/articles/schoepp-songs.html volume 4, no. 1, 2019 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/579 1)ananda taqwa earned his undergraduate degree in english language education department from universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, yogyakarta. he is currently pursuing his master’s degree in english language studies at sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. his main research interests are english education technology and second language acquisition. 2)vernanda nopita sandi accomplished her undergraduate degree in english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, yogyakarta. she is now pursuing her master’s degree in english language studies at sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. her main research interests are in technology on english education and statistics for english language educational research. students’ experiences of using vlogs to learn english ananda taqwa1), vernanda nopita sandi2) sanata dharma university1,2) 1)anandataqwa3@gmail.com 2)vnsandi@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.4134 abstract there has been a change in the process of learning from a conventional way into the technologicallybased way these days. from this change, it is necessary to find out the significance of utilizing technology in learning english from students’ perspectives. this study aims to investigate the efl mailto:anandataqwa3@gmail.com mailto:vnsandi@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 2 students’ experiences of using vlogs, as one of the technology products to learn english. in conducting this research, the researchers adopted exploratory study as the approach and employed the hermeneutic phenomenology as the research design. these designs have relations to description and interpretation of the meaning of efl students’ experience. one student participated in this study. the researchers employed the student’s reflection as part of the assignment after making vlogs as well as a one-on-one in-depth interview to obtain the data. at this point, two research questions are underlying this study, namely: (1) how are the students’ experiences in learning english using vlogs?; (2) what does the student learn from it? from the data analysis, the researchers found several findings in this study. for the first research question, there are three findings found, namely, losing words to say, conveying english language expression, expressing his identity, looking for additional information in english. for the second research question, there are four findings revealed. those were detailed guideline making, better editing, confidence gaining, and vocabulary improvement. keywords: mall; youtube; vlog; english learning; students’ experiences =========================================================================== introduction the term industrial revolution (ir) 4.0 has been becoming a hot topic in indonesia recently. in this particular era, a lot of revolutions, such as in technology innovations has emerged rapidly to the surface of any aspects of life like in education, because of that, these days, technology has claimed further its role in language teaching-learning through its software or hardware. additionally, without a doubt, a lot of teachers have also brought more technology, such as through mobile devices, into their classrooms to facilitate the teaching-learning environment. for example in language learning, using mobile devices in language classroom have revealed several positive outcomes, such as providing access of collaborative classroom activities for group in speaking, writing, and listening as well as enriching the activities in classroom authentically by using mobile apps or online sites (godwin-jones, 2018). furthermore, another innovation of technology which has become very popular recently is what is a so-called vlog and youtube channel. youtube is an online video-sharing or video hosting, which lets users have access to uploading, sharing, and watching videos (dean, 2008; weinberg, 2009). gunelius (2018) also adds that vlog is a type of blog in which it is full of video content in it. having a channel on youtube, people can create vlog content then upload it to their channel. thus, due to this phenomenon, teachers or learners also possibly can use vlog on youtube or create their own to get them involved in the environment of the teachingjournal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 3 learning process. this method can be such a fun way of learning the language. seeing this fact, it reveals that education also has changed and has brought education to entering its new era, namely education 4.0. in the age of education 4.0, it essentially uses technologybased tools and resources to drive education in non-traditional ways. with this era, it allows a lot of activities that teachers can collectively relate to the current real-life situation and condition. consequently, learners will have the opportunity to be exposed to different kinds of authentic resources. therefore, this sort of new way of education is essentially positive. further, several scholars conducted studies involving vlogs in language teachinglearning that have also revealed several results. a study from avci and aksar (cited in maulidah, 2018) shows that they have found some significances of vlogs, such as to develop an effective tool to build self-efficacy. maulidah (2018) also finds out that, vlog significantly can increase learners’ speaking ability. it can boost students’ encouragement by providing a fun and accessible learning process. also, it promotes a good presentation in students’ speaking performance. they will be able to interact in an authentic environment to get a lot of exposure in speaking. besides, students get a chance to build up their autonomous learning. those several things bring students to enhance their progress in speaking ability (p. 15). moreover, “involving more vlogging in oral communication class also increases student talk time. more oral communication practice helps students improve mastery of new vocabulary and grammar, decrease shyness while bolstering confidence, and develop fluency.” (watkins, 2012, p. 197) from those previous relevant research findings and currently available kinds of literature, only a few studies have tried to investigate the experiences of learners when they get vlogs involved in english language learning. instead, a lot of studies on vlogs tend to focus on revealing its use in language learning to enhance speaking ability. this study, therefore, tries to reveal learners’ experiences in learning english when using vlogs as well as to find out what they learn based on their perspectives by describing and interpreting them to have an empathic understanding. with that, the findings will reveal richer information on the significances of using vlogs in english language learning. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 4 literature review mall the rapid development of innovations in mobile technology has significantly given a contribution to all aspects of human life. one of them is in grasping knowledge. thus, this allows a lot of people to have broader access to learn the different extent of knowledge like language learning. such contributions of mobile technology have opened up a new way of learning languages, namely mobile-assisted language learning (mall). mall deals with language learning, based on the employment of mobile devices. mall often offers a way to access learning materials and to interact with teachers and peers, exceeding place and time barriers in a way that has never been possible until now. by using this technology, teachers or students will have the likelihood of teaching and learning languages more fruitfully and interestingly. several available devices like mobile phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (pdas), tablet personal computers (pcs) and laptop pcs, except desktops, can support mall in carts and other similar solutions (traxler, 2005). the involvement of all these devices in the language teaching-learning provides students with the opportunity to experience learning languages every time, and everywhere they are, such as a bus, at home, or in public places. moreover, it is the fact that mobile phones, for example, has become part of many learners’ life so that they will not find it difficult using it when accessing learning materials. additionally, the emergence of the internet has also opened wider possibilities of eliminating distances in getting various and rich learning materials from all parts of the world only through mobile technology. as a result, by learning using mobile phones, learners can access varieties of language materials provided by teachers or other sources through self-searching easily. furthermore, this sort of language learning based upon mobile is very helpful in conducting activities outside the classroom since these activities let the learning to have a direct connection to the real-world experiences (kukulska-humle, 2009). miangah and nezarat (2012) also add that such as the advantages of mobile learning is collaborative learning, as this kind of learning is very encouraging. they allow different learners to swap their knowledge, skills, and attitudes through interaction as well as helps learners to support, motivate, and evaluate each other to reach significant amounts of journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 5 learning. it means that such a product of mall is effective for language education. vlog the existence of computer-mediated communication (cmc) can be a useful tool to reinforce language learners and achieve the goal of meaningful language learning. one of the profound aspects in cmc is beneficial to achieve the language learning goal is the availability of web-logging, in which it has access to create a vlog (meskill & ranglova, 2000). a vlog stands for a video blog and sometimes videocast or vodcast. according to gunelius (2018), a vlog is also a type of blog with full of video content in it. the name vlog is also employed by video streamers who do not utilize a blog but post scheduled videos through online video hosting like youtube. however, live broadcasts count as vlogs too available on youtube and facebook. as a result, vlogs have gone as a mix of blogging and streaming, with or without the other as long as there are self-made, first-person videos involved. youtube channel youtube is an online video-sharing or video hosting, which lets users have access to uploading, sharing, and watching videos (dean, 2008; weinberg, 2009). a channel on youtube is not only the home for personal accounts but also for business accounts. the difference is the channel for business accounts has access to having more than one owner (karch, 2019). having a channel on youtube means creating vlog contents, then uploading them on their channel. additionally, the public can express their opinion towards the video uploaded on the channel. teachers or learners also can use vlogs on youtube or create themselves to get them involved in the environment of the teaching-learning process. vlogging in english learning classroom the era of ir 4.0 certainly has profound impacts on many aspects of life, including the learning system in the english education classroom. it shapes the new face of education. back then, creativity and emotional intelligence did not belong to the skills that teachers had to master. however, now, teachers are demanded to change the way they teach and think in the classroom. they should be able to develop an innovative and creative learning model that can sharpen their students’ critical thinking and do complex problem-solving. importantly, they have to be able to associate all the aspects mentioned above with technology. speaking journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 6 about technology, one of the technologies utilized by students to enhance their creativity, critical thinking, and complex problemsolving in the language learning process is vlogging. since the major activity of vlogging involves an oral activity in which students are required to narrate some stories in their life while facing the camera, it is clear that vlog can be utilized for students to develop their communicative skills. according to rakhmanina and kusumamingrum (2017), the vlogging project can help learners develop their speaking skills, communication skills, and also creativity. dr. anil (2016) also adds that vlogs help improving students’ oral skills because it allows them to practice their english either inside or outside the classroom, and they can get instant feedback from the teachers as well as watch their fellow friends performance in the video. therefore, it is a very good idea to conduct a vlogging project in the english learning environment. related studies several previous studies have revealed the use of vlogs involved in teaching-learning processes. the first study is “using vlog in the youtube channel as a means to improve students’ motivation and confidence to speak english in intermediate 1 level of lblia jambi” and the second study is “stepping up the english-speaking proficiency of hospitality students through video blogs (vlogs).” both of the researches above have the purpose of finding out whether vlogs can enhance students’ speaking skills or not. it is different from the research that is conducted by the researcher in which the focus area of the study is to investigate the experiences gained by the students. by investigating students’ experiences in vlogging, the result obtained by the researchers will be more prosperous. methodology the study employed a hermeneutic phenomenology study. phenomenology means that it has a close relation to the description, and hermeneutic means that it has a close relation to interpretation (manen, 1990). the participant of this study was two students from the english for tourism course at the english language education department of a private university in yogyakarta batch of 2016. willy and gala, pseudonym, were sixth-semester students at one of the private universities in yogyakarta, majoring english education department. regarding this study, which aims to investigate students’ experiences in making journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 7 english vlogs, they were assigned to make a vlog as a final project in the english for tourism course. in this case, they made a vlog by using english, with a duration of approximately seven minutes. the researchers administered an interview guideline, reflection, and vlog documentations as the instrument to collect the data. all the expected data were in the form of written text gained from the reflection and spoken text gained through interviews. in doing the interview, the researchers did a oneon-one in-depth interview. the participants had to fill in a consent form before the interview and in analyzing the data, the researchers employed creswell’s (2012) stages, consisting of six stages namely, collecting and organizing the data, coding the data, making descriptions and revealing the meanings, reporting the findings, interpreting the findings, and validating the findings. the transcribed data were then checked by the participant to convince that the data fit the participants’ statements to validate the findings of the research. this process was named member checking to make sure the trustworthiness of the study. findings and discussions following up on the results, the researchers interviewed the participants and found several findings. in regards to research question one: how are the students’ experiences in learning english using vlog? they reported that making a vlog to learn english was not easy due to losing words to say, conveying english expression, expressing identity, and looking for additional information in english. for the second research question: what do the students learn from it? one participant mentioned that he had learned while doing the interview, namely detailed guideline making, better editing, confidence improvement, and vocabulary gaining. from the interview result and the reflective report, the participant narrated that he was very excited and confident enough to conduct this project at first because he already had the same experiences in making videos. however, he did not realize that the vlog which he made previously was slightly different from the video assigned. in the previous project where he made vlog by his intention, he just needed to record everything without considering many things like the contents, durations, cinematography, as well as the concept of the vlog. moreover, in his journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 8 previous vlog, he did not speak up and show his face. however, in the current project, he had to consider the other way around, such as the duration, contents, and purpose of making the vlog as well as communicating in front of the camera. although willy is an english student, however, it seemed like english still became a threat to him. he got difficulty speaking english during video-recording; because of this matter, he felt overwhelmed. starting from making guidelines, he was initially not aware of making any guidelines because he thought that guidelines were not important. however, in the middle of the process of recording the video, as he realized that he needed to speak in front of the camera by using a camera, it turned out that he was not able to say anything since he was confused and got shy speaking in front of the camera. thus, he re-planned to make a guideline for the next video taking to help him deliver the contents. losing words to say like writing a web-blog, to make decent and easy-to-organize writing, being wellprepared by making a guideline or framework for the blog is necessary. it is similar to vlogrecording. the difference is the script or guidelines to keep the contents on track. willy, the participant, found some difficulties as he did not make any guidelines. in the following statements, he revealed his experience. “frankly speaking, the most challenging experience that i had was in the script/guideline making process, since if we didn’t have script/guideline, we would not know what to say. but in the previous vlogs, we just went with the flow without any guideline to hold, and that led us to the confusion of what we should say. from that moment, we realized to start making not fully script but guideline. with that, we were able to set the sequence of what we should say (though our english was limited) in every part, like in the opening and so on.” gala, the other participant, added that “in terms of english language, although we are english students and it is not our mother tongue. also, it got worse when we had to speak in front of the camera. so there were times in the video we get stuck and confused. we didn’t know what to say”. it might be easier to speak in english if he did not speak while recording the video. however, since he needed to speak while recording, it made him lose the focus and ended up being stuck and confused. moreover, as depicted in gala’s story above, making a vlog was not as easy as it seemed. there were several challenges that he journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 9 faced while making a vlog. hung (2011) states that the case narrated by gala in his reflection was an effective barrier. willy very close to the description conveyed the term of the effective barrier because of effective barriers, according to hung, is time constraints, discomfort with recording oneself, and some technological and logistical challenges. he adds that, for some people, video of oneself is more challenging than being video-recorded by other people. video of oneself might indeed become discomfort for some people, especially for those who do not get used to being in videos. they would feel unnatural, strange, and awkward. however, it gets better by the time. the longer one is dealing with a camera, the faster he would feel comfortable. furthermore, this discomfort might be related to krashen’s theory (1985) regarding an effective filter hypothesis, which comprises several variables obstructing the process of language acquisition. these variables are motivation, confidence, and anxiety. similar to the finding above, the factors which made gala shy, afraid of speaking, uncomfortable, stuck, and confused in front of the camera might be caused by low confidence and anxiety (zhipping, 2013). conveying english language expression not having the opportunity to practice speaking in the real-life context is unfortunate. the learners may interact with peers and use the target language as it is necessary to reach the level of proficiency and fluency. another opportunity nowadays is given by the vlogging platform to practice english. through vlogging, english learners can practice conveniently without worrying about getting any mean feedbacks, which can demotivate them. in the vlog, learners can freely express any topics using any language. one participant also states the same idea that his vlog allowed him to practice his english skills, such as conveying the expressions of admiration in english. here is what gala has stated: “what i experienced while making english vlog was i got a chance to convey something by using language expression that i had learned when i was still in senior high school. that was my first time going to sambisari. what i did once i arrived at the destination was i could not stop expressing my admiration for that great temple. what i said was, ‘what a unique temple,’ oh my god, oh my lord, you can see that, what a very beautiful temple.” as gala revealed in his interview that vlogging conveyed his language expression. after watching his vlog, the researchers could see how he tried to convey the expression of journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 10 admiration. it is an expression that aims to convey admiration toward someone or something. this expression starts with ‘how’ or ‘what.’ expressing identity as vlog can facilitate to practice the target language, it is also possible for anybody to use vlog as the medium of showing or expressing someone’s nationality. it is in line with the era of world english where there is no need for a standard english accent like the american accent anymore. instead, everyone may show their particular accents. one of the participants also shared the same idea. when he vlogged in english, he did not doubt to speak english with his javanese accent. he asserted that, “both of us are from java, and then although we are english students yet, we remain javanese, which sometimes when we talk to other people, we tend to speak by using the javanese accent. as you know, javanese people are famous for his accent, aren’t they? thus, instead of being shy with our accent, we tried to reveal it by using blankon. we did this because we expect many people will watch our vlog and acknowledge our culture and identity.” based on gala’s statement, he wants to implement the notion of world english where there is no standard for the english accent anymore. not like the old times when people competed in speaking like a native speaker. nowadays, english speakers from around the world should not feel embarrassed about their real dialects as long as the pronunciation is correct. looking for additional information in english when doing a vlog to a certain place like historical sites, for instance, a little research about the place is necessary as a part of being well-prepared. some people might do this for fun, knowledge acquisition purposes, or gaining new vocabulary, which is essential. another way is by reading english descriptions or information boards available. one participant often does those actions while doing a vlog at certain places. here is what he states, “as i mentioned earlier, we had never been to sambisari temple. thus, i need to search for information related to the destination. based on the information, i got experience to know more detail about the temple from the information board and the employers. based on the explanation from the employees and the information board, i also realized that i needed to filter the information that i got. it is because the information that i read from the internet did not match with the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 11 explanation from the information board and the employees.” what the participants learned detailed guideline making talking in front of the camera using the mother tongue alone and using a foreign language might be a pressure for some people. therefore, in making a video, especially a vlog, considering making a detailed guideline about what to deliver is crucial. detailed guidelines allow the creator to have sequences of video. with that, vloggers are not going to get confused about the sentences that should come out. one participant agrees as he states, “after doing the vlogs, i realized that the guideline should be more detailed. if it were more detailed, it would be easier for us to set the sequence of what we should deliver.” better editing another lesson that the participants learned is how to create a good video. furthermore, he learned how to edit videos. putting in all the clips without cutting them off is not good for the results. therefore, considering the flow of the video, the transition, the duration of effects can be a great way to edit the video. in the following is his statement. “the most important thing, in this case, is that we know how to edit video good and not boring video. if we only talk all the time for 7 minutes of video, it will be boring. thus, we should also know the proportion of editing the video so that it comes out a good result.” confidence improvement confidence is essential in language learning since it is the key to express easily and confidently. moreover, delivering things in a vlog also needs such confidence, and vlog activity can be a great tool to try out exercising confidence. a previous study involving vlog in the classroom in intermediate 1 level of lblia jambi also had proved the significances of a vlog, and one is to improve the confidence of students (sari, 2017). willy, one of the participants, mentions that, “then, through these vlogs, i started to gain my confidence. the first time doing the vlogs, i was so bad at it. i used to feel like talking in front of the camera was different and weird. but after doing some, it was pretty comfortable talking in front of the camera.” journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 12 vocabulary gaining in creating a vlog, the first important step is making the guidelines. from that process, people consciously will involve themselves with a lot of vocabulary from many new words or terms from the brochure, information boards, and even from the menu in the restaurant around. consequently, through exposure, the vocabulary will improve at some point. willy, the participant, revealed the same issue regarding his vocabulary after doing a vlog. the following is what he conveys. “in the sense of english, i feel like i gain new vocabulary. it is because when i did the vlogs in tourism places, for example, they usually got information board in certain points, and that was very informative. in the information board, they usually had it in english and indonesian, and from there, i have gained new terms or vocabulary.” conclusion and suggestion the findings of the study had answered the research questions. they are: how are the student’s experiences in learning english using vlogs?; and what does the student learn from vlogging? the researchers had three findings in response to the first research question. first, it was guideline making. one participant stated that his experience was challenging, and making a guideline was one of them. he revealed that a guideline was important and would help him a lot to deliver the content he wanted to convey. second, it was a language barrier. he revealed that doing a vlog using a foreign language, in this case, was english, and was an issue for him. third, the editing process. he admitted that he used to record everything that he wanted, but it eventually caused him trouble when it came to editing since he was confused what to edit. furthermore, the researchers discovered four findings for the second research question. first, one participant admitted that in making a guideline, it had to be in details and clear, because it eased him a lot while talking in front of the camera. second, it was better editing. the participant learned that he should not have put all the videos he took while editing them. instead, cutting off some scenes was a good action to have a better result. third, another thing he learned was that he improved his confidence constantly. fourth, it was vocabulary gaining. getting involved in doing vlogs in several places helped the participant to gain new journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 13 vocabulary from the places he visited or employees working there. for further researchers who want to conduct similar topics as the researchers, it is suggested to conduct a study by using different methods and designs. by using other methods, the result will be richer. references creswell, j. w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches: 2nd ed. california: sage publication, inc. creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research.4th ed. boston: pearson education, inc. dr. anil, b. (2016). top-up students second language talk time through vlogs. indonesian journal of efl and linguistics, vol.1 (2) educational, j. o. f., studies, i., & world, i. n. t. h. e. (2016). mobile assisted language learning. (1), 9–12. godwin-jones, r. (2018). using mobile devices in the language classroom: part of the cambridge papers in elt series. [pdf] cambridge: cambridge university press. hung, s. (2011). pedagogical applications of vlogs: an investigation into esp learners’ perception. british journal of educational technology, 42 (5), 736 -746. krashen, s. (1985). the input hypothesis: issues and implications. harlow: longman. manen, m. (1990).researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. canada: the university of western ontario. maulidah, i. (2018). vlog : the mean to improve students’ speaking ability. 145 (iconelt 2017), 12–15 miangah, t. m., & nezarat, a. (2019). mobile-assisted language learning. 2019 (february 2015). retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5121/ijdps.2012.312 6 traxler, j. (2014). defining mobile learning. iadis international conference on mobile learning. watkins, jon. (2012). increasing student talk time through vlogging. language education in asia. 3. 196-203. 10.5746/leia/12/v3/i2/a08/watkins . https://doi.org/10.5121/ijdps.2012.3126 https://doi.org/10.5121/ijdps.2012.3126 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/579 1)atta rilysia azis received her undergraduate degree in english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. now, she is studying english language studies at sanata dharma university. her research interest revolves the area of extensive reading, technology in education, and academic writing. 2)evi puspitasari is a lecturer in universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she earned her undergraduate degree in english language education department of universitas negeri yogyakarta and gained her master’s degree in english language studies at sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. her main research interests are in material development and evaluation, teaching methodology, and teacher’s cognition. book review podcasting in the implementation of extensive reading: exploring the students’ benefits atta rilysia azis1), evi puspitasari2) sanata dharma university1), universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta2) 1) attarilysiaazis@gmail.com 2) evimianto@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.4136 abstract book review podcasting is one of the alternatives follow up activities in extensive reading. this type of activity is a result of integrating book review, a common post-reading assignment, and podcasting, a digital recording in a share-comment internet platform. this research aims to discuss the benefits that the students get from the activity in the implementation of extensive reading. this research belongs to qualitative research and took place in one english language education department of a university in indonesia. the researchers collected the data by interviewing four first-year students who joined a reading-writing class where the lecturer journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 29 implemented extensive reading. to gain answers from different perspectives, the researchers involved two participants with high reading interest and two others with low interest in that activity. those four participants who were all female were chosen based on the recommendation from the lecturer. the result pointed out that book review podcasting could enhance students’ reading interest, improve language skills, get a recommendation of good books from friends, and get parents’ support to cultivate reading habits. the conclusion drawn from the finding is that creating a book review podcast as the follow-up activity after the extensive reading has a positive impact on the students. keywords: extensive reading; book review podcasting; benefits of book review podcasting =========================================================================== introduction extensive reading plays a significant role in assisting students in improving their language skills. by highlighting a large number of books to read and reading for pleasure as the goal, the approach offers habit formation to improve reading interest and language input to enhance students’ language proficiency. this phenomenon also happens in english as a foreign language (efl) context. the approach has been extensively implemented to get students’ interest in reading and to improve their english as a new language that they learn. like other reading instructions, in the implementation of extensive reading, a teacher usually gives some follow-up activities that the students should do. on the same side, jacob and renandya (2014) also suggest follow up activities after reading in the implementation of extensive reading. they add that the activities make the approach implementation more studentcentered. if the students are actively joining the class, they will feel engaged. the engagement itself is a seed that will grow to be a giant interest in reading. however, one point to consider, the basic principle of extensive reading that focuses on assessment is that the teacher is not allowed to give students an assignment that demands their detailed understanding of a text. this opinion is in line with stein (2018). he argues that there is no comprehension question or test for examining extensive reading. so, the activities should be fun and center on a general understanding of what they read. a book review can be a thoughtful idea for that main goal. in this activity, students only tell what they read in brief and give a general comment on their reading. this type of activity was once implemented by a teacher to teach japanese as a foreign language (kirchhoff, 2015). besides giving a journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 30 book talk, the teacher also asked the students to share the talk on the internet so other people who learned japanese could drop by, listen, and get book recommendations to learn the language. in an efl context, a similar activity named book review podcast also exists in a reading and writing class. in this activity, after reading a book, students were asked to make an audio of a book review. then they shared the audio to a free accessed podcast platform. after that, they had to comment on each other. podcast itself is a digital audio recording that people can share or upload their recordings on the internet (rajic, 2013). it is a new platform to make book reviews in audio form because, commonly, a book review is in a written form. by integrating a book review with social media with a review recording, the students enjoy the activity more since they can access other students’ work and get a recommendation for interesting and compelling books. besides giving students a recommendation, the goal of this assignment is making the students more active and involved. by being so, they would be more engaged in the activity, and it could have a positive impact on their reading interest. since being presented in the form of audio, podcast works as a source of students’ language input in listening. in common classrooms, students are asked to listen to a podcast with a specific topic. then they answer questions related to the audio after listening. however, in the reading class mentioned above, the podcast is applied for reading. the students read their self-selected book, reviewed the book, and recorded their voice while reviewing. after that, they uploaded the review to a podcast platform and commented on each other’s work. seeing the detailed activity, book review podcast here has double functions as a language input when the students listen to their friends’ works and as a medium to show their speaking ability. due to its double roles, the activity may give more benefits to the students as well. it is a thoughtful innovation to integrate between reading and speaking skills as what the teacher in this research did. interestingly, based on the researcher’s preliminary interview, one of the students in this reading class was not keen on reading, but after having the book review podcasting assignment in her reading class, she enjoys her reading even more. due to the elaboration closed with the students’ positive testimonial about the activity, this phenomenon of using a podcast in reading class for book reviewing is worth to discuss further. the center of this research is on digging out the benefits that the students get journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 31 form book review podcasting in the implementation of extensive reading. extensive reading extensive reading is an activity in which the goal is reading for pleasure, not for pressure. students have their freedom to choose any book they want to read. it does not matter what kind of book or genre the students want to read as long as they enjoy their reading; it is extensive reading. keegan and stein (2015) state that the most important principle in extensive reading is students reading in pleasure for comprehension. extensive reading has become a popular term implemented by teachers to increase students’ reading habits. as supposed to intensive reading conducted inside the classroom, teachers rarely implement extensive reading as the main subject in the classroom. it is because an extensive reading application needs more time than other approaches to read instructions. students should wander, finding out the right book. the journey of choosing the book is not an instant process. some students need to experiment, try, and error. after a long time for picking and dropping, they finally find the engaging ones. however, the mission is not over yet since they still have homework to find where and when that they are convenient to read. some of them may not be able to read in a crowded place and choose to enjoy books alone in their rooms. also, reading interest, one important aspect of this approach, cannot be successfully built-in a short time. that is why extensive reading will be quite challenging to be applied inside the classroom with limited time given. extensive reading has principles that must be obeyed by both teachers and students. based on day and bamford, as cited in mori (2015), extensive reading can be implemented when students can choose what they want to read from a variety of easy materials provided by their teacher. students can also read silently and individually for getting information but in pleasure, reading for a large number of books. students should read books within their language competence to avoid the difficulty and boredom in the reading process. reading speed also matters in extensive reading. using a dictionary when students find unfamiliar vocabulary is wasting time. they will have a mode of read-stop-open the dictionary repeatedly, hustling their concentration on reading, and leading to hampering their comprehension at last. by being speedy in reading, they could focus on what they read, get possibilities to maximum information absorbance, and have more language models to meet and learn. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 32 the reward of extensive reading is reading itself. it means that in this approach, when students read, they wander page by page of the book and decline to drop the book down until finished; they get the pleasure. in that condition, they are engaged with their book and have a feeling of pleasure. additionally, reading is an activity where students become a sponge to absorb the knowledge that the book gives. for instance, somebody who never knows about culture in a certain area constructs prior knowledge about the culture through reading. then he becomes an expert in that culture due to the knowledge and information that the book gives. the other case is about when a student is so tired after a final exam, and he needs entertainment by reading comics. the sweet escape with comics works to sweep his tiredness and feels entertained after doing the activity. so, in brief, engagement, pleasure, knowledge, and amusement after reading are the rewards. a reading closely connected to the pleasure principle and easy material is the necessity for the student to have a reading comfort zone (keegan & stein, 2015). in extensive reading, the principles are not only for students but also for the teacher. a teacher plays several roles in the implementation of extensive reading. first, she becomes a role model of reading. since the teacher asks students to read, she should do the talk by putting that activity into her list to do regularly. witnessing the teacher read will drive the students to read more. they will not think of themselves as an object for the teacher’s project, but they will place themselves as a teacher’s partner in the activity. second, the teacher should provide various reading materials for the students. by providing a great number of options, the students will not get drowned from the flood of books. not only book provision, but the teacher is also suggested to recommend books to the students. giving reviews and telling information about amusing books are examples of what teachers can do as teacher’s support. lastly, the teacher also needs to monitor and supervise the students in reading. if students face any difficulties in the process of doing extensive reading, the teacher has to help them find a way out. guiding and supervising the students are obligations for an extensive reading teacher. in line with the statements, celik (2018) argues that although extensive reading tends to be students’ self-activity in reading when students lost their enthusiasm in reading, the teacher’s role is needed to support them in reading. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 33 follow up activities for extensive reading there are some activities conducted as follow up in extensive reading. they are keeping a reading diary and writing short book reviews (harmer, 2007), sharing book content in a book sharing, having performance under teachers’ supervision (charumanee, 2014), and having a book talk in the classroom (kirchhoff, 2015). at a certain time, for two weeks, for instance, the teacher can ask the students to exchange book information they read to their classmates. they may share the story or give a review and comment on whether the book is engaging or not. on the other hand, if the teacher finds this activity inappropriate because students’ speed in reading is not the same, the teacher can ask them to keep reading the diary on what they read in the previous time. this activity can help students who are not confident in speaking to their colleagues. besides, students can write short reviews of the books they read in the class noticeboard. at the end of the semester, they can vote for the most popular book in the library. other teachers have their students filling their record chart of reading where students record title, level, publisher, comments, and rate. another follow up activity for extensive reading is implementing rsa, which stands for reading sharing acting. charumanee (2014) explains that this activity took a semester. students started this activity by choosing new books to read. the reading section was according to students’ leisure time outside the classroom, and they should write about 10-12 pages of their reading every week. the sharing step consisted of three rounds. in the first round, students shared their reading with their groups of four members, while other students took notes. in the second round, the students shared their reading in the presence of a new group formed by different group members. each student shared the whole story from the previous group to the new member group. in the third round, every two groups were merged into one consisting of eight members and do the sharing like what they did in the previous round. later, each group should decide a story to perform on the stage. in the acting session, each group performed their story well while the rest of the students acted as the audiences. at the end of the performance, all of the students were asked to reflect their performance and gave an evaluation of the other groups’ performance by giving feedback on the paper. teachers’ role in this activity was as a researcher and supervisor. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 34 kirchhoff (2015) explains that japanese senior college students in an english class implementing extensive reading had an activity named book talk. first, kirchhoff explains the benefits that the students will acquire for having an extensive reading. then students were asked to choose their book from the provided book in the class or library. the first 30 minutes was the time for silent reading, and then they had the rest of the time for sharing about their book to their classmates in a small group. students had four book talk rounds with different members. the languages used in each book talk were varied. students could do the book talk both in japanese and english based on the teacher’s decision. regarding what kirchhoff recommends, sharing what students read with students’ classmates in the classroom would be more updates if integrated with technology and social media. chauhan and lal (2012) state that technology does not only influence students’ learning in the classroom but also their reading behavior. students can go beyond the class, such as uploading their work in social networks and let other students leave comments and likes. appreciation given through comments and likes would make them more confident. a study reveals that praise motivates students to become better learners (gambrell, 2011). book review as an after-reading activity in this research, a book review works as an assignment in extensive reading. a book review can be the media for students to express their thought about certain books and give their critical evaluation, including the positive and negative path from certain books. according to kindle (2015), presenting a book review as an assignment can improve students’ language skills in reading and writing. the content of a book review covers critical analysis, summary, and honest evaluation from the reviewer. in line with that, ulum (2016) mentions that the book review content includes telling general topics, book organization, significance, and the good and the bad side of the book. students need to select the book to be reviewed, choosing the publication outlet, writing the review, and share it with the publication outlet to create and publish the book review (kindle, 2015). in this research, the students have to share their book reviews in the form of the podcast then share it with the internet. besides, according to obengodom (2014), writing book reviews can be a tool for students to express their opinion about certain books, including evaluating it based on their perceptions. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 35 book review podcasting in extensive reading a podcast can be media for a teacher to deliver and increase student’s learning outside the classroom (hasan & hoon, 2013). chan, chi, and ling (2011) explain the use of podcasts as a tool in learning outside the classroom. chinese and koreans students have supplemented classroom instruction of two podcast projects conducted in a university in singapore. chan et al. interviewed the participants and summarized that the use of podcasts outside their classroom had an appreciably positive attitude towards the use of podcasts itself. for the students, a podcast can be the media for sharing. deal (2007) argues that podcast is normally for leisure purpose, but when used for academic matters, a podcast can be a good and flexible tool for learning. philips (2017) argues that when students accept and enjoy the learning, they will gain many benefits. providing the students fun learning is needed, especially in this extensive reading class. it is because not all students, especially in reading class, like reading so that having an extensive reading with enjoyable activities will motivate them to read. also, the activity of sharing students’ book reviews in the form of the podcast is an interesting way for students who are familiar with the technology. after recording their book review, students share their book review podcasts on the internet. creating podcasts can increase students’ skills, such as speaking, listening, scripting, and communication skill that students cannot learn inside the classroom (panday, 2009). additionally, deciding a book review podcast as the post extensive reading activity is a great choice. in the same vein, kindle (2015) exclaims that presenting a book review assignment has been significantly effective for developing students’ reading and writing skills. methodology since this research aims to discuss the university students’ response to the benefits of book review podcasting implemented in their reading class, this research used a qualitative research approach because it can explore more about certain phenomena happened around the students. besides, a qualitative research approach is a research type in which the researcher works and collects with nonnumerical data seeking to understand the meaning of the target population and place (creswell, 2012). this research took place in an english education department of a university in indonesia. the subject where the teacher implemented book review journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 36 podcasting in a reading class was for the firstyear students of reading and writing class. in that reading class, a teacher implemented a book review as the follow-up activity after extensive reading, and the students had to share their book review in the form of a podcast. there were four students taking part in this research as participants. they were female students in batch 2018, joining the reading and writing class with the book review podcasting of extensive reading implementation. besides, the researcher collected the data from four students with different reading habits. two of the students liked reading, and two of them showed that reading was not their favorite. the participants’ pseudonyms were, namely, luna, ginny, bella, and sissy. the data were collected using the interview. according to cohen, manion, and morrrison (2011), interview enables the participant to discuss and express their opinion on a certain situation from their point of views. the interview was conducted through a verbal way to get rich data. the interview was using bahasa indonesia as the students’ first language to make the interview more comfortable and expressive. the data then were transcribed and validated through member checking. member checking is needed to make sure that the data from the participant were valid, and the participants confirmed it. the researcher did the member checking by giving the transcriptions to the participants and asked them to check. to analyze the data, the researcher used data analysis suggested by saldana (2009). findings and discussion based on the interview, the researcher found that the participants gained many benefits from the activity of book review podcasting in the implementation of extensive reading. the findings have four parts, namely enhancing reading interest, improving language skills, getting book recommendation, and getting parent’s support to cultivate reading habits. enhancing students’ reading interest reading interest is a feeling of special attention towards reading. the core goal of extensive reading is to get students’ interest in reading and make reading as their habit. besides, mori (2015) argues that extensive reading is a reading quantity with a purpose for improving proficiency and developing students’ good reading habits. when the students of the extensive reading class are interested in reading, it means that the implementation of the approach is successful. it is also supported by the given right for students that they can choose any journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 37 books to read, even the easiest ones. the book type does not matter as long as the students enjoy reading it. besides, when the students have the freedom to choose their book genres, such as comedy, romance, mystery, drama, and adventure, they will have natural engagement with their book for understanding the literature (ferrer & staley, 2016). bella and sissy, as the participants, confessed that since given a chance to decide their reading book, they could read the book. besides, ginny, who already liked reading, said that this extensive reading made her enjoying her assignment more as she could channel her reading habit. sometimes, although the teacher already gives a chance to choose the students’ favorite books, some of them are still confused to decide their reading material. this condition usually happened to students who are not interested in reading at all because they do not even know what books they like. on this occasion, the teacher’s role is necessary. one of the teacher’s support is to provide around three or four books within the students’ language level so that students can choose the book easier. this term is called bounded choice (gambrell, 2011). the extensive reading class in this research also used that term to ease the struggling readers while choosing books. in line with that, sissy stated that the students were ordered to read three books, and after that, they could choose one of them to review. after joining this book review podcast in an extensive reading class, sissy said that she enjoyed her reading because she could read the preferred book. the participants accomplished the main goal of extensive reading in this book review podcasting assignment, implemented in an extensive reading class proven by the statements of the participants above, saying that they were enjoying their reading. it means that their reading interest began to appear since they engaged with their book doing this assignment intensely. even a participant, bella, stated that after joining the extensive reading class, she spent her leisure time reading instead of watching a movie as she did before. reading with pleasure increased their reading interest. based on the participants’ statements about their reading improvement, doing book review podcasting in an extensive reading class rewarded them for extensive reading. one of the extensive reading principles highlights that the reward of extensive reading is reading itself, as stated by day (2015). improving students’ language skills the assignment of book review podcasting in an extensive reading class journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 38 influences the students to improve their language skills. almost all language skills have an improvement in creating this book review podcast assignment such as reading, writing, and speaking even their grammar, pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary increased as well. to make the book review, students have to read their books to get a comprehension of their book. a clear understanding is necessary to make an honest and clear review. since the students have to understand their book well, luna exclaimed that she even read it twice or three times to make sure that she understood the book. the reading frequencies of the students for doing this assignment develop their reading skills. archer (2012) supports the statement. he mentions that the more books the students read, the better they become in reading. in the process of writing the review of the book, students felt that their writing skill was improved. writing the review was necessary to ease the students for podcasting. from the process, improvement of writing, including vocabulary, grammar, and the way the students arranged interesting sentences to get the participants’ interest gained. in line with that, luna and ginny said that the process of writing the book review into paragraphs increased their vocabulary and writing skills. besides, ginny stated that writing the review required her creativity to do an interesting review. obengodom (2014) supports the statement. he argues that making a book review can develop students’ writing skills and ideas. since the students had to make the book review in the form of a podcast, students tried to podcast their book review well with correct pronunciation and interesting intonation. hassan and hoon (2013) mention that a podcast could be the media to practice students’ pronunciation skills. ginny said that she needed to podcast her book review part by part. podcasting the book review one by one can avoid incorrect pronunciation. students also checked the correct pronunciation of some words they were going to utter before podcasting their book review. the more the students practice their pronunciation and intonation, the better speaking skill they will get. according to jain and hashmi (2013), if students keep practicing, performing, and recording the text, they will improve their speaking skills. in this assignment, the last thing that the students had to do was listening and giving comments to their friends’ podcasts. they had to give their comments as their appreciation to their friends’ book review podcast. one of the participants, ginny, said that through listening to her friends’ podcast, she learned about intonation and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 39 pronunciation even she got her listening interest in this assignment. getting a book recommendation although the assignment of book review podcasting as the follow-up activities after extensive reading aims to share the students’ book review, in fact, the students even got book recommendations after listening to their friends’ book review podcast. luna, as the participant, revealed that by listening to her friends’ book review podcasting assignment, she got book recommendations to read. in extensive reading, book recommendation is necessary to promote extensive reading outside the classroom (fisher & frey, 2018). when students have many options, they need a suggestion to choose. it is the benefit of a book recommendation. also, people usually try to find out information about certain books through book reviews or friends’ recommendations before buying them. review and recommendation of the book can come from friends, colleagues, family, or the internet. sometimes, people feel bored of reading certain books due to dreadful content. it makes them give up on reading. so, people need book recommendations to support their reading habits. getting parents’ support to cultivate reading habit parents have a great contribution to the education of their children spiritually and financially. parents do everything to support their children’s education. however, in indonesia, parents tend to avoid their children to buy and read authentic book material such as novels, magazines, and comics. they consider that that shopping is wasting money. additionally, parents have thoughts on what students need for their education is reading their school subject or books for academic matters. with this belief, it is rare for indonesian parents to give their support for their children to read their favorite novels. book review podcasting gives a positive result dealing with the provision of parents’ reading support. bella said that she told her parents about the assignment, and her parents gave financial support to buy any books she wants to do the book review assignment. they never permitted her to buy fiction books before. the assignment of book review podcast in her extensive reading class can be a nice excuse to get the support for parents. this support benefits the students to not only read in this extensive reading class but also make reading a pleasurable activity. vasylenko (2017) argues that if parents support their children to read journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 40 and make reading as their habit, it will make the children have their positive reading outcomes. implication and recommendation this study has some implications and recommendations for students, english teachers, and other researchers. it is necessary for students, especially those who do not keen on reading to try doing extensive reading. as it is a reading for pleasure, students can read at any time without any rules provided. the intensity of reading will treat the students to increase their willingness to read even they will get their reading interest. second, english teachers, especially in reading class, must attempt to implement extensive reading in their class. extensive reading will build students’ reading engagement. it can ease english teachers if they give an assignment for their students related to reading. students will naturally read because they have received the treatment in extensive reading. besides, the finding revealed that the benefits of conducting a book review podcasting assignment in an extensive reading class were satisfying. the researchers accomplished the core purpose, such as getting reading interest, reading for pleasure, and improving reading habits. third, other researchers may conduct research related to this study by finding out the challenges faced by teachers or students. besides, teachers’ perceptions towards implementing extensive reading in reading class were not discussed here so that other researchers can take this idea for their next research. conclusion in brief, the assignment of book review podcasting as the follow-up activity after the extensive reading has a positive influence on the students. the result showed that the main benefit that the students obtain was enhancing their reading interest. reading the books several times made the students understand the whole book content, and their reading interest increased. besides, creating the book review podcast assignment develops a myriad language skills for students such as reading, writing, listening, increasing vocabulary knowledge, grammar, pronunciation, and intonation. besides, one of the requirements for students in this assignment is to listen and give comments to other’s podcasts, and this occasion gives benefits for the students to get book recommendations from their friends. the last benefit is getting parents’ support to improve reading habits. through this assignment, students can get an excuse to buy and read inauthentic materials such journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 41 as novels, graded readers' books, magazines, or comics. references archer, a. v. (2012). analyzing the extensive reading approach: benefits and challenges in the mexican context. a colombian journal for teachers of english, 19, 169-184. celik, b. (2018). effects of extensive reading on learners: how it develops certain points in vocabulary and sentence structure. international journal of english linguistics, 8 (2), 73-84. chan, w. m. (2011). students' perception of and attitudes towards podcast-based learning a comparison of two language podcast projects. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, 8 (1), 312-335. chauhan, p. &. (2012). impact of information technology on reading habit of college students. ijrrest: international journal of research review in engineering science and technology, 1 (1), 101-106. chumaranee, n. (2014). idea sharing: the use of read-share-act to promote extensive reading. passa , 47, 184-198. cohen, l. m. (2011). research methods in education (7 ed.). london: routledge. creswell, j. w. (2012). education research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th edition ed.). boston: pearson. day, r. r. (2015). extending extensive reading. reading in a foreign language, 27 (2), 294-301. deal, a. (2007). classroom response system. a teaching with technology white paper. retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/techno logy/whitepapersclassroomresponsen ov07.pdf ferrer, e. &. (2016). designing an efl reading program to promote literacy skills, critical thinking, and creativity. the catesol journal, 28 (2), 79-104. fisher, d. &. (2018). raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. the reading teacher, 1–9. grambell, l. b. (2011). seven rules of engagement: what’s most important to know about motivation to read. the reading teacher, 65 (3), 172–178. hasan, m. m., & hoon, t. b. (2013). podcast applications in language learning: a review of recent studies. english language teaching, 6 (2), 128135. jacobs, g. m., & renandya, w. a. (2014). making extensive reading even more student-centered. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 4 (2), 102-112. jain, d. s., & hashmi, f. (2013). advantages of podcast in language learning classroom. journal of indian research, 1 (2), 158-163. keegan, p. &. (2015). extensive reading in theory and in practice. reading, 24 (1), 52-54. kindle, p. a. (2015). teaching students to write book reviews. contemporary rural social work, 7 (2), 135-141. kirchhoff, c. (2015). extensive reading in the efl classroom: benefits of a face-toface collaboration activity. an international online journal, 15 (1), 5465. lambert, v. a., & lambert, c. e. (2012). qualitative descriptive research: an acceptable design. pacific rim international journal of nursing research , 16 (4), 255256. mori, s. (2015). if you build it, they will come: from a “field of dreams” to a more realistic view of extensive reading in an efl context. reading in a foreign language, 27 (1), 129-135. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 42 obeng-odoom, f. (2014). why write book review?. australian universities' review, 56 (1), 78-83. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej101 7964.pdf panday, p. p. (2009). simplifying podcasting. international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, 20 (2), 251-261. phillips, b. (2017). students-produced podcasts in language learning exploring student perceptions of podcast activities. journal of education, 5 (3), 157-171. rajic, s. (2013). educational use of podcast. the fourth international conference on e-learning, (pp. 90-94). serbia. stein, k. (2018). extensive reading in theory and in practice. reading, 24 (1), 52-54. ulum, ö. g. (2016). a genre analysis of esp book reviews and its reflection into genre-based. 6th international research conference on education, language & literature, 604-606. vasylenko, v. o. (2017). the parents’ role in helping children to develop reading skill. scientific articles, 12 (4), 71-80. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1017964.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1017964.pdf volume 4, no. 1, 2019 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/579 1)sri sulastri received her bachelor's degree in english language education department, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. now she is a temporary staff at doctoral management program postgraduate program, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. her research interests include teaching strategy, language assessment, students’ learning strategy, and teaching media. 2)indah puspawati is a lecturer in the english education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she has been teaching english as a foreign language since 2002. her research interests include teaching methodology, critical pedagogy, democratic language assessment, students’ voices in language teaching and learning, and material development. a computer-based standardized testing: the challenges and strategies sri sulastri1), indah puspawati2) universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta1,2) 1)lalastri060@gmail.com, 2)indahpuspawati@umy.ac.id doi:10.18196/ftl.4135 abstract computer-based standardized testing has become a new way to measure students’ achievement to graduate from senior high school in indonesia, starting from 2015. seeing the importance of this computer-based test for students, the researchers found it important to conduct a study about students’ voices in this test to ensure the effective use of the test. this study focused on exploring challenges faced by the students in using a standardized-computer-based test. moreover, the researchers also explored strategies used by the students to overcome the mailto:lalastri060@gmail.com mailto:indahpuspawati@umy.ac.id journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 15 challenges. this study used qualitative research conducted in the english education department of a private university in indonesia. the researchers applied an interview to six students less than one year after they conducted computer-based testing. the findings showed that insufficient facilities to conduct the test, examination’s schedule, time management, and lack of simulation were the challenges faced by the students in implementing the test. the study also revealed three strategies used by the students to overcome the challenges. there are strategies to face the challenges related to facilities, strategies to manage time better, and strategies to prepare the examination well. keywords: english national examination; computer-based test; assessment; standardized testing =========================================================================== introduction the indonesian government does some reformation to improve the quality of education. one of the reformations was the implementation of the national examination as a standard evaluation for students in elementary, secondary, and high schools since 2005. research from pakpahan (2016) supports the national examination as an appraisal of the students’ competencies achievement during the learning process in the unit of education. this standardized test is used by students from all over indonesia to measure students’ achievement. since the indonesia minister of education and culture use the national examination as the standardized testing, it has become the standard for students whether they can continue their studies to a higher level of education or graduate from school. according to hadi (2014), the national examination becomes the sole factor in determining students’ graduation. because of its role, the national examination became a high-stake test. it also has received many criticisms of its adverse impacts on indonesian education. the critics come from various stakeholders, including the students, teachers, and the government. then, the ministry reassessed the use of the national examination. this examination was no longer the sole measurement to determine students’ graduation in 2015. then, in 2015, the government changed the implementation of paper-based national examination into computer-based national examination as a way to accommodate technological development in an educational context. another consideration to use a computer-based test is because it brings more accurate and reliable results (mubashrah, tariq, & shami, 2012). the use of the computer-based test is trusted to test the students because this standardized test can journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 16 decrease cheating among students. then, the use of the computer-based test is accurate in giving the score. even though the computer-based test brings positive aspects, the implementation of computer-based testing also comes with some problems. one of the biggest problems is the technology infrastructure in the school environment (brown, 2019). in indonesia, where school’s technological facilities vary from places to places, the schools in the cities are reported to have more advanced technological facilities compared to schools in rural areas (nasution, 2014). the difference in technological facilities can lead to the difference in students’ ability to use the computer in testing and students’ readiness as the important aspects to consider in conducting computer-based testing (jamiludin, darnawati, & uke, 2017). the students’ readiness in doing computer-based test include their ability to use a computer. this statement is in line with research conducted by puspawati (2014). she reveals that students’ readiness has relations to operating used technology skills in testing. it influences the score obtained from the test. jamiludin et al. (2017) state that students who have a better knowledge of computers could conduct the computer-based test successfully than the less tech-savvy students. wise (2019) also claims that testtakers’ readiness could also influence score validity, where the score gained from the test may not reflect the true picture of students’ ability. considering the importance of how students’ readiness may influence the result of computer-based standardized testing, research is necessary to see how students in indonesia perceive their readiness in conducting computer-based standardized testing. based on the explanations above, the researchers conducted research focusing on students’ perceptions of the challenges and strategies towards computer-based standardized testing. understanding the challenges can make some stakeholders such as the schools and students anticipate the problems which may appear during the test, so both the schools and the students can prepare it well, whereas knowing the strategies in that implementation may help schools and students for the test. therefore, the findings can be useful for the schools and students as the guideline in taking the test. research questions  what are the challenges faced by the students in the use of computer-based tests in english national examinations?  what are the strategies used by the students to face the challenges in the use of computer-based tests in english national examinations? journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 17 literature review indonesian standardized testing the regulation of the ministry of education article 1 number 4 states that the national examination is an activity to measure graduate's competence nationally, which refers to the graduation competency standard. national examination becomes the standard of the education quality in each region. hence, the government determines the national examination result as the needs of the students to continue their study. according to sukyadi and mardiani (2011), the national examination could be used to rank and compare individuals and schools. therefore, indonesia uses national examination as standardized testing. in implementing the national examination, there are two techniques included in the test, i.e., the paper-based standardized test and the computer-based standardized test. indonesia used the paperbased standardized test in the national examination from 2005-2014. then, in 2015, the implementation of the paper-based test had changed to a computer-based standardized test. jamiludin et al. (2017) stated that there are two techniques in implementing a test, namely by paper-based tests and computerbased tests. computer-based standardized testing terzis (2011) states that one of the essential aspects of educational development is assessing students because it measures the students’ knowledge. the development of technology, especially for a computer, can be used by the minister of education, teacher, and schools to assess and grade the students. seeing the opportunity, the indonesia minister of education and culture decided to use a computer since 2015 in the national examination or school examination to assess students. however, in 2015, some schools still did paper-based tests to know whether it was appropriate or not to measure students’ knowledge. a computer-based standardized test is a test conducted in a school using a computer. brown (2004) states that a computer-based test becomes the burgeoning of assessment to measure students' knowledge. moreover, there is an opinion toward a computer-based test believing that it will increase students' motivation, ease the students in doing the test, and decrease cheating possibility among students. the use of a computer-based test in measuring students' competence is supported because it brings an accurate result that the score already set electronically. according to brown (2004), a computer can score electronically for reporting the result quickly. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 18 based on the indonesia minister of education and culture, in the first year of the implementation of a computer-based standardized test was successful and getting praise from other countries. however, some problems appeared in that implementation. some opinions revealed that some students were unfamiliar with this type of test, or some schools still had incomplete facilities, and limited client-server to support the software and hardware used in this test. challenges in using a computer-based standardized testing there are two opinions toward computer-based tests based on students' points of view. some students enjoy working with the computer because they are familiar with the device. in line with terzis (2011), he argues that students enjoy working on the computer because it creates excitement. some students enjoy it when they are working on a computer. the use of computers is known as the technology of instrumental assessment. however, it faces some challenges in the implementation, which appear from students as well as from schools. the first challenge in using a computer-based test is students’ familiarity with the computer. students who are not familiar with computers tend not to do well in the tests (jamiludin, darnawati, & uke, 2017). students’ familiarity could influence the students to work during the test because it is the first experience for them to implement the computer-based test in the national examination. the second challenge in the implementation of the computer-based test is in the schools. the challenge comes from computer facilities. students who study in high-quality schools perhaps do not face this challenge than students who study in lowquality schools. schools with high quality tend to have complete computer facilities than schools with low quality. students from schools with incomplete computer facilities may conduct the test lately. some of them usually join the test in the other schools which have complete computer facilities. the incomplete computer facilities affect the students in conducting the computer-based test. based on the researcher's experience, schools will divide the test into two or three sessions. then students will be divided into two or three groups. students from group one will get the first session of the test in the morning. students from group two will get the second session in the afternoon. the students who get the third session are less happy compared to those who get earlier schedules. (sulistiyono, suyata, & rahayu, 2016). the third challenge is still from school facilities such as servers and electricity. when the electricity goes out, the computer shuts journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 19 down, and when the server does not run well, the computer will be slow down (jamiludin et al., 2017). when the students face the challenges both of the server and the electricity during the test, it will be the worst challenge because electricity is the main component in using the computer. besides, the server also becomes the main component to run the test. the students may feel panic when they face this issue. the challenge could ruin their concentration during the test and the students' results. strategies to face the challenges in using computer-based test there are some strategies to face the challenges mentioned in this literature review. the computer-based test is viewed as a challenge for students because they are not familiar with it. the strategy to face the students’ unfamiliarity is that the schools have to give practice for students through assessment using a computer-based test (sulistiyono, suyata, & rahayu, 2016). the students also have to practice by themselves in operating the computer. the challenge of the computer-based test that faces by the students in the examination is the division. according to sulistiyono et al. (2016), to face the challenge of a division of the test, the schools should provide better computer facilities. furthermore, to face the challenge of server and electricity, the schools can add bandwidth and cooperate with electricity enterprise state (sailan, 2016). research methodology a qualitative research method was applied in this research to discover the challenges faced by the students in conducting a computer-based test and the strategies used by the students to face the challenges. creswell (2012) argues that one of the qualitative approach characteristics is to discover and develop a detailed understanding of the trends. the researchers applied descriptive qualitative research as the research design of this research. through descriptive qualitative, the researchers could explore the participants' point of view and believes more depth. lambert and lambert (2012) argue that the objective of descriptive qualitative is to discover a comprehensive summary of a specific trend experienced by the participants. the researchers did the study at a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. this private university was selected because the university provided many students who graduated from different senior high schools, so it was easy to select the participants of this research. also, the researchers could gather and access more data from students from different senior high schools. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 20 the participants of the research were six students of a private university in yogyakarta batch 2018. they were mawar, melati, sekar, mayang, bunga, and arum. all the participants were selected because they experienced using the computer-based test as standardized testing. the researchers used a pseudonym to describe and keep the participants' identities — some criteria in selecting the participants. the researcher selected six students from the ten students by seeing their high school background. the participants graduated from a and b schools' accreditation. the reasons why the researcher chose a and b accredited schools because both an a and b accredited schools have their challenges and strategies in implementing the computer-based test so that each participant might face different challenges and strategies. also, the researchers believed that students who graduated from b accredited schools may have more challenges than students who graduated from schools with better accreditation. by selecting both an a and b school accreditation, the researcher gathered the data more depth, and it answered the research questions of this research. two participants in this study had graduated from b schools' accreditation. they were bunga and arum. four participants had graduated from a schools' accreditation. they were mawar, melati, and mayang. the other criterion for selecting the participants was from their province's background. by selecting the province's background, the researcher faced different challenges and strategies in conducting the test. the participants in this study are from different provinces. in selecting the province, the researchers chose two provinces that have less quality education and four provinces with a better quality of education. the researcher chose two participants who are from provinces that have less quality education and four participants who are from provinces that have better education quality. it helped the researcher in gathering depth data. having less than a year of experience using a computerbased test became the other criterion in choosing the participants. in collecting the data, the researchers used an interview. the researchers made the interview guideline before doing the interview. the interview guideline covered the research questions of the challenges faced by the students in using a computer-based test and the strategies used by the students to face the challenges. in conducting the interview, the researchers used the indonesia language to ease the participants to answer the questions. the researchers used a mobile phone to record the participants' answers during the interview. after interviewing the participants, the researchers transcribed the recording into the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 21 word. the researchers did member checking to ensure that the transcript fit what participants said in the interview. in doing member checking, the researchers showed the transcript to the participants to cross-check. then the researcher analyzed the data by doing coding to find the themes from the interview related to the students'students' perception of the use of computer-based standardized testing. in analyzing the data, the researchers used four steps mentioned by saldana (2009). those four steps are compact of fact, the accumulation of the same fact, categorizing and reporting the data. findings and discussion the researchers report the findings and the discussion to support the findings of the research. the findings reveal the students’ perception of the use of computer-based standardized testing in the national examination. challenges faced by the students in using computer-based standardized testing the researchers found four categories of challenges that were faced by the students in the implementation of the computer-based test. those four challenges are insufficient facilities to conduct the computer-based test, the examinations’ schedule, time management, and the lack of simulation. the discussion to support the findings presented in the following paragraph. insufficient facilities to conduct the computer-based test in this part, the challenge faced by the students was the facilities. the participants said that facilities became the most significant challenges. there were five themes of challenges found in this part. insufficient computer. three participants, mayang, arum, and bunga, had similar experiences towards the insufficient computer. their schools did not have complete facilities for the computer-based test. some students had to bring their laptops to conduct the test because the school did not have sufficient computers. this finding is in line with sulistiyono, sutaya, and rahayu (2016), who argue that there are some requirements for the schools to conduct the computer-based test, and one of them is the computer. if the schools do not prepare the computer, it might disturb students in conducting the test. less equipment for the listening section. listening is one of the sections in the implementation of the computer-based test. the earphone is one of the essential facilities in conducting the listening section. the finding showed that the earphones did not work properly, and the schools did not provide journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 22 many earphones, so the students could not change their earphones with better ones. in conducting the english test in the computerbased test, the earphone problem becomes the reason why the students did not finish the listening section well. also, it can affect the students' results. that way, the listening section becomes one of the crucial parts of the test. according to saukah and cahyono (2015), listening and reading sections become the central part that focused on the english national examination competency standards of graduation. the unstable electricity. there must be electricity to run the computer well. the finding showed that electricity was also a challenge. three participants, mawar, sekar, and melati, faced the same challenge that sometimes the electricity was off. then the students could not continue to do the test. they had to wait until the electricity turn on. jamiludin et al. (2017) state that to run the computer in the examination, it needs electricity. hence, electricity becomes the crucial facilities to conduct the test. lack of compatible computers. the students’ challenge is mostly the computer. melati and arum said that they had experienced where the computer was off suddenly during the test. melati added that some of the students in her room did not get a compatible computer. this statement had a similar idea to jamiludin et al. (2017). they state that in conducting the computer-based test, the computer could be slow down anytime if the computer is not compatible. hence, this challenge could trigger students’ anxiety. unstable connection. the findings showed that there was a problem with the connection during the test. melati had experienced where the connection became the challenge in conducting a computer-based test, especially in her school. she faced the connection getting lost, so her school had to delay the examination. melati’s experience was also similar to arum. she faced an unstable connection, and it caused a delay in the test. when the computer-based system has a problem, the implementation of the test will be delayed (sailan & harmiyuni, 2016). therefore, not only the examination gets postponed, but also the student's concentration will decrease. the examinations’ schedule the participants experienced where the computer was insufficient and affected the examination. arum, mayang, and melati had this particular experience. their examinations had to be into three sessions because of the insufficient computer, in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. the challenge from this problem is that the division of three sessions does not fair for some students. arum journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 23 argued that students who got the first session of the test would have better concentration than students who got the third session due to the enthusiasm of early schedules compared to the third session. this finding is in line with sulistiyono, suyata, and rahayu (2016). they argue that students who get the first session of the examination have fresher minds in the morning. time management the students faced challenges in managing time during the test. the finding showed that the participants, sekar, and mawar were challenging to manage the time because they could not mark the main idea on the items or mark the important points. they added that they could not scrawl or mark the answer on the questions; it avoided them from finishing the test quickly. hence, they could not manage the time in the test. they explained that when they used a paper-based test, they could scrawl the critical point of the items on the paper. however, they could not scrawl the point when they used a computer. the participants stated that they needed more time to finish the test when they could not scrawl the items. based on the participants’ experience, when they conducted the reading section, she was challenging to answer the item because she could not mark or scrawl the points on the items. the lack of simulation the finding showed that the lack of simulation became the challenge before the due of the test. based on the interview result, the students who had less knowledge of computer-based tests felt that school should have conducted simulations for students before the test. therefore, the students would have known how to operate the computerbased test. the researchers found that students felt panic while having the test because they had not practiced or joined simulation of the computer-based test. the students were not familiar with the test. so, they were not able to conduct the test well. this finding is in line with muna, witarsa, and ulfah (2018), who mentions that anxiety would appear inside of the students because there is no simulation on the computer-based test. strategies used by the students to face the challenges in the use of computer-based test the researchers found three categories of strategies applied by the students to overcome the challenges from the computerbased test. the first category is strategies to face the facilities challenges. the second category is strategies to have better time management. then the third is strategies to prepare the test journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 24 well. hence, each strategy is in the paragraphs below. strategies to face facilities challenges there are two themes in this category, the technical strategy, and non-technical strategy. both technical strategy and nontechnical strategy are used by the five participants, sekar, melati, mayang, bunga, and arum, to overcome the challenges in using a computer-based test. technical strategy. the challenge faced by the participants in the test is facilities such as the earphones and the computer. the researchers found two strategies in this part. the first is that students checked the test’ facilities. then they confirmed to the invigilator if they face a problem during the test. in line with antoni (2014), students have to prepare the tools for a listening section before the section begins. the second is that students have to learn and prepare for the computer. these are the strategies to face the challenge of students’ unfamiliarity with the computer-based test. the participants stated that to minimize the challenge, the students had to learn in using a computer-based test. students also had to prepare for the computer by bringing their laptops to conduct the test. the participant stated that students in her schools had to bring their laptops because of insufficient computers in her school. according to muna, witarsa, and ulfah (2018), besides preparing the computer, students should often learn from books. non-technical strategy. the finding showed that non-technical strategy to face the facilities challenges appeared from students’ feelings. the strategy used by the students was managing their feeling not to panic. the challenges that appeared during the test could disturb students’ concentration. when students working with a computer for around two hours, and they face challenges in the implementation, it will cause anxiety (thurlow, lazarus, albbus, & hodgon, 2010). in managing students feeling, this research found that when having problems during the test, they should take easy and try to calm down. if they were panic, they would face the other bigger challenges because of being panic. therefore, managing students’ feeling is the appropriate strategy to apply by the participants. strategies to have better time management the finding showed that students faced the challenges of time management. hence, this became the strategies used by students to overcome the challenges. based on the interview result, in time management, the strategy used by students is to manage the time. they decided how many minutes were needed journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 25 to answer one item. terzis (2011) states that the essential factor in conducting the computer-based test is the time. that way, there must be a better technique to manage the time during the test. based on the participants’ opinions, dividing the time helped the student to manage the time in conducting the test. strategies to prepare the examination well the researchers found strategies to face the challenge of lack of simulation. learning and joining a test simulation became the strategies used by the participants. to prepare the test well, the students had to learn the material. then they should join a test simulation conducted by the schools to familiarize students with the use of a computer-based test. thurlow et al. (2010) state that students are unable to use online measurement tools if there is no prior training. moreover, to make students familiar with the computer, students have to update their knowledge of computer use. this finding is in line with muna et al. (2018). they mention that students are supplied with the technology in extracurricular to compliment in teaching and learning process, so the students should not feel nervous about operating the computer in the test. conclusion to sum up, the participants reported that they had a positive feeling in using the computer-based test as the technique in implementing standardized testing. they added that the use of the computer-based test was good and efficient for the students. it was good and efficient because the computer-based test brought an accurate result. besides, the implementation was more practical than using paper-based. the other participants’ responses reported that the use of a computer-based test appeared to be uncomfortable. it because the computer-based test brought some problems in the implementation. some challenges came from both of the participants from a school accreditation and b school accreditation. however, participants from a school accreditation did not face the challenge where they had to bring their laptops because of the insufficient computer in the school. the results showed that there were no significant challenges between provinces with better quality education than provinces with less quality education. the researchers propose some recommendations related to this research. they are; first, students who intend to conduct computer-based tests should be more prepared such as joining a computer-based test simulation. proper preparation can help them journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 26 to pass the test successfully. secondly, schools should support the implementation of a computer-based standardized test with proper preparation. also, schools should give a computer-based simulation for students before due to the test. in the end, the school can provide such a test using a computer in school test activities so that students familiar with the use of it. references antoni, r. (2014). an analysis of 6th-semester students' toefl experience at english department of teachers training and education faculty of pasir pengaraian university. jurnal ilmiah edu research, 3(1), 9-16. brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. 10 bank street: pearson education. brown, g.t.l. (2019) technologies and infrastructure: costs and obstacles in developing large-scale computer-based testing, education inquiry, 10(1), 4-20, doi: 10.1080/20004508.2018.1529528 creswell, j. w. (2012). an introduction to educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4 ed.). boston: pearson. hadi, s. (2014). ujian nasional dalam tinjauan kritis filsafat pendidikan pragmatisme. jurnal ilmiah pendidikan guru madrasah ibtidaiyah, 4(1), 283-294. jamiludin, darnawati, & uke, w. a. (2017). students' perception towards national examination 2017: computer-based test or paper-based test. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 8, 139-144. lambert, v. a., & lambert, c. e. (2012). qualitative descriptive research: an acceptable design. pacific rim international journal of nursing research, 16(4), 255-256. mubashrah, j., tariq, & shami. (2012). computer-based vs. paper-based examinations: perceptions of university teachers. the turkish online journal of educational technology, 11(4), 371-381. muna, a. f., witarsa, & ulfah, m. (2018). analisis kesiapan sekolahmenghadapi pelaksanaan unbk di sman 1 sungai ambawang. jurnal pendidikan dan pembelajaran, 7(9), 1-12. nasution, e. (2014). problematika pendidikan di indonesia. jurnal mediasi, 8(1), 1-10. pakpahan, r. (2016). computer based national exam model: its benefits and barriers. jurnal pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 1(1), 19-35. puspawati, i. (2014). fairness issues in a standardized english test for nonnative speakers of english. tesol journal, 5(3), 555-572, doi: 10.1002/tesj.157 sailan, m., & harmiyuni. (2016). persepsi siswa tentang pelaksanaan ujian nasional berbasis komputer di smk komputer mutiara ilmu makassar. jurnal tomalebbi, 36-42. saldana, j. (2009). the coding manual for qualitative researchers. london: british library, cataloguing publication. saukah, a., & cahyono, e. (2015, 2015). ujian nasional di indonesia dan implikasinya terhadap pembelajaran bahasa inggris. jurnal penelitian dan evaluasi pendidikan, 19(2), 243-255. sukyadi, d., & mardiani, r. (2011). the washback effect of the english national examination (ene) on english teachers' classroom teaching and students' learning. kiata journal, 13, 96-111. sulistiyono, r., suyata, p., & rahayu, t. (2016). inventory survai ujian nasional bahasa indonesia berbasis komputer. jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra indonesia, 69-80. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 27 terzis, v. (2011). the accpetance and use of computer based assessment. journal elsevier computers & education, 56, 10321044. thurlow, m., lazarus, s. s., albbus, d., & hodgon, j. (2010). computer-based testing: practices and considerations. minnesota: national center on educational outcomes. wise, s.l., (2019) controlling constructirrelevant factors through computer-based testing: disengagement, anxiety, & cheating. education inquiry, 10(1), 21-33, doi: 10.1080/20004508.2018.1490127 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/581 mariska intan sari earned her bachelor’s degree in english literature focusing on english linguistics from yogyakarta state university. she then obtained her master’s degree in applied linguistics from ohio university. she has taught at the english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta since 2012. her research interests are reading, writing, and call or the use of technology in language learning. the use of web 2.0 tools for learning in efl context: pre-service teachers’ voice mariska intan sari universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta mariska.intan@umy.ac.id doi: 18196/ftl.4243 abstract information and communication technology (ict) has always been evolving, and its advancement has affected every aspect of human life, including education. as future teachers, pre-service teachers need to be aware of this development and have to be able to follow suit by learning how to utilize the technology for their teaching and learning processes. in english as a foreign language (efl) context, web 2.0 tools have been widely used since they provide opportunities for the users to have interaction and collaboration with other people from around the world, and, thus, open the opportunity to global learning. therefore, this research aims to explore the web 2.0 tools that have been employed by the pre-service teachers, and it also aims to examine the benefits they perceived in applying some of the web 2.0 tools for their learning process in the efl context. the results of the research show that there are five types of web 2.0 tools that the pre-service teachers used, namely video sharing platforms, social networking tools, social photo tools, blogs, and game-based learning platforms. concerning the benefits of using web 2.0 tools in the learning process in the efl context, the pre-service teachers stated that they could help them to find information more easily, allow them to collaborate with other people, enhance their language skills, and increase their motivation. keywords: pre-service teachers, web 2.0 tools, efl context =========================================================================== journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 136 introduction the advancement of information and communication technology (ict) in this industrial revolution 4.0 era has affected every aspect of people’s life, including the education aspect. both teachers and students are affected in some ways in that they might get the benefits as well as the challenges from the use of technology in the learning process, and this has become inevitable in this era. the teachers have to be well aware that their current students are digital natives who have been exposed to technology from a very young age. whereas, the students, as the digital natives, must be ready to utilize technology if they do not want to be left behind. based on the survey data from asosiasi penyelenggara jasa internet indonesia or indonesian internet service providers association (2018), in indonesia alone, 143.26 million out of 262 million people used the internet in 2017. the data also show that 75.50% of school-age students between 13 to 18 used the internet for various purposes, but they mostly used chatting tools and social media. the internet users in indonesia has been increasing each year. data from hootsuite (in riyanto, 2019) show that the internet users in indonesia in 2018 had increased to 150 million from the total population of 268.2 million people, which was then 56% of the total population. the data also show that all of them are active social media users, and that 130 million of them are mobile social media users or people who actively access social media from mobile devices. it also highlighted that in 2018, the time indonesian spent to access the internet was approximately eight hours and 36 minutes, in that three hours and twenty-six minutes were spent using social media via any device, two hours and fifty-two minutes were spent watching broadcast streaming and video on demand, and one hour and twenty-two minutes were spent listening to streaming music. furthermore, it can be seen from the data that 79% of the indonesian internet users access the internet every day. hence, considering the condition, the teachers shall promote the best way to use ict to create the best learning environment for the students to enhance their learning, whereas the students must also learn to get the best out of the ict for their learning process since they have been exposed to ict in their daily lives. nowadays, the use of ict for learning is mostly related to web 2.0 tools. it is because they provide opportunities for the users to not only browse and read the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 137 static content on the internet as in web 1.0 technology, but also to write, post, and interact online on the world wide web (balbay & erkan, 2018). moreover, aşıksoy (2018) claims that web 2.0 technologies also allow students to control their learning instead of relying heavily on their teachers. also, web 2.0 tools might be used by a vast array of subjects or disciplines. therefore, web 2.0 tools have been increasingly used in the efl context. many studies have been conducted regarding the utilization of web 2.0 tools in english language teaching and learning. these studies have reported different findings. some of them favor the implementation of web 2.0 tools for english language learning. a positive attitude has been revealed among teachers who have utilized web 2.0 technology in their teaching and learning process (ajjan & hartshorne, 2008; balbay & erkan, 2018). not only teachers, but students also have a positive attitude regarding the implementation of web 2.0 tools in language learning, in that it can increase their motivation to learn, and thus enhancing their language skills (aşıksoy, 2018; eren, 2012). however, several studies reveal that even though students and teachers believed that the implementation of web 2.0 positively affects language teaching and learning process, its application is still very limited in that they are unenthusiastic to incorporate it in the teaching and learning process (faizi, 2018; hartshorne & ajjan, 2009). however, most of the studies concerning web 2.0 tools were conducted to find the effect of the implementation of web 2.0 tools on the students’ vocabulary acquisition, motivation, attitudes, and awareness, and the effectiveness of the tools. most of the studies having students as the subjects of the research were conducted to efl students. thus, this research aims to scrutinize the pre-service teachers’ lived experiences in utilizing web 2.0 tools for their teaching and learning process. also, this research aims to find out the web 2.0 tools used by the pre-service teachers in the efl context. the research questions are formulated as follows: 1. what web 2.0 tools have pre-service teachers used for learning in the efl context? 
 2. what are the benefits of using web 2.0 tools for learning in the efl context perceived by pre-service teachers? literature review definitions of web 2.0 tools the term web 2.0 was introduced by o'reilly (2005) to refer to web-based journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 138 technology, facilitating, promoting and sharing communication among users worldwide. blogs, wikis, podcasts, rss feeds, aggregators, social bookmarks, among others, are concepts ingrained in this new approach to global interaction that have been rapidly adopted by the e-learning community. there are many kinds of web 2.0 tools available on the world wide web. aşıksoy (2018) had divided these tools into eight categories. they are blogs, social networking tools, podcasts, video sharing platforms, social photo tools, voice threads, and youtube. there are some blogpublishing services available nowadays, such as blogger, wordpress, tumblr, weebly, and livejournal. also, there are some social networking tools available, among others are facebook, whatsapp, and twitter. the podcast can be used in language learning to share audio to improve students’ listening skills. thus, both students and teachers have many choices in utilizing web 2.0 tools for their teaching and learning processes, depending on their objectives. the benefits of using web 2.0 tools in language learning web 2.0 tools have provided learners with new opportunities to learn things outside the classroom through the internet (ajjan & hartshorne, 2008; aşıksoy, 2018; greenhow, robelia & hughes, 2009). the teachers can share information through some online applications, whereas the students can access it through those online applications, as well as by other experts through some web 2.0 tools on the internet. several studies reveal that the web 2.0 tools environment has enhanced the interaction between teachers and students and among students, leading to a better and richer language learning process (aşıksoy, 2018). studies on the use of web 2.0 tools in language learning have shown that they provide some benefits for the students. one of the commonly mentioned benefits is to find information (aşıksoy, 2018; rahimi, van der berg, & veen, 2015). it is because students can access the information from many resources directly on the internet. there are many options that students can choose, such as reading blogs, reading from wikipedia, reading from the language learning online application, and reading news. the second benefit that web 2.0 tools have offered to students is that they help the students to become active internet users, meaning that they do not only become the consumers of the information given on the internet, but also the producers of the information by sharing the knowledge they journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 139 learned through social media, blogs, or another web 2.0 tools available in the world wide web (huffman, 2017). besides, students can acquire better the information they get through web 2.0 tools since they carry out active learning through these tools, making it possible for them to retain the information in their brain (cochrane, 2014). the fourth benefit of using web 2.0 tools in language learning is that they provide an environment allowing students to collaborate with their fellow students both in the same and different contexts (barbara & linda, 2013). it means that the web 2.0 tools enable students to interact and collaborate with their fellow students in their schools as well as with other students from other schools in their countries, or even from different countries all over the world. this way, the students’ minds will also be broadened since they will get different perspectives from different people in different countries. the fifth benefit that web 2.0 tools offered to students is the dynamic and flexibility they possess (aşıksoy, 2018; cochrane, 2014; rahimi, van der berg, & veen, 2015). it means that by employing web 2.0 tools in language learning, students can learn at their pace, anywhere and anytime they want. it may help students since they have different abilities in absorbing information and in understanding a particular concept. some studies also reveal that the use of web 2.0 tools in language learning has, in some ways, increased students’ motivation because they offered different platforms that can avoid students from being bored to learn both inside and outside the classroom and because they might turn the students from passive to active learners (aşıksoy, 2018; huffman, 2017). methodology this section elaborates on the research design. it also explains the research participants, the setting of the place, and the time the researcher conducted the research. the instruments of the study and the rigor are also described in this section. research design. a qualitative research design was applied in this research. using a phenomenological approach, the researcher describes the lived experiences of the participants on a specific phenomenon to find similar traits among them (creswell, 2007). in this research, the phenomenon under study was the utilization of web 2.0 tools among pre-service teachers in the efl context. since the focus of this study is the description of participants’ lived experience, instead of the interpretation of the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 140 researcher, the transcendental type of phenomenological study by moustakas (in creswell, 2007) was employed. therefore, this study used constructivism as the worldview in that the study investigated the meaning of participants’ experiences. participants. the research participants were five efl pre-service teachers who were currently taking a bachelor’s degree in english education department at a large private university in yogyakarta (eed of puy) when this study was conducted. there were three criteria used by the researcher in choosing the participants. that the participants were actively enrolled in courses at eed of puy during the research is the first criterion. the second criterion is that the participants were at least in the second year of their study, meaning that they have taken the two technology-for-language-teaching-andlearning-based courses, namely computer literacy online and innovative technology. the participants need to have taken these courses to ensure that they have sufficient background knowledge about web 2.0 tools. by joining these two courses, they learned how to use and apply some web 2.0 tools for the teaching and learning process. the third criterion is that the participants had utilized some web 2.0 tools in learning english. thus, they have enough experience to share for this research. to find the participants, the researcher employed convenience sampling; the researcher chose the individuals nearest to her who can be contacted easily (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011). the five participants consist of two males (michael and andrew) and three females (lucy, jennifer, and rose) efl pre-service teachers at eled of puy from batch 2017. it means that they were interviewed in the second year of their study. they had taken and passed the two technology-for-language-teaching-andlearning-based courses. the names of the participants were changed into pseudonyms to maintain the confidentiality of the participants. data collection method. a semistructured interview was used to collect the data. therefore, the researcher created a semi-structured interview guideline. the guideline covered the kinds of web 2.0 tools used by pre-service teachers for their learning in the efl context, and their experiences in utilizing the tools for learning, which also included the benefits they perceived and the challenges they faced. the interviews were conducted on the preservice teachers in a comfortable place agreed by the two parties. the interviews were voice-recorded to avoid the missing of the data, and the records were kept in a safe journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 141 place to ensure the confidentiality of the participants. the researcher also did notetaking throughout the interview to help the researcher in making the follow-up questions whenever needed so that rich data on the participants’ experience could be collected. reliability and validity. the reliability and validity of the findings and data interpretations were conducted through member checking. these were carried out by sending the interview transcripts along with the interpretations to be reviewed by the participants. the participants were allowed to check whether the transcript and researcher’s interpretations are correct, correct mistakes if any, and add further information if necessary. cohen et al. (2011) indicate that member checking is a respondent validation in that a researcher allows respondents to check whether the data and the interpretations are correct, correct errors, and add further information. the researcher then analyzed and elaborated on the findings after the participants approved the data. findings with the advancement of technology in this industrial revolution 4.0 era, the implementation of web 2.0 tools in the language classroom is inevitable since they might provide opportunities for a better environment to learn the language, especially in the efl context. thus, investigating the kinds of web 2.0 tools used by pre-service teachers in learning the language in the efl context, and also the benefits they perceived in utilizing them is crucial, in that it can provide insights on what is good about it. the web 2.0 tools used by pre-service teachers for learning in efl context when asked about what web 2.0 tools are, pre-service teachers had given convincing answers, proving that they know about the tools. then, it can be concluded that they were aware of the existence of these tools and that they could use them to support their language learning, in this case, english language learning. andrew defined web 2.0 tools as “the tools on the internet that we can use to obtain and share information.” it shows that by using web 2.0 tools technology, users are not only able to obtain information, but also to share information with others. lucy also has the same understanding; she added that web 2.0 tools are devices that “can promote collaborations among the users.” it is in line with jennifer, who stated that “web 2.0 tools are the platform providing services by journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 142 which the users can obtain and share information from one another.” thus, the notion of information sharing and collaborations of the web 2.0 tools are wellunderstood by the five participants. regarding the web 2.0 tools used by pre-service teachers in the efl context to enhance their english language learning, they claimed that they had used various web 2.0 tool platforms outside the classroom. they also claimed that each web 2.0 tool has its benefits. out of the seven categories given by aşıksoy (2018), social networking tools, social photo tools, and video sharing platforms are the most widely used by preservice teachers. the followings are the web 2.0 tools they utilized for their learning in the efl context. video sharing platform. the most mentioned platform that the pre-service teachers used, which they perceived as helpful to enhance their english learning, is youtube. most of the participants of this research said that they frequently watched videos on youtube. michael stated, “i always search on youtube whenever i need to know something; i always use youtube as my reference.” some of them even watched youtube every day. jennifer mentioned, “i watch youtube videos every day. i usually watch short movies, vlogs, and tedtalks on youtube.” she further explained that watching videos on youtube is not only beneficial for her language learning but also refreshing at the same time. she said, “i enjoy watching videos on youtube rather than reading books.” rose also stated that she watched youtube videos every day after school. she said, “i like watching videos on youtube; i usually watch youtube videos in my boarding house after coming back from campus; it is fun and entertaining.” she mentioned that she had some favorites vloggers that she always watches on youtube. the participants agreed that watching english videos on youtube gave them more exposure to the english language, and they could indirectly learn english because most of the videos they watched were in english. there is another video-based tool occasionally used by the participants, namely youglish. it is a part of youtube services providing the users with the pronunciation of english words through clips from youtube. users can choose to listen to one of the accents, namely american english, british english, or australian english, or all of them. jennifer stated, “i like to check the pronunciation of new words in youglish since it provides many examples of how the words are pronounced.” andrew added, “what i like from youglish is that i can journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 143 choose whether i want to listen to american, british, or australian accent.” social networking tools. pre-service teachers also used social networking tools as one of the media to learn english. they used facebook, twitter, and whatsapp to interact with others. by doing so, they claimed that they got benefits in terms of social interaction and communication skills such as information exchanges, cooperation, and turn-taking, including the language skills, which in this case is english as the target language. michael mentioned that social media such as facebook and twitter could be a good place to practice his english even though not all his friends in the media speak the language. he further claimed that casual interaction on facebook created a comfortable zone to express his feelings, ideas, and opinions. lucy also shared the same opinion. she mentioned, “facebook is one of the social media i often use. i sometimes wrote my status in english.” she further explained that she found it beneficial for her learning since every time she wrote her status in english, she would make sure that she wrote it correctly before posting it. social photo tools. another platform of web 2.0 tools commonly used by pre-service teachers is the social photo tools. included in this category is instagram. some of the pre-service teachers used instagram to share photos and their opinions along with the photo. they said that by doing these, they could share their opinions as well as ask others’ opinions. jennifer stated, i usually use instagram to share photos along with the caption, especially when i have an opinion about something; i will then use the ‘ask a question’ feature on insta story to ask for people’s opinions regarding the topic i raise. the interaction she got from giving and asking opinions from instagram users provides exposure to english as the target language when they used it to communicate on instagram. jennifer further explained that before using the ask a question feature, she used to share photos with an opinion on her blog. however, she moved to instagram because it was more user-friendly, and she could use her smartphone to do it. rose also used instagram to share photos; she also agreed that by using instagram, she could indirectly practice her english by sharing her opinion through the caption, and by understanding the comments from her friends. blogs. blogs have also been one of the platforms used by pre-service teachers to enhance their english learning. it turned out that some of them could enjoy the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 144 process of writing their posts on their blogs. jennifer said that she learned how to write well in terms of content and the language because she realized that many people would be able to read her posts on the blog. therefore, she had to be very careful in writing her posts on her blogs. she tried to minimalize the grammatical errors in her writing so that her readers could understand the content well. game-based learning platforms. pre-service teachers also utilized some gamebased learning platforms such as kahoot! and quizlet. for some of them, the use of these game-based learning platforms could create fun learning. through these platforms, learners could compete, and that was what made them fun. andrew mentioned, “kahoot! makes learning fun because of the competition among the learners and also the background music when playing the game.” michael also agreed that “kahoot! is fun and motivating.” besides kahoot! the participants also mentioned quizlet as a game-based learning platform they used. lucy stated that what made quizlet fun was that many studies set available online. she added, “we can also create our own study sets based on our needs.” the benefits of using web 2.0 tools in the efl context when it comes to pre-service teachers’ voices in using web 2.0 tools in their teaching and learning process, all participants claimed that they like to use them because they could make learning english more fun and easier. rose, one of the participants, stated, “by using the appropriate web 2.0 tools, it is easier to learn the language. they can make learning language easier because we can learn it anywhere and anytime.” another participant, michael, stated, “using web 2.0 tools to learn language makes learning language more fun and easier.” he added that web 2.0 tools were beneficial in supporting english language learning, for example, learning vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. for example, he could easily check the pronunciation of certain words by opening youglish. all in all, all participants claimed that web 2.0 tools were beneficial for them in learning english. in terms of experience in using web 2.0 tools for learning, the pre-service teachers mentioned that they got benefits from utilizing them. the benefits are as follows: finding information easily. the first benefit that pre-service teachers perceived in using web 2.0 tools in learning journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 145 language is able to find information easily. michael mentioned, “i always check on youtube or easily browse on google to find information about anything, especially when i have an assignment.” he added that finding information through the internet was faster than finding it manually by reading books or magazines. jennifer also mentioned that it was easier to find information from youtube or google search. she said, “i can get information easily by searching on google or youtube to get videos, blog posts, or web content.” similar to michael and jennifer, rose mentioned that she could find the information she needed for her learning or assignment on the internet using some web 2.0 tools available online. this view is similar to andrew’s, who stated, “web 2.0 tools facilitate us to obtain any knowledge and information we need anywhere and anytime; they make everything easier to access.” allowing collaboration with other users. another benefit of using web 2.0 tools is that students can collaborate with others, which can enhance their language learning. web 2.0 tools such as google docs, google slides, prezi, and padlet allow their users to edit the same document online synchronously or asynchronously. the preservice teachers found this feature beneficial for them in that they could collaborate with their friends or group mates even though they could not find time to meet each other due to their different schedules. andrew stated, “by using web 2.0 tools, i can interact with my friends, and it is really helpful especially when i have an assignment.” jennifer also stated, when i have a group assignment from the lecturer and my friends and i cannot find the time to meet to discuss it, we can discuss it online, or we can even use for example google slides to create and edit our presentation together. she found that using web 2.0 tools could help her and her friends to work together to do the assignment even though they could not meet face-to-face. rose also has a similar view that web 2.0 tools allow the users to have a collaboration with other users. enhancing learners’ language skills. the participants also said that using web 2.0 tools could enhance their language skills, namely reading, writing, listening, speaking, and pronunciation skills. they could improve their skimming and scanning skills in reading and their reading comprehension performance by reading much information through websites and blogs on the world wide web, as stated by jennifer and lucy. lucy mentioned, “i read a lot of things over journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 146 the internet, and it helps me improve my scanning skills since i have to find the correct information; my understanding when reading english texts also becomes better.” the web 2.0 tools enhance the preservice teachers’ pronunciation by listening through english videos available online on youtube, or also by searching and watching video clips on youglish. there are some sites dedicated to english teaching and learning like bbc website so that the preservice teachers can learn a lot from them. increasing learners’ motivation. motivation is essential in language learning. having high motivation can be beneficial for students to achieve better results in their studies. another benefit of utilizing web 2.0 tools is that learning can be fun so that it can increase students’ motivation to learn. michael stated, it was fun to use web 2.0 tools. for example, when the teacher used kahoot! in the class, i felt motivated to learn because it was fun to compete with my friends. also, the background music was fun to listen too; it enlivened the atmosphere. jennifer added, “it feels good when we need information and can find it easily on the web. i feel more motivated to learn more and more.” she further explained that the ease in finding information on youtube and websites made her feel motivated to learn. thus, web 2.0 tools can motivate students to learn. discussion the findings indicate that pre-service teachers are aware of the availability of web 2.0 tools for their english learning and that these tools can enhance their language learning. it is in line with a study conducted by aşıksoy (2018), reporting that most of the students who were the participants of the study were aware of the availability of the web 2.0 tools and that these tools were believed to be able to enhance their english language learning. therefore, these preservice teachers also utilized some of the web 2.0 tools available online for their english learning. the web 2.0 tools that they employed both in and out of the classroom context are video sharing platforms, social networking tools, social photo tools, blogs, and game-based learning platforms. video sharing platforms and social networking tools are among the tools that most of the pre-service teachers used. these findings are similar to previous studies of aşıksoy (2018) and kizil (2017), revealing that videosharing, especially youtube and social media tools, are among the most used web 2.0 tools among elt students. they further journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 147 explained that the reason why most students used youtube was that it provided them with a large number of videos that they could choose based on their interest. the second most used web 2.0 tools among the pre-service teachers are social media, which are also similar to the findings of a previous study conducted by aşıksoy (2018). it is because today’s students are familiar with social media. they are exposed to social media every day, and these media provide opportunities for them to interact directly with people from all around the world, especially to the native speakers of english. as stated by aşıksoy (2018) that the use of social media enables the students to learn language through social interaction. the web 2.0 tools used by preservice teachers were mostly chosen because they were easy to use, fun, and could be beneficial for them. the benefits of utilizing the tools are helping them finding information more easily, allowing collaborations with other people, enhancing their language skills, and increasing their motivation. the finding which states that web 2.0 tools are enhancing pre-service teachers’ language skills is in line with what keleş (2013) has underlined that web 2.0 tools have positive effects on the english learning skills for elt students, and these students believed that. similarly, aşıksoy (2018) highlights that web 2.0 tools help students in learning english and motivate them to be autonomous learners who can regulate their learning. it is related to the first finding of this research, namely finding information easily so that they can be autonomous learners in finding the information they need anytime and anywhere they are. the finding of a study carried out by aşıksoy (2018) shows that the use of web 2.0 tools can enhance students’ pronunciation, which is similar to the finding of this research. it can also be traced back to the kinds of web 2.0 tools they used. since most of them liked to use youtube and youglish, it is normal for them to think that their pronunciation skill has increased since they were provided with pronunciation examples from the videos or clips. conclusion and suggestion it is expected that the findings of this research can contribute to the literature concerning the use of web 2.0 tools for language learning in the efl context. it can be concluded from the findings of the research that pre-service teachers were aware of the existence of the web 2.0 tools available for them. this research found that there are five types of web 2.0 tools they frequently used. the tools are video sharing platforms, social networking tools, social journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 148 photo tools, blogs, and game-based learning platforms. besides knowing and using some of the web 2.0 tools, they were aware that these tools could be beneficial in learning english. the benefits perceived by these preservice teachers are helping them to find information more easily, allowing collaborations with other people, enhancing their language skills, and increasing their motivation. furthermore, it can be concluded from the five participants of this research that the use of the web 2.0 tool can make english learning easier and fun. therefore, teachers must be aware of these conditions so that they can utilize more web 2.0 tools in their classrooms to provide more exposure for these pre-service teachers so that they can maximize the use of these tools for their learning and their teaching later on after finishing their study. references ajjan, h., & hartshorne, r. (2008). investigating faculty decisions to adopt web 2.0 technologies: theory and empirical tests. the internet and higher education, 11(2), 71-80. asosiasi penyelenggara jasa internet indonesia (indonesian internet service providers association). (2018). [infographic from survey results]. penetrasi & perilaku pengguna internet indonesia survey 2017. retrieved from https://apjii.or.id/survei2017 aşıksoy, g. (2018). elt students’ attitudes and awareness towards the use of web 2.0 technologies for language learning. journal of language and linguistic studies, 14(2), 240-251. balbay, s., & erkan, g. (2018). perceptions of instructors on using web 2.0 tools in academic english courses. international journal of curriculum and instruction, 10(2), 45-60. barbara n., & linda b., (2013). changing academic teaching with web 2.0 technologies. innovations in education and teaching international, 51(3), 315-325. doi: 10.1080/14703297.2013.796727 cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7th ed). abingdon, oxon: routledge. creswell, j.w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches (2nd ed). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. cochrane, t. d. (2014). critical success factors for transforming pedagogy with mobile web 2.0. british journal of educational technology, 45(1), 65-8. eren, ö. (2012). students' attitudes towards using social networking in foreign language classes: a facebook example. international journal of business and social science, 3(20), 288294. faizi, r. (2018). teachers’ perceptions towards using web 2.0 in language learning and teaching. education and information technologies, 23(3), 12191230. greenhow, c., robelia, b., & hughes, j. e. (2009). learning, teaching, and scholarship in a digital age: web 2.0 and classroom research: what path journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 149 should we take now? educational researcher, 38(4), 246-259. hartshorne, r., & ajjan, h. (2009). examining student decisions to adopt web 2.0 technologies: theory and empirical tests. journal of computing in higher education, 21(3), 183-198. huffman, k. (2017). web 2.0: beyond the concept practical ways to implement rss, podcasts, and wikis. education libraries, 29(1), 12-19. keleş, u. (2013). the perceptions of elt students about the use of web 2.0 tools, particularly wikis, in their future language classrooms (doctoral dissertation). retrieved from bilkent university. kızıl, a. ş. (2017). exploring efl learners' use of web 2.0 tools: preliminary findings. pamukkale university journal of social sciences institute, 27, 28-40. o'reilly, t. (2005). what is web 2.0: design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. communications & strategies, 65(1), 1737. rahimi, e., van den berg, j., & veen, w. (2015). facilitating student-driven constructing of learning environments using web 2.0 personal learning environments. computers & education, 81, 235-246. riyanto, a. (2019). [infographic from survey results]. hootsuite (we are social): indonesian digital report 2019. retrieved from https://andi.link/hootsuite-we-aresocial-indonesian-digital-report-2019/ volume 4, no. 2, 2019 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/581 harsya danang pradana is a graduate student of english language education studies from universitas sanata dharma. his research interest is in the english language and the field of world englishes in general english language education students and their perceptions regarding the various accents of the english language harsya danang pradana sanata dharma university haretranslations@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.4239 abstract this study intends to identify the perceptions of english language education students from a pre-determined private university in yogyakarta regarding the english language and its accents. many english language education students prefer accents from english-speaking countries to accents from countries that use english as a second or foreign language. however, many of them may not be able to speak in accents from the former category. the current study aims to find the reasons for this phenomenon, and whether or not having a preferred accent helps them learn the english language. the research uses qualitative design to search for more detailed answers and uses a custom-made interview as a research instrument. to that end, the researcher enlists five students of english language education from this private university as participants in this study, where they receive questions about their accents, view on accents, and whether or not having an accent has helped them learn english. the results of the research indicated that while the students have a mixed view of accents and use various accents themselves, having a familiar accent to use when learning english has helped them learn the language better. being familiar with an accent and mimicking the source of language input) gives the participants an easier time when learning the english language. keywords: english language, english language education students, world englishes, accents. =========================================================================== mailto:haretranslations@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 75 introduction the english language is one of the most spoken languages around the world. in china, there are over 390 million learners of english, and that number does not include speakers in taiwan and hong kong (wei & su, 2012). the english language is so widespread that it leads to the development of multiple different regional accents. there are over 24 english accents in the british isles alone (hughes, trudgill, & watt, 2012), and the speakers use those accents in different regions of the british isles. as the english language travels around the world, the number of people who speak it increases, and further variations have developed (hughes, trudgill, & watt, 2012). braj kachru, a jubilee professor of linguistics at the university of illinois and urbana-champaign, is the first scholar to coin the term world englishes to describe the multitude of english accents around the world. kachru uses the term “englishes” because it “symbolizes the functional and formal variations, divergent sociolinguistic contexts, ranges and varieties of english in creativity, and various types of acculturation in parts of the western and non-western world. this concept emphasizes 'we-ness,' and not the dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (the native and nonnative users)” (kachru, 2008). he categorizes the world englishes into three different groups based on how english is used in different countries (kachru, 2008). for countries where english is the first language, such as the united states and australia, he includes the accents in his inner circle of english. for accents used in countries where english is a secondary language, like singapore or india, kachru classifies these english in the outer circle of english. the outer circle refers to countries that do not have english as a native language, but it is useful for a connection between different ethnic groups and language groups living in the country. the foreign circle includes the type of english language used in countries where the people use english on special occasions and places, e.g., international conferences or english classes. in indonesia, for example, the type of accents typically used is called indoglish (saddhono & sulaksono, 2018). like many other accents from regions where english is not the first language, indoglish is created by mixing english words with the grammar and syntax of local languages, which in this case, is the indonesian accent. as a language used in international contexts, the english language is bound to have different varieties and accents. however, there has been no agreement journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 76 about which version of english to use in the classroom the one with a local dialect or the ones used in countries with english as a first language (l1). while using l1 variations of english in classrooms of l2 english learners is possible, it may create a sense of abnormality in the classroom, making learners less wanting to take risks (schweers, 2012). also, from over 150 accents that exist, the majority of english language learners (ell), including indonesian ells, gain increased exposure and experience in the english language through social media and other means of communication (saddhono & sulaksono, 2018). from the researcher’s experience in an english language education department of a private university in indonesia, ells in this department prefer to use, copy, or attempt to use an english accent or american accent. while these ells might not realize that they are using the indoglish variant, it is common for ells to use said accent, especially on formal occasions, e.g., when they are presenting a paper or when they are speaking. similarly, indonesian-english language teachers would tend to give lower scores to students who use indoglish because it is quite different from the accent commonly used, which is english or american. with a large number of accents that exist, ells should be aware of this phenomenon so that they can be aware of and appreciate the world's multiculturalism, becoming the strong foundation of the emergence of diverse accents. the current study aims to investigate the perceptions of ells on the myriad of english language accents and the preference of these ells toward the existing accents. the goal of the study is to find out how the preferred accent benefits ells to learn english. with acceptance for l2 languages being more widespread than ever (sung, 2013), it is important to know which side the ells take: are they more partial to l1 accents, or do they use l2 accents? to make the results of this research seem valid, the researcher has related this research to other similar researches. the first research was conducted by tracy derwing in 2006, concerning esl students and their perceptions of pronunciation problems and the consequences of speaking with a foreign accent. in her research, derwing interviewed over 100 esl students regarding pronunciation problems and any consequences they might have when they spoke with a foreign accent. the results of that research revealed that while the students did have pronunciation problems, they could not pinpoint where exactly the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 77 problem was, and those problems were minor at best. regarding discrimination, the students revealed that there was no accentbased discrimination, but people did respect them more when they spoke with an l1 accent. derwing’s research is similar to this research in that it inquires english language students’ perceptions regarding accents, and that both studies use the interview method. however, it differs in secondary goals: while this research focuses on how the participants’ english language learning process is affected by their accent, derwing’s research focused on the accent’s impact on their social life. literature review definition of a native speaker a native speaker is a speaker of a language that is his or her mother tongue. for the english language, this includes speakers of american, english (great britain), and australian descent (kachru, 2008). non-native speakers, on the other hand, are speakers of the target language that does not have the language as a mother tongue. in the case of the english language, non-native speakers usually use the english language in specific situations, such as business or entertainment (kachru, 2008). as most ells usually learn from certain examples, native english speakers usually become the model for them, especially when it comes to speaking english. it has led to many english learning institutions in nonenglish speaking countries employing english native speakers as their teachers. however, with the changes in world dynamics, a new source of debate emerges: l2 variations of english have become more accepted globally, and they are no longer concerned with the “integration” of language and more to the creation of a “bicultural” or “world citizen” identity (sung, 2013). in addition to the discussion regarding accents, there has been a massive debate regarding the teaching capabilities of non-native english and native english teachers (medgyes, 1992). compared to non-native english teachers, native english teachers have a better grasp of the language, because they have been using it on a day-today basis since they were born. however, knowing a language is very different from being able to teach it. as a result, not all english native speakers can be good english teachers because not all of them are qualified teachers. on the other hand, nonnative english teachers may be perceived as better role models because, although they may not be as fluent as native speakers, they have been trained to teach the language, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 78 meaning that they are qualified teachers (braine, 2011). in the end, both native speakers and non-native teachers are suitable for teaching in one way or another (schweers, 2012), depending on the needs of the ells when learning the english language. english, as the world’s connecting language, is somewhat of a dilemma when taught in classes. while both non-native teachers and native speakers can become teachers in their own right, a debate about which variation of english to teach is still taking place (braine, 2011). it creates a rift between the users of standardized english (english as spoken in first circle countries) and world englishes. on the one hand, using standardized english will make the learners’ ability to speak english closer to the native source, which may make any communication between international community members less awkward and less prone to misunderstanding. however, some speakers of english have come to see their variation of world englishes as a part of their culture, which they use in everyday life (sung, 2013). for example, singapore and its approach to english. the usage of singaporean english or “singlish” as it is more widely known, has been so ingrained in the singaporean culture that despite its classes teaching usage of standardized english, the singlish variation is the one used by most native singaporeans (alsagoff, 1998). perceived accents the division between users of standardized english and native english can create a divide of their own, called language privilege (subtirelu, 2013). this division happens when speakers of one model think of the others as inferior. for example, speakers of standardized english can consider their counterparts as having a worse skill in english because they do not speak the english language as they do. they feel like mimicking the l1 users of english and thinking the localized version of english is wrong. while many ells still want to sound like native speakers, e. g. british or american, some studies have proven otherwise (sung, 2013). native speakers’ accents are considered unintelligible; thus, they are difficult to understand. in his study, sung argues that ells prefers non-native speakers as their role model to speak english, such as local high profile people or local news anchors. these speakers are more understandable, and ells favor them than native speakers of the english language. another accent preferred by ells is foreign non-native speakers who happen to be a successful public figure. the public figure journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 79 comes from a non-english speaking country and speaks fluent english, but becomes a well-known figure in english speaking countries and the world. english accents in indonesia as a country that falls under the category of the outer circle, indonesians have a distinct dialect of english. this dialect is called “indoglish” (saddhono & sulaksono, 2018), and it mixes english words and the grammar and syntax of native indonesian languages. for example, the sentence, “i prepared some book and went to college.” in indonesian, this sentence is correct because the indonesian word for “some” is similar in meaning to “several.” it is one example of the use of indonesian structures and words that have multiple meanings in the english language. the division between users of standardized english and native english can create a divide of their own, especially at a time where l2 speakers are more widely accepted in the wider world (sung, 2013). however, in regions like singapore where the elites of the country speak a different dialect of english than their less fortunate counterparts (alsagoff, 1998), speakers of standardized english may consider their counterparts to have a worse skill in english because they do not speak the english language as they do. they feel like mimicking the l1 users of english and thinking the localized version of english is wrong. related studies in addition to the research mentioned above by derwing, another research that is related to this research was conducted by johanna norman in 2017 titled “student’s self-perceived english accent and its impact on their communicative competence and speaking confidence.” this research took place in sweden, and it investigated esl students’ perceptions of whether or not their accent had affected their english learning process and how it affected them. the study was conducted using a web-based survey given to 80 students that took english 6, a mandatory course for further education. the results of the research revealed that native-like accent was overrated and that communication was more important. norman’s research is similar to this research in that they both inquire about students’ perceptions regarding accents and what impact they might have on the students’ language learning process. however, norman’s research used a quantitative research method and did not inquire further on how the students’ accents impact the learning, while this research used a journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 80 qualitative method, and inquired further on the accents’ impact on the learning process. methodology this research used a quantitative research method, specifically the descriptive qualitative design. the design was deemed to fit in with the research because it aims to understand and describe what certain groups think about an issue (creswell, 2012). the two foci in this research are the variety of world englishes and the students’ opinions regarding world englishes. as mentioned before, the current study aims to investigate the perceptions of english language education students regarding accents so that the first focus would address the students’ general knowledge about the variety of world englishes. the second focus, which was the students’ personal opinions of world englishes, was chosen to investigate the students’ feelings and stances about world englishes, whether they were positive or negative. this research took place in a private university in yogyakarta because, based on the researcher’s observation, the phenomenon of preferred accents existed in the university. also, accessibility to the research setting was the reason to collect the data in the university. the participants of this research were five students from the 2014 batch. the researcher chose this batch because, by the time this research took place, the students of this batch had studied in the university for three years, and would have developed some familiarity and preference for some accents. for this particular research, five students participated, and for their privacy, the participants’ identities were under pseudonyms. as this research is qualitative, there is no limit to the number of participants (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011). however, to make sure that the data gathered for this research had enough diversity, the researcher chose to select five participants. the participants answered the researcher’s questions under the pseudonyms della, amo, ilya, sue, and sara. to collect the necessary data for the research, the interview method, specifically the interview guideline, was employed. the interview method was employed in this study because the researcher aims to obtain in-depth in the form of statements rather than widespread data in the form of statistics. an interview guideline was used to obtain specific information without a set sequence of questions, which encourages the participants to answer truthfully (cohen, manion, & morisson, 2007). an openended structure for the interview was journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 81 employed to make sure that the participants’ responses provided as much detail on the information as possible. an open-ended structured interview is an interview method that makes the participants respond to questions without any influence from the researcher (cohen et al., 2007). the format used for this research was the non-direct general format, which makes it possible for the researcher to coax further answers should any be required (cohen et al., 2007). the process of data gathering went as follows: first, the researcher contacted the potential participants through a shared line group. one of the researchers studied in the same class as the potential participants, which made it easier to contact them through existing media. then, the researcher and participants decided a place and time for the interview. regarding the place, the interviews took place on campus. the details regarding the time and date of the interviews were up participants’ free time. the interviews used the indonesian language to prevent any misunderstandings and false data. the researcher used a recording app on a cell phone to record the interviews and get tangible data and informed the participants about the recording to obtain the consent for data collection. all the interview questions were designed specifically for this research to make sure there are no biased answers. the first two questions of the research inquired about the participants’ knowledge regarding world english and any variants the participants might have encountered. the second set of questions was about their stance regarding world englishes and their reason for said stance. then, the researcher asked if there’s any variation the participant might prefer. the last question asks whether or not there were any variations they would like to implement further. in total, the participants received six questions. member checking was by consulting the interview transcription to the participants to see if they would want to change any information they provided. it aimed to maintain the reliability of the data and to make sure if the participants’ current opinions are still similar to the ones they have during the time of the interview (cohen et al., 2007). to perform the data checking, the researcher called the participants one by one and asked them whether or not they had changed their opinions. the participants did not alter any information given in the interviews. for validity reasons, the researcher transcribed the recordings of each interview as a microsoft word document. for the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 82 coding method, the researcher used the open, axial, and selective coding method. open, axial, and selective coding are methods to catalog and sort the results of an interview or other data gathering methods (cohen et al., 2007). the first step of coding was open coding, done by labeling the texts to categorize them. then, axial coding was the next step. axial coding involves labeling groups of open codes similar in meaning. lastly, selective coding was done to identify the core categories of the text data, then theories based on those categories were created. the steps used for data analysis are as follows: the transcribes of the interview were written down in open and axial coding in the form of tables. then, a selective coding document was created by combining the results of the interview and identifying the main ideas derived from it. finally, the data were written down in a report seen in the fourth chapter of this research paper. findings the first research question was regarding the participants’ perceptions of the various accents of the english language. all five participants showed positive reactions, albeit with different responses. one reason is that some accents are more understandable than others. participant under the pseudonym della said, “i think american is simpler because i have an easier time using an american accent, when i use british it’s still a little…difficult, and in american, it’s easier to pick up.” the fact that della thought one accent was more comprehensible than others due to her familiarity with the said accent. in turn, it would help her replicate the accent. a study conducted by mulkeen (2016) finds that replicating a foreign accent is a good way to help a non-native english speaker to understand when speaking english. it explains why students perceived the easier accents as positive. in turn, it will help them with the familiarization of the english language. also, a study cited by hough shows that humans tend to mimic accents they are exposed to, familiarizing themselves with the accents (hough, 2010). as they are used to these accents, they are more comfortable with it, and it helps them learn english better. however, despite the positive responses from all five participants, several participants also expressed negative responses, citing that some accents are more difficult than others. participants ilya and sue mentioned their difficulty in differentiating accents, with participant ilya saying that she “has difficulty separating words that are usually in british and american,” while participant sue would journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 83 sometimes confuse uk and us accents, as she says, “i sometimes uh…confuse uk and us accents.” what ilya and sue experienced is not uncommon to ells. some ells learn homonyms of two english accents. for example, ‘chips’ would commonly refer to ‘french fries’ in american english, while ‘chips’ would mean potato snacks in american english. both sue and ilya would sometimes be confused uk and us accents, which they referred to as the intonation, pitch, and pronunciation of the two englishes. a study conducted by the acoustical society of america in 2015 tested their participants’ ability to remember simple phrases in different accents, one they are familiar with and one they are not (mulkeen, 2016). their study reveals that learners devote an extra modicum of brainpower when trying to remember things in an unfamiliar language. it may explain the students’ difficulty in learning using an unfamiliar language. besides, the positive and negative responses, some of the participants’ responses cannot be necessarily positive or negative. one participant noted that accents were easily differentiated. participant amo stated that “the british accent is like, turning color into color, the l is not pronounced, but in american, it’s more pronounced.” amo used two different accents, one for learning purposes and one for non-learning activities. a study regarding pronunciations (yan, vaseghi, rentzos, ho, & turajlic, 2003) shows that pronunciations of differing l1 accents made it apparent how relatively identifiable these words are to someone perceptive. however, two of the participants are more or less indifferent about accents. participant della mentioned her indifference on the interview by saying that she’s “pretty indifferent,” while participant ilya explained that she tended to focus more on the meaning of the words by saying “when i use the english accent i tend to focus on meaning than thinking about other things.” while della and ilya might not have focused specifically on grammatical accuracy, they might also not focus on the intonation or accent of the native speaker. these responses catalog them under the under-user monitor category (krahnke & krashen, 1983), namely language users who focus on meaning over grammatical accuracy. regarding the participants’ preferred accents, the researcher made sure to inquire in which context the participants preferred to use them. some participants preferred to use similar accents in both classroom and casual environments, while others used completely different accents in both cases. the researcher categorized the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 84 participants’ responses according to what accents they used regardless of condition. those categories are l1 users (users of english as is spoken in countries where the language is native) and mixed accents (users that mix their local accents with l1 accents when they speak). all participants used an l1 accent to a degree. some participants clarified that they used the american accent during class activities and british accent when speaking to their friends, while others said that they used the american accent or british accent exclusively. amo, della, sara, and sue mentioned that they used the american accent, with amo saying that her use of an american accent was “spontaneous.” on the other hand, participant della mentioned that she preferred british english because it was “easier on the ears.”. however, she only used it to play and kid with friends, citing it as “to play and kid with friends, i usually try out the british accent.” hough (2010) clarifies that learners of a language tend to mimic the closest speaker of said language, which, in the case of these participants, their lecturers. lecturers in their university generally speak in l1 accents, so the students mimic the accent mentioned above. despite all participants being comfortable with l1 accents, some of them still use mixed accents. participant della, who has javanese traces, mentioned that she tended to be more comfortable with the american accent, but “because i have some javanese tendencies, it still carries over when i’m talking.” ilya said that she prioritized meaning over everything else. she mixed her accent while she was studying. regarding this, she said, “mixed accent, when i study english i mix my accents.” these two participants were a monitor under users who prioritized meaning over the accuracy of any sort (krashen, 1987). participant della clarified to the researcher that she used a mixture of american and javanese accents, a byproduct of the globalization of the english language, which mixed with the local language (rajagopalan, 2012). regarding whether or not having a favored accent has helped them learn the english language better, all participants responded in the positive. the reasons for the participants feeling this way are largely similar to their perceptions regarding the various accents: their preferred accents make the learning process easier, they are familiar with their preferred accent, and certain sentences become clearer when spoken in said familiar accent. an asa study conducted in 2015 states that users of a certain accent must devote extra brainpower to process information spoken in an unfamiliar accent. the participants, being journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 85 familiar with the accents of speakers closest to them, mimic said speakers’ accents (hough, 2010), familiarize themselves with their accent, which in turn helps them study other, non-verbal ways of communicating such as body language (mulkeen, 2016). as they are familiar with the accents that they use, they feel like getting help with their learning process. discussions the researcher set out to find out if the students of the english language education department in a private university in yogyakarta have any preferred accents, how they perceive accents in general, and whether or not having an accent has proven to be useful in learning english. after the research finished, the researcher concluded that the students of english language education of this particular university have different perceptions and opinions when it comes to various accents of english. however, they all feel that their english learning process was helped by having an accent. the respondents are familiar with the accents used by their lecturers, and they subconsciously mimic them. it explains why all respondents of this research use l1 accents to some degree. they are familiar with l1 accents, and because of this, they don’t have to think as hard when speaking with their l1 accents. it makes them able to concentrate on comprehending the meaning behind words instead of comprehending the words first before comprehending their meaning. besides, even though all participants used l1 versions of english, this does not mean that standardized english is mandatory in classrooms. some of them felt familiar using mixed accents with their local dialect. since familiarity is key to learning language, language diversity should be fostered instead of discouraged. in other words, accent diversity must be a research topic. the findings of this research show that having an accent helps english language learners with the language learning process. by having a familiar accent, the learner becomes more comfortable when learning english with that accent. the findings of this research confirm derwing’s findings that english language learners have pronunciation problems. however, while derwing’s participants reported no lasting effects of the pronunciation problems from a social standpoint, the participants of this research reported that pronunciation problems harmed their learning process. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 86 as for this research’s effect on norman’s research, its findings regarding the swedish students’ indifference on accents have correlations to several participants’ opinion that it is the meaning of the communication that matters, and that they feel indifferent about accents as a whole. however, norman’s research did not inquire further about the effects that the accents may have on their learning process. conclusion and implication the researcher revealed perceptions of eed students from this particular university regarding the various accents of english using an interview method. after the initial and following coding processes, the study found that the students have different perceptions regarding the various accents of english and that they feel helped in their english learning escapades by their preferred accent. in this research, one keyword kept popping up to explain this phenomenon: familiarity. the participants were familiar with the accents used by their lecturers and subconsciously mimic them, which may explain why all respondents used l1 accents to some degree. since they were familiar with the accents, the time and brainpower required for switching accents are devoted to comprehension, making them think faster and more efficient. this level of linguistic competence helps the students learn the materials better, giving them motivation and allowing them to achieve a higher level of understanding. however, standardized english can see more use than for a reference point in classrooms. despite the lecturers of the private university using l1 accents, some students from the university, including some of the participants, still, speak in a mixed accent. it is similar to l1 accents mixed with the local dialect, showing the flexibility of the english language. indigenization of english still exists and can help a student learn english instead of hindering them. as such, future researchers should foster diversity in english languages, as it could help the students learn the world’s most used language. references alsagoff, l. (1998). the grammar of singapore english. 212–246. retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.e du.documents/31762465/alsagoff_19 98_the_grammar_of_singapore_eng lish.pdf?awsaccesskeyid=akiaiwo wyygz2y53ul3a&expires=155869 7985&signature=rs6izepofjsh5zunu ljdg6n21uq%3d&response-contentdisposition=inline%3b filename%3dt braine, g. (2011). nonnative speaker english teachers: research, pedagogy, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 87 and professional growth [book review]. new zealand studies in applied linguistics (vol. 17). cohen, l., manion, l., & morisson, k. (2007). research methods in education. new york: routledge. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. creswell, j. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). boston: pearson. hough, a. (2010). humans “subconsciously mimic other accents,” psychologists claim. retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci ence/science-news/7931299/humanssubconsciously-mimic-other-accentspsychologists-claim.html hughes, a., trudgill, p., & watt, d. (2012). english accents & dialects (fifth). retrieved from http://www.ghbook.ir/index.php?nam e=های رسانه و فرهنگ option=com_dbook&task=readon&نوین line&book_id=13650&page=73&chk hashk=ed9c9491b4&itemid=218&l ang=fa&tmpl=component kachru, b. (2008). world englishes : approaches, issues, and resources. cambridge university press, 25(1). krahnke, k. j., & krashen, s. d. (1983). principles and practice in second language acquisition. in tesol quarterly (vol. 17). https://doi.org/10.2307/3586656 medgyes, p. (1992). native or non-native: who’s worth more?. elt journal, 46(4), 340–349. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/46.4.340 mulkeen, d. (2016). why mimicking a foreign accent can help you to be understood. retrieved from https://www.communicaid.com/busin ess-language-courses/blog/ismimicking-a-foreign-accent-moreeffective-than-learning-the-language rajagopalan, k. (2012). “world english” or “world englishes”? does it make any difference? international journal of applied linguistics (united kingdom), 22(3), 374–391. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14734192.2012.00316.x saddhono, k., & sulaksono, d. (2018). indoglish as adaptation of english to indonesian: change of society in big cities of indonesia. iop conference series: earth and environmental science, 126(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/17551315/126/1/012092 schweers, c. w. (2012). research findings in ijkd, january 2012. english teaching forum, 6(1), 79. subtirelu, n. (2013). language privilege: what it is and why it matters. retrieved from https://linguisticpulse.com/2013/06/ 26/language-privilege-what-it-is-andwhy-it-matters/ sung, m. (2013). learning english as an l2 in the global context: changing english, changing motivation. changing english: studies in culture and education, 20(4), 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684x.2 013.855564 wei, r., & su, j. (2012). the statistics of english in china: an analysis of the best available data from government sources. english today, 28(3), 10–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/s026607841 2000235 yan, q., vaseghi, s., rentzos, d., ho, c. h., & turajlic, e. (2003). analysis of acoustic correlates of british, australian, and american accents. 2003 ieee workshop on automatic speech recognition and understanding, asru 2003, (may 2014), 345–350. https://doi.org/10.1109/asru.2003. 1318465 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/651 iful rahmawati mega is a lecturer in the english education study program at stkip muhammadiyah bangka belitung. she currently teaches curriculum development, teaching english for foreign language, english for specific purposes, and research methods in language teaching. her research draws on english language teaching process, focus on english language skills, digital literacy, and technology development for language and teaching program. dody sugiarto is a lecturer of english education study program of stkip muhammadiyah bangka belitung as well as the head of national and international cooperation affairs. he is interested in english speaking proficiency research and any factors affecting its improvements. the teaching of speaking and dealing with the pre-service teachers’ quality development has always been his concern since 2018. speaking skills in correlation with english speaking learning habit and self confidence of vocational high school students iful rahmawati mega1), dody sugiarto2) stkip muhammadiyah bangka belitung, indonesia 1)iful.rahmawati@stkipmbb.ac.id 2)dody.sugiarto@stkipmbb.ac.id doi: 10.18196/ftl.5253 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 173 abstract the purpose of conducting this study is based on problem identification asking whether there are correlations among english speaking learning habits and self-confidence toward english speaking skills in promoting local tourism and culture of bangka belitung. the first-grade students of smkn 3 pangkalpinang in the academic year of 2018/2019 majoring in tourism travel business agent became the population in this study, and it took 50 students as the sample using a purposive random sampling technique. this correlational study used questionnaires and oral tests in collecting the data. the oral test was used to obtain english speaking skill data, while the questionnaires were used to obtain english speaking learning habits and students’ self-confidence data. the data were then analyzed using simple and multiple correlation and regression. the results of this study revealed that (1) there was a relationship between english speaking learning habit and english speaking skill, (2) there was a correlation between students’ self-confidence and english speaking skill, and (3) english speaking learning habit, confidence, and english speaking skill was simultaneously and positively correlated. in short, this study leads to a recommendation to the teachers and students to be aware of having good english speaking learning habits and high self-confidence to enhance english speaking skills. keywords: learning habit; self-confidence; speaking skill ============================================================================== introduction english is an important language that learners should acquire. it is because, as an official international language, english has an essential role in language communication. it connects people in other countries to make a deep conversation as well as creates an instrument in utilizing modern educational technology. in updating the kind of education sciences, english skills should be enhanced well because many sources related to the education field are written and described in english. english as a foreign language has four primary skills; named speaking, listening, reading, and writing. these four skills have different characteristics. speaking and writing are called productive ability, and they produce communication. due to the importance of english for the vocational school students majoring in tourism project, the students in the future is hoped to be a tourist guide and entrepreneur in a business travel agent. thus, english will be the fundamental skill that they provide, especially their speaking ability. it is the reason why this research is necessary to conduct vocational high school students majoring in a tourism travel agent. because speaking is considered as having a significant role in communication, people make the effort to learn the skill with the aim to be able to communicate with the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 174 world society (parupali, 2019). it is in line with a study conducted by leong & ahmadi (2017). they explain that appropriate speaking instruction is the learners’ priority and a field needing more attention. this type of research can be beneficial to consider what students need in the process of learning. speaking ability needs to be advanced as well as practiced. problems finding in the firstgrade students of smk 3 pangkalpinang in the process of speaking practice were having difficulties in responding to english conversation. they were also afraid to answer the question in english, lacking selfconfidence in sharing the thoughts, feeling nervous when speaking english in front of the class, and lacking motivation in learning english speaking. in the learning process, learners can share their thoughts, answer the questions communicatively, and ask the problems in the form of group discussion. students may be mastering the ability to speak, but it is only applied in a small group. they do not have high self-confidence when they share their thoughts with the general public. this action makes the learning process on english speaking does not engage the students well. when sharing their opinions, students must increase their confidence. based on riani's (2011) research, students with high self-confidence had better speaking skills than those with low self-confidence. she added that self-confidence significantly contributed to the learners’ willingness to communicate in a foreign language. selfconfidence in someone’s force needs to be advanced. according to burton, kate, and brinley (2006), confidence is the ability to take suitable and necessary action in any given situation even when it seems difficult in the perspective of others. the center of all learning is the confidence a person has to perform the task. self-confidence is an attitude characterized by a strong belief in being able to take charge of your life and your plans. self-confident people are those who understand their ability to do something, and then continue to do activities of this kind. they do not depend on other people’s approval. students with high self-confidence do not fear to explore their potential. they are usually successful in the classroom and not afraid to make learning faults. in studying english, students also need to record their learning habits, especially in english speaking learning habits. people who study thoroughly will influence their behavior changes, while knowledge, attitude, and ability. stimulating children to learn is journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 175 the most important thing. learning habits that are continually fostered will be beneficial for teachers, parents, and students. crede and kuncel (in gallardo-echenique, bullen, & marqués-molías, 2016) believed that study habits usually indicate the extent to which students engage in regular study actions characterized by appropriate study routines (e.g., material reviews) that occur in an environment conducive to studying. in line with a previous study by urh and jereb (2014), in their discussion, they showed that the study habits of the individual are essential, as the ability to change behavior concerning the needs of the study. however, most students have ineffective learning habits. they only study the english subject when they have tests, and they spend their free time doing nothing. therefore, schools must have a rule in supporting students’ learning habits. some schools hold additional english classes in the form of extracurricular activities. the productive learning habit will be better if applied at an early age for the children. it is also correlated to the students’ environment. a great contribution environment influences the habits of children to do positive things. in creating this condition, parents should make the best role to guide the children. the parents have an important role and must engage their children well in leading their habits to build their learning habits upright. from the description of the introduction above, the researcher draws some hypotheses. they are 1) there is a relationship between english speaking learning habits and english speaking skills; 2) there is a correlation between students’ selfconfidence and english speaking skill; 3) there is a correlation between english speaking learning habits and self-esteem simultaneously english speaking ability. literature review in this part, the researcher gives literature supports as the foundation of the research. the literature is presented in four sub-sections explaining the concept of learning habit, self-confidence, english speaking skill, and some previous studies to show what has been found in the past regarding the related variables. learning habit the english language can be learned through various learning methods or strategies. people have the best way in the process to absorb foreign language learning. however, the most side to be concerned is the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 176 self-habit of the learners. the habit consistency as an effort to enhance language skills is one of the essential factors that distinguish success between the learners. according to anwar (2013), there are two categories of learning habits. they are bad learning habits and good learning habits. by using learning habit and ethics survey developed by margono (2010) about students’ learning habit at school, students would have good learning habit by applying some indicators: 1) doing homework or tasks punctually, 2) having time for study efficiently, 3) having competence teacher or mentor, 4) having learning objectives, exercises, and requirements. shortly, it can be concluded that people who have good learning habits have a commitment to themselves to do all essential tasks punctually using effective methods and supported by the teachers, and also they know their final objectives. there are seven learning habit indicators. according to megasari (in yustiningrum, 2010), they are first, having learning targets. every learner must set the goals in the learning process. this target requires students to experience a structured and effective learning process. the second is to arrange a study plan. every student is educated to be an autonomous person in following the learning process. students who can arrange the study plans are mentioned as good independent learners. third, studying materials every day, one of the benchmarks of students’ learning habits, is their consistency in understanding and learning the materials as well as improving their psychomotor abilities, which are certainly done routinely every day. fourth, repeating learning materials. it is essential to do and can increase students’ proficiency in understanding the materials. fifth, reading various books has a significant impact on broader students’ knowledge. sixth, doing assignments or homework provides functional learning abilities for the students. seventh is making notes. learners need to have their notes from the learning summaries studied. indicators of learning habits in this research work as indicators of learning habits in english learning. students who learn english should 1) have targets that want to be achieved in learning english; 2) arrange english study plans effectively; 3) learn english every day; 4) repeat the english materials; 5) read english book diligently; 6) do the english tasks properly; 7) make english materials summaries. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 177 self-confidence in learning english, the learners are required to have high self-confidence in understanding and to improve four english language skills comprehensively. according to hendriana (2014), building the learners’ selfconfidence is needed to provide to actualize his or herself. in line with anggelis (1997), self-confidence is a belief in someone’s ability to do something in life that begins with selfrestraint. besides, hambbly (in totong, 2011) told that self-confidence is someone’s belief to do something calmly, firmly, and lively in front of the public. it is essential to have high self-esteem because there is a belief in being able to do everything and actualize oneself, which begins with self-determination. self-confidence, which is a factor in students learning success, has several components. they are 1) identity, strong and coherence sense of self; 2) self-concept, special evaluation for self-evaluation; 3) self-esteem, level of compliment that someone has; 4) selfefficacy, someone’s belief on students’ success. these self-confidence components are required as indicators of students’ selfconfidence (roth-rerbst, borbely, & brooksgunn, 2008). english speaking skill the first way to connect and communicate is through speaking. according to aye and phyu (in zuhriyah, 2017), people need practical english speaking skills in the whole life aspects of this globalization era. speaking is people’s way of transmitting and sharing thoughts verbally to others. bahadorfar and omidvar (2014) stated that if the listeners can comprehend what someone is saying, the speaker is considered as having and excellent speaking skill. speaking skills has several indicators to be assessed. speaking skill can be assessed through a rubric assessment called the competent speaker. dunbar, brooks, and kubicka-miller (2006) state that speaking rubric assessment of the competent speaker consists of 1) choosing and focusing the topics; 2) delivering the specific purpose; 3) providing suitable supporting materials; 4) utilizing appropriate drafting patterns; 5) using proper language; 6) using a various level, tone, and vocal intensity; 7) using suitable fluency, grammar, and pronunciation; 8) using physically attitude that supports verbal messages. also, according to lazaraton (2001), speaking requires active interaction between the speaker and the listener as the process of constructing and sharing meaning involving journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 178 components of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and understanding. from these experts' descriptions, people can master english speaking skills through active interaction with the respondents in delivering or expressing meaning in regarding speaking skill aspects. there are pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. previous related studies this research article has relevant research, the first previous research entitled increasing english speaking skills through picture series media (hamid b, 2014). it was classroom action research using three cycles and analyzing data using a qualitative and quantitative method. the final study showed that quantitatively found the students’ speaking skills increased significantly from the first cycle to the third cycle. it can be concluded that students’ speaking skills could be improved using picture series media. for teachers, it is strongly suggested to use picture series media as one of the teaching media in teaching and learning english speaking process. second, a research entitled the correlation between learning habits and students’ learning achievement analyzed product-moment correlation and presentation (arifin, 2012). the final results revealed that there was a correlation significant between learning habits and students' learning achievement. the third is research entitled self-confidence and autonomous learning to senior high school students (pratiwi & laksmiwati, 2016). this research proposed to analyze the relationship between selfconfidence and learning ability to senior high school students majoring in social science. it was quantitative research using selfconfidence scale and learning ability scale as instruments in collecting the data and using product moment to analyze the data. the final results showed that there was a correlation between self-confidence and autonomous learning, where the relation of each variable is unidirectional. it means that the higher selfesteem of the student has, the higher of autonomous learning will be. research method design and sample this research used quantitative research through multiple correlations design. it was conducted at smkn 3 kota pangkalpinang. the first-grade students of smkn 3 pangkalpinang in the academic year journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 179 of 2018/2019 majoring in tourism travel business agent became the population in this study. this major has two classes. each class contains 25 students, so it took 50 students as the sample using a purposive sampling technique. instruments and procedures in collecting the data, the researcher used questionnaires and oral test. the oral test was for taking the speaking skill data, while questionnaires were to take learning habits and self-confidence data. learning habits questionnaire provided seven indicators, with the total number were 30 items, while the selfconfidence questionnaire provided four indicators, and the total amount was 40 items. these questionnaires used a likert scale as well as the speaking test used oral test and recorded the students speaking about tourism places in bangka belitung province. the component of speaking analyzed five indicators. they are pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. data analysis this research intended to reveal the validity and reliability of the instruments. the validity test used product-moment formula, and the reliability test used alpha cronbach for questionnaire instruments. the technique used to analyze the data was linear regression analysis statistic by using spss. the research tests used product moment and multiple linear regression formula for the hypothesis testing. before continuing to linear regression analysis, there are pre-requisite tests for the data. they are the normality test that is tested by using the lilliefors test and linearity test. results and discussions the data description of these variables explained in the table below. table 1. description data variables mean standard deviation n speaking skill (y) 79.56 7.733 50 learning habit (x1) 78.08 8.136 50 self-confidence (x2) 82.00 5.813 50 the table describes that the mean score of learning habit (x1) is 78.08, selfconfidence (x2) is 82.00, and speaking skill (y) is 79.56. after measuring the description data, the researcher analyzed the pre-requisite tests. the normality test can be shown below. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 180 table 2. the result of normality test variables result significance level (5%) decision learning habit (x1) selfconfidence (x2) speaking skill (y) 0.394 0.064 0.667 0.05 0.05 0.05 normal normal normal from the table normality test above, the score of learning habit (x1) is 0.394> 0.05; self-confidence (x2) is 0.064> 0.05; and speaking skill (y) is 0.667> 0.05. from the results, the data are in a normal distribution. the next pre-requisite is the linearity test, described in the table below. the table shows that variant x1y, freg (38.02) is higher than ft (4.04) or freg (38.02) > ft (4.04), so the regression is significant. as well as fo (2.20) is lower than ft (2.22) or fo (2.20) < ft (2.22), so the regression is linear. variant x2y, because freg (33.31) is higher than ft (4.04) or freg (33.31) > ft (4.04), so the regression is significant; because fo (1.63) is lower than ft (2.08) or fo (1.63) < ft(2.08), so the regression is linear. after measuring the requirement test, the research hypothesis result draws in the table below (table 4). table 4. hypothesis testing model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. correlations b std. error beta zero-order partial part (constant) 6.519 10.989 .593 .556 x1 .415 .120 .437 3.446 .001 .665 .449 .345 x2 .496 .169 .373 2.941 .005 .640 .394 .294 table 3. the results of linearity test pre requirement test result ft explanation x1y fre g 38.0 2 4.0 4 the data is significant fo 2.20 2.2 2 the data is linear x2y fre g 33.3 1 4.0 4 the data is significant fo 1.63 2.0 8 the data is linear journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 181 table 6. significant test model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 1549.390 2 774.695 26.367 .000a residual 1380.930 47 29.381 total 2930.320 49 table 7. contribution analysis variables relative contribution effective contribution learning habits (x1) self-confidence (x2) 54.90 % 45.10 % 29.03 % 23.85 % total 100 % 52.88 % the correlation between learning habit (x1) and speaking skill (y) this first hypothesis explains that the result of regression testing between x1 and y reveals the computation ̂ = 30.219 + 0.632 x1. the significance of regression shows that fo is 38.02, and ft is 4.04 at a significant level of 5%. the regression x1 and y is significant (table 3). it can be used to predict the relationship between learning habit, and speaking skill means that speaking skills will enhance 0.632 if the learning habit lifts one score in a constant score of 30.219. from the computation of the single correlation between x1 and y, the correlation coefficient is 0.665. it is compared to r-table 0.279 (table 4). due to this finding, there is a positive correlation between students’ learning habits and students’ speaking skills. this correlation reveals the contribution of each variable. the effective contribution of learning habits for speaking skills is 29.03% (table 7). it describes that 29.03% of student’s speaking skill success is influenced by the learning habits of the students’. this first finding is in line with research done by mohammad, sumardi, and ngadiso (2018) entitled students’ speaking skill in english table 5. multiple correlation test model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate durbinwatson 1 .727a .529 .509 5.420 1.877 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 182 immersion school (a case study). their study revealed factors that were assumed to affect students’ english speaking skills. they were environment, local accent, vocabulary mastery, english use, preference, and habits. they discussed that habit was another crucial matter in building up students’ english speaking skills. therefore, in the english immersion program, the school set the situation where students communicate in english, and there was punishment for those who did not use english in their conversations. this step is part of conditioning to push students to use english, despite the low english ability. indeed, students find a habit useful for increasing their english proficiency. other findings exposed the strategy for teachers in improving students’ speaking skills. they should make speaking english as a habit (wahyuni & basri, 2014). it also relates to the study discussion by latif (2016). his research found that the contribution of the habit of using english in daily life toward speaking skill was 42.64%. therefore, the researcher concluded that there was a significant positive correlation between the habit of using english in everyday life and speaking skills of the first-grade students mapk man 1 surakarta. from all the supporting previous research findings above, various studies figured a correlation needed between habit, learning habit, and speaking skill. habit stands as an essential factor in the contribution of strong speaking skills. the correlation between self-confidence (x2) and speaking skill (y) the second hypothesis finds that the result of regression measurement between x2 and y showing the computation ̂ = 9.741 + 0.851 x2. the finding result of significance regression fo is 33.31 compared to ft is 4.04; because fo is lower than ft, it means that the regression of x2 and y is significant (table 3). as there is a relationship between selfconfidence and speaking skills, the mean of speaking skills will increase 0.851 if the selfconfidence enhanced one score in a fixed score of 9.741. from the measurement of a single correlation between x2 and y, it is found that the coefficient of correlation is 0.640, compared to r-table is 0.279 at the significance level of 5% (table 4). this discussion reveals that there is a positive correlation between self-confidence and speaking skills. this correlation has a different contribution. the effective contribution of self-confidence toward journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 183 speaking ability is 23.85%, and it explains that 23.85% of students’ speaking skill achievement is determined by students’ high self-esteem (table 7). this discussion relates to the study done by leong and ahmadi (2017). their paper aims to establish the need to focus on the factors that influence english language learners' language skills. their paper reviews explore the body of research on the terms speaking, the importance of speaking, and the characteristics of speaking performance, speaking problems, and the factors that affect speaking performance. according to the literature review, suitable speaking instruction was important for learners and is something that needs more attention. the resulting paper said that one of the factors affecting speaking skill was related to affective ones. based on the review of the literature of the study, teachers should understand their students’ interests and feelings, improve their learners’ selfconfidence, and choose the best teaching method to keep their learners involved in the speaking activity. the paper showed that students who had the higher motivation and lower anxiety could speak quickly and effectively. one of the studies about selfconfidence, is the one conducted by gürler (2015), who found that there was a statistically significant correlation between self-esteem and speaking achievement. the study also informed that by constructing moderate self-confidence, speaking problem can be solved. this finding supports the previous study conducted by arango (2015), which found that affective domain, as the emotional aspect of human behavior, involves aspects of personality such as emotions, motivation, attitudes, anxiety, personality, and self-confidence. arango added that confidence, among all, became the most influential to foreign language learning. to be more specific, speaking performance and self-confidence are highly correlated. all of the previous studies above also support the last finding of this research. it describes that students’ self-confidence was highly correlated with students’ speaking skills. the correlation between learning habit (x1), self-confidence (x2), and speaking skill (y) the last finding shows that the result of multiple regression computation between x1, x2, and y is ̂ = 6.519 + 0.415 x1 + 0.496 x2. the result of the significance regression test for fo is 26.367 compared to ft is 3.23 at journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 184 the significance level of 5% (table 6). this result reveals that fois higher than ft, so fo is significant. then, it can be used to interpret the correlation between x1, x2, and y. this description means that in every one score increases from learning habits in line with students’ self-confidence, it will increase 0.911 of students’ speaking skills in a constant score of 6.519. meanwhile, if there is no increase in learning habits as well as self-confidence, every student has the mean of speaking skill 6.519 shown in constant positive value. the computation of multiple correlations revealed that r obtained is 0.727 (table 5). this simultaneous correlation has a contribution to each factor. the effective contribution is 52.88%. it shows that learning habits and selfconfidence are crucial factors that affect the speaking skill. 52.88% of factors that affect the speaking skills of the students occur from students’ learning habits and students’ selfconfidence, then 47.12% of the rest was determined by other factors (table 7). it is in line with previous research that this research proposed to analyze the relationship between self-confidence and learning ability. the final results showed a correlation between selfesteem and autonomous learning, where the relation of each variable was simultaneously (pratiwi & laksmiwati, 2016). it means that the higher self-confidence of the student has a more significant of autonomous learning. all the previous studies have been discussed in the last findings, so learning habits and confidence are essential factors in growing speaking skills. the effect is a strong correlation between learning habits and selfconfidence at the same time speaking skills. conclusion the findings and the discussions above fortify that this paper investigates the correlation between learning habits, selfconfidence, and speaking skills. it can be concluded that, first, there is a positive and significant correlation between english learning habits and students’ speaking skills. english learning habits make a useful contribution of 29.03% to students’ speaking skills. second, there is a positive and significant correlation between selfconfidence and speaking skills. selfconfidence makes an effective contribution of 23.85% to growing the students’ speaking skills. the last finding shows that there is a positive and significant correlation between learning habits, self-confidence, and speaking journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 185 skills, with the effective contribution is 52.88%. suggestion the teacher should applaud their pupils’ english-speaking effort. it is also suggested that teachers build a good relationship with their students so that they feel comfortable to speak in the classroom and feel eager and enthusiastic to learn english, especially to hone their speaking skill. the teacher also guides the students to have a good learning habit in studying english, together with increasing and building up the students' self-confidence to deal with the increasing students’ speaking skills. this study shows the finding only focus on the aspect of learning habits, self-esteem, and speaking skills. other studies also can be carried out to prove other problems that relate to students' english skills and another psychological aspect of the students in learning english. references anggelis, d. (1997). percaya diri sumber sukses kemandirian. gramedia. anwar, e. (2013). a correlational study of academic achievement and study habits: issues and concerns. excellence international journal of education and research, 1(2). arango, h. p. (2015). students’ self-confidence as a way to improve english oral production in tenth grade students at ricaurte school. arifin, p. (2012). hubungan kebiasaan belajar dengan prestasi belajar siswa. universitas negeri malang. bahadorfar, m., & omidvar, r. (2014). technology in teaching speaking skill. acme international journal of multidisciplinary research, 2(4), 9–13. burton, kate, and brinley, p. (2006). building confidence for dummies. john willey and sons, ltd. dunbar, n.e., brooks, c.f., & kubickamiller, t. (2006). oral communication skills in higher education: using a performance-based evaluation rubric to assess communication skills. innovation higher education, 31(2), 115. fadil mohammad, sumardi, and ngadiso. (2018). students’ speaking skills in english immersion school (a case study). pancaran pendidikan, 7(1), 51–60. https://doi.org/10.25037/pancaran.v7i1. 138 gallardo-echenique, e. e., bullen, m., & marqués-molías, l. (2016). student communication and study habits of firstyear university students in the digital era | communication étudiante et habitudes d’étude des étudiants universitaires de première année à l’époque numérique. canadian journal of learning and technology / la revue canadienne de journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 186 l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 42(1). https://doi.org/10.21432/t2d047 gürler i̇smail. (2015). correlation between self-confidence and speaking skills of english language teaching and english language and literature preparatory students. curr res socsci, 1(2), 14–19. hendriana, h. (2014). membangun kepercayaan diri siswa melalui pembelajaran matematika humanis. journal pengajaran mipa, 19(1), 52–60. hamid b, l. o. m. i. (2014). peningkatan kemampuan berbicara bahasa inggris melalui media gambar berseri. bahtera: jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra, 13(1). latif, m. a. (2016). a correlation study between the habit of using english in daily life and speaking skill of the first grade students mapk man 1 surakarta in the academic year of 2016/2017. islamic education and teacher training faculty. lazaraton, a. (2001). teaching oral skills. in marrianne celce murcia (ed.), teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). heinle&heinle publisher. leong, l.-m., & ahmadi, s. m. (2017). an analysis of factors influencing learners’ english speaking skills. international journal of research in english education, 2(1), 34–41. https://doi.org/10.18869/acadpub.ijree. 2.1.34 margono, c. (2010). predicting grades in mathematics and english through study habits. the international journal of research and review, 5, 40–50. parupali, r. s. (2019). the importance of speaking skills in english classrooms. alford council of international english & literature journal (acielj), 2(march). www.acielj.com pratiwi, i. d., & laksmiwati, h. (2016). kepercayaan diri dan kemandirian belajar pada siswa sma negeri “x”. jurnal psikologi teori dan terapan, 7(1), 43–49. riani. (2011). the effectiveness of simulation method to teach speaking skill viewed from the student’s self-confidence. sebelas maret university. roth-rerbst, j., borbely, c.j., & brooksgunn, j. (2008). developing indicators of confidence, character, and caring in adolescents. key indicators of child and youth well-being: completing the picture. lawrence erlbaum associates. totong, u. (2011). pengaruh outbound training terhadap peningkatan rasa percaya diri dan kerjasama tim. jurnal ilmiah spirit, 11(3). urh, m., & jereb, e. (2014). learning habits in higher education. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 116, 350–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.0 1.220 wahyuni, hasan basri, m. (2014). the influence of english day towards students ’ speaking skill. 2(4), 1–10. yustiningrum, a. (2010). studi korelasional antara kebiasaan belajar, motivasi berprestasi, hasil belajar siswa kelas v sd di gugus hasanudin kecamatan argomulyo kota salatiga. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 187 zuhriyah, m. (2017). storytelling to improve students’ speaking skills. english education: jurnal tadris bahasa inggris, 10(1), 119–134. http://ejournal.radenintan.ac.id/index.p hp/engedu/article/view/879/753 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/651 abdullah noori has been working as an assistant professor at kabul university, afghanistan. he has such research interest on the field of academic writing. an investigation of undergraduate english major students’ difficulties in academic writing abdullah noori kabul university, afghanistan abdullahm40@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5249 abstract academic writing is a core subject that undergraduate students take during their four years of study. however, many students find the subject challenging. several studies have been conducted to explore the difficulties students face, yet in afghanistan, little to no research is available. hence, this project is a small attempt to address this gap. this research aims to look into the difficulties of undergraduate english major students face in academic writing. the writing difficulties were investigated in terms of content, structure, and language. a descriptive quantitative method was employed for this study, and a questionnaire was given to 121 undergraduate degree students from the english department at kabul university. the research data were analyzed using spss. the research findings revealed that the students faced several challenges in academic writing in terms of language, structure, and content. finally, some recommendations to overcome the difficulties and suggestions for future research are provided. keywords: academic writing; difficulties; undergraduate study; efl; afghan students ============================================================================== journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 100 introduction in afghan universities, english is regarded as a core subject, taught at the undergraduate level, to enable the students from the undergraduate degree to attain competency in english in their study majors (noori, 2018). the acquisition of both receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing) are deemed crucial. however, to the degree, productive skills are concerned. arguably, writing is an essential skill to acquire (ariyanti, 2016). in the meantime, english students in afghanistan, besides acquiring general english language proficiency, are also required to communicate in english academically. academic writing is one of the critical courses that the students take for four years. the overall goal of the course is for the students to acquire the necessary skills to write and observe the different kinds of writings and genres. however, many students, even after taking the course for four years, still find the subject a challenging task. for that reason, the overall goal of the current research is to explore the fundamental difficulties english students face in academic writing. as mentioned, most of the students still find this subject difficult. they struggle to produce high quality and academically verified compositions. therefore, it is necessary to address and identify where the problems lie. for that reason, this research aims to answer the following research questions: 1. what content difficulties do afghan’s english students face in academic writing? 2. what structure problems do they experience? 3. what language difficulties do they face? along with the research questions, the current study holds several purposes. first, this research is a small attempt to contribute to the research gap in afghanistan, where there is less previous evidence exploring the topic. second, the study is a slight attempt to provide to the body of related literature and offers an overall observation of the difficulties students face when writing academic texts. besides, understanding the problems will help educators, policymakers, and curriculum developers develop essential strategies to make sure the students can deal with the writing challenges. as a result, students can improve their overall academic performance. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 101 literature review academic writing is defined by many scholars. for instance, it is described as a “transformation of knowledge that involves convincing readers of the value, significance, and credibility of one’s work” (tardy, 2005, p. 325). it obliges the learners to possess the capacity to incorporate various necessary skills, which may involve gathering, revising, synopsizing, and rewording the information (fukao & fujii, 2001). likewise, abdulkareem (2013) describes academic writing as “the construction and development of techniques taught in universities such as organizing and generating students’ ideas and critical thinking and developing vocabulary and grammatical syntax” (p.1553). academic writing is also described as a form of assessment that requires learners to display understanding and competence of specific skills such as making inferences, analysis, and production (irvin, 2010). academic writing has a crucial position in the acquisition of a second or foreign language. in this respect, sanu (2016) asserted that at the university level, to acquire the competency to communicate effectively, students have to master the writing skills, for they will be required to write in a variety of genres. they have to adapt to the methods of knowing, understanding, interpreting, and organizing knowledge in their writing in different ways such as assignments, essays, summaries, imperative reviews, and research papers (mutimani, 2016). besides, its crucial position in a second or foreign language, academic writing is performed for several reasons and has a variety of forms and characteristics, and students are expected to deal with the various types and unique styles of writings. according to lee (2005), writing could be looked into from dualistic fundamental theoretic perspectives: cognitive and sociocultural perspectives. “the cognitive perspective is goal-oriented and emphasizes the process of writing and revising, whereas the sociocultural perspective is context-oriented and emphasizes the product of writing for a particular audience” (p.3). factors making academic writing challenging even though academic writing skill is crucial for undergraduate students, it is perhaps also reported to be a difficult skill to develop too. according to al fadda (2012), at an advanced level, academic writing, even for most native english speakers, is a challenge. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 102 students may encounter difficulties in terms of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and at a more advanced level in developing coherent arguments while writing reports and essays. ahmed (2010) argued that generating a cohesive and efficient composition is typically a demanding task, and the fact that the linguistic principles of the english language are quite distinctive makes it even more challenging. similarly, musa (2010) asserted that attaining writing skills is indeed a challenging task. it consists of some constituents such as a good grip on spellings and punctuation, a thorough command of grammar, the application of suitable vocabulary, proper writing style to fulfill the expectations of the desired readers. what makes academic writing even more challenging, according to street (2004), is the fact that it is not just about following a series of principles or conventions. instead, “it is a cultural and social practice.” it includes the use of a variety of cognitive skills to deliberate control, authority, and uniqueness inside universities. a similar view is stated by barkaoui (2007), arguing that linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural competencies make academic writing challenging for the students. results of previous studies the results of several empirical studies reveal that a few factors contribute to the fact that undergraduate students at the universities find learning academic writing skills a challenging task (mwangi, 2017; alfaki, 2015; rahmatunisa, 2015; xiao & chen, 2015; albalawi, 2013; abdulkareem, 2013; lamptey and atta 2013; al-khasawneh, 2010; barkaoui, 2007). the difficulties students encounter in academic writing discovered in previously conducted studies can be grouped under three fundamental categories, as described by xiao and chen (2015): content, structure, and language. 1. in terms of content, the students may find it challenging to differentiate various types of genres, formulate the content of their writing, search for relevant sources, provide clear introductions, supporting details, conclusion, and a clear focus on one topic. 2. in terms of structure or form, students might find it challenging to provide proper in-text citations, have problems in capitalization, punctuation, paraphrasing and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 103 summarizing, and formatting references. 3. in terms of language, students’ inabilities to construct grammatically correct sentences, the use of appropriate tenses, discourse markers, part of speech, and proper vocabulary choices. mwangi’s (2017) study revealed that students observed complications relating to terminology usage, their spelling, and the development of arguments in their academic writing papers. similarly, in their research, albalawi (2013) and alfaki (2015) concluded that learners mainly revealed problems with grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. mousaviand kashefian (2011) discovered that the key reason why iranian students were not good in english academic writing was because of their inadequate level in writing. they encountered difficulties in both content and form. al-khasawneh’s (2010) study revealed that the main factors that influence students writing were lack of sufficient vocabulary and hiccups in grammar and punctuation. alfaki (2015) concluded a lack of motivation as one of the critical factors why efl/esl students struggle with writing. motivation, according to barkaoui (2007), consists of learners’ attitudes regarding the nature and significance of writing, the dissimilarities concerning learner’s first language and second language, “their attitude to the l2, and about their writing competence, which in turn influence learners’ engagement, effort, and learning in the l2 writing classroom” (p.42). similarly, rahmatunisa (2015) found that elf students mainly faced three challenges in writing essays, linguistics, cognitive, and psychological problems. her study also disclosed that the learners struggled concerning culture and religious aspects that influenced students and prohibited them from writing about a topic that was too sensitive in their family. lamptey and atta (2013) discovered that students had difficulties in doing citations of referencing information in their assignments. their study further revealed that this problem was because learners did not have the necessary awareness about academic writing, rewording the data, and organizing in-text citation and bibliographical lists. similarly, abdulkareem (2013) investigated the potential components which led to poor academic writing skills. the results of the study concluded that “paraphrasing, referencing, and using citations” were journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 104 reported to be problematic. finally, xiao and chen (2015) discovered that a significant challenge in academic writing lies in the lack of depth and profundity in content. the students were incapable of producing new ideas and expressing their thoughts in writing. to summarize, academic writing is a crucial subject that students, especially at the university level, have to master, but it is also reported to be a difficult skill to acquire. the results of previous studies revealed that students faced several challenges in terms of content, structure, and language when asked to complete academic writing tasks. these difficulties were mainly because of linguistic deficiency, lack of motivation, attitude towards academic writing, and writing technicalities. methodology this research used quantitative descriptive survey design. the questionnaire to 121 respondents was distributed. the data were analyzed using spss v.23 and evaluated concerning mean scores and standard deviation. the highest mean score that could be obtained was 5, indicating “a major challenge,” and the lowest mean score that could be achieved was 1 showing “no challenge at all.” participants the study was conducted at the english department of kabul university, kabul, afghanistan. this department is specially selected to be part of the study because the researcher is currently teaching in this institution. furthermore, this department is also chosen for its accessibility and convenience. the participants for this study were 121 undergraduate junior and senior year english students. instrument the questionnaire was adapted from wang and yu’s (2008) study, and the survey questionnaire consisted of likert scales statements related to the difficulties encountered in academic writing. few adjustments were made to meet the goals and context of the research—the questionnaire comprised of three sections. section one informed the students of the purpose of the study; section two asked the students for their demographics, and section three focused on finding out the difficulties students facing in academic writing concerning content, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 105 structure, and language with a total of 35 statements. results demographics table 1 illustrates the demographics of the respondents. table 1: respondents’ demographic information characteristic frequency percent age 17-21 69 51.2 22-23 52 43.0 gender male 56 46.3 female 65 53.7 year of study junior 43 17.4 senior 78 81.0 also, the questionnaire examined respondents’ perceptions of the importance of academic writing. the results are shown in table 2 below reveal that the respondents consider academic writing a crucial subject. the majority of the students 82 (67.8%) think of academic writing as an essential subject; whereas, another 35 (28.9%) believe it to be necessary. only 4 (3.3%) describes it as somewhat necessary. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 106 table 2: students’ perceptions of the importance of academic writing frequency percent importance of academic writing extremely important 82 67.8 important 35 28.9 somewhat important 4 3.3 the third section of the questionnaire investigated the challenges respondents encounter in academic writing in terms of content, structure, and language. challenges in terms of content table 3 illustrates the top five challenges in terms of content, as reported by the respondents. table 3: challenges in terms of content: 5 high challenges mean std. deviation i find it difficult to: 1. distinguish types of genre in academic writing 4.23 1.13 2. analyze the requirement of written task 4.19 1.16 3. provide sufficient supporting points in my writing 4.08 1.44 4. provide sufficient main points in my writing 4.03 1.14 5. complete the whole body of my writing effectively 4.01 1.15 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 107 in the meantime, table 4 indicates the five low-level challenges in terms of content. table 4: challenges in terms of content: 5 low challenges i find it difficult to: 1. identify essential points from other sources to be used in my writing 2.70 1.17 2. clarify my thoughts or opinions in my writing 2.70 1.29 3. my paragraphs have an unclear focus on the topic selected in my writing 2.63 1.18 4. provide clear conclusion my writing 2.57 1.23 5. search for relevant sources related to assigned written tasks 2.56 1.23 challenges in terms of structure for difficulties in terms of structure, table 5 describes the top five high-level challenges: table 5: challenges in terms of structure: top 5 items with the highest mean score mean std. deviation i find it difficult to: 1. provide proper in-text citation in my writing (apa style) 4.58 1.33 2. organize the content of my writing accordingly 4.37 1.47 3. display organization in my writing 4.07 1.26 4. plan the structure of my writing 4.01 1.37 5. avoid plagiarism in my writing 3.96 1.16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 108 whereas, table 6 illustrates the top five low-level challenges: table 6: challenges in terms of structure: top 5 items with the lowest mean score i find it difficult to: 1. provide a clear thesis statement in my writing 2.72 1.58 2. use appropriate punctuation in my writing 2.67 1.25 3. use appropriate capitalization in my writing 2.34 1.35 4. compile a correct reference list based in the apa style at the end of my writing 2.22 1.18 5. paraphrase and summarize relevant sources in my writing 2.13 1.28 challenges in terms of language the top three highest-level challenges in terms of language reported by respondents are detailed in table 7: table 7: challenges in terms of language: top 3 items with the highest mean score mean std. deviation 1. i find it difficult to use appropriate discourse markers in my writing to connect the sentences 4.58 1.32 2. i have to leave out my ideas because i am unable to find the accurate vocabulary to express my writing 4.05 1.20 3. i use the same vocabulary repeatedly in my writing 4.01 1.15 while table 8 explains the top three lowlevel challenges: journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 109 table 8: challenges in terms of language: top 3 items with the lowest mean score i find it difficult to: 1. to construct grammatically correct sentences in my writing 2.80 1.23 2. to use the proper part of speech in my writing 2.56 1.23 3. i use google to translate my writing to english 2.42 1.34 the overall mean scores calculated for challenges in terms of content, structure, and language are displayed in table 9: table 9: overall mean scores for challenges in terms of content, structure, & language 1. overall mean score: challenges in terms of language 4.08 1.23 2. overall mean score: challenges in terms of structure 3.99 1.17 3. overall mean score: challenges in terms of content 3.87 1.12 the results in table 9 reveal that respondents find academic writing challenging. the highest mean score is obtained by challenges in terms of language m= 4.08 (sd=1.23). challenges follow this are in terms of structure m=3.99 (sd=1.17) and challenges in terms of content m= 3.87 (sd=1.12), respectively. discussion and recommendation academic writing is a complicated process, and many undergraduate students find it challenging to compose an organized and coherent academic text. bearing this in mind, the objective of this project is to investigate the challenges in writing academic texts as identifying these challenges will help instructors use appropriate strategies to help students overcome them. the outcomes of the current research revealed that undergrads perceived academic writing as a crucial subject. still, they also faced several challenges firstly in terms of language, then in terms of structure, and lastly, in terms of content. these findings are journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 110 in line with the results reported by wang and yu (2008). in their study, wang and yu said that in academic writing, ‘language use’ was the most challenging feature, followed by ‘content,’ and then ‘structure.’ yet, these findings were not consistent with the results reported by xiao and chen (2015). they discovered that learners found the challenges in terms of content more serious than structure and language. the current research discovered that firstly, in terms of language, the three highly reported challenges were learners’ lack of ability to use fitting discourse markers, appropriate vocabulary to express their ideas, and the use of the same vocabulary repeatedly in their writing. similarly, mwangi (2017) discovered that learners had difficulties using appropriate terminologies, their spelling, and the development of arguments in their academic papers. one key reason for the problem could be that the respondents do not have sufficient opportunities to use english outside the classroom, and even at the school, they often tend to use their first language. also, they barely had writing practice other than the course assignments in which the instructors often comment on the mechanics rather than the writing as a whole (noori, 2018). second, in terms of structure, the majority of the respondents conveyed that they faced problems in terms of providing proper in-text citations, organizing the content, planning to structure, and adequately organizing ideas. likewise, in terms of citation and referencing, abdulkareem (2013) found that paraphrasing, referencing, and using quotes were the critical challenges learners encountered in academic writing. this challenge may have come from a lack of awareness, also because referencing and citing requires paying attention to a high number of details (wallace, schirato, & bright, 1999). even though the respondents of this study have briefly studied how to cite and reference various sources of information in their introduction to research course, the fact that they have not had many opportunities to use these aspects practically could potentially be the source of these difficulties. besides, in terms of organization and coherence, ahmad (2010) asserted that delivering a coherent text is quite demanding because the stylistic and linguistic standards of english like structure, organization, and grammar differ from other languages. it amplifies the challenge. third, in terms of content, the highly reported challenges were students’ inability to distinguish types of genres, analyzing the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 111 requirement of a written task, and providing sufficient main supporting and minor supporting points effectively. one reason for this could be that the students are not presented with writing samples, illustrating different writing genres, such as descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical (casanave & hubbard, 1992). another potential reason associated with this challenge can be students’ lack of reading and writing practice. to overcome the writing challenges, students need to receive regular feedback from their lecturers on both the process and product of the writing. lecturers often do not provide students with feedback because they are teaching large mixed-ability classes, and because they teach too many classes (miri & joia, 2018). feedback is a crucial feature that could help students improve academic writing (myles, 2002). lecturers also should help learners device effective strategies that can help learners in self-correction and instruction. besides commenting on areas of improvement, the feedback should also aim to motivate students (mutimani, 2016). the encouraging comments from the lecturers can help learners develop a more positive attitude toward academic writing, and learners with a positive attitude are more likely to flourish in academic writing than those with an adverse reaction (myles, 2002). teachers also should encourage learners to take responsibility for their learning and read widely to enrich their knowledge. learners need to carry out practical tasks on their own such as keeping journals, diaries, writing essays on a variety of topics, maintaining blogs, or web pages. also, the integrating of technology into the classes and providing students with a variety of online and print resources can enhance learners’ motivation and enrich their learning experience as the integration of technology in the classroom encourages learners to strive, learn more and be actively involved at school (afrin, 2016; noori, 2018). conclusion and suggestion the current study explored the challenges afghan undergraduate efl learners face in academic writing. the study used a quantitative research method in which a questionnaire was given to undergraduate learners at the english department of kabul university. the results of the research revealed that english students in afghanistan still encounter several challenges in academic writing in terms of language, structure, and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 112 content of the writing. however, the vast majority of the students considered academic writing extremely important. in the meantime, as this research only examined a limited number of participants and at one university, it is difficult to generalize the result of the study to other contexts. therefore, further research is needed in which a more significant number of participants should take part in, and a variety of research instruments should be employed. references abdulkareem, m. (2013). an investigation study of academic writing problems faced by arab postgraduate students at universiti teknologi malaysia (utm). theory and practice in language studies, 3(9), 1552-1557. afghanistan ministry of education. (2011). afghanistan education curriculum. kabul: ministry of education. ahmed, a. (2010). students’ problems with cohesion and coherence in efl essay writing in egypt: different perspectives. literacy information and computer education journal (licej), 1, 219-221. al fadda, h. (2012). difficulties in academic writing: from the perspective of king saud university postgraduate students. english language teaching, 5 (3). 123-130. albalawi, m. a. (2013). exploring academic and cultural challenges for saudi students in the united states (publication no. 1569743) [master’s thesis, gonzaga university]. proquest dissertations publishing alfaki, i. (2015). university students’ english writing problems: diagnosis and remedy. international journal of english language teaching, 3 (2), 40-52. al-khasawneh, f., & maher, s. (2010). writing for academic purposes: problems faced by arab postgraduate students of the college of business, uum. esp world, 9(2), 1-23. ariyanti, a. (2016). the teaching of efl writing in indonesia. dinamika ilmu. 16(2), 2442–9651. http://doi.org/10.21093/di.v16i2.274 barkaoui, k. (2007). teaching writing to second language learners: insights from theory and research. tesl reporter 40, (1), 35-48. casanave, c. p., & hubbard, p. (1992). the writing assignments and writing problems of doctoral students: faculty perceptions, pedagogical issues, and needed research. english for specific purposes, 11(1), 33-49. https://doi:10.1016/08894906(92)90005-u collis, j., & hussey, r. (2009). business research: a practical guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students. basingstoke: macmillan international higher education. fukao, a., & fujii, t. (2001). investigating difficulties in the academic writing process: interview as a research tool. icu language research bulletin, 16, 29-40. lamptey, r. b., & atta-obeng, h. (2013). challenges with reference citations among postgraduate students at the kwame nkrumah university of science http://doi.org/10.21093/di.v16i2.274 https://doi:10.1016/0889-4906(92)90005-u https://doi:10.1016/0889-4906(92)90005-u journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 113 and technology, kumasi, ghana. journal of science and technology (ghana), 32(3), 69-80. lee, n. (2005). understanding students’ perceptions of difficulty with academic writing for teacher development: a case study of the university of tokyo writing program. researchgate, 14, 1-11. retrieved march 3, 2017, from www.researchgate.net. miri, m. a., & joia, j. (2018). writing anxiety in an afghan efl setting: voices from five afghan students. journal of foreign language teaching and learning, 3(1), 14-29. mousavi, h. s., & kashefian-naeeini, s. (2011). academic writing problems of iranian postgraduate students at the national university of malaysia (ukm). european journal of social sciences, 23(4), 593-603. musa, f. (2010). teaching writing to postsecondary students: procedure and technicalities in an efl classroom. paper presented at the first national conference on english language teaching, al-quds open university, palestine. retrieved from: http://www.qou.edu/english/conference s/firstnationalconference/pdffiles/faro uqmusa.pdf. mutimani, m. m. (2016). academic writing in english: challenges experienced by bachelor of education primary level students at the university of namibia, katima mulilo campus [master’s thesis, university of namibia]. http://hdl.handle.net/11070/1666 mwangi, s. w. (2017). challenges faced by undergraduate students in academic writing: a case of kenyan students. african multidisciplinary journal of research, 1(2). myles, j. (2002). second language writing and research: the writing process and error analysis in student texts. tesl-ej, 6(2), 120. noori, a. (2018). attitudes of afghan efl lecturers toward instructional technology. techtrends, 2(62), 17-178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-0180347-9 noori, a. (2018). communicative language teaching (clt) in efl context: exploring afghan efl lecturers’ perceived challenges in implementing clt. international journal of research, 5(16), 1049-1063. https://journals.pen2print.org/index.ph p/ijr/article/view/15468/14994 rahmatunisa, w. (2015). problems faced by indonesian efl learners in writing an argumentative essay. english review: journal of english education, 3(1), 41-49. sanu, l. o. (2016). narrative paragraph writing of the second-semester student of the stated institute of islamic studies (iain) samarinda a syntactic analysis. script journal: journal of linguistic and english teaching, 1(1), 36–45. street, b. (2004). academic literacies and the new orders: implications for research and practice in students’ writing in higher education. learning and teaching in the social sciences. 1(1), 9-20. retrieved on may 14, 2016, from http://dx.doi.org/10/1386/ltss.1.1.9/0 tardy, c. m. (2005). “it’s like a story”: rhetorical knowledge development in http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstnationalconference/pdffiles/farouqmusa.pdf http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstnationalconference/pdffiles/farouqmusa.pdf http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstnationalconference/pdffiles/farouqmusa.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/11070/1666 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0347-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0347-9 https://journals.pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/article/view/15468/14994 https://journals.pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/article/view/15468/14994 http://dx.doi.org/10/1386/ltss.1.1.9/0 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 114 advanced academic literacy. journal of english for academic purposes, 4(4), 325338. wallace, a., schirato, t., & bright, p. (1999). beginning university: thinking, researching, and writing for success. crows nest, nsw: allen & unwin. wang, w. and yu, x. (2008). a survey of learners’ self-perceived difficulties in l2 writing. foreign language learning theory and practice, (1), 31-35. xiao, g., & chen, x. (2015). english academic writing difficulties of engineering students at the tertiary level in china. world transactions on engineering and technology education (13), 259-263. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 111 article history: submitted: 9 january 2021 reviewed: 10 march 2021 edited: 29 april 2021 5 july 2021 accepted: 8 july 2021 demotivating factors in learning second language: the case of chinese language learners in ghana bright nkrumah university of ghana, ghana bnkrumah@ug.edu.gh doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i2.10815 abstract demotivation is a negative counterpart of motivation that affects student learning process and outcome. the present study attempted to determine the demotivating factors in learning a second language in ghana using the chinese language as a case study. a structured survey questionnaire data were collected from two hundred students learning chinese at the university of ghana to achieve the stated objective. the study identified the significant demotivation factors affecting students learning a second language: teacher competence and teaching style, learning materials, crowded classroom, high competition in acquiring scholarship to china, less chance to get chinese ambassador scholarship award, and lack of self-confidence and experience of failure. teachers should use more appropriate textbooks to improve their teaching skills. also, students should be motivated to learn and participate in classroom activities to form lasting reminiscences. keywords: university of ghana students; chinese language learners; demotivating factors ========================================================================== mailto:bnkrumah@ug.edu.gh https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.10815&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 112 introduction numerous factors are affecting the second language learning process, among which motivation plays a crucial role. motivation is a driving force that energizes humans behavior. motivation to learn l2 is a complex construct, considering that language is always socially and culturally bound and hence, quite different from other school subjects (kandambi, 2018). motivation provides students with directions and aims to follow. kandambi (2018) has shown that students with higher motivation are fruitful in their language learning. however, a situation where a student feels bullied by the lecturer or humiliated by the teacher is more likely to reduce students’ motivation to learn. furthermore, azar and tanggaraju (2020) firmly believed that motivation is the neglected heart of language teaching. in line with this, adwani and shrivastava also stated, “it is observed that all of the learning activities are filtered through the students’ motivation. without student’s motivation, there is no pulse; there is no life in the class” (as cited in azar & tanggaraju, 2020, p. 324). in contrast to motivation, demotivation can be considered as the negative counterpart. some researchers (li & duff, 2018; sakai & kikuchi, 2009; liu, zheng, ma, & wei, 2020) go on to expand dornyei’s original definition to cover both external and internal factors (i. e., demotivators), which reduce or diminish the motivation to study the second language. demotivation has recently attracted the attention of educationalists considering its direct educational implications (jahedizadeh & ghanizadeh, 2015; liu, 2020). besides, knowing what motivates a learner, being aware of the hazards that undermine motivation is essential for both teachers and learners. however, a demotivated learner is someone who has lost interest for some reason. the loss of interest can originate from different sources of demotivation. for instance, an unprepared teacher or an uninteresting textbook can act as a demotivation for a learner. li and zhou (2017) identified several demotivating factors in second language learning: lack of interest, teachers, and experiences of failure that probably diminish learners’ desire and motivation towards learning. khan stated that “despite a sound planning, purposive curriculum, suitable textbooks, qualified teachers and effective administration, the teaching-learning process journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 113 sometimes seems to be ineffective…and unsatisfactory” (as cited in al-khairy, 2013, p. 366). based on studies by kandambi (2018) in china, altiner (2018) in turkey, and zhang (2020) in ireland the most demotivating factor in second language learning was teachers’ incompetence. on another note, nkrumah and darko (2020) suggested that no language acquisition or teaching could occur in a classroom. learners might bring along with them in the learning process. most studies on demotivation were conducted in countries other than african or particularly not in ghana. liu et al. (2020) explored the demotivation among uzbekistani students while learning chinese in a chinese university. sixty-seven (67) uzbekistani students were given questionnaires, and 30 of them were interviewed about their experiences of learning chinese using a mixed-method. the data analysis revealed that a lack of self-confidence, insufficient learning opportunities, a lack of learning support, and teacher qualities were the most salient factors affecting uzbekistani students’ demotivation while learning chinese. in light of the findings, it was suggested that language educators and educational administrators enhanced language learners’ interest in and enthusiasm for learning chinese to sustain their learning efforts, and chinese universities could achieve sustainable multilingualism. whiles this study focuses on demotivation factors of learning chinese, it used mixed-method either than the quantitative method being deployed in the current study. not only that, this study was conducted in china and not in africa or ghana. pretty (2019) sought to investigate the factors contributing to the demotivation of zimbabwean students studying chinese as a foreign language at the university of zimbabwe. the study took the qualitative approach, and data was collected from participants through semistructured interviews from a sample of 20 sophomore students and two native chinese instructors from the university of zimbabwe’s confucius institute. the major demotivation factors found in this study were the instructor’s inferior teaching methods, teacher’s behavior, the consistent failure of exams by students, the difficulty of the language itself, and the work overload of the students. the main recommendations given by the researchers include maintaining a good teacher-student relationship, using diverse teaching material and methods in the language classroom, utilizing role models to guide students, running awareness campaigns on the effects of culture on learning of foreign languages, considering teacher and students’ emotions and providing counseling services to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 114 both students and teachers where necessary. this study focuses on the same varies as the topic under study. however, it did not take place in ghana and used a qualitative research approach with only 20 respondents compared to the 200 respondents of the current study. in a study conducted by nkrumah and darko (2020) on attitudes of second language learners in ghanaian universities regarding the chinese language, the study targeted 492 students pursuing chinese as a foreign language (cfl) at the university of ghana (ug) and the university of cape coast (ucc). the study employed a quantitative research design. the study’s findings indicated that several factors affected chinese language learning, such as feeling reluctant, gender, peer pressure, social class, age, anxiety, encouragement, and motivation. the study recommends that local chinese teachers need more scholarships to be given to ghanaian students who desire and are interested in learning the chinese language. though the analysis was done in ghana, the focus of the study was on attitudes of the students learning the chinese language and not the demotivating factors that affected them in their studies. demotivation factors are becoming more popular among researchers worldwide, especially in asian countries (duff, lui, & li, 2017; pretty, 2019). regardless, little is known if anything about this study in ghana. studying demotivation factors of learners of the chinese language cannot be overemphasized. this condition opens new chapters who how to strategize mechanisms to help motivate students. furthermore, demotivation has an exact intrusive on educational inference with the rising of relevant learning of chinese language as a foreign language. the literature as reviewed makes room for the current study to contribute to the body of knowledge in ghana as little is known about it here. the study, therefore, aims to find out the demotivating factors in learning a foreign language at the university of ghana. second language learning language is critical. ghana as a nation is geographically but linguistically diverse. as nkrumah and darko (2020) have pointed out that education and language issues are very complex in africa because of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual situation. the english language was the official second language during the colonial era as far back as (cheong et al., 2019). it began in the central region at mfantsipim and adisadel schools in cape coast, when colonial school authorities deemed journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 115 it necessary to introduce french language learning at its inception in 1950. with the inception of formal education and the subsequent use of english as the medium of instruction, the indigenous languages were seen as “inadequate” as teaching media (nkrumah & darko, 2020). the world is a global village, and it will become closer if we learn other people’s languages. to enhance international understanding, learning a second language like chinese is essential. one of the reasons why there are many conflicts worldwide is the lack of language and cultural awareness. lack of intercultural sensitivity can lead to mistrust and misunderstandings. the inability to understand one person’s or people’s language may lead to suspicion or doubt and eventually mistrust. globalization gains momentum with the ability to communicate in other people’s tongues. for survival and better cooperation, every person needs to understand a foreign language, significantly more extensive speakers like chinese. a competent person in a foreign language can bridge the gap between the two people or nations. however, english and french are not the only foreign languages studied in ghana. other foreign languages such as russia, spanish, swahili, and arabic are also studied. due to the increasing number of chinese companies in ghana, it has become crucial to learn chinese, especially in universities (nkrumah & darko, 2020). the expansion of chinese businesses in ghana has resorted to high-quality interpreters and translators of the chinese language. chinese language learning and teaching started in august 2009 at the university of ghana. still, the first confucius institute was established in 2013 to promote the teaching and learning of the chinese language and culture in ghana. research question the study is designed to answer the following question, which intends to provide the demotivating factors on students studying chinese at the university of ghana. what are the demotivating factors discouraging learners of the chinese language at the university of ghana? research objectives to identify the factors affecting students studying the second language at the university of ghana journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 116 methodology the population of the study was the students learning chinese at the university of ghana. the study adopted a quantitative research design, under which it deployed descriptive quantitative research techniques. descriptive research was also appropriate for the study as it aimed to identify characteristics, frequencies, trends of the samples. using non-probability sampling techniques, precisely convenience, and purposive sampling techniques, the researcher sampled two hundred (200) students from the population. convenience sampling was merged with purposive as the students were chosen based on their availability to participate in the study. the students were selected based on their study program and knowledge of the chinese language through the purposive sampling technique. the framework developed by sakai and kikuchi (2009), as used in ali, m, ali, s. s., and nasir (2021), was used to solicit the most impressing factors that cause demotivation. five (5) point likert scale (agree and disagree) where 1 is strongly agree, 2 is agree, 3 is neutral, 4 is disagree, and 5 is strongly disagree also used to support the questionnaire for data collection. structured and closed-ended questionnaires were used to gather information from these respondents based on the study’s objectives, as reflected in the literature review. the data collected was analyzed using excel. the findings were presented using descriptive statistics, including tables and charts. results the study sought to answer the following research questions on demotivating factors affecting students styling chinese language: teacher competence and teaching style: lack of learning content and material, high competition in acquiring scholarship to china, crowded classroom, and less chance to get chinese ambassador scholarship award and lack of selfconfidence and experience of failure. table 1 indicates that 190 (95%) of the students state that inferior teaching methods from teachers to students cause demotivation, for example, poor classroom activities, lack of modern technology during teaching, and poor practical strategies to aid the understanding of the various topics of study. the teaching is either slow or too fast, which makes the lesson incredibly dull. 85% journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 117 of the students say that teachers ‘incompetence cause demotivation in students. for example, some teachers are less resourceful, disorganized, discourage students from asking questions, and strict. 93% of the students attest that lack of commitment on the part of the teachers causes demotivation in students learning a second language. table 1. teacher competence and teaching style item respondent percentage% lack of qualified teachers 170 85% lack of commitment 186 93% lack of teaching methods 190 95% figure 1. lack of learning material figure 1 shows studying materials used by students. 85% of students state that they do not have access to the required textbook, which will help them improve upon their studies to enhance computers 70% cds,audios,videos 55% text books 85% journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 118 their skills and effort in learning, and because of this result, it affects their academic performance. 55% of the students state that lack of cds, videos, and audio affect their learning because when resources are used, the natural rhythm of the language is precise. 70% of the students reveal that they do not have access to computers to study. figure 2. high competition in acquiring scholarships to china high competition in acquiring scholarships to china figure 2 shows that 91.5% of students getting access to a scholarship to china is hard to get. when they work hard to do their best in terms of academic performance, passing the chinese proficiency test with the hopes of getting access to the abroad language programs in china, but it turns out to be unfruitful because of high competition in gaining a scholarship. 83% of the students attest that getting a scholarship to china is not cost-effective. 65% of the students said ignorance and fear set in due to high competition to get a scholarship to china. 91,5 83 65 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 very difficult to get scholarship very expensive ignorance and fear journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 119 figure 3. crowded classroom figure 3 shows a crowded classroom in the learning environment. 90.5% of the students state that a crowded classroom affects their performance. 77.5% of the students reveal crowded environment makes them stressed. it distracts their attention and tension in the classroom, and 91% of students attest that the teacher becomes burnout, lacks concentration on the students’ side, and is frustrated. figure 4. difficulties with chinese characters affect sudents academic performance students become stressful,destructiv e attention and tension teacher become burnout,lack of concentration and fustration 82,50% 71,50% 97% 0,00% 20,00% 40,00% 60,00% 80,00% 100,00%120,00% the chinese writing system, tone of chinese charaters reading and writing memorizing of letters, strokes and other radicals journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 120 difficulties with chinese characters figure 4 shows that 82.5% of students said the chinese characters in a writing system, tone of chinese characters demotivate them. 71.5% of the students said reading and writing more passages is a problem. with enumerated factors, intrinsic motivation is critical to encourage the students to perform well. 97% of students said memorizing letters, strokes, and others sometimes demotivates them to learn the foreign language. when one loses intrinsic motivation, it decreases satisfaction and performance in learning. table 2. less chance to get chinese ambassador scholarship award and lack of self-confidence and experience of failure table 2 shows that 96.5% of students feel difficulty getting the chinese ambassador award. 92% of students reveal that hanyu shuiping kaoshi (hsk) or proficiency test affects their scholarship award due to good grade and grade point average (gpa) requirements. however, if the students do not have the requisite chinese hsk or the proficiency test/exams, it will go against them when applying for the chinese ambassador scholarship. 88.5% of students attest that their enthusiasm and the effort of learning becomes low. on the other hand, 90% said lack of self-confidence and items respondents percentage% a) difficult to get the chinese ambassador award 193 (96.5%) b) hanyu shuiping kaoshi (hsk)or proficiency test affects student’s scholarship award 185 (92.5%) c) it affects student’s enthusiasm and the effort of learning 177 (88.5%) lack of self-confidence and experience i) expressions of anxieties, worries, and fear 180 (90%) ii) students feel mocked by their fellow friends 166 (83%) iii) awkward, unlovable, loss of interest in language learning 165 (82.5%) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 121 experience of failure leads to anxieties, worries, and fear. 83% feel mocked by their fellow friends. anxiety over making mistakes in the l2 may be considered another cause of reduced self-confidence, while 82.5% said lack of confidence leads to unlovable and lost interest in language learning. discussions the study examined the main demotivating factors for chinese language learning among university students of ghana. a descriptive research design was used to gather information through a survey. bryman (2016) clarified that the demotivated learner is once motivated but has lost motivation for a reason. teacher competence and teaching style the findings revealed that 190 (95%) of the students saying inferior teaching methods from teachers to students cause demotivation, such as teachers’ personality, poor management of the classroom, and poor use of practical methods to understand the various topics teachers study. 85% of the students state that teachers ‘incompetence cause demotivation in students. for example, some teachers are not well trained, less resourceful, disorganized, discourage students from asking questions, and strict class affects their study. 93% of the students attest that lack of commitment on the part of the teachers causes demotivation in students learning a second language. this finding is similar to liu et al. (2020), whose data analysis revealed that teacher qualities, a lack of selfconfidence, insufficient learning opportunities, a lack of learning support were the most salient factors affecting students’ demotivation. pretty (2019) found that instructor’s inferior teaching methods, teacher’s behavior demotivated students learning chinese. learning materials however, when one loses motivation, it decreases satisfaction and performance in learning. the result revealed that the lack of studying materials was considered one of the demotivating factors affecting the students’ learning. pretty (2019) and kandambi (2018) concluded that course books and learning content were prominent demotivators. 85% of students state that they feel bored to learn when the requisite learning materials are not available. invalid aids of learning material, coherence, and disparities staged in some books cause demotivation in foreign language learners. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 122 furthermore, some students feel bored with some topics like the characters being taught without any feasible demonstrations. 55% of the students mention that lack of cds, videos, and audio affect their learning because when they listen to these videos and audios, it enhances their skill. 70% of the students said they do not have access to computers to study. crowded classroom the study discovered that 70.5% of students’ respondents believed that crowded classroom in the learning environment was the most influential factor that discouraged students from learning because they become stressful, destructive attention, lack of concentration, and the teachers become burnout. the class environment hinders students’ engagement in learning a foreign language, for instance, when the lessons are taught in the classroom. the students leave the lecture hall outside the learning environment. they do not get access to other people in the language to communicate or interact. as a result, it does not enable them to have fluency in the language, which discourages them from studying. also, learners are frightened of being mocked and humiliated by their classmates when they make mistakes in the classroom, which demotivates or prevents them from learning the language because they think their colleagues are far better than them. high competition in acquiring scholarship to china the findings show that 91.5% attest that access to get a scholarship to china is difficult. 83% also say that it is costly. students’ performance sometimes depends upon these aspects. for example, when the students pass the chinese proficiency test with the hopes of getting access to the abroad language programs in china, it turns out to be unfruitful as a result of high competition in gaining a scholarship to china. they can have the edge to pursue the language nationally and internationally to uplift the school’s name and career in all endeavors of life and through their academic excellence. when students have access to the abroad language programs, it will boost their morale, confidence and encourage other students to learn hard to achieve the objectives and goals in life. difficulties with chinese letter characters furthermore, the results show that 82.5% said the chinese characters in a writing system, tone of chinese characters demotivate them. 71.5% of students mention that reading and writing more passages is a problem. with slanted factors, intrinsic motivation is essential to encourage the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 123 students to perform well. 97% of students state that memorizing letters, strokes, and others sometimes demotivates them to learn the foreign language. the result reveals the teacher’s focus on the learner’s motivation and motivational strategies to increase learners’ motivation. limited opportunities to get chinese ambassador scholarship award, lack self-confidence, and experience of failure the findings reveal that 96.5% attest that access to the chinese ambassador scholarship award is complicated. 92% mention that hsk or proficiency test affects student’s scholarship award. for example, after passing the chinese process test and having good grades and a required grade point average (gpa), the students are turned down by the abroad language emergency program, which demotivates them from learning the foreign language amicably. in this vein, it affects the enthusiasm and interest in chinese language learning. disappointment due to test scores, lack of acceptance by teachers and others, and inability to memorize vocabulary and idioms (kandambi, 2018). kandambi (2018) stated that demotivating factors obstruct a learner’s learning motivation. finally, the findings revealed that 90% of students believed that lack of self-confidence and experience of failure demotivates students in learning the foreign language because it leads to anxieties, worries, and fear. 82.5% of students also feel mocked by their colleagues or their fellow friends because of low self-esteem and experience of failure. conclusion the study analyzed the demotivating factors that affect ghanaians students studying chinese as a second language at the university of ghana. the findings signified that the learning environment was the most demotivating factor that discourages students from learning, which cannot be overlooked among ghanaian students studying chinses as a second foreign language at the university of ghana. considerably, other factors including teacher competence and teaching style, learning materials, high competition to get a scholarship to china, difficulties of the chinese characters, limited chance to get chinese ambassador scholarship award, lack of self-confidence, and failure, demotivated learners. students would feel excellent and appreciated when being journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 124 motivated by the teachers when they academically excel in their studies, which boosts their morals in climbing to higher heights of their lives and endeavors. suggestions were put across to avoid the demotivation factors among ghanaian students and other similar contexts: the textbooks used by the teachers should be revised to improve their teachings skills, there should be solid and intimate cooperation among the teachers and students. the chinese language should not only be practice in the chinese classroom, but it should also be practice outside the academic setting. students should be guided in the areas of weakness; opportunities should be given to students to travel abroad to learn other different obsessions that will enhance their skills and knowledge academically. references ali, m., ali, s. s., & nasir, m. s. (2021). focusing on english learners’ concerns: investigating de-motivational sources of esl learners in classroom setting of a public-sector university of pakistan. psychology and education journal, 58(1), 5782-5794. https://doi.org/10.17762/pae.v58i1.1987 al-khairy, m. h. (2013). english as a foreign language learning demotivational factors as perceived by saudi undergraduates. european scientific journal, 9(32), 365-382. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2013.v9n32p%25p altiner, c. (2018). preparatory school students’ english language learning motivation: a sample from turkey. universal journal of educational research, 6(8), 1729-1737. https://doi.org/ 10.13189/ujer.2018.060814 azar, a. s., & tanggaraju, d. (2020). motivation in second language acquisition among learners in malaysia. studies in english language and education, 7(2), 323333. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v7i2.16506 bryman, a. (2016). social research methods. oxford university press. cheong, k. m., jano, z., salam, s., bareed, n. a., ithnin, f., & suraidi, n. (2019). motivational factors among undergraduates learning mandarin: a qualitative perspective. international journal of academic research in progressive education and development, 8(2), 187-199. http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v8-i2/5694 duff, p. a., liu, y., & li, d. (2017). chinese heritage language learning: negotiating identities, ideologies, and institutionalization. in the routledge handbook of heritage language education (pp. 409-422). routledge. https://doi.org/10.17762/pae.v58i1.1987 https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2013.v9n32p%25p https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v7i2.16506 http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v8-i2/5694 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 125 jahedizadeh, s., & ghanizadeh, a. (2015). demotivation and foreign language achievement: educational level and gender differences among iranian efl learners. international journal of foreign language teaching in the islamic world, 3(6), 5-9. kandambi, s. (2018). understanding demotivating factors in teaching chinese as a foreign language among advanced level students. ssrn. retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3219106 li, c., & zhou, t. (2017). a questionnaire-based study on chinese university students’ demotivation to learn english. english language teaching, 10(3), 128-135. https://doi.org/ 10.5539/elt.v10n3p128 li, d., & duff, p. a. (2018). learning chinese as a heritage language in postsecondary contexts. in the routledge handbook of chinese second language acquisition, (pp. 318-335). routledge liu, c. (2020). motivators for demotivators affecting efl learners in chinese secondary vocational school. english language teaching, 13(4), 41-51. liu, m., zheng, y., ma, x., & wei, y. (2020). sustaining multilingualism in chinese universities: uzbekistani students’ demotivation while learning chinese. sustainability, 12(18), 7570. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187570 nkrumah, b., & darko, j. o. (2020). a study of attitudes towards learning chinese as foreign language in ghanaian universities: a comparative study of university of ghana and university of cape coast. integrity journal of education and training, 4(1). https://doi.org/ 10.31248/ijet2019.058 pretty, t. (2019). demotivation in a chinese language classroom a case of uzci students. international journal of multidisciplinary and current educational research, 1(6), 1-10. retrieved from: https://ijcmer.com/ijmcer_a0160110.pdf sakai, h., & kikuchi, k. (2009). an analysis of demotivators in the efl classroom. system, 37(1), 57-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2008.09.005 zhang, c. (2020). demotivation in learning chinese as an additional language: insights of irish chinese learners (doctoral dissertation, trinity college, dublin). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3219106 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187570 https://ijcmer.com/ijmcer_a0160110.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2008.09.005 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/610 nafisatul lutfi is currently teaching english at stmik akakom yogyakarta. she obtained her master’s degree from gadjah mada university and completed her undergraduate study in english language and literature department at yogyakarta state university. her subjects of interest in writing are american studies, tesol methodology, specifically on the implementation of technology in foreign language teaching. the integration of mall to enhance students speaking skill: an autonomous learning model nafisatul lutfi stmik akakom yogyakarta nafienevan@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5144 abstract mobile-assisted language learning (mall) is a new approach for students to learn language through the use of mobile technology. learning a language should not only happen in a class setting activity but also happen outside the class in which the students take charge of their learning. hence, it requires students' autonomy in learning the language. students are now able to carry out their learning without depending on the teachers, which then leads to a sustainable and independent learning process. quizlet, a web application, is introduced in this paper as an alternative solution to improve students’ speaking skill through an autonomous language learning activity. this paper used an action research method combined with a questionnaire to analyze the implementation of quizlet in an autonomous class setting at stmik akakom yogyakarta. 30 students were involved in the study. the practical, usability, and sustainability aspects become the focus of this research. the data gathered from the action research shows that an autonomous learning activity still requires teachers to be the facilitator, and the questionnaire shows positive feedback from the students regarding the usability and sustainability of their language learning using the application. keywords: mobile assisted language learning; autonomous learning; speaking class journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 2 ============================================================================ introduction the enactment of aec (asean economic community) in indonesia opens up the gate of internalization. the use of english as a basic means of communication becomes more crucial since the competition escalates to be more globalized. english first research result shows that indonesia has a low level of english proficiency with an ef english proficiency index (epi) score of 51,58, ranking at number 51 out of 88 countries (education first, 2019). it becomes a concern for all english teachers to be more innovative in creating a new method of teaching, which can improve students’ proficiency. furthermore, sustainable learning allows students to learn english independently anywhere. this way of learning will improve their speaking skills. it requires more hours of engagement with the target language, which classroom activities cannot always fulfill. one of the ways of supporting this independent learning method is by integrating the use of technology, as in integrating mobile assisted language learning (mall). indonesia is a country with a huge number of mobile subscriptions. it has around 355.5 million subscriptions, covering 133% of its population, and 84% of them are broadband with 3g and 4g connection (kemp, 2019). it shows the potential for mall application in indonesia. the strong mobile connection enables teachers to encourage students to use various applications available to improve their language skills outside the class. it is also suitable to improve students’ speaking skills since it requires more engagement time with the target language. despite the many language learning applications downloaded online, students still do not know which one is good and how to use them for learning properly. in this case, educators can play an important role in introducing the tool and teach the students how to use it so they can independently use the tool outside the class. many researchers have dealt with the integration of mall in english classes. they are fazeena, ekanayakan, and hewagamage (2015), koole (2009), and miangah and nezarat (2012). the others give theoretical explanations and references on mall practices in general without mentioning a specific tool used. a specific application, namely quizlet, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 3 has been used to improve students’ english vocabulary acquisition in several countries such as in malaysia (azman, shuraimi, & yunus, 2018), japan (dizon, 2016) and turkey (korlu & mede, 2018). however, their researches are still according to a teacher-led activity that did not improve students' autonomy in language learning. in indonesa, supardi (2016) has attempted to combine autonomous learning using quizlet, albeit only discussing how to use the application theoretically without real application in an autonomous class setting. the research seeks to answer if mall, the integrating quizlet application, can improve students’ speaking skills by encouraging them to use it in an autonomous learning class activity. the novelty of this research lies in its practical aspects rather than the theoretical ones. literature review mobile-assisted language learning (mall) mall or mobile assisted language learning is considered a broad approach in which researches have studied. it results in different perceptions of the authors and researchers on the basic nature of the mall and in different definitions of mall. some regard this simply as m-learning, a method of learning a language using lightweight devices, specifically handheld, such as pda, ipod, pager, or mobile phone. traxler in fazeena et al. (2015, p.2) defines mobile learning into a "learning delivered through the use of mobile technologies or devices" to simplify the meaning. in its simplest form, it specifically put more emphasis on the aspect of the learning experience instead of the teaching aspect (traxler, 2007). according to miangah and nezarat (2012, p.309), learning using mobile devices“ is characterized by its potential for learning to be spontaneous, informal, personalized, and ubiquitous.” this learning broadens the aspect of learning into a much individualistic one. the learners can take control of their learning whenever and wherever they want, in any manner they prefer, without the involvement of others. furthermore, koole (2009, p. 30) adds that despite the practicality of the learning method, there are also some factors determining the learning experience using mobile devices. they are “the physical characteristics and the learner’s skill or knowledge and experience on using the devices for journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 4 learning.” the first one relates to the device’s ability to perform its task. the second one relies on the user’s ability to use the device. hence, this study aims to introduce a method of combining both aspects, i.e., the device and the learner’s skill into an autonomous language learning method by integrating mall as in the forms of quizlet application in a speaking class activity. quizlet application quizlet is a flash card-based application with several features suitable for learning vocabulary in a fun and interactive way (solhi, 2019). it is a free application that can be accessed by downloading it via play store or appstore or opening the link quizlet.com using a web browser. the application provides more than 200 study sets that can be accessed by anyone. each set has the following features: flashcards. this feature enables the students to learn vocabularies with digital flashcards, which include pronunciation option. students can also mark the words to study first as a priority. learn. it is a feature that helps the students to evaluate their progress in studying the sets. students can choose the type of questions, multiple-choice, or writing the correct answer. spell. this feature is best for listening practice. students listen to some words or phrases, and they must write down the words in the mini test correctly. write. in this mode, students can write down the answer for each word and hear how the word is pronounced. the application will repeat the wrong answers to be studied later. test. the teacher can ask the students to do this test to evaluate the learning activity as a task, and marks are also recorded automatically in a class mode. the teacher can set the difficulty level to low, medium, or high. match. it is a game in which students match the word and its meaning in a limited time. the faster they finish, the higher the chance they can be the matching champion. gravity. it gives a challenging experience to the students since they have to save the earth from the falling asteroids with words in it. students need to type the correct answer to the word or question to make the asteroid disappear. live. this feature is perfect for collaborative activity. students are divided into groups and compete to win journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 5 first place in answering all of the questions. the site provides two choices for a free account, teacher and student accounts. the teacher account enables the user to create classes and manage lessons which are not available in students' accounts. both teachers and students can search various study sets from different subjects by writing the topic in the search column or create their own study sets and share the link to the others. despite the many features it provides, teachers can modify the flashcards and activity following their students’ requirements. barr (2016) considers fillthe gap activity as more effective in improving students’ vocabulary acquisition. solhi (2019) suggests that linking vocabularies with humorous pictures are more effective in improving vocabulary acquisition than words or description. sanosi (2018), on the other hand, concurs that all features in quizlet are applicable and effective in a language learning activity in the class. considering the effectivity of each feature as mentioned by researchers above, this research lets the students choose the mode or feature they like to use to improve their skill. autonomous learning one of the most used definition of autonomous learning comes from holec (1982) as cited in thanasoulas (2000) which emphasizes the notion of students’ ability to choose and sets aims, purpose, and goals of learning, select the means of learning which includes the materials, methods, tasks and the criteria of evaluation to reach their goals. instead of mentioning the autonomous learning activities, benson (1997) as cited in palfreyman and smith (2003) takes the definition further by distinguishing three perspectives regarding autonomous learning, i.e., the technical perspective which relates to the learners’ skills and strategies, psychological perspective which relates to the learners’ attitudes and cognitive abilities and political perspective related to the empowerment of learners to control their learning. both definitions relate to the importance for the learners to acquire the skills to be autonomous learners, such as the ability to plan, design, and carry out a learning process on their own. although learner autonomy emphasizes the importance of students’ independence in designing journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 6 their study, it does not mean that the teachers’ roles are absent. teachers should be facilitators to help students becoming autonomous learners (thanasoulas, 2000). moreover, not all students can acquire the skills required to be an autonomous learner. the fact that teachers need to learn the techniques to help students who are unable to acquire autonomous learning skills still becomes a concern (ustunlouglu, 2009). bretts and kercher (1999) propose a model of class activity to address the issue, which can be applied by teachers to encourage students’ skills to be autonomous learners. they proposed five components included in their autonomous learning model. the first is orientation, which equips the students with knowledge regarding the meaning, support system, and basic information on the importance of intelligence and autonomous learning for their future. the second is the development stage, in which the students receive an introduction to tools and skills on how to manage their independent learning. the third is enrichment in which the students gain knowledge by applying it through real-world experiences. the fourth is a seminar by the students to demonstrate the knowledge they have learned from alm. the last is an in-depth study, the most difficult of all, in which the students synthesize everything they have learned and developed new knowledge on their own. the model designed was for a multiyear program in which all components are applicable for students to be life-long learners who are independent and selfdirected (betts, 1996). even though the model was initially for gifted students, it is proven to be effective for improving students’ language skills in iran, as shown in bazleh and yarahmadzehi’s research (2012). this research attempts to apply some of the components’ basic activities in the form of a lesson plan to improve students’ speaking skills. due to the limited time, the research could only apply orientation, individual development, and enrichment components of the model. speaking skill speaking does not only means delivering meanings orally. it encompasses several aspects, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and accuracy (brown, 2001). someone must be able to produce sounds in words clearly and correctly, speak without pausing and thinking, possessing various journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 7 words to express their meaning, and using proper grammatical rules to convey their messages in spoken language to fulfill those aspects. mazouzi (2013) further explains that the speakers must be able to speak understandably both contextually (idea) and orally (pronunciation, stress, and intonation) so that the listeners understand what the speakers say. in brief, nunan (1995) refers to speaking as the ability to say words orally, to communicate as by talking, to make a request, and to make a speech. to improve students’ speaking skills, teachers need to create a lesson plan to improve students’ pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and accuracy, as mentioned by brown (2001). four elements need consideration when creating a lesson plan, according to leong and ahmadi (2017). the first one is performance condition, which includes the length, quality, and teacher’s support during a class activity. second is effective factors that encourage students to be more confident and not afraid to make mistakes. the third is improving students’ comprehension through listening practices with familiar topics within students’ surrounding so they are be able to understand information, request, or question addressed to them and communicated more effectively. the fourth is feedback in which students know if they have made a mistake and how to improve their speaking skills. in an autonomous language learning model, the teacher acted as the facilitator, concept creator, actor, or evaluator, guiding the students to gain knowledge and experience so they can learn more independently after the end of the lessons (thanasoulas, 2000). this research aims to do such by creating, applying, and evaluating an autonomous learning-based class activity that focuses on introducing the students to learners’ autonomy and the tools they can use to achieve it. the tool used in this research is quizlet application. research methodology this research used the classroom action research (car) method to analyze the applicability of quizlet in an autonomous classroom activity. the researcher chose this method since it can generate solutions for the learning problem faced by the students. the teacher acted as the researcher, teacher, data collector investigating the teaching and learning activity to improve the students' speaking skills by integrating journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 8 mall in an autonomous learning model. the subject of the research was 30 students of stmik akakom yogyakarta taking english 3 class in the odd semester of the 2018/2019 academic year. the students were selected due to their familiarity with technology since they were it students, and the researcher taught this class so she could follow up with the progress of the class periodically. the data resources were the students and the teacher herself collected by observing the implementation of the teaching activities and a questionnaire at the end of the class. hence, there were two types of data, qualitative data from the observation and quantitative data from the questionnaire. the qualitative data from the observation was analyzed using the content-based analysis to create a conclusion based on the reflection and evaluation of the action. whereas the data from the questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive qualitative methods to show the trends of the students’ responses to quizlet. the questionnaire data were divided into three main categories: quizlet ease of access, english skill, and quizlet, and quizlet for language learning and displayed in a bar chart displaying the trends of students’ answers based on the likert scale. the data went through three processes of validity, namely democratic validity, process validity, and dialogic validity, as proposed by anderson and herr (1999). by making sure that all of the parties involved in the research are active in giving feedback for the effectiveness of the action research gains democratic validity. when the researcher solved the research problem after conducting the action research, then it will gain the validity process. when other practitioners or researchers in the same field discuss the results of the action research, it will gain dialogic validity. the researcher discussed with the fellow english lecturers at the campus, siska lidya revianty, s.pd., m.hum, and andhina ika s.pd., m.pd. triangulation avoids subjectivity. it consists of time, space, investigator, and theoretical triangulation, as proposed by burns (1999, p. 164). there are four stages of action research, namely, reconnaissance, planning, action, and reflection (kemmis & mc taggart, 1999). this research chose the component of improving students' speaking skills as its thematic concern (reconnaissance) by observing the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 9 students' skills in the class. the planning was to create a learning activity that enables the students to learn to speak independently by integrating mall in the lesson. the action consisted of two cycles in which the researcher reflects and reformulate the finding through the process of reflection, where the researcher observed all actions and formulated the solutions. the researcher conducted two cycles of activities. the first cycle was on tuesday, 7 may 2019, and the second cycle was on 21 may 2019. findings and discussion depending on the model, action research can generate quantitative data and qualitative data. this research’s findings consist of two parts: qualitative data from the action research cycle and quantitative data from the questionnaire on students’ feedback for quizlet. below is the full explanation. the steps of action research there were two cycles conducted by the researcher to improve students' speaking skills through the integration of mall in an autonomous class setting. the two cycles used the same lesson plan, but with different materials, the first dealt with the expressions of asking and giving suggestions only, and the second one focused on the contexts. before the action research, a reconnaissance or identification of the problem was first. reconnaissance. the observation conducted before the action results in several issues to address in the english 3 class of stmik akakom yogyakarta. they were the students' lack of participation in the class and modulebased teaching method. the teacher gave a lecture, and the students listened and did exercises. as a result, passive teaching and learning process, and the low level of speaking skills due to the insufficient time to practice their speaking and lacking vocabularies happened. among those problems, one problem became the most significant that was the lack of students’ involvement in the teaching and learning process. the planning and action. a lesson plan contained the topic of asking and giving suggestions to solve the problem, as mentioned in the previous stage. the application used as quizlet due to its complete features, which enable students of different types of learning to choose which way to learn the language or vocabularies. there are flashcards, learn, write, spell, test features for studying, and there are match, gravity, and live for journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 10 studying while playing a game. the action was following the lesson plan previously made, which went, as shown in appendix a. within the lesson plan, the stages of autonomous learning have the discussions. the reflection for cycle 1 the first cycle of the action was purely autonomous, in which the teacher gave the students a piece of paper highlighting on what they need to do in the class. previously, the teacher had introduced the students on the nature of autonomous learning and a brief introduction to the application used in the class activity. the teacher merely observed the classroom, and students were free to do all of the tasks whenever they want. the observation showed that the students were indeed busy with their handphones, but only a few students were accessing the quizlet materials. the statistics at the application show that only 23 students were accessing the study set, and one student put the set in his folder. out of the 23 students, nine students managed to finish the match champion quiz while the rest of them did not finish the quizzes. the other features, such as gravity, learn, write, and the students did not use spelling. the top 9 scores were visible through the app statistics. when asked about the feedback, some of them replied that the task of writing was the most difficult since it should be very precise; otherwise, it was false. the lack of participation was because some of them did not log in to the site, so the system did not record their names. during the practice section, some of the students managed to use some common asking and giving suggestions expressions from the study set. in conclusion, the first cycle was a failure in introducing autonomous learning to the students using mall due to the lack of guidance from the teacher. although it is autonomous, it does not mean that the teacher does not have any role in the learning process at all (thanasoulas, 2000). teachers should act as the “facilitator” in an autonomous class, in which they promote and ensure that the students get the specific skills for their sustainable learning in the future (benson, 2006). hence, the next cycle should involve the teacher as the guide for the students for each activity. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 11 the reflection for cycle 2 the second cycle was in a more organized manner in which the teacher guided the students in doing the task step by step and overview their progress one by one. the teachers gave the same lesson plan to the class, but this time with different study sets, observed and guided all activities. the teacher also created a class via quizlet in which the students joined, and could observe their progress through the statistics on the study set. the progress of their activity in opening the quizlet link was displayed in front of the class so the students could see who was actively involved in the quiz and who were not. the tool in quizlet allows the creator to observe the students accessing the materials and even create a class. the difference here is that the study time was limited, and after that, there was a game using quizlet live, which lighten up the atmosphere. the statistics on the app showed that all 30 students accessed the study sets. it could be observed through the “create the class” option on the home page of the app. creating a class enables the teacher to observe the students’ progress and manage the class easier. four students put the study set in their folder, which means that they would open the set again next time. based on the score statistics, the most favorite feature was still the match champions, followed by writing with four students who managed to finish the quiz. two students finished the learning feature, and one student finished the spelling quiz. since the limited time for accessing the features, some students did not manage to finish the quizzes. hence, the statistics did not record their names. as for the quizlet live, all students participated in it, as seen from the game profile. in this cycle, all students participated and collaborated in a group and do the live game. from the second cycle, the students still require guidance in using the application. once they are familiar with it, they enthusiastically use the app tools and participate in the group quiz. during the speaking session, they showed more consistency in using english compared to the previous one. familiarity becomes the key to this autonomous learning method by integrating mall in a speaking class. it supports koole’s (2009) idea that “familiarity” with the tools is important. thus, the teacher needs to introduce the tools in the early stages, coined as the individual journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 12 development stage by betts and kercher (1999). in this stage, students learn how to use the specific tools to reach their learning objective, which becomes an essential stage to be an autonomous student. students’ feedback after the second cycle, a questionnaire on the effectivity of quizlet for their learning and their plan on the app was distributed through google form via whatsapp to the class. the questions had three main topics. the first was on the ease of access for the app, on the language skill of the students before and after using the app and their feedback and plan on the app. a total of 29 students participated in the questionnaire. when asked about the ease of access of quizlet, ten students stated that it was average, whereas eight students answered as very easy to access. as for the usage, most of the students answered relatively easy to use the app, eight students answer average, and only one student answered difficultly. the data is in the bar chart below. figure 1. quizlet’s ease of access regarding their english skills, 16 students answered that the effectiveness of the tools at quizlet was good, 11 students answered average, and no student answered negatively. the performance in improving their english was c positive with two students answered very good. thirteen students answered good, and 13 students answered average, and only one student answered negatively. the improvement of the skill before and after using quizlet is apparent 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 the materials for the study set the ease of use for quizlet the ease of access for quizlet quizlet's ease of access very easy relatively easy average relatively difficult not difficult journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 13 on the decreasing number of low-level students from 9 students before the application into only three students after the application. the data shows that the effectiveness of quizlet in improving the students’ skills is deemed positively by the students. it validates the action research on the process validity that relies on the “effectivity of the tools to solve the research problem” (anderson & herr, 1999). it is students' activeness and performance in learning the english language. this positive attitude helps them to use the app more often outside the class, which supports a more sustainable and autonomous learning method. figure 2. english skill and quizlet the third set of questions was about quizlet as a tool for language learning. the set of questions seeks to know students’ follow up after the autonomous activity conducted. most of the answers to the statement show a positive attitude for the usage of quizlet in their study plan. sixteen students agree that they will browse for more study sets at quizlet, while 18 students agree that they will make their own study sets on quizlet. it shows a willingness of the students to set the goal of learning, create the materials, and evaluate them by themselves. one of the seven main attributes of autonomous learners is “having insights into their learning styles and strategies” 0 5 10 15 20 english skill before using the app english skill after using the app english skill goal quizlet's peformance in improving english the effectivity of the tools at quizlet english skill and quizlet very good good average low very low journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 14 (thanasoulas, 2000). the rest of the data are in the bar chart below. figure 3. quizlet for language learning conclusion the observation, reflection, and the questionnaire show that positive results come from integrating mall into an autonomous speaking class activity. the students involved more in the process of learning and autonomously practiced learning in which they need to set their goals, means, and the whole process of learning. their willingness to learn the sets again make another study set of their own. it also browses for some more sets to reflect their readiness to be an autonomous learner despite still in the basic language matter. despite all of the positive results, there are some issues to be addressed. the first is the requirement for the teacher to guide the students in the process of introducing the autonomous language learning to the students through the usage of a mobile application. the teacher needs to observe the students' progress as well, especially in the initial stage for the students to be able to learn a language more effectively. follow-up research needs to be conducted with a bigger sample and more applications to use in the class. 0 5 10 15 20 25 quizlet is an effective application for… the lessons at quizlet are easy to… quizlet is an interesting app for language… i have used all of the tools in quizlet i will make my own study set at quizlet i will learn the study set again at home quizlet helps me learning english faster… i will recommend quizlet to my friends i will browse for more study sets at quizlet quizlet for language learning very agree agree average disagree very disagree journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 15 references anderson, g. l., & herr, k. (1999). the new paradigm wars: is there room for rigorous practitioner knowledge in schools and universities? educational researcher, 12-21. anonymous. (2017, february 25). wearesocial.com. retrieved from we are social: www.wearesocial.com azman, m. n., shuraimi, f. m., & yunus, m. m. (2018). enhancing english language learning and teaching via qgram (telegram and quizlet) innovation. international journal of academic research in progressive education and development, 436 446. barr, b. (2016). checking the effectiveness of quizlet as a tool for vocabulary learning. the center for english as a lingua franca journal, 2.1, 36-48. bazleh, e., & yarahmadzehi, n. (2012). the effects of applying betts’ autonomous learner model on iranian students. studies in selfaccess learning journal, 3(3), 310321. benson, p. (2006). autonomy in language teaching and learning. united kingdom: cambridge university press. betts, g. (2005, january 1). the journey of lifelong learning. retrieved from http://mrshueyswiki.pbworks.com/f /journey+of+lifelong+learning.pdf betts, g. t., & kercher, j. k. (1999). autonomous learner model: optimizing ability. alps publishing. dizon, g. (2016). quizlet in the efl classroom: enhancing academic vocabulary acquisition of japanese university students. teaching english with technology, 16(2), 40 56. education first. (2019, may 31). english proficiency index. retrieved from ef: www.ef.com/ca/epi/regions/asia/in donesia/ fazeena, ekanayaka, & hewagamage. (2015). a theoretical approach to initiate mobile assisted language learning among school leavers and university students of sri lanka. australian conference on information systems, (pp. 1-9). adelaide. holec, h. (1982). autonomy and foreign language learning. strasbourg: janus book pub/ alemany pr. karpati, a. (2011). digital literacy in education. moscow: unesco institute. kemmis, s., & taggart, r. m. (1999). the action research planner. victoria: deakin university. kemp, s. (2019, january 31). digital 2019: indonesia. retrieved from datareportal: https://datareportal.com/reports/di gital-2019-indonesia koole, m. (2009). a model for framing mobile learning. in m. ally, mobile learning: transforming the delivery of education & training (pp. 25-47). athabasca: au press. korlu, h., & mede, e. (2018). autonomy in vocabulary learning of turkish efl learners. universitat politecnica de valencia. leong, l.-m., & ahmadi, s. m. (2017). an analysis of factors influencing learners' english speaking skills. international journal of research in english, 34 41. miangah, t. m., & nezarat, a. (2012). mobile assisted language learning. international journal of distributed and parallel systems (ijdps), 309 319. http://mrshueyswiki.pbworks.com/f/journey+of+lifelong+learning.pdf http://mrshueyswiki.pbworks.com/f/journey+of+lifelong+learning.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 16 nunan, d. (1995). language teaching methodology: a textbook for teachers. new york: phoenix ltd. palfreyman, d. (2003). introduction: culture and learner autonomy. in d. palfreyman & r. c. smiths (eds), learner autonomy across cultures, language education perspectives (pp. 1-23). new york: palgrave macmillian. sanosi, a. b. (2018, august 4). the effect of quizlet on vocabulary acquisition. asian journal of education and e-learning, 06(4), 71 77. retrieved december 1, 2018, from www.ajouronline.com solhi, m. (2019). the effect of humor integrated pictures using quizlet on vocabulary learning of efl learners. journal of curriculum and teaching, 8(2), 24-31. supardi. (2016). using quizlet for facilitating the learner autonomy in mastering legal english vocabulary. the 3rd international language and language teaching conference (lltc 2016) (pp. 404-413). yogyakarta: english language education sanata dharma. thanasoulas, d. (2000). what is learner's autonomy, and how it can be fostered? the internet tesl journal. traxler, j. (2007, 2 8). defining, discussing, and evaluating mobile learning: the moving finger writes and having writ... international review of research and open and distance learning. ustunlouglu, e. (200). autonomy in language learning: do students take responsibility for their learning? journal of theory and practice in education, 5(2), 148-169 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 17 appendix lesson plan: asking and giving suggestions topic asking and giving suggestions: a speaking exercise in an autonomous class aims * students understand the variations of asking and giving suggestion expressions contextually * students can pronounce the expressions properly * students can use the expressions in a discussion setting age group teenagers and young adults level beginner time +/120 minutes (60 minutes x 2 meetings) materials 1. asking and giving suggestions expression sheet/link 2. a quiz about asking and giving suggestions at quizlet 3. activity plan/topics for discussion in the class introduction this activity aims to introduce autonomous learning to the students with the help of quizlet application. it is important to introduce an autonomous learning model to the students before beginning to use this lesson plan. in his article, getts (n.d) mentioned that teachers and students are supposed to be familiar with the 5 elements of autonomous learning methods. for the class to be effective, the teachers must provide the students with links and files to download regarding the focus of the study. it will be better if the teacher provides some materials to be downloaded from their design since it can be adjusted with the class condition. procedure a. introduce the students with the topic of discussions. give a simple asking and giving for suggestions expressions for a startup. write down some of the basic expressions on the whiteboard if required. (10 – 15 minutes) this is the introduction to the topic phase. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 18 b. make sure that each student has a handphone with a working internet connection. ask them to explore the app used in this course. this is a warming up session, the students are introduced to the topic. teachers can also start the phase of orientation in this stage. motivate and explain the children on how to learn on their own. c. tell learners they are going to do autonomous learning on the topic of asking and giving suggestions. provide them with the handout or links containing the expressions used in asking and giving suggestions. (15 minutes) this is the individual development stage of the autonomous learning model in which the students are introduced to the tools of technology and facilities they can use to learn the topic by themselves. d. introduce them to quizlet. ask them to create an account. let them explore the app for a while. show them the link to the quiz you have made concerning asking and giving suggestions expressions and its contexts. (25 minutes) it is the individual development stage as well, in which technology is used, and the students can proactively use the features in the app to learn more things by themselves later. e. ask the students if they have understood the materials. use quizlet live to create a game. ask the students to enter the code of the game. the tool will group them automatically. start the game; make sure that they use english during the activity. (10 minutes) it is the in-depth study stage in which the students can work in groups to solve problems f. after the game, choose one leader to lead the discussion. give them the problems to be discussed. start the discussion. ask the leader to put a thick on the list of expressions used in the discussion (the one that you have been given at the beginning of the class). (30 minutes) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 19 it also belongs to an in-depth study stage in which the students can work in groups to solve problems in the real-life setting. however, it is considered as a lower level of in-depth study stage since the things assessed in this stage is merely the practical use of some expressions. the students are welcomed to discuss various kinds of matter and explore their knowledge further in this discussion. g. assess the class and wrap up. make sure that everybody is using the expressions properly contextually and fluently. (15 minutes) volume 3, no. 2, 2018 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 widia kusuma wardani received her bachelor degree at english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (umy). widia is an independent novice researcher with research interests in teaching and learning speaking skills and the use of technology in language learning. she is a part time english teacher and also a language consultant. the characteristics of anxious students in speaking classroom widia kusuma wardani universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta widiawardani17@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3230 abstract this research investigates the characteristics (observable and non-observable) of anxious students in speaking classroom. this study was conducted in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. two instruments were used in this study, namely structured observation and standardized open-ended interview. two classes were observed. from the observation, four students were chosen to become the participants. this study found two symptoms which were divided into observable symptoms and non-observable symptoms. the observable symptoms were trembling, remaining silent, nervously touching object, stuttering or stammering, using filler, and getting sweaty. the non-observable symptoms were getting confused, getting cold, feeling nervous, and heart beating quickly. keywords: characteristics of anxious students, anxiety, speaking anxiety =========================================================================== mailto:widiawardani17@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3230 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 61 introduction in learning a language such as english, there are four skills studied by the students such as listening, reading, writing, and speaking. those four skills are divided into two types, namely receptive skill and productive skill. based on brown (2000), listening and reading are categorized in receptive skills, and writing and speaking are categorized in productive skills. speaking becomes an essential thing because one of the purposes of learning a language is to be able to use the language. one usage of the language is for oral communication. it is also a tool for communication with other people. in teaching and learning process, the english teachers often speak english in order to make the students accustomed to using english. based on dearden (2014), english as a medium of instruction has an important role in teaching and learning process, because it can help the students to get used to hearing the english words, and it can also improve the students’ english ability especially speaking skill. in addition, english as a medium of instruction can motivate the students to learn the language (ibrahim, 2001). however, in speaking using english, the students also face some problems. one of the problems faced by the students is anxiety. anxiety is a popular psychology phenomenon which is related to fear, selfesteem, and worry (wu, 2010; yahya, 2013; & zheng, 2008). according to marwan (2008), anxiety can be defined as “threats to self-efficacy and appraisals of situations as threatening or an uneasy feeling due to something threatening” (p. 120). when students feel anxious about speaking, it can be indicated that they undergo speaking anxiety. according to mak (2010), speaking anxiety will only take place when speaking is concerned. it can happen in the subject concerning speaking english. in addition, speaking anxiety can give a negative effect to the students (liu, 2006; mak, 2011). it can hinder the students to try to speak english, and in the end, it affects the students’ speaking ability. since speaking anxiety is one of the serious problems faced by the students, and it can affect negatively, speaking anxiety becomes an urgent thing to be studied. it is important to conduct research on speaking anxiety in order to find out the strategy to solve or reduce speaking anxiety. based on the limited observation done at english language education department of a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia, speaking anxiety exists in english foreign language (efl) classroom. during the teaching and learning journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 62 process, the students also have to try to speak in english in the classroom in order to be able to interact with both the teachers and the other students. in some occasions, the teachers ask the students to do group discussion, presentation or role-play. in doing group discussion, the students are asked to make a group of five, and the teacher gives some cases to the students. in the group, the students discuss the case with the group member using english. on another occasion, the teacher asks the students to do a presentation in front of the classroom. it can be done individually, in pair, or in a group. the teacher gives time for the students to prepare the material before doing the presentation. in addition, role play is also used in speaking classroom. the students are usually divided into some group or they can do the role play in pair. before performing role-play, the students have time to make script and practice acting out. those speaking activities are done so that the students can practice speaking english. on the other hand, those speaking activities can cause anxiety among students. it happens because the students become the focus of attention. when the students do group discussion, presentation, or role-play, they are feared since they speak english in front of their classmates and lecturer (liu, 2007). in addition, the students feel anxious, because they are afraid of making mistakes. liu states that fear of making mistakes is one of the causes of speaking anxiety. another cause of speaking anxiety is lack of practice. the students are anxious in speaking since they do not have plenty time to practice speaking english in their daily life, and they are not accustomed to speaking english in front of people (anandari, 2015; liu 2007). finally, this study was conducted in order to find out the characteristics of anxious students in speaking class. the characteristics or symptoms which were going to investigate were both observable and non-observable symptoms. furthermore, this study is beneficial for english teachers. by reading this study, the teachers are able to identify which students undergo speaking anxiety, and from the results, they are also able to apply strategy in order to solve or reduce the students’ speaking anxiety. this study also enriches the literature on language anxiety. this study was conducted in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia in its english language education department. to collect the data, observation and interview were done. the observation was done at speaking subject, and four students became the participants in journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 63 this study. this study investigates the answer to the question: what are the characteristics of anxious students in speaking classroom. literature review one of the famous phenomena which exist in foreign language classroom is anxiety. according to wu (2010) and zheng (2008), anxiety becomes a major problem in education field including in foreign language classroom and it needs to be overcome. based on marwan (2008), anxiety is defined as "threats to self-efficacy and appraisals of situations as threatening or an uneasy feeling due to something threatening” (p. 120). additionally, yahya (2013) mentions that anxiety is related to self-esteem, fear, and worry. gregersen (2005) also states that students who are anxious in foreign language learning might not enjoy their learning. thus, it can be concluded that anxiety is one of the problems exists in foreign language classroom which happens because of something threatening, and it needs to be solved. anxiety must be overcome because it becomes an obstacle for the students, and it affects negatively to the students’ ability. aghani and amanzadeh (2017) find that the correlation between students’ anxiety and communication performance is strongly negative. additionally, there is a negative correlation between language anxiety and achievement; if the anxiety increases, the achievement decreases (awan, azher, anwar, & naz, 2010). moreover, lian and budin (2010) also state that students who undergo high anxiety might think that second language learning is threatening, and they show poor performance as their response. thus, it proves that anxiety affects negatively to students’ performance. the students can suffer anxiety in some occasions. one of the situations which can be a source of anxiety is when the students have to speak english. according to tsiplakides and keramedina (2009), many students are highly anxious to participate in speaking activities. in addition, ahmed (2016) states that students feel anxious about speaking because they are afraid of being laughed by their classmates and they also worry if they fail their english class. if the students feel anxious in speaking english, it indicates that they undergo speaking anxiety. based on mak (2011), speaking anxiety can take place in a subject which focuses on speaking. in addition, ahmed (2016) mentions that speaking anxiety is an obstacle for most learners, and it affects their speaking ability negatively. therefore, it can be said that speaking anxiety only happens when speaking is concerned, and it becomes a serious journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 64 problem for learners because of its negative effect. liu (20016) finds that speaking anxiety affects negatively to student’s speaking performance. the students who undergo speaking anxiety will get more difficulties in improving their speaking skill. in addition, speaking anxiety affects the students’ attitude towards english language. according to yahya (2013), anxiety affects students’ behavior and their learning achievement; students also choose to not participate in speaking since they think that they are not good at speaking. the students who are anxious in speaking might tend to keep silent when they get a chance to speak english even when they like english. finally, speaking anxiety needs to be solved. when students feel anxious about speaking, they actually show some symptoms. the characteristics of anxious students are divided into two. the first is observable symptoms and the second is nonobservable symptoms. observable symptoms mean that the symptoms can be seen by other people, but non-observable symptoms are the symptoms which are only felt by the anxious students. based on suleimenova (2013), anxious students show observable symptoms such as “squirming, playing with hair or clothing, nervously touching objects, stuttering or stammering” (pp. 1861-1862). in addition, anxious students also experienced getting sweaty, vomiting, trembling, and perspiring (ansari, 2015; boyce, alber-morgan, & riley, 2007). hence, if the students show those symptoms when they speak english, it indicates that they undergo speaking anxiety. moreover, when students feel anxious, they do not only show observable symptoms, but they also feel non-observable symptoms. according to suleimenova (2013), “fidgeting, headache, experiencing tight muscle, and feeling unexplained pain or tension in any part of the body” are experienced by the anxious students (p. 1861 – 1862). ansari (2015) also states that “nervous, worried, fearful, and heartbeats quickly” (p. 39) is also felt by anxious students. moreover, weak knees and dry mouth also become anxiety symptoms (boyce, alber-morgan, & riley, 2007). methodology qualitative research method was adopted in this study. according to creswell (2012), qualitative research allows the researcher to explore the problem by listening to the participants. creswell also adds that the nature of qualitative study is the word. hence, by applying qualitative research method, the data are detailed and rich. the method under qualitative used in journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 65 this study was a case study. a case study was appropriate to be used since the problem investigated in this study was a specific problem. according to merriam (1998), a case study is an investigation about “particular situation, event, program, or phenomenon” (p. 29). the kind of case study applied was an interpretive case study. based on merriam (1998), interpretive case study helps the researcher to get thick and rich data. the instruments used in this study were observation and interview. a structured observation was done in order to get non-verbal data, and it was also used to choose the participants. according to cohen, manion, and marrison (2011), in conducting structured observation, observation checklist must be prepared so that the observation will be organized. observation checklist contained the observable symptoms of speaking anxiety was prepared before conducting the observation. the researcher observed observable symptoms because those symptoms could be seen by other people. after preparing the observation checklist, the researcher asked permission to the lecturer who taught listening and speaking for academic purposes. the researcher chose this subject because this subject focused on speaking and had more speaking activities compared to the other subjects. the students participating in this study were freshmen. two classes were observed. during the observations, the researcher was a complete observer meaning that the researcher only observes and is not a part of the group being observed (cohen, manion, & marrison, 2011). the researcher observed, recorded, and did note-taking. the observations were done twice for each classroom. the first observation was conducted when the students did a group discussion, and the second observation was done when the students did a presentation. after conducting the observations, the researcher analyzed the data by counting the frequencies. according to cohen (2011), “for structured observations, researchers can count frequencies, and with references to an individual, group, classes, events, activities, behaviors and so on” (p. 464). after counting the frequencies, the students showing the observable symptoms more frequently than the other students became the participants in this research. the second instrument used in this study was interview. based on cohen, manion, and marisson (2011), an interview is a verbal or non-verbal interaction between individuals, and it permits to get greater depth information than other methods. in addition, the type of interview used was a journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 66 standardized open-ended interview. according to cohen, manion, and marisson (2011), the characteristics of a standardized open-ended interview is the participants are asked the same basic questions using the same order. the interview was used to confirm the symptoms shown by the participants during the observations and to find out the non-observable symptoms. the researcher chose the participants by using the result of observations. the students showing the observable symptoms in the observations more often than the other students became the participants in this research. the participants were two female and two male students. additionally, the researcher decided to do a phone interview, because one participant was in another city. in addition, the researcher got difficulty to meet the other three participants because they had assignments to do. after doing a phone interview, the researcher did some steps to analyze the data. the first step was transcribing the data where the researcher transformed the spoken data into written. the second step was member checking which was done to ensure that the data was the same as what the participant said during the interview. the third step was coding done in four ways which were open coding, analytical coding, axial coding, and selective coding. findings the observations were done in two classes. the students were observed when they did group discussion and presentation in front of the class. there were seventeen observable symptoms presented in the table below. the observable symptoms were used to identify which students felt anxious in speaking class. the researcher only used observable symptoms, because those symptoms can be seen by other people. after doing the observations, the data was analyzed. the observation analysis presented below is the result of observations done in two classrooms. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 67 table 1. the observations analysis no. visible symptoms frequency percentage 1. trembling 13 8% 2. remaining silent 25 15% 3. sitting in the back row 0 0% 4. avoiding eye contact 40 24% 5. squirming 1 1% 6. playing with hair 5 3% 7. playing with clothing 20 12% 8. nervously touching object 28 17% 9. stuttering or stammering 7 4% 10. getting sweaty 1 1% 11. vomiting 0 0% 12. blushing 0 0% 13. rubbing the palms 14 8% 14. staggering voice 3 2% 15. reading from the script while giving a presentation 7 4% 16. too fast speed of speech 1 1% 17. too slow speed of speech 3 2% total 168 100% after doing the observations, the researcher chose four students to become the participants in this study. the participants were chosen because they showed observable symptoms more frequently than the other students. the result of the observations and the interview were triangulated. the findings were divided into observable symptoms and nonobservable symptoms. based on the observation result, some students were trembling when they spoke english. this symptom appeared thirteen times. it was seen when the students did a presentation in front of the classroom. they did the presentation using posters. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 68 while they were presenting, the poster was shaking too because they trembled. two participants said that they trembled when they did the presentation in front of the classroom. when the researcher asked why the first participant trembled, the participant answered, “because i am nervous if i speak in front of the classroom” (interview excerpt). while the third participant said, “because i memorize what i am going to say, so i am afraid if i forget what i have to tell” (interview excerpt). the second observable symptom shown by the students is remaining silent. it revealed 25 times. during the group discussion, some students only kept silent when the other students tried to tell their opinions. in one group which consisted of four up to five students, there was a student who kept silent while the other students in the same group were trying to tell their opinions. one of the participants kept silent during the group discussion and the presentation. then the researcher asked why she remained silent in those two speaking activities. the first participant stated, “i am shy to speak because i have not known my friends well. i have prepared what i am going to say, but i am shy to speak in front of the classroom. i feel nervous, and i have a mixed feeling because they focus on me” (interview excerpt). nervously touching object symptom appeared 28 times during the observations. the students touched their book or their pen when they did a group discussion. one of the participants seemed nervously touching an object when he did a presentation in front of the classroom. he stated that he touched object nervously because he nervous when he did a presentation. on the other hand, participant two explained that she touched object such as pen in order to reduce her anxiety in speaking english especially when she did a presentation in front of the classroom. the next observable symptom is stuttering or stammering. it revealed seven times during the first and the second observation. one of the students stuttered in the presentation. he said, “homeschooling can help er er he or she, boy or girl, girl er because, because, er we can, we can’. another student said, “full-day school can er can, avoid, what, avoid, avoid”. one of the participants stuttered when she spoke english especially when she did the presentation. the researcher asked her why she stuttered in the presentation, and she answered, “because i have not been accustomed to do public speaking, and i am nervous. i also did not prepare well” (interview excerpt). journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 69 another characteristic which was appeared during the observation is getting sweaty. it revealed 1%. it only happened in the second observation when the students did the presentation in front of the classroom. one participant in this research also said that he got sweaty when he spoke english in front of the class. using filler also became the characteristics of anxious students, though it was not listed in the observation checklist. during the observations, the researcher also took note to write something important. based on the researcher’s note-taking, some filler which was used by the students were “er” or “well”. in the second observation, one student mumbled, “it’s like er it’s famous er and then er why we er”. two out of four participants mentioned that they used filler when they spoke english. the first participant and the second participant said that there was much filler when they spoke english. besides the observable symptoms, the participants in this study also mentioned some symptoms which finally categorized into non-observable symptoms. there are four non-observable symptoms mentioned by the participants. the first is getting confused. participant four said that she was confused about what she has to say when she tried to speak english. the second nonobservable symptom is getting cold. the second participant said that she would tremble and get cold when she was going to present something using english. in addition, three participants said that they felt nervous in speaking english. participant three mentioned that he still felt nervous, though he prepared what he would say. the last non-observable symptom which was not listed in the observable checklist but it was mentioned by the participants is heart beating quickly. participant one, participant two, and participant four mentioned that their heart pounded quickly when they spoke english. discussions the study about the characteristics of anxious students is important to be researched because speaking anxiety is a big problem for the students who learn english. in addition, speaking anxiety needs to be overcome because speaking is a communication tool. the research was conducted in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia where english is still a foreign language. moreover, the students who were observed were english department students. thus, this study gives information that speaking anxiety really exists even in english department. the instruments used by the researcher were observation and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 70 interview. by conducting observations, the researcher got live data. the researcher did the observations twice. the first observation was done when the students did group discussion, and the second observation was conducted when the students did the presentation in front of the classroom. based on the observation, the students were more anxious when they did the presentation in front of the classroom. it happened because the atmosphere in doing group discussion and presentation was different. when the students did a group discussion, they looked relaxed. a group consisted of five people. while sharing their opinions, sometimes they laughed with their friends, and they did not seem that they were anxious. based on the researcher’s opinion, the students did not seem anxious because they could ask their friends directly and easily when they got difficulty. on the other hand, when the students did a presentation in front of the class, they seem anxious though they did the presentation in pair. some of the students trembled when they did a presentation in front of the classroom. moreover, the students also showed other symptoms such as remaining silent and getting sweaty. those symptoms are in line with ansari (2015) who states that anxious students experience getting sweaty, trembling, remaining silent, and perspiring. additionally, some students also stuttered or stammered and touch object nervously. according to suleimenova (2013), the characteristics shown by anxious students are “squirming, playing with hair or clothing, nervously touching objects, stuttering or stammering” (pp. 1861-1862). besides observable symptoms, the researcher also found two non-observable symptoms. those were getting confused and getting cold. according to khan (2015), when a learner is supposed to speak english, s/he will be confused, nervous, and anxious. moreover, anandari explains that discomfort is the condition when the students “are uncomfortable with their bodies”. based on the data collection, those symptoms appeared more in the presentation than in group discussion. it can be said that the students were more anxious when they did public speaking such as presentation in front of the classroom. after doing the observation, the researcher interviewed four students who showed more symptoms than the other students. from the interview, the researcher could know that the symptoms shown in the observations appeared because they were anxious. the symptoms in this research were divided into observable symptoms and nonobservable symptoms. the researcher confirmed that the observable symptoms journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 71 appeared because of anxiety or not. however, some of the observable symptoms revealing in the observations appeared not because of the students’ anxiety. for example, a participant touched object nervously when she did the presentation. she did that in order to reduce her anxiety. additionally, two participants in this research avoided eye contact with the audience when they did the presentation. they did that to solve their speaking anxiety. in conclusion, the students showed the anxiety symptoms not because they were anxious, but they showed the symptoms in order to cope with their speaking anxiety. in addition, the non-observable symptoms were also found in this research because it was mentioned by the participants. based on the result of the observations and the interview, it can be concluded that the characteristics of anxious students can be divided into two which are observable symptoms and non-observable symptoms. in addition, from the observation done in two classrooms, it can be said that most of the students undergo speaking anxiety. however, the level of their anxiety is different from one student to the others, because the symptoms shown by the students are different. it supports the previous literature because the results are related. in addition, the results of this research adds information about the characteristics of anxious students, especially in speaking class. conclusion and implication according to the results of this research, speaking anxiety really exists in the efl context. higher education students even the english department students who learn english everyday experience speaking anxiety. it happens in a speaking activity such as group discussion and presentation. however, the students feel more anxious when they do public speaking. therefore, it can be said that speaking anxiety really exists in a foreign language classroom. after comparing the results of the observations and the interview, the observable symptoms appeared more than the non-observable symptoms. it indicates that it is not difficult to know if someone undergoes speaking anxiety. however, based on the interview, the participants showed the symptoms because they undergo speaking anxiety, and it is their way to solve their speaking anxiety. thus, the observable symptoms appeared because the students were anxious and it can be their strategy to handle their anxiety. finally, this study is beneficial for english teachers because the english teachers are able to identify which student is anxious in speaking. moreover, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 72 the english teacher can find some strategies for the students to cope with speaking anxiety. the researcher also suggests the english teachers create a friendly classroom atmosphere, especially in a speaking class. references aghani, m., & amanzadeh, h. (2017). the effect of anxiety on speaking ability: an experimental study on efl learners. journal of applied linguistics and language research, 4(7), 154-164. ahmed, n. f. (2016). an exploration of speaking anxiety with kurdish university efl learners. journal of education and practice, 7(27), 99-106. retrieved from www.iiste.org ansari, m. s. (2015). speaking anxiety in esl/efl classrooms: a holistic approach and practical study. international journal of educational investigations, 2(4), 38-46. retrieved from www.ijeionline.com awan, r.-u.-n., azher, m., anwar, m. n., & naz, a. (2010). an investigation of foreign language classroom anxiety and its relationship with students' achievement. journal of college teaching & learning, 7(11), 33-40. boyce, j. s., alber-morgan, s. r., & riley, j. g. (2007). fearless public speaking: oral presentation activities for the elementary classroom. childhood education, 83, 1-11. brown, h. d. (2000). principles of language learning and teaching. new york: addison wesley longman, inc. cohen, l., manion, l., & marrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. london: routledge creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). boston: pearson dearden, j. (2014). english as a medium of instruction a growing global phenomenon. oxford: british council. ibrahim, j. (2001). the implementation of emi (english medium instruction) in indonesian universities: its opportunities, its threats, its problems, and its possible solutions. the 49th international teflin conference, 3(2), 121-138. lian, l. h., & budin, m. b. (2014). investigating the relationship between english language anxiety and the achievement of school based oral english test among malaysian form four students. international journal of learning, teaching, and educational research, 2(1), 67-79. liu, m. (2006). anxiety in efl classroom: causes and consequences. tesl reporter, 1(39), 13-32. mak, b. (2011). an exploration of speakingin-class anxiety with chinese esl learners. science direct, 202-214. doi:10.1016/j.system.2011.04.002 marwan, a. (2008). the exploration of factors triggering foreign language anxiety: learners' voice. teflin journal, 19(2), 119-126. merriam, s. b. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san fransisco: jossey-bass publishers suleimenova, z. (2013). speaking anxiety in a foreign language classroom in kazakhstan. procedia-social and behavioral sciences 93, 1860-1868. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.131 tsiplakides, i., & keramedina, a. (2009). helping students overcome foreign language speaking anxiety in the english classroom: theoritical issues and practical recommendations. international education studies, 2(4), 39-44. wu, k. (2010). the relationship between language learners' anxiety and learning strategy in the clt classroom. http://www.ijeionline.com/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 73 international education study, 3(1), 174191. yahya, m. (2013). measuring speaking anxiety among speech communication source at arab american university of jenin. european social science research journal, 1(3), 229-248. zheng, y. (2008). anxiety and second/foreign langauge learning. canadian journal.new scholar education, 1(1), 1-12. volume 4, no. 2, 2019 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/581 oktari firda hibatullah graduated from english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. currently, she is working in a singapore educational course as a fully employed english tutor. she has the interest in doing a research on english language teaching fields such as language teaching practices which integrate technology and practices related to psychology. some of her publications were investigating efl students’ writing process, pre-service teachers training, and a fun learning process. the challenges of international efl students to learn english in a non-english speaking country oktari firda hibatullah english faster, tangerang hibatullahfirda@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.4240 abstract in the recent era, a wider global community has used english for any purpose; one of the most important is academic purposes. in terms of academic purposes, learning english now becomes a must for any students all around the world, specifically efl students. focusing on the learning english issue, this research took a rare case about the efl students do a study abroad program in a non-english speaking country, especially in the context of english learning problems and strategies. under a qualitative case study, the researcher addressed two main methods to two international efl students at a private islamic university in yogyakarta, indonesia. by using reflective essays and interviews as the methods, the data concluded that most of the problems found had similarities to the efl students’ problems when they study in their home country. along with the problems, the researcher also discovered strategies done by both of the participants to resolve the problems. keywords: language learning problems and strategies; study abroad; a non-english speaking country; international efl students journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 89 introduction nowadays, english has become global and brings the impact to people around the world to be able to communicate with the language. the purpose of english has indicated it is not only limited to international purposes but also for local purposes (gunantar, 2016). therefore, the role of using english has spread into a wider global community (mckay, 2018). it could happen because the effect of english as an international language that successfully made domination of the english role shifted globally. according to the spread of the role of using english, kachru (1992) pointed out that the role of english could be used in nonenglish speaking countries for academic purposes, especially in the process of learning english. nevertheless, not all processes of learning the language are always working well. some challenges still exist along the process. especially learning english in nonenglish speaking countries, the potential challenges of the english learning process might arise bigger than in english-speaking countries. the challenges were affected by some factors such as learners’ ability, motivation, environment, practices, and previous knowledge of learning foreign languages (thompson, 2014). furthermore, linguistic differences also can be another factor that caused the problem; for instance, the difference of phonology, word order, phrases, and verbal system (tappendorf, 2014). a study conducted by akbari (2016) found that the potential challenges mostly faced by efl students. the reason was that they included the learners of english using the language only on a certain occasion and for specific purposes (kirkpatrick, 2014; kanchru, 1992). due to the limited role of using english, it leads the efl students to have bigger learning problems than other learners who use english in their daily language, such as esl students. accordingly, knowing the english learning challenges emerged in their home country, some of these students studied abroad as one of the learning strategies to cope with the problems. that way, they were called as international efl students who participated in a study abroad program (singh, 2017). then again, learning problems also exist during the process of learning english abroad, especially in a non-english speaking country. the most serious problem, as faced journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 90 by the researcher, was no exposure to practice english outside the classroom due to the inability of the local community to communicate with english. it began with facing the problem and then brought the researcher curiosity to gain more deeply about the other possible challenges faced by the other students with the context of international efl students who learn english in a non-english speaking country. additionally, due to rare investigation and analysis of previous studies about the field problems explicitly in a non-english speaking country, which is indonesia, the researcher gained more curiosity to investigate the potential challenges that the international efl students faced while learning english in indonesia. the researcher would also find out some strategies that the international efl students do to overcome those challenges to make this study more useful. literature review difficulties of efl students in learning english this study found some learning english problems faced by the efl students discovered by the previous studies and categorized as followed. problems in exposure. learning english is quite challenging for most efl students, and one of the causes is the lack of english roles in society (akbari, 2015). in other words, english roles in the outside classroom are deficient. akbari added that the possible impact of the lack of exposure in learning english outside the classroom was raising unnecessary feelings to learn english. in the following study, the unnecessary feeling of learning english had an impact on their lack of free time due to their other activities (akbari, 2016). thus, due to the bustles and no immediate need to learn english, they made them have less priority in time. besides, the lack of exposure could also cause fear in learning english. a study investigated that the cause of indonesian efl students having difficulties in learning english was feeling afraid to develop and use the language outside the classroom (patahuddin & tahir, 2017). referring to the previous studies above, the roles of english in society become the main thing to support the efl students' language learning process. furthermore, the little intention to learn english and the lack of confidence to use english in society also becomes another problem for the efl students to increase their exposure. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 91 problems in language skills. each of language skills brings different problems for the efl students. ur (2000) mentioned that the most struggle found in speaking was doing verbal communication process such as the tendency of keeping silent in classroom due to lack of motivation to express their idea, the lack of participation of the students because of the mixture of ability groups in classroom, and the inability to use of english correctly in communication due to lack of vocabulary mastery (as cited in imani, 2015, p.11). last, the problem in pronunciation as investigated deeply by a study about the effect of mother tongue in students learning pronunciation. the study found that the effect of l1 vowels created a potential risk to master the targeted language vowels, specifically when both languages have different vowels systems (uwambayinema, 2016). meanwhile, problems in writing skills, as mentioned by byrnes (1998), were that the most problems faced by the students in writing skills included psychological problems, linguistic problems, and cognitive problems. rahmatunisa (2014) investigated indonesian efl learners’ problems in writing, such as linguistic problems, which comprised structuring sentences, cognitive problems which explained about organizing paragraphs, and psychological problems, which elaborated about the bad attitudes. another common problem also faced by the efl students is their poor insight into english due to their discouragement to read (akbari, 2015). the lack of motivation can affect their comprehension while reading processes such as difficulty in learning indefinite words and pronouncing some words (medjahdi, 2015). additionally, a major problem faced by the efl students in comprehending english text was being unfamiliar vocabulary (raisha & kasim, 2017). also, a prior study found that the efl students’ dedicated time to read is inadequate, especially in outside classroom activities (qarqez & ab rashid, 2017). the major listening problems are losing concentration while listening process because of anxiety and unable to listen due to bad recording audio, the speed of speech, accent of the speaker, and inadequate vocabulary (hamouda, 2013). the cultural differences of language also being a problem for the efl students because it can affect the students' understanding while listening to the speech (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016). azmi et al., and underwood in gilakjani and sabouri (2016) also mentioned that the length and speed of journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 92 speech could affect the level of difficulty of their listening comprehension, the more the length of speech, the more difficult the efl students comprehend what they heard, likewise with speed. the problems in maximizing the language skills above could be varied, as clearly mentioned by the prior studies above. those problems belong to problems in productive skills, which included speaking and writing skills (wambayinema, 2016; rahmatunisa, 2014) and problems in receptive skills, which consisted of reading and listening (akbari, 2015; hamouda, 2013). each of the problems could also be differently faced by one to another efl students depending on their learning ability. problems in vocabulary. the main part of learning a language is mastering the vocabulary knowledge. however, for most efl students, mastering vocabulary knowledge became a common problem in learning english (al-jamal & al-jamal, 2014). another study also proved that the most challenging thing in learning english vocabulary is choosing appropriate words with the limitation of word knowledge (abrar, et al., 2018). thus, the lack of vocabulary knowledge caused the students could not express their idea or even argue with any topic by using the language (keong, ali, & hameed, 2015). then, rahmatunisa (2014) claimed that one of the factors that caused the efl students to have lack of vocabulary knowledge is the bad attitude towards learning english. problems in motivation. most of the efl students believe that learning english is only a part of finishing tasks without knowing the significances of what they have learned (akbari, 2015). it is one of the problems of demotivated students in learning english. the indication of demotivated students can be seen by their no willingness to participate in classroom activity (abrar, 2016). he also revealed three factors affect these problems are shyness, uninterested feeling to study, and fear of making mistakes. other problems were discovered by current findings that were feeling of wasting time and challenging (akbari, 2016). problems in teachers’ resources. one of the english language mastery problems faced by most efl students, especially in indonesia, is the lack of english teachers’ competence (kurniawan & radia, 2017). the notion added that the teachers' competence had important roles in managing their classes, enriching the students’ skills, and providing innovative resources. some journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 93 problems of low teachers’ ability were mentioned clearly by kurniawan and radia (2017), such as insufficient time of teachers’ availability to practice english for students and incompetent skills while delivering the learning materials or simply providing insufficient teaching methods for the students. their finding is in line with the result of keong, ali, and hameed's (2015). their investigation concluded that one of the students' difficulties in learning english in the classroom was the lack of teachers' role to use english while teaching and learning process. thus, the impact is that the students rather use the native language than english. strategies of efl students in learning english referring to some strategies found by ellis as mentioned in safranj (2013) such as formal practice strategies, functional practice strategies, resourceful-independent strategies, general study strategies, conversational strategies, avila (2015) included creative strategies. firstly, formal practice strategies, these practices included some strategies such as recognizing the similarities and the differences between languages, scrutinizing words, adopting structural knowledge, also generating and reviewing some rules. secondly, functional practice strategies, these strategies mostly conducted in the outside classrooms, such as watching foreign movies, making interaction with foreigners, and using authentic materials of learning targeted language. in line with the practice, a study conducted by sargsyan and kurghinyan (2016) also mentioned some activities to improve english skills in the outside classrooms, such as listening to songs, watching movies and clips, exploring social media and even traveling. furthermore, thirdly, resourcefulindependent strategies covered some activities related to memorizing words and sentences, for instance, listing, recording, and elaborating words and sentences, also doing exercise to develop words and sentences. fourthly, general study strategies. these strategies contained some activities intending to study hard, being well prepared and organized, having good time management, and paying no attention to interruptions. fifthly, conversational strategies, these included techniques such as asking repetition, slower speed, pronunciation alteration, and predicting what the native language speaker will say. then, lastly was creative strategies. as initiated by avila (2015), creative strategies journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 94 could assist the students’ language learning process easily by implementing various interactive activities such as games, role play, and presentation. challenges of international efl students to learn english in study abroad program there have been many studies discussed the english learning problems in english speaking country, but lack investigation about the english learning problems, especially study abroad program in a non-english speaking country need to be concerned. this study found a similar investigation conducted by nam (2018) that the biggest problem while international efl students experienced a study abroad program, particularly in a non-english speaking country, they have lack opportunities to use english for communication. strategies of international efl students to learn english in study abroad program most of the recommendations given by the previous studies including the facilities or universities teaching and learning management, including facilities that help the international efl students to adapt easily in their new environment (milian, birnbaum, cardona, & nicholson, 2015). the idea is also in line with paltridge et al. that, the international efl students need to have more social supports such as build relationships both in the university and society, enhance english proficiency, increase social and cultural communications, also to grow the view about the world (as stated in alghamdi & otte, 2016, p.18). moreover, improving the classroom teaching and learning activities such as increasing the lecturers’ role in teaching processes, and providing more effective standardized english language placement test to assess students’ language capability are other examples of the proper strategies (singh, 2014). research methodology this study focused on a descriptive case study as a qualitative approach. merriam (1998) mentioned, “a qualitative case study is an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a single instance, phenomenon, or social unit” (p.21). the type of study could be by studying a phenomenon, which has a boundary. under the qualitative case study, this study addressed multiple methods, such as document writing and interview. each journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 95 method has a different function in terms of collecting the data; first, in order to explore the international efl students’ english learning problems, this study collected the students’ document writing in the form of an essay. second, to find out the strategies done by the students, this study delivered the interview process. the interview process was also to get more information and probing some unclear information based on the students' essay writing. place and participants a private islamic university in yogyakarta was chosen as the research setting because several international students came from non-english speaking countries such as china, thailand, and taiwan. these places provided some international majors and an english major that most all of the courses are in english. besides, the data of this study came from two participants by using purposive sampling. the participants consisted of male and female students from thailand who already took one and a half year period of a study program. furthermore, they had low to intermediate level proficiency of english (ets, 2017). the first participant, a male student with a pseudonym name as rio, had 480 and ellen. a female student had 403 for the toefl scores. the low level of proficiency indicated that the learning problems are highly possibly happened. technique and procedure the first method was using the document analysis method because it comprised “manageable and practical sources” (triad, 2016). the document proposed in this study was a document of students writing, which gathered from a reflective essay on experiencing their study program in indonesia called a reflective essay. meanwhile, for the second method, this study addressed questions in the form of an individual interview. the questions clarified the efforts to overcome their english learning problems. addressing a consent letter to agree with the selected participants while gathering the data process to avoid the thrust of the participants was the first procedure to collect the data. then, asking the participants to make an essay based on their english learning problem while experiencing the study abroad within two weeks maximum of submission time was another procedure done to get the data. lastly, interviewing asking both participants available time by using tools such as a pen, notebook, and mobile phone recorder to journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 96 record the data was the final procedure to end the data collection process. analysis there were two main steps to analyze the data of this study, such as analyzing the information in the reflective essay and analyzing the results of the interview. first, this study used five major steps, which consist of assessing the authenticity of the text, exploring the text biases, exploring background information of the text, and exploring the content deeply in order to analyze the reflective essay (o' leary, 2014). meanwhile, to analyze the result of the interview, this study used some steps from saldana (2016) included transcribing, giving pseudonym, member checking, probing, and coding. findings and discussion in this part, the researcher elaborated on those problems and strategies based on the participants’ cases in order to provide complete and deep information. for the first part, the researcher will describe the english learning challenges of both participants, along with the discussion of prior studies, while the participants’ strategies will be in the second part. english learning problems in a nonenglish speaking country the problems of both participants were categorized to be problems in productive skill, problems in receptive skill, problems in lecturer’s resource, problems in learning strategy, problems in vocabulary mastery, problems in motivation, problems in exposure, and problems in culture. hence, each challenge is in the following paragraphs in detail. problems in receptive skills. the indication of receptive skills problems faced by both of the participants as international efl students were similar to the common efl students’ problems categorized by sadiku (2015), which divided into listening and reading. firstly, in listening problems, both participants faced listening comprehension problems due to some factors. the factors described by hamouda (2013) were similar to the findings found in both of the participants, such as recording audio, the accent of a speaker, and blending some words that were faced by rio. he mentioned that he usually got low scores even if he had listened carefully; he always ended up with missing information related to journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 97 what the speaker spoke due to those factors. besides, ellen had struggled with the accent of the speaker, speed, and lack of vocabulary. in detail, she could not understand well about most of her friends' and lecturers' accents; also, the speed, when they spoke up, was too fast for her. she also added that it also due to her lack of vocabulary mastery that made her difficult to understand some new terms in her listening process. furthermore, cultural differences in language also influenced difficulty in rio’s listening comprehension outside the classroom as proved by azmi et al. in gilakjani and sabouri (2016) that the cultural differences of language could cause difficulty in students’ listening comprehension. secondly, rio faced poor knowledge caused by the laziness of reading both inside and outside the classroom. he realized that he was lazy to read so. usually, he was too late to update any new information. due to his laziness in reading, he always missed some updated information. consequently, he knew something less than his other friends. it correlated with akbari (2015), qarqez, and kasim's (2017) investigation that the poor insights were caused by the discouragement to read or laziness in reading and less dedicated time to read. problems in productive skills. in line with sadiku (2015), the categorization of productive skills is including speaking and writing skills. firstly, the problems found in writing skills. the findings showed that the participant who faced this problem intensely inside the classroom learning process was rio, as he clarified that the writing was a difficult process. in his opinion, writing activity was a kind of boring activity and made him a headache because he could not avoid the activity in the classroom. his bad attitude towards writing still happened, as he stated, “i do not like writing until now, especially essay; it is not my passion” (r2, reflective essay). additionally, when the lecturer assigned a task to write an essay, he always had a problem with developing an idea. for the impact, he took a long time to finish the essay. in regards to his reason, the bad attitude came up as a result of bad reading habits. he considered that he did not like writing because of his laziness to read books. in line with rahmatunisa's (2014) research, the english writing process is quite complicated, especially in learning a foreign language context. in the statement, rio had explained about the difficult process caused by the factors stated in rahmatunisa (2014) categorization aspects, a psychological aspect. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 98 those aspects included negative attitudes towards writing, such as boring activity, not feeling passionate, and laziness influenced by the process of generalizing the idea. secondly, allowing to the findings, the speaking skill problems were faced by both of the participants, rio and ellen. these findings were mostly about their difficulties to express their verbal idea due to some factors such as difficult to say words in the presentation due to lack of vocabulary in the classroom faced by rio. besides, ellen tended to feel shy to express any argument because some other dominant students were participating actively in the classroom, but she spoke unclear pronunciation and lack of confidence. these results resonate with ur findings in imani’s (2015) investigation that the difficulties in expressing verbal utterances happened due to lack of vocabulary mastery, lack of participation due to mixture abilities such as talkative and silent students, and shyness in classroom learning. moreover, ahmed’s (2017) findings were also related to the factor of the difficulties in doing verbal communication, which was pronunciation. additionally, outside the classroom, the interesting finding was found by rio, who stated the lack of experience to speak in front of many people caused the difficulty in speaking, especially affecting their confidence. as explained by ur in imani (2015), the lack of confidence, such as feeling shy if their speech will lead to an attraction, causing obstacles to say things in english. another interesting finding, ellen faced a communication barrier with other people because she could not speak in bahasa and not fluent in english. chen in alhamdi and otte (2016) further explain these communication barriers as the problem caused by a lack of english proficiency, so it limits the international efl students to communicate with society. problems in vocabulary. agreeing with patahuddin et al. (2017), they note that vocabulary learning had a significant role in mastering a language, the current study found the same. the lack of vocabulary prompted the other skills, such as faced by rio, the low vocabulary mastery influenced his ability to speak specifically in terms of finding proper words, listening comprehension, and understanding material through reading outside the classroom. meanwhile, the lack of vocabulary also influenced ellen’s learning problem when listening to the material lesson and reading comprehension in the classroom. the most challenging thing in learning journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 99 vocabulary, as stated by abrar et al. (2018), was similarly faced by rio difficulty while choosing appropriate words in speaking. problem in exposure. an unsupported environment also found the main problem in the current study. as found in the study, rio, the only international efl student who can speak bahasa fluently. he faced english learning difficulty while learning english outside the classroom, which was a lack of exposure. he expressed that the social environment did not support his english learning process, especially in speaking. the finding was similar to akbari (2015), who mentioned that the challenging thing in learning english faced by common efl students was the lack of english roles in society. a similar case also existed in a study conducted by nam (2018). she mentioned that the main problem of international efl students faced to learn english, especially in a non-english speaking country, was the lack of opportunity to use english for communication effectively outside the classroom. additionally, because of the ability to speak in bahasa indonesia, it led to the feeling of unnecessary to learn english, especially during free time (akbari, 2016). problem in culture. the cultural issue found in this study was different from prior studies investigation that commonly found this issue in a social context (wu et al., 2015; yang, 2017). the cultural issue found in this study came from autonomous learning, which was done by rio through watching a video. due to the dominant content of the video from western culture, rio felt uneasy to understand the video content. the difficulty of understanding the video content indicated one of the english learning problems as described by nguyen (2011), the different culture could cause it. problem in instructional language. this problem faced by ellen in the classroom, as she mentioned that she had a low ability to understand and speak in bahasa indonesia. due to most of the lecturers tended to use the language in delivering the materials lesson, ellen felt it difficult to understand the lesson and had a lack of opportunity to use english in the classroom. the tendency of using bahasa indonesia as the home country language indicated that the learning problem included problems in instructional language caused by lack of the lecturers’ role, especially in giving enough exposure to english. as explained by keong et al. (2015), students’ problems to learn english in the classroom can be caused journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 100 by a lack of teachers or lecturers’ role to use english while teaching and learning processes inside the classroom. problem in motivation. the indication of demotivation in english learning in the classroom exists in the current study. according to the problem, as mentioned by ellen, the shyness led her not to have the bravery to participate in the classroom. abrar’s (2016) indication noted that demotivated students could be visible from the unwillingness to participate in classroom activity due to shyness, even fear of making mistakes. ellen added that the willingness to participate in the classroom was also affected by the classroom size and the assessment. both of the classroom sizes and assessments caused the feel of challenging in learning english, as found by akbari (2016) that the challenged feeling in learning english included the situation of demotivated students. strategies done by the international efl students in a non-english speaking country along with the problems found in this study, some of the attempts or efforts done by both of the participants were categorized based on five strategies addressed by ellis in safranj (2013) such as general study strategies, formal practice strategies, resourceful-independent strategies, functional practice strategies, and conversational strategies, also one strategy suggested by avila (2015). general study strategies. the techniques intended to gain more focus and ignore disturbance, as found in rio’s strategies, while overcoming the receptive skills problems inside the classroom by listening carefully and closing eyes to gain more focus. then, in order to maintain his study hard in reading, rio also motivated himself to read to increase the willingness to read. meanwhile, still inside the classroom, being well prepared and doing self encouragement done by ellen to increase confidence in the learning process correlated with this type of strategy. formal practice strategies. some strategies implemented in this category were identifying the language meaning, finding similarities and differences of the language, generating and reviewing complicated words or sentences. those strategies are done by ellen when coping with the lecturer language and vocabulary problem inside the classroom by finding the language meaning through journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 101 translating and asking another thai friend who understood bahasa indonesia. moreover, ellen also did the strategies outside the classroom, such as asking other friends and doing reviews related to the difficult meaning. resourceful, independent strategies. these independent strategies revealed some strategies done to memorize some words or sentences, such as listing words, which were similarly done by rio outside the classroom. another strategy discovered in this current study, such as playing a game, namely toeic zombie done by rio and ellen in their spare time to memorize words, included in this type of strategy. moreover, one type of strategy suggested in this category was proposing the participants to use any recordings to do the memorization easily. interestingly, the present study found that the recordings combined with self-analysis were adopted to produce better pronunciation in speaking, not merely focused on memorizing context (ellen, interview). functional practice strategies. using authentic material related to the targeted language outside the classroom was the main characteristic of using this type of strategy. those activities included reading the materials in a foreign language. both of the participants clarified that they used the reading materials such as articles and textbooks in order to improve their learning comprehension. especially, rio, he read some english articles to enrich his idea in writing. additionally, both rio and ellen also used podcast audio as an authentic material to practice their listening. in order to increase word knowledge, ellen also spent the spare time to watch english movies as another example of employing authentic materials. another interesting finding related to the use of authentic material combined with the technology outside the classroom was gaining some of the targeted language information on google due to cultural issues as faced by rio. conversational strategies. the researcher did these strategies in all of the processes of communication, such as asking repetition or requesting a slower speed. ellen, one of the participants, also did the strategies when communicating with other people. she sometimes asked for repetition at a slower speed due to her listening problem. in the context of improving communication skills, she also added that traveling could be a strategy to develop her english language communication. it was also supported by journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 102 sargsyan and kurghinyan (2016), who stated that traveling is one of the activities done by the common efl students in learning english outside the classroom. creative strategies. several creative activities such as playing games, doing roleplays, and presentations done by the students effectively assisted their learning process in the classroom (avila, 2015). similarly, the current study found that doing presentations more often as one kind of creative strategy held by most of the lecturers could help rio improve his speaking skills. besides, related to the context of lecturer strategies, especially in giving feedback after the assessment, the present study also found that the feedback could be useful as a resource to deal with students learning problems. as concluded by rio, the given feedback from the lecturers could assist his writing problem inside the classroom. klimova (2015) mentions that the feedback could assist the development of students’ language skills by assisting the students in detecting their weaknesses and developing their learning process. conclusion the current study on revealing some english learning problems faced by international efl students in a non-english speaking country found that the students had some struggles in language skills both in receptive and productive skills, lecturer resources, learning strategy, vocabulary, motivation, exposure, and culture. the indicated problems of this current study mostly included the problems faced by the efl students in general when they learn english in their home country, referring to these findings to the discussed former studies. however, even if there was a domination of similarity in the findings, several unique findings still found. the unique findings indicated that learning english in home country and study abroad had differences such as problems in exposure due to the language barrier and the cultural context due to autonomous learning. the strategies carried out by both participants to cope with the problems also indicated the similarities and differences. those were categorized as general study, formal practice, resourceful-independent, functional practice, conversational, and creative strategies. since this study is still limited, especially to enrich specific problems faced by international efl students, future researchers should adopt different methods to gain more specific findings. moreover, after knowing the findings, some suggestions journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 103 were proposed to some subjects. first, reflecting the english learning problems found in this current study was considered as more effective possible ways for the efl students to reduce their learning problems. furthermore, they also can maximize this study as a reference to participate in a study abroad program. second, for the lecturers, they can help the efl students preparing to participate in the study abroad program by giving any useful suggestions especially for the lecturers in the home country, and developing the efl students' english learning process in a new environment especially for the lecturers in the host country. at last, for the institution both inhome and host countries, both institutions can help the students to improve their english learning process by providing better facilities such as targeted language training centers. references abrar, m. (2016). teaching english problems: an analysis of efl primary school teachers in kuala tungkal. the 16th indonesian scholars international convention, 94-101. abrar, m., mukminin, a., habibi, a., asyraf, f., makmur, m., & marzulina, l. (2018). “if our english isn’t a language, what is it?” indonesian efl student teachers’ challenges speaking english. the qualitative report, 129-145. ahmed, z. a.-a. (2017). difficulties encountered by efl students in learning pronunciation: a case study of sudanese higher secondary schools. international journal of english linguistics, 7(4), 75-82. akbari, z. (2015). current challenges in teaching/learning english for efl learners: the case of junior high school and high school. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 199, 394-401. akbari, z. (2016). the study of efl students' perceptions of their problems, needs, and concerns over learning english: the case of ma paramedical students. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 232, 24 – 34. alghamdi, h., & otte, s. (2016). the challenges and benefits of study abroad. international journal of humanities and social science, 6(5), 16-22. al-jamal, d. a., & al-jamal, g. a. (2014). an investigation of the difficulties faced by efl undergraduates in speaking skills. english language teaching (pp. 1927). canada: canadian center of science and education. avila, h. (2015). creativity in the english class: activities to promote efl learning. how, 22(2), 91-103. byrnes, h. (1998). learning foreign and second languages: perspective in research and scholarship. new york: mla. ching, y., renes, s. l., mcmurrow, s., simpson, j., & strange, a. t. (2017). challenges facing chinese international students studying in the united states. academic journals, 12(8), 473-482. gilakjani, a. p., & sabouri, n. b. (2016). learners’ listening comprehension difficulties in english language learning: journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 104 a literature review. english language teaching, 9(6), 123-133. gunantar, d. a. (2016). the impact of english as an international language on english language teaching in indonesia. language circle: journal of language and literature, 10(2), 141151. hamouda, a. (2013). an investigation of listening comprehension problems encountered by saudi students in the efl listening classroom. international journal of academic research in progressive education and development, 2(2), 113-155. kachru, b. b. (1992). teaching world englishes. the other tongue: english across cultures, 2, 355-366. keong, y. c., ali, a. i., & hameed, f. w. (2015). speaking competence of iraqi efl undergraduates of garmiyan university. international journal of education and research, 3(5), 157-170. kirkpatrick, a. (2014). world englishes. in the routledge companion to english studies (pp. 63-75). routledge. klimova, b. (2015). the role of feedback in efl classes. globelt: an international conference on teaching and learning english as an additional language (pp. 172-177). antalya: elsevier. kurniawan, m., & radia, e. h. (2017). a situational analysis of english language learning among eastern indonesian students. advances in social science, education, and humanities research (assehr) (pp. 1-6). yogyakarta: researchget.net. mahmoudi, s., & mahmoudi, a. (2015). internal and external factors affecting learning english as a foreign language. international journal of language and linguistics, 3(5), 313-322. mckay, s. l. (2018). english as an international language: what it is and what it means for pedagogy. relc journal, 49(1), 9-23. medjahdi, w. b. (2015). reading comprehension difficulties among efl learners: the case of third-year learners at nehali mohamed secondary school. algeira: university of tlemcen. merriam, s.b. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. milian, m., birnbaum, m., cardona, b., & nicholson, b. (2015). personal and professional challenges and benefits of studying abroad. journal of international education and leadership, 5(1), 1-12. nam, m. (2018). study-abroad experiences of two south korean undergraduate students in an english-speaking and a non-english-speaking country. asia-pacific edu res, 27(3), 177-185. nguyen, c. t. (2011, february). challenges of learning english in australia towards students coming from selected southeast asian countries: vietnam, thailand, and indonesia. international education studies, 4(1), 13-20. o' leary, z. (2014). the essential guide to doing your research project (2nd ed.). thousand oaks: sage publications, inc. paltridge, t., mayson, s., & schapper, j. (2012). covering the gap: social inclusion, international students, and the role of local government. australian universities' review, 54(2), 29-39. patahuddin, syawal, & tahir. (2017). investigating indonesian efl learners’ learning and acquiring english vocabulary. international journal of english linguistics, 7(4), 128-137. qarqez, m., & ab rashid, r. (2017). reading comprehension difficulties journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 105 among efl learners: the case of first and second-year students at yarmouk university in jordan. arab world english journal, 8, 421-431. rahmatunisa, w. (2014). problems faced by indonesian efl learners in writing argumentative essay. journal of english education, 3(1), 41-49. raisha, s., & kasim, u. (2017). efl students’ reading comprehension problems: linguistic and non-linguistic complexities. english education journal (eej), 8(3), 3018-321. sadiku, l. m. (2015). the importance of four skills reading, speaking, writing, listening in a lesson hour. european journal of language and literature studies, 1(1), 2931. saldana, j. (2016). the coding manual for qualitative researchers. 67-273: sage. šafranj, j. (2013). strategies of learning english as a foreign language at faculty of technical sciences. brussels: elsevier. sargsyan, m., & kurghinyan, a. (2016). the use of english language outside the classroom. journal of language and cultural education, 4(1), 29-47. singh, m. k. (2017). international efl/esl master students’ adaptation strategies for academic writing practices at tertiary level. journal of international students, 7(3), 620-643. singh, m. m. (2014). challenges in academic reading and overcoming strategies in taught master programmes: a case study of international graduate students in malaysia. higher education studies, 4(4), 76-88. tappendorf, r. c. (2014, may). a linguistic comparison of english and bahasa indonesia: examining language transfer effects. retrieved from asu library | digital repository: https://repository.asu.edu/items/22799 thompson, i. (2014, march 11). language learning difficulty. retrieved from about world language (awl): http://aboutworldlanguages.com/langua ge-difficulty triad. (2016, march 9). an introduction to document analysis. retrieved from a splot on the web: https://lled500.trubox.ca/2016/244 ueki, m., & takeuchi, o. (2015). study abroad and motivation to learn a second language: exploring the possibility of the l2 motivational self-system. the japan association for language education & technology, 1-25. uwambayinema. (2016). challenges faced by english as a foreign language (efl) learners in the perception and production of north american english vowels: a case of rwandan students in various us universities. the rwandan journal of education, 3(2), 11-19. wu, h.-p., garza, e., & guzman, n. (2015). international student’s challenge and adjustment to college. education research international, 1-9. yang, c. (2017). problems chinese international students face during academic adaptation in english-speaking higher institutions. canada: uvicspace. yin, m. (2015). the effect and importance of authentic language exposure in improving listening comprehension. minnesota: st. cloud state university. volume 4, no. 1, 2019 volume 4, no. 1, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/579 inda nofrika is an english teacher at madrasah tsanawiyah negeri 3 kutai kartanegara. she obtained her bachelor's degree at english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (umy). inda is interested in social media issues as the learning media to students, especially the use of youtube to enhancing students’ english competencies. efl students’ voices: the role of youtube in developing english competencies inda nofrika madrasah tsanawiyah negeri 3 kutai kartanegara nofrikainda@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.4138 abstract youtube is one of the most visited video-sharing platforms in the world. on youtube, students can watch many kinds of videos. this research explored the types of videos often watched by english as a foreign language (efl) students in a private university in yogyakarta. additionally, the aspects of students’ english competence got improvement by watching youtube videos. the researcher employed a descriptive qualitative research design in this study. four seniors of an english language education department (eled) in one private islamic university in yogyakarta participated in this study. the findings of the study indicated that there were three categories of youtube videos often watched by students, such as art and humanities, vlogs, and social sciences. art and humanities videos consist of a music video or lyric video, film, talks, sitcom, and talk show. vlogs include food vlog, review video, beauty vlog, haul vlog, and diy videos. social sciences contain simulation and educational videos. mailto:nofrikainda@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 57 to summarize, the students watch youtube based on their interests. the result also revealed the aspects of english improved through watching youtube videos. they are speaking skills, listening skills, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. keywords: social media; youtube; vlog; listening skill; speaking skil;, pronunciation; vocabulary; grammar ================================================================== introduction technology is becoming the premier part of life. people are using technology to support their life instead of getting information and keep in touch with others. based on wahab, rose, and osman (2012), technology gives knowledge and attention to the process of research and development. in this era, one of the popular technology is the internet. the internet has been spread so fast among the community, especially the school community. the internet provides numerous websites and has birthed to social media, including facebook, twitter, instagram, and youtube. on those websites, people can share and discuss an issue. research by siddiqui and singh (2016) illustrates that social media exist for people to share their ideas and to discuss the issue. however, there is an attractive website which offers the social media user to use, and it is called youtube. youtube becomes the top popular video-sharing website in the world. according to benson (2015), “youtube is an online service, officially launched in late 2005, which allows registered users to upload video clips for viewing by the general population of internet users”. kousha, thelwall, and abdoli (2012) support the statement by stating, “youtube is video-sharing for public use and the third most visited website after google and facebook” (p. 2). youtube not only provides texts and images but also combines video and animated video. the modifications of youtube get the attention of people to use, especially students. therefore, youtube has potential as a tool for education. dewitt, siraj, yakuub, ayob, and ishak (2013) mention that in the learning context, youtube has potentially been using as a learning tool. youtube supports the learning process in english class. youtube enhances students’ english skills, such as reading skills, writing skills, listening skills, vocabulary lists, and pronunciation. research by watkins and wilkins (2011) mentions that youtube has the potential to enhance students’ reading skills, writing journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 58 skills, speaking skills, and listening skills. kabooha and elyas (2018) state that youtube has a big impact on increasing students’ vocabulary. watkins and wilkins (2011) also mention that youtube has a role in increasing students’ pronunciation. the researcher, who is also a youtube user, often spends the leisure time on the platform while waiting for the lecturer, taking a break in the classroom, or lying on the bedroom. it is not only happening in the researcher's life but also in people surrounding, including friends or family. a lot of students use youtube as a platform to study because the videos are fun, and they are attractive to watch. each video is accessible and repeatable many times. youtube is flexible because users can watch anytime and anywhere. many animated videos are available to watch since it is rare to find the animated video on other websites/applications. meanwhile, there are also bad sides of youtube. youtube needs an internet network, so people will look for wi-fi or mobile data to access it. the validity of video sources is not always guaranteed because many youtubers do not give the sources of the information of the videos. moreover, students become addicted and engrossed in using youtube lately. those aspects drive the students’ attention away from classroom activities. students watch youtube secretly during the class, and then during the break time, students will still watch youtube from their smartphone. nevertheless, those bad habits of watching youtube may turn the student’s english competencies to be better. many students watch youtube without realizing that youtube helps them to improve their english competencies by watching different types of videos on youtube. therefore, the researcher is curious about why the researcher’s friends who are students always watch youtube, what kinds of video they like to watch, and what aspects of english get improvement through watching it. youtube is becoming a new platform resource for students to learn and following the time. moreover, the use of youtube as the learning tool can be increasing students’ critical thinking and motivating students. however, future researchers can find out about a channel that can help students to increase their english skills. therefore, the main objective of this research is to find out types of videos often watched by english as a foreign language (efl) students on youtube and also the aspects of students’ english competence improved through watching youtube videos. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 59 many prior researchers conducted studies on youtube as a language learning media. this paragraph will explain two prior research related to this research by zaidi et al. (2018) and june, yaacob, and kheng (2014). zaidi et al.’s study aims to investigate students’ interest using youtube to learn english and to find out the students' perception of using youtube in the classroom. zaidi et al. applied a quantitative research approach and had 159 respondents who were undergraduate students of the faculty of accounting, universiti teknologi mara in the 2nd, 3rd semester. the result showed that youtube could be interesting to motivate students and increase students’ pronunciation. meanwhile, june et al. (2014) found out the students' perceptions towards the use of youtube videos by interactive activities in stimulating their critical thinking. june et al. applied qualitative research approach and had 50 students who were undergraduate students of the human resource management course, universiti utara malaysia. the result of their research was that students had a positive view of the use of videos, and students became more aware of the discussion held. both of the studies have similarities and differences. both zaidi et al. (2018) and june at al. (2014) chose undergraduate students as the respondents and participants. meanwhile, the differences between both pieces of research were the foci. zaidi et al. investigated the students’ interests in using youtube in learning english in classroom and applied the quantitative approach design, while june et al. explored the students’ perception towards the use of youtube videos for interactive activities in stimulating their critical thinking and applied the qualitative approach design. the current study tries to fill in the gap that both studies have not explored, namely the types of you tube videos that students like and what language competence that they think improved by watching the videos. with this topic, the study was hoped to benefit three parties. firstly, this research can help students select the types of videos to watch in enhancing their english skills. secondly, teachers can select the appropriate videos to use in the classroom activity. likewise, this research can be useful as a reflection for teachers/lecturers’ teaching. lastly, this research can enrich the existing literature about youtube for enhancing students’ english competencies. literature review teaching tools become the complement in education. it supports the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 60 learning process in the classroom. the tools used in the classroom included pictures, cards, and magazines. the development of technology influenced education. the use of social media helped in the learning process. social media, as one form of technology, complete the traditional modes of teaching (buzzeto, 2014). the advantages of using social media according to prior studies, in the field of teaching and learning, there are two advantages of using social media, namely increasing students’ motivation and socializing. increasing students’ motivation. social media are fun, and they motivate the students to learn. lin, warschauer, and blake (2016) note that the positive response of using social media increases the users’ motivation. redecker, al-mutka, and punie also note the use of online networks in the classroom increasing students’ motivation (as cited in akbari, naderi, simons, and pilot, 2016, p. 17). socializing. social media build interaction and relationship with people around the world. liu (2010) explained that by sharing opinions on social media, students did socialize. blattner and fiori also support that social media pushes students to build positive relationships and interactions with native speakers (as cited in lomicka and lord, 2016, p. 261). many kinds of social media can be useful in the classroom, and one of them is youtube. youtube is interesting, fun, and flexible to use. benson (2015) asserts that youtube is an online service launched in 2005 with url http://www.youtube.com which allows the users to watch and upload the video. there are types of youtube videos and the advantages of using youtube for enhancing students’ english competences. types of youtube videos according to the prior researchers of kousha, thelwall, and abdoli (2012), there are three types of youtube videos. they are art and humanities, natural and formal science videos, and social science. besides, there is a new type of video mostly watched by students called vlog. arts and humanities. youtube provides an entertaining media that consists of music, songs, animations, comedy, tv shows, and dance. based on kousha, thelwall, and abdoli (2012), the arts and humanities have several categories, including music, dance, movies, animations, comedy, tv shows, and humanities documentaries. khan (2015) states that movies motivate students to learn the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 61 language because it is more enjoyable and entertaining. berk (2009) explains that movies grab students’ attention, motivate, and inspire in the learning context. many people, especially students, love music. youtube provides songs to listeners. the video combines a song and lyrics or a set of songs. aguirre, deydania, lira, and melania (2016) explain that using the song works as an effective way to learn to improve students’ vocabulary. burhayani (2013) also supports the statement. by listening to songs, the students get the opportunity to enrich their vocabulary. natural or formal science videos. students can see a lot of topics on youtube, for instance, about the phenomenon of natural or formal science. according to kousha, thelwall and abdoli (2012), natural or formal science videos cover online videos with natural science or formal science (maths and logic) categories: demonstrating a particular natural or formal phenomenon, explaining theory underpinning natural or formal phenomenon, and describing a scholarly event or experience associated with studying such phenomenon (e.g., a scientific conference). there are some different types of videos classified, such as demonstration of natural or formal science phenomenon, natural or formal science documentary, natural or formal science education or hobby, and natural or formal science academic lecturers. social sciences. youtube seems like replacing television. people prefer watching youtube to television because what is on television is available on youtube. according to kousha, thelwall, and abdoli (2012), there are some videos included in social sciences types such as advertisements, news or correspondents’ report, activism and business, politics, social science documentaries, and academic talks by a social scientist. vlog. vlog is one of the most visited videos on youtube. based on baran (2007), vlog or video blogging combines images, audio, movies, and texts to communicate with the viewers. besides, there are many kinds of vlog, such as beauty vlog, tutorial, and review. westenberg (2016) states that youtuber reviews a product, and most of their subscribers believe that it is an honest review. saiful (2019) states that “youtube vlog is an avenue to form digital communities and sharing real-life activities and thoughts from people all around the world” (p. 76). the advantages of using youtube for enhancing students’ english competencies journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 62 there are six advantages in enhancing students’ english competencies by watching youtube videos. those are giving flexibility for students, helping students to understand the topics, providing fun videos, facilitating students’ macro practice, facilitating students to improve their vocabulary list, and facilitating interaction in a real-life context. each advantage is in the paragraph below. giving flexibility for students. students can access youtube from any location in the world. monkhouse and forbes (2015) state that youtube is easier to access because students can watch a video on their smart-phone / personal computer whenever they want. buzzeto-more (2014) also adds that youtube is free, and it provides educational videos. lai (2013) explains that accessing youtube is simple. helping students to understand the topic. youtube is an effective application that gives a deep explanation of the topic to students. liu (2010) explains that youtube provides great resources for students because there is a lot of instructional material uploaded by the teacher. moghavvemi, sulaiman, jaafar, and kasem (2018) assert that youtube gives a more in-depth explanation and helps students to understand the difficult topics. providing fun videos. each student has a different interest. furthermore, youtube provides many videos which allow students to choose based on their interest. moghavvemi et al. (2018) assert that using youtube as the learning tool is an attractive way for students because the videos are interesting and fun. fleck, beckman, stern, and hussey (2014) also add that students consider using youtube as it is entertaining, interesting, and fun. facilitating students’ macro practice. english videos on youtube become a new activity for students in enhancing students’ english competences, especially in macro skills. macro skills consist of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. according to watkins and wilkins (2011), youtube videos could be useful as a new activity. students can do conversation analysis, movie trailer voiceovers, famous movie scene re-enactments by watching a video. these activities can help students to practice their speaking and listening skills. silviyanti (2014) argues that “the use of youtube appeared to be interesting and beneficial for students in listening class “(p. 54). besides, watkins and wilkins (2010) state that by doing notetaking and summarizing after watching a video helps students to practice their reading and writing skills. jalaluddin (2016) journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 63 also adds a thousand english videos on youtube. those videos can be useful to increase students’ reading and writing skills. facilitating students to improve their vocabulary list. from a video, students can get a new vocabulary that can be used to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. research by abidin, mohammadi, singh, azman, and souriyavongsa (2011) explain that students who watch english videos on youtube will increase their vocabulary list. kabooha and elyas (2015) also add that youtube helps students well as remembering new vocabulary. facilitating interaction in a real-life context. youtube has comments features that help students to interact with other people around the world, especially native speakers. duffy (2008) points out that youtube users use comments features to create discussions. benson (2015) adds that the comments sections are rich in interactional, and oriented to sharing the meaning of information on the video. methodology this research applied a qualitative research design. based on creswell (2012), qualitative research explores the phenomenon by participants’ views. also, this research adopts a descriptive qualitative study. merriam (1998) states that “qualitative descriptive study is a comprehensive summarization in every day in terms of specific events experienced by individuals or group of individuals” (p.255). the researcher applied qualitative research design to enrich the data by getting the point of view from each participant about the research problems. this research conducted at the english language education department (eled) in one of the private islamic universities in yogyakarta. four participants in this research were selected by some criteria that the participants were students of eled at a private university in yogyakarta especially the batch 2015 and had experiences in using youtube. the interview was the gathering method used by the researcher. cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) assert that the interview expresses the participant’s perceptions of the situation based on their point of view. snowball sampling used by the researcher to get participants, the researcher asked the first participants to recommend another person who has some characteristics as the researcher’s criteria needed, then the fellow participants did the same process as well. also, before the researcher did the interview, the researcher created the interview guideline to ease the whole process. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 64 name how long participants learn english how often participants watch youtube batch major nita 13 years everyday 2015 (senior ) english language education tia 15 years every day since a college student 2015 (senior ) english language education linda 13 years while having mobile data and also wi-fi connection 2015 (senior ) english language education monic 15 years often 2015 (senior ) english language education table 1.2 participants information the interview was the gathering method used by the researcher. cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) assert that the interview expresses the participant’s perceptions of the situation based on their point of view. also, from the interview, the researcher has thick information from each participant to enriching this research. snowball sampling used by the researcher to get participants, the researcher asked the first participants to recommend another person who has some characteristics as the researcher’s criteria needed, then the fellow participants did the same process as well. also, before the researcher did the interview, the researcher created the interview guideline to ease the whole process. after creating the interview guidelines, the researcher’s selected the participants by the characters made. then, the researcher got a hold of participants, next the researcher and participants determine the time to interview. the interview was done in bahasa indonesia because the researcher and participants are indonesians. besides, it feels more comfortable during the interview. the researcher applied open-ended questions and also applied the unstructured response for the participants. the researcher used a smartphone, pen, and note in the process of the interview. each participant took around 12-23 minutes to interview. the difference in interview time was because the researcher allowed the participants to give the answers in whatever way they chose. after the gathering process finished, the researcher transcribed the audio interview into written text. then, the researcher did the member checking or journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 65 probing to check whether there were unclear statements from the participants. it helps the invalid data becoming valid. next, the researcher gave code and made a phrase or called focus coding. besides, the researcher should interpret or make a sentence based on focus coding. furthermore, the researcher divided focus coding and interpretation into the same group belonging to the same field. on the other hand, the researcher made a categorized table to put the same facts from the grouping step. the last step was narration. the researcher changed the categorized table into a paragraph that had the participant’s statement, followed by a supporting quotation from other researchers or experts. qualitative research was used to confirm the validity and reliability of whether the data were valid or not valid. lincoln and guba assume that the aims of trustworthiness in qualitative research are to support the statement where the research findings are focus-worth. there are five alternatives for assessing the trustworthiness of a qualitative research design that contains credibility, dependability, conformability, transferability, and authenticity (as cited in elo et al., 2014, p. 2). following the lincoln and guba steps, the researcher did member checking of the data interview to confirm the credibility of the data. then, member checking results showed the participants’ statements based on the interview by sending the transcript to all participants through whatsapp. findings and discussion the result of the data interview showed three types of youtube videos often watched by english of a foreign language (efl) students. they were art and humanities, social sciences, and vlog. therefore, there are five aspects of english competences improved through watching youtube videos, including two macro-skills, which were listening skill and speaking skill. besides, three micro-skills consisted of pronunciation, vocabulary, and also grammar. based on the findings, youtube has given many advantages to use. the finding will be in the following sections. types of video often watched on youtube by efl students art and humanities. in this research, each participant talked about five types of youtube videos entered in the art and humanities category, namely film, talk show, sitcoms, talks, music video, and lyric video. also, the participants explained a little bit of the reasons why they watched the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 66 videos. it can be seen in the following excerpts: “… from films, i really learn their accents fastly …” (nita’s statement) “… for films, sometimes i stream films on youtube, but it is seldom.” (linda’s statement) “… yeah… that talk show [the late late show with james corden] (linda’s statement) “… yeah… that is it sitcom (laughed), but he plays many characters by himself alone. i found it is so fun.” (tia’s statement) “…she talks about whatever happens now, what problems youth faced …” (monic’s statement) “…if i am feeling sad, i hear songs, so i watched music videos.” (monic’s statement) “sometimes on youtube, there is something that if, for example, the artist or the singer releases a song, and surely they did not directly release the video clip. surely they will upload the lyric video first. well, from there, i also learn.” (tia’s statement) in the art and humanities category, the video is not always to entertain because from participants' statements, they gain new knowledge. linda, one of the participants, said that she was learning the accents from the film. films get the participant's attention to focus and motivate students to learn something from them. berk (2009) supports the statement that films have the potential to grab students’ attention and motivate students. besides, tia learned new knowledge from watching music/lyrics videos, either it is speaking skills, listening skills, or vocabulary. kusnierek (2016) states that “songs contribute to developing students’ better memorization of vocabulary.” beare supports kusnierek’s statement by saying that music is one of a good way to introduce new vocabulary to students (as cited in abidin et al., 2011, p. 3). social sciences. the data showed that youtube had replaced television as the entertainment media, getting information quickly. the participant also obtained a more deep understanding of the topic of the videos. the videos are entertaining, full of information, and educating. “almost every day, but just in that week, just watching like a simulation like that, mm what’s the channel’s name … i don’t know the name, but it is about a plane crash.” (linda’s statement) “there is one called lang focus. the channel is filled with language content. so journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 67 it’s like explaining the language from one country but in a detailed explanation. for example, discussing the indonesian language. he tells us that from the origin of indonesian, it is a language that is often used. anyway, everything about language is detailed.” (nita’s statement) “mmmm…there are also videos from other children who have sent them to sesame street. nah, it is good to watch, and also educative.” (monic’s statement) vlog. vlog is the videos which contain the images, texts, videos, animated videos, gifs, and audios. on vlog, people talk about anything they want, and mostly they are review products or explaining places. food vlog, beauty vlog, and haul vlog entered are videos that review a product to makes people interested in buying it. the participants’ excerpts show the findings. “eeee… a lot of it is like food vlogger. i like that.” (nita’s statement) “i really like watching videos about cooking.” (tia’s statement) “i also like daily vlog like that, but daily vlogs are not important. yeah, it’s like that, you know (laughed).” (tia’s statement) “mmmm… i like makeup, but i rarely watch makeup videos on youtube.” (nita’s statement) “i also like beauty vloggers, even though i don’t have makeup. i like watching it because i can learn something from it.” (tia’s statement) “i like the types of vlogs like haul or shopping.” (monic’s statement) “mmmm… what’s more? mmmm… diy makes me knowledgeable.” (tia’s statement) aspects of english improved through watching youtube videos listening skills. the data showed that participants’ improved their listening skills by watching vlog and songs. “yes, i felt that when watching cia, my listening skill improved…” (monic’s statement) “it means to sing more? if i know the song, i sang it. mmm…but regarding the specific skill, i don’t feel it. maybe because i heard the song, it was doubtful that it might increase my listening skill.” (linda’s statement) silviyanti (2014) argues that “the use of youtube appeared to be interesting and beneficial for students in a listening class” (p. 54). watkins and wilkins (2011) also point out that videos on youtube can be a journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 68 new activity in the class to practice students’ listening skills. speaking skills. the finding revealed that youtube videos have enhancing students’ speaking skills. it makes participants focused on using english after watching the videos, and it became a habit to the participants. “…maybe speaking skill. sometimes, like, the habit is like this. if i have watched an english video, i talk using english; i suddenly watched it and suddenly talked to myself, like that.” (nita’s statement) jalaluddin (2016) noted that youtube helps learn speaking skills because it has many advantages to support the learning process. pronunciation. the participants revealed that by reading the subtitles and the emergence of curiosity to pronounce someone’s name improved pronunciation. “so, i read the subtitle and saw his mouth, and it was the first time i went to his channel then all of the other youtuber channels. i may increase my pronunciation.” (tia’s statement) “especially the pronunciation, there is like, one artist’s name. i used to be able to pronounce it, but now i forget it. but now i can pronounce it, that’s the point.” (linda’s statement) “yes, i felt that when watching cia, my listening skill improved, and my pronunciation also improved.” (monic’s statement) siidoroff and sundberg (2018) state that “… there is a wide variety of pronunciation learning materials available on youtube“(p. 37). muna (2011) found out that youtube videos helped to express students’ ideas fluently by considering accepted pronunciation. vocabulary. the participants revealed that watching youtube videos has improved students’ vocabulary lists. “yes, i felt that when watching cia, my listening skill improved, my pronunciation improved, my vocabulary also improved, but more towards to the slang vocabulary.” (monic’s statement) “it is like vocab, but there is not many, just like if the term uses slang like that.” (linda’s statement) kabooha and elyas (2015) explain that youtube helps students to memorize 71% of new vocabulary. muna (2011) asserts that students improve their vocabulary because they learn a new topic. grammar. this research shows that three of the four participants state their pronunciation improved by watching youtube videos. the participants focus on seeing how the youtuber pronounces a journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 69 word. also, they experience a new vocabulary and the use of grammar. participants analyze their english language skills without realizing it by analyzing each video. they also practice every word they hear from the video. “…after watching it, i know how to use grammar. usually, i watch the part about how to use grammar and how to you use the future tense and simple present.” (monic’s statement) this research revealed the types of youtube videos often watch by efl students and aspects of english competences improved through watching youtube videos. the participants reported that they watch different types of youtube videos, but all of the types help students to enhance students’ english competences. each type’s videos help students to improve, different english competences as the following table types of youtube videos english competences improved art and humanities 1. listening skills 2. speaking skills 3. pronunciation 4. vocabulary list social sciences 1. pronunciation 2. grammar vlog 1. listening skills 2. pronunciation 3. vocabulary list table 1.3 types of youtube videos and english competencies improved furthermore, another benefit that participants get by watching youtube videos are more confident and new knowledge. nita mentioned that by watching youtube videos, it motivated her to be more confident while doing public speaking. by doing this, the participants solving their problems by themselves. the curiosity build by participants in solving their problems. it is great for shy or introverts students to gain their confidence by watching youtube videos. “…i am curious about how they are confident. so, there are a lot of people who will watch them, how they are confident like that. so, i practice my confidence while i’m doing the presentation in the class. eee… i imagine myself like … ready or not, i should be speaking, i must speak up in front of my journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 70 friends or doing public speaking. the impact will be going like that to me…” (nita’s statement) “…cia’s channel taught me to be confident. is it wrong for people to speak english? ...” (monic’s statement) besides, the participants reported gaining new knowledge, either it is what they are looking for or not. directly or indirectly, participants gain new knowledge from the videos watched. students get a new insight into something that they have never seen only by watching youtube videos. also, students obtain a deep understanding of the topic from the videos. “… insight, we get new knowledge.” (nita’s statements) “… i like the video because i get something knowledge from the videos i liked …” (tia’s statement) “… in films, i learn the culture. it is different, indonesia culture and abroad, like quite know the culture of other countries…” (linda’s statement) conclusion and implication this research was investigated to discover the types of youtube videos often watched by efl students, and the aspects of students’ english competence improved through watching youtube videos. the data from four participants had a different point of view on the research questions. this research found three most-watched youtube video types by efl students, such as art and humanities, social sciences, and vlog. also, through watching those types of videos, students improved their english competencies, including listening skills, speaking skills, pronunciation, vocabulary list, and grammar. furthermore, this research found that youtube videos gained students’ confident and new knowledge, proven by how students can solve their problems and get new insight into a topic. although this research has illuminated the use of youtube as the learning tool for students, it also can be useful for the teacher in the classroom. students will know what types of videos can improve their english competences. thus, the teacher has a variety of videos to use in the classroom, depending on which skills the students would like to improve. also, the students will tend to focus on their preferred videos. therefore, future researchers can find out the types of youtube videos often watched by students, and the aspects of english improved through watching youtube videos. they also can apply a quantitative approach as the methodology and measure of students’ english competencies through watching youtube videos. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 71 references abidin, m. j., mohammadi, m., singh, k. k., azman, r., & souriyavongsa, t. (2011). the effectiveness of using songs in youtube to improve vocabulary competence among upper secondary school studies. theory and practice in language studies, 1(11). aguirre, h., deydania, i., lira, h., & melania, h. (2016). effectiveness of the strategies used by the english teacher at yelba maria antúnez institute of ocotal, to teach english vocabulary through songs to 11th grade students, during the 2nd semester 2015 (doctoral dissertation, universidad nacional autónoma de nicaragua, managua). akbari, e., naderi, a., simons, r. j., & pilot, a. (2016). student engagement and foreign language learning through online social networks. asian-pacific journal of second and foreign language education, 1(1), 4. baran, e. (2007). the promises of videoblogging in education. in 2007 annual proceedings. selected papers on the practice of educational communications and technology presented at the annual convention of the association for educational communications and technology sponsored by the research and theory division (vol. 2, no. 30, pp. 10-18). benson, p. (2015, october 01). commenting to learn: evidence of language and intercultural learning in comments on youtube videos. language learning and technology, 19(3), 88-105. berk, r. a. (2009). multimedia teaching with video clips: tv, movies, youtube, and mtvu in the college classroom. international journal of technology in teaching & learning, 5(1). burhayani, e. (2013). the effectiveness of teaching vocabulary through songs to the second year’s students of ikatan keluarga kesejahteraan tentara (ikkt) elementary school west jakarta. in the 2nd international seminar on quality and affordable education (isqae 2013). buzzetto-more, n. a. (2014). an examination of undergraduate student’s perceptions and predilections of the use of youtube in the teaching and learning process. interdisciplinary journal of e-learning and learning objects, 10(1), 17-32. buzzeto-more, n (2015, march). students’ attitudes towards the integration of youtube in online, hybrid, and webassisted courses: an examination of the impact of course modality on perception. journal of online learning and teaching, 11 (1), 55 -72. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k (2011). research method in education. 7th edition. london: routledge. 143-443 creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4 ed.). boston: pearson education. dewitt, d., alias, n., miraj, s., yakuub, m. y., ayob, j., & ishak, r. (2013). the potential of youtube for teaching and learning in the performing arts. 13th international education technology conference (pp. 1118-1126). turkey: elsevier ltd. duffy, p. (2008). engaging the youtube google-eyed generation: strategies for using web 2.0 in teaching and learning. electronic journal of elearning, 6(2), 119-130. elo, s., kääriäinen, m., kanste, o., pölkki, t., utriainen, k., & kyngäs, h. (2014). qualitative content analysis: a focus on trustworthiness. sage open, 4(1), 2158244014522633. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 72 fleck, b. k., beckman, l. m., sterns, j. l., & hussey, h. d. (2014). youtube in the classroom: helpful tips and student perceptions. journal of effective teaching, 14(3), 21-37. jalaluddin, m. (2016). using youtube to enhance speaking skills in esl classroom. english for specific purposes world, 17, 50. june, s., yacoob, a., & kheng, y. k. (2014, july 27). assessing the use of youtube videos and interactive activities a critical thinking stimulator for tertiary students: an action research. international education studies, 56-67. kabooha, r., & elyas, t. (2015). the impacts of using youtube videos on learning vocabulary saudi efl classrooms. proceedings of iceri2015 conference (p. 3525). seville: researchgate. kabooha, r., & elyas, t. (2018, january 11). the effects of youtube in multimedia instruction for vocabulary learning: perception of efl students and teachers. english language teaching, 11(2), 72-81. khan, i. u., ayaz, m., & faheem, m. (2016). the role of social media in development of english language vocabulary at university level. international journal of academic research in business and social science, 6(12), 590604. kousha, k., thelwall, m., & abdoli, m. (2012). the role of online video in research communication: a content analysis of youtube videos coted in academic publications. journal of the american society for information science and technology, 63(9), 1-24. kuśnierek, a. (2016). the role of music and songs in teaching english vocabulary to students. world scientific news, 1(43), 1-55. lai, k. (2013). how are our undergraduates using youtube? a survey on music students’ use of youtube and the library's multimedia collection. music reference services quarterly, 16(4), 199217. lomicka, l., & lord, g. (2016). social networking and language learning. the routledge handbook of language learning and technology, 255-268. lin, c.-h., warschauer, m., & blake, r. (2016, february 1). language learning through social networks: perceptions and reality. language learning & technology, 20(1), 124-147. liu, y. (2010). social media tools as a learning source. journal of educational technology development and exchange, 3 (1), 101-114. merriam, s. b. (1988). the jossey-bass education series, the jossey-bass higher education series, and the jossey-bass social and behavioral science series. case study research in education: a qualitative approach. san francisco, ca, us: jossey-bass. moghavvemi, s., sulaiman, a., jaafar, n. i., & kasem, n. (2018). social media as a complementary learning tool for teaching and learning: the case of youtube. the international journal of management education, 16(1), 37-42. monkhouse, h., & forbes, a. m. (2015). the use of youtube to improve students’ acuity and analytic skills in discussion of issues in music performance. literacy information and computer education journal, 6(3), 19641970. muna, m. s. (2011). utilizing youtube videos to enhance students’ speaking skill. peyghambarian, f., ashraf, h., & fatemi, m. a. (2014). the effect of ''go english. me'' a virtual learning website on lower intermediate iranian efl learners speaking ability. advances in language and literary studies, 5(6), 234-238. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 1, 2019 73 saiful, a., j. (2019) efl teachers’ cognition in the use of youtube vlog in english language teaching. journal of foreign language education and technology. 4(1). 72-91. siddiqui, s., & singh, t. (2016). social media its impact with positive and negative aspects. international journal of computer applications technology and research, 5(2), 71-75. silviyanti, t. m. (2014). looking into efl students' perceptions in listening by using english movie videos on youtube. studies in english language and education, 1(1), 42-58. sundberg, j., & siidoroff, a. (2018). a critical review of english pronunciation teaching on youtube and in mobile applications. wahab, s. a., rose, r. c., & osman, s. u. (2012). defining the concepts of technology and technology transfer: a literature analysis. canadian centre of science and education, 5(1), 61-71. doi:10.5539/ibr.v5n1p61 watkins, j., & wilkins, m. (2011). using youtube in the efl classroom. language education in asia, 2(1), 113119. westenberg, w. (2016). the influence of youtubers on teenagers a descriptive researchaboutthe role youtubers play in the life of their teen age viewers (doctoral dissertation, yüksek lisans tezi, university of twente. wu, k. (2016). youtube marketing: legality of sponsorship and endorsement in advertising. journal of law, business, and ethics 59, 1-46). zaidi, a., awaludin, f. a., karim, r. a., ghani, n. f., rani, m. s., & ibrahim, n. (2018, february 05). university students' perception of youtube usage in (esl) classrooms. international journal of academic research in business and social sciences, 8(2), 541-553. volume 3, no. 2, 2018 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 lanoke intan paradita is a teaching staff at faculty of language education, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she earned her degree from sanata dharma university where she develops her interest in reading and technology. recently, the focuses on her research are about extensive reading, extensive listening/viewing, and the use of technology to support teaching and learning motivating students in l2 reading through dialogue journal: an investigation on students’ perception lanoke intan paradita universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta lanoke.ip@umy.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3233 abstract reading is one of the sources of input that plays a crucial role in foreign language learning, yet low reading motivation remains a challenge. while the premise to motivate reading is by reading itself, efl students would require more attention. this study is to investigate students’ perspective on their practice of writing dialogue journal, which is intended as a tool for a teacher to develop students’ motivation in reading. five interviews with freshman were analyzed to find out what aspects they perceived to be facilitated by the written commentary in the dialogue journal. the analysis revealed that both students’ cognitive and affective aspects were mostly reinforced, thus supporting the development of reading motivation. keywords: dialogue journal, reading motivation, teacher’s commentary, students’ responses =========================================================================== mailto:lanoke.ip@umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3233 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 106 introduction reading motivation is highly correlated with reader’s comprehension or ability to decode the message that the author tries to convey (afflerbach, cho, kim, crassas, & doyle, 2013; schiefele et al., 2012; wigfield, gladstone, & turci, 2016). it has a significant contribution to the development of reading competence which is crucial not only to academic achievement but also to students’ basic competence to function in the society. in many cases, however, students’ interest and motivation to reading, especially l2 reading, does not necessarily reflect their positive belief toward reading (chang & renandya, 2017). the practice of l2 reading in class is possible to be attributable to their low reading motivation. in indonesia, for example, reading has been heavily focused on intensive reading, where careful reading becomes the main objective (cahyono & widiati, 2006). reading is most of the time emphasized on strategies and skills but less to encourage reading for pleasure. students are then not accustomed to view reading as a joyous activity and are not trained to do a voluntary reading and be an independent reader. reading is a matter of doing the set of strategies such as “skimming, scanning, predicting, activating prior knowledge, and guessing new words from textual and contextual clues” (renandya, 2015) which does not necessarily give meaning to the process and activity of reading which lead to reading demotivation. krashen (2011 in renandya, 2015) mentioned that basic reading strategies are “innate,” so students naturally make use of the strategies for both readings in l1 and l2. the strategies, however, may encounter a temporary cognitive load that causes students unable using the strategies. it happens when students have too many unfamiliar words that make them busy to find the meaning of particular unknown vocabularies. it also means that l1 strategies are not directly transferable to l2 reading due to the unfamiliarity to the lexis and insufficient language proficiency (renandya, 2015) especially when added by the foreign system of writing and culture the text brings that augment the anxiety to l2 reading (saito, garza, & horwitz, 1999). also, though strategy-based reading helps students’ comprehension, the effect is not “straightforward” to reading ability and comprehension (renandya, 2015; wigfield et al., 2016). it is considerably minimum, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 107 which makes it less determinant to improve students’ reading comprehension. if comprehension means “the process of making meaning from the text,” then reading aims to an overall understanding of the text instead of obtaining “meaning from isolated words or sentences” (woolley, 2011:15). davis (1989) also mentioned that to draw meaning, the students have to be able to interact with both the textual instructions of the text and students’ life experiences. therefore, the construction of meaning involves both cognition and affect. as previously pointed, for students who have not acquired sufficient linguistic competence, recreating and reconstruction of the meaning of the text will not be easy since they may spend time to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words. for this reason, the text-based approach is the best option for students to train their reading skill. text-based reading activities usually involve, for example, shared-book reading, interactive reading, extensive reading, repeated reading, and extensive reading (renandya, 2015). among the activities that focus on meaning, extensive reading has significantly been researched for its contribution to not only in improving comprehension but also in the development of other language and reading skills as well as reading motivation and attitude (for comprehensive research see the annotated bibliography on www.erfoundation.org). despite the promising benefits of er, its implementation is not without challenges. in the asian context, free voluntary reading is mostly not embedded in the curricular so that “reading as its own reward” (principle number 6 of the 10 principles of extensive reading, day & bamford, 1998) is difficult to instill. compared to learning, students mostly prioritize their “extracurricular activities such as part-time jobs, clubs and social life” so that “simple encouragement will not be effective with a large number, and perhaps the majority, of one's students” (robb, 2002). asian students also culturally do not see “free choice” (as in principle number 3 where students choose what they want to read, day & bamford, 1998) as motivating as it does in western culture. what motivating (intrinsically) for asian students is choices given by “trusted authority figures or peers” (ivengar & lepper, 1999 in mori, 2015). with these contexts and the attitude to l2 reading that has long been practiced by the students, encouraging them to read independently will require more than just giving a grade for any books they have learned. though it may serve as a direct http://www.erfoundation.org/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 108 reward for doing what the teacher expects from the students, he/she will need to make sure that students are doing the reading and get their reading skill and comprehension improved. to do this, teachers may assist students’ in their process of creating meaning from the text. dialogue journal which adapts primarily from reader-response theory serves as an instructional strategy to help students in meaning creation by encouraging and validating their meaningful conversation of the text. a dialogue journal mostly lies in a literary study where conversation such as literature circles, book clubs, and discussion groups are used (werderich, 2006). a written dialogue journal, however, can also be used for a similar purpose but with a more limited participant in the conversation that is the student and the teacher. using this dialogue journal, students do not only write their opinion, thought, and feeling which expresses their comprehension on text, but they also receive replies from teacher which function to guide the dialogue as meaning creation. this study, then, focuses on how the students perceived their practice of writing dialogue journal used as a means to improve their reading motivation. literature review reading motivation the discussion on reading motivation gained more attention when focusing cognition in reading was insufficient to foster (wigfield et al., 2016) and encourage the development of lifelong reader (afflerbach et al., 2013). the engagement and persistence of reading along with the understanding of the benefits and importance of reading in academic and nonacademic success were contributed by students’ motivation to learn. to concern on motivation was then crucial since the high motivation to read correlated with positive self-concept and high-value assignment. on the other hand, low motivation to read associated with poor selfconcept as a reader and low-value assignment (ford, 1992; henk & melnick, 1995; wigfield, 1994 in gambrell, palmer, codling, & mazzoni, 1996) motivation in reading was in general seen as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation model by ryan and deci of which intrinsic motivation referred to “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence”; it is done for pleasure and with joy. while the later was defined as “whenever an activity is done to attain some separable outcome” (ryan & deci, 2000). wigfield and guthrie journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 109 (1995 in mori, 2002) specified the motivation model for reading based on the expectancy-value theory from psychology and was similar to the motivation model from ryan and deci. the reading motivation had three categories, i.e. competence and reading efficacy, achievement values and goals, and social aspects of reading. these aspects, however, were constructed to study l1 reading motivation. mori (2002) attempted to use the model wigfield and guthrie proposed to see l2 reading motivation and found out that there were eight aspects corresponded to the eleven aspects of the expectancy-value theory. the aspects identified were reading efficacy and the importance of reading. while the other aspects, namely reading challenge, reading curiosity, reading involvement, and reading avoidance, were clustered as intrinsic value of reading. the other two that were reading for grades and compliance were ones of extrinsic motivation. she also found the constructs of fl reading motivation was similar to the expectancy-value theory constructs. the expectancy for success was labeled as reading efficacy; intrinsic value was labeled as value of reading; extrinsic utility value was labeled extrinsic utility value of reading, and attainment value was labeled as importance of reading. reading efficacy was individual’s expectation to perform well on a reading task (schiefele et al., 2012) and individual’s confidence in accomplishing different tasks (protacio, 2012; wigfield et al., 2016). value of reading referred to valuing the task because it brings enjoyment and involvement (mori, 2002; schiefele et al., 2012). the extrinsic utility value of reading was the practical or instrumental significance that referred to the usefulness of doing the reading task (schiefele et al., 2012; wigfield et al., 2016). importance of reading referred to the importance to be able to read well (schiefele et al., 2012). dialogue journal for reading the use of dialogue journal for reading was mainly based on the theory of reading responses used in the literary study where the readers connected to the text and construct the meaning to be able to interpret it (hirvela, 1996). the interpretation did not have limitation in its sense of allowing students to express their responses however it was at the same time limited since the responses would be text-based. the meaning-making advocated in this theory was in line with the process of reading in foreign language (davis, 1989) where he inserted that “the production of meaning requires an interaction between the textual instructions and the reader’s own life journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 110 experience.” iser (1978, p. 152 in davis, 1989) mentioned that the process of meaning creation occurred when “something happens to the reader.” reading, therefore, was an active process where continuous reflection made throughout the practice, which involves both cognition by matching schemata and affective because each reader had different experiences used to make meaning of the text. both of these aspects contributed to the general understanding of the text, meaning that, without one, the comprehension was incomplete or not developed. the problem of making meaning in reading in a foreign language, however, occurred when the reader was “not-yetcompetent” to decode the language features (renandya, 2015), the instructions implicitly embedded in the text (davis, 1989), and anxiety (saito et al., 1999). for these reasons, creating safe environment for students to read became essential in their reading development. while text-based reading could address the three challenges, dialogue journal could be used to support and “encourage students’ growth and motivation to read” (werderich, 2006) because they owned individualized instruction guidance from the teacher. in a dialogue journal, the teacher could provide instructional and conversational responses. instructional responses were given when teacher “called for direct scaffolding, focusing on developing students’ literacy understanding” and conversational responses were during teacher’s involvement in a discussion “as an equal”, in which both instructions were to give the students “more freedom to experience the literature” (probst, 1984 in werderich, 2006) and to invite the students to make meaning of the text continuously. thus, not only did it dialogue journal help students in cognitive aspect but also affective aspects of which both were essential for students’ reading comprehension development. werderich (2006) theorized that in the dialogue journal the facilitation given by teacher were classified into four subcategories of response facilitator that were 1) visual aids or teacher’s guide using the format of journaling to help scaffold the process of writing; 2) modelling where teacher gave his or her response to literature and focused on encouraging students’ personal experience with the literature; 3) questioning and requesting in which teacher encouraged students to reflect upon thinking by inviting them to discussion, clarifying their understanding, and redirecting and extending students’ thinking; and 4) feedback where teacher gave reciprocal conversation in order to journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 111 provide students with encouragement, to answer students questions, to offer recommendation and to give compliments. studies on the use of dialogue journal or response journal showed a positive result on students’ motivation in reading (fuhler, 1994; lee, 2013; neugebauer, 2013) and motivation in writing (liao & wong, 2010). most of the studies, however, investigated students of primary schools and only few of them were conducted in higher education or young adolescence students. fuhler (1994), for example, strongly evidenced that dialogue journal was successfully improved students’ motivation in reading because it aided the communication on literature between the students and the teacher. more, it enabled parents to also participate in the development of students’ reading. neugebauer (2013) also examined the use of dialogue journal for primary students but focusing more on how it helped motivating students to read among different settings that were inside and outside class. the study involving higher education students was by lee (2013) who specified the use of e-journal as a means to have activities on other dialogue journals. her study also fell under efl context and successfully achieved her goals and had the students motivated both in reading and writing. to add empirical evidence on the benefits of dialogue journal for motivating students’ reading in tertiary level, the study presented in this article investigated the use of dialogue journal to motivate students’ reading where feedback was highly used and how the students perceived the process of reading and writing the dialogue journal. methodology the study was a descriptive qualitative study aimed at investigating students’ response to the use of dialog journal in their reading class and their perceived motivation development. in a sense, the study revealed the ways the teacher commented and the students’ views on the given comments. research design thematic analysis was used to analyze the data from the interview to identify and report the themes. using a thematic analysis, furthermore, the researcher implied that the study was not based on the specific theoretical framework (braun and clarke, 2006). instead, it was a data-driven process done to explore the participants’ perspective through their narration. this way, themes emerged from the data itself. the steps of doing the thematic analysis were: familiarizing with the data, coding, searching, reviewing, defining journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 112 and naming the themes, and writing up (braun and clarke, 2006). setting and participants the participants of the study were 5 (five) indonesian students of english as a foreign language classroom. they were in the first semester of their undergraduate program in arabic education department at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. the students were not accustomed to doing a reading for pleasure, especially to read english texts. most of the time, the reading practice was done as it was required by the curriculum and was to complete their assessment and evaluation. these respondents were purposely chosen to represent the students who read the most and the least number of books during the outside class reading program. in the study, students self-selected the stories after being introduced to the five-finger rules that was a method to select the reading text according to their english competence, especially vocabulary. reading stories were encouraged because not only that they “provide abundant linguistic resources for students to learn foreign language” (damayanti, 2017) but stories are more compelling and engaging students emotionally (tomlinson & masuhara, 2004 as cited in renandya, 2018). the stories that the students read were those available at www.er-central.com. the website was an openaccess extensive reading material with leveled texts and also graded readers available in the department. the reading activity was a standalone reading course in which students read outside the class time, generally at a convenient time. once in two weeks, the students were asked to write a short response in a diary book. the response included the story and its basic information such as author, title, page, and numbers of words read, length of reading time, and personal rating to the stories. their response to the stories, however, was given more attention. it included a brief description of what the stories they read were about and their comments on how they felt about the stories. the teacher would then provide feedback in the journal prompting more conversation with the students, thus creating a dialog with the students. the journal was graded and contributed to the overall class score. the scoring system of the outside reading class was taken from the total number of words the students read throughout the semester. data collection method(s) and analysis the data were mainly collected from the interview as it allowed researchers to gain perspective which involves participants’ opinion, thoughts, feelings or experience on a particular issue (cohen et al., 2011, p.411). the interview is also useful to generate data in research involving a small number of participants. it enables the researcher to obtain 'rich' data from them through the interaction with the interviewee by giving questions and http://www.er-central.com/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 113 receiving answers. additionally, in a semistructured interview, researchers may encourage the interviewees to have more leeway in exploring their response and elaborating more about their perspectives (robson, 2011). applying the semistructured interview principles, the researchers had numbers of predetermined open-ended questions, and the interviewees’ report acted as prompts to go more in-depth on their perspective, opinion, or feeling. in this study, the interview was conducted to the 5 participants via telephone at their most convenient time. it was done in indonesian (the interviewees’ national language) to encourage them to elaborate their answers quickly (mann, 2016). each interview lasted for about 10-15 minutes. the researcher recorded the interview, transcribed it for data analysis purpose, and translated some part of the conversation supporting the findings into english. findings the teacher provided individualized instructional guidance via the dialog journal that the students submitted according to the schedule. the guidance and commentaries fluctuated between instructional and conversational responses which were given in the form of questioning and requesting, modeling, and giving feedback on what responses the students wrote in the journal. also, the teacher wrote feedback which included praise for students’ reading progress, appreciation for shared ideas and experiences, suggestions for reading problems encountered by students, and recommendations for books. by giving comments, a written conversation between the teacher and the students occurred. in the interview, the teacher frequently asked students’ previous experiences such as ‘have you ever encountered similar experience?’, ‘do you have friends dealing with the same problems?’, students’ prediction and creative idea such as ‘what would you do if…?’, ‘what will you suggest to the main character?’, ‘what do you think will happen next/what may the character do next?’, students’ feeling and opinion about the stories such as ‘how do you feel about the story?’, ‘what do you learn from the story or particular character?’, and ‘do you like certain character?’. the teacher also shared her own reading experiences and used that to develop conversation as well as to suggest books to students. the teacher also asked the students for simple detailed information on the story the students read such as “was karra (the main journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 114 character) alone in the room?” as a way to check if the students read. in general, the students responded to the outside class reading activity positively. they identified themselves to gain benefits from their reading practices, such as improved vocabulary and writing skill. some of them asserted that they became more familiar with the english text so that they read more texts than the others. the students also mentioned that they enjoyed learning the moral values from the stories and tried to internalize it in their personal life. concerning the focus of this study, all of the students were reported to give positive views on the feedback given by the teacher and the interaction they built through the dialog journal. it was indicated by their awareness of the benefits they received from the comments. the benefits had two categories, namely cognitive and affective aspect. the cognitive aspect was suggested by their awareness of their work, as shown in their comments. one of the students mentioned that the feedback was good for him to introspect his weakness. he became more careful in writing the summary. he asserted that: if it is unclear, the teacher will ask what i mean (with my review). so, it trains me to express my thoughts. i cannot be reckless in summarizing the stories. (hr) they were also reported to understand the text better and that the feedback helped them to involve the story deeper. the students stated: i think i can understand the story better now. i have more knowledge. (hr) i think it (the feedback) is good. by reading the feedback from the teacher, i can be more motivated. sometimes, she asks me questions on the story that i don’t understand, so i reread the story to understand it better. (ur) there are many questions (given by the teacher), so i am trained to answer the questions. there are questions of ‘why’ too, so have i to understand why the sentences are written as so. (cr) my teacher asks me as if karra (the character in the story) is real person, and it makes me feel, well, it is like i journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 115 have to really participate (in the story). (az) more, the comments also encouraged the students to express their ideas better, as asserted by the students: i can construct my sentences into, i mean, the way i respond it. i can use english better to respond it. (az) so after my teacher gave me the responses, i can apply it (the writing) based on the texts. (pr) the affective aspect was identified in that positive feedback such as praise that was well received by the students resulting to motivate them to read more stories. they mentioned: i feel i am appreciated, and it motivates me. there is an appreciation. (pr) i am happy. my teacher appreciates my work, though it is not a big project. it motivates me because few teachers are thanking us for doing the task. it is my first experience to get this appreciation from my teacher. and because of this appreciation, i become more enthusiast to add my vocabulary, to read. (hr) when she gives me those comments, i feel like, well, i have a special achievement from the task. (az) the feedback also accommodated the creation of a positive student-teacher relationship through the conversational-like feedback written in the diary. two students were reported to get benefits from this conversation, as seen in the following excerpts: my teacher seems to understand the students, so i express the feeling to her. i tell her about my daily life. it is like talking to our friends. sometimes i tell her my stories. she always gives responses. i am pleased because she gives me advice. if i have problems, she tells me to do this or that. so i feel close to her. (ur) when i read something difficult, and we have to write the report, right. she asks me to read easier stories. she gives me this advice. it is like when i read stories for level 2, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 116 and she advises me to read an easier one. (pr) she says “hi.”, and i am enthusiastic to reply it. it makes me happy because she responds to it. (cr) well, i am happy to get good responses … the books are also interesting to read, so i feel happier. (hr) elaborated and specific feedback was also received positively by the students. one student mentioned that the elaboration of the feedback helped her to see how far she had progressed in her reading. this feedback motivated her to read more, and this student was the one who read many stories compared to the others. she also asserted that she felt glad when the teacher pointed out that she had even read more titles than the teacher did. discussion according to the responses from the students, the dialogue journal had accommodated the teacher to provide individualized instruction guidelines of which instructional/conversational responses by the teacher developed positive responses and enhanced students’ motivation in l2 reading. the teacher utilized the journal to devise the communication with the students where she could facilitate the responses and lead the students to construct meaning from the story (werderich, 2006). it affected not only to students’ improved motivation and attitude in l2 reading but also their comprehension of the story. during the meaning-making through dialogue journal, the teacher was eager to give praise, especially for students who struggled with reading due to the minimum language competence as well as those who had low motivation to read. the compliment was considered as motivating students to either to stop reading or to read more stories. burnett & mandel (2010) mentioned that feedback focusing on students’ effort was preferred and was reported to improve students’ positive perception to the teacher. burnett (2003) further conceptualized the relationship between teacher’s feedback, specifically praise, to students’ self-talk and self-concept. in his study, positive statements by the teacher were indicated to be influential to students’ positive self-talk and self-concept. acknowledging students’ efforts and achievements and praising on that, according to dörnyei (2001:143-144), was motivating for students. the positive journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 117 feedback that was given by noticing and reacting on students’ progress and discussing with students what they could do to read better as part of the motivational teaching strategies. this positive perspective was also supported by the non-general praise and a contextualized feedback from the teacher (burnett & mandel, 2010; hyland & hyland, 2006 in lee, 2008; seker & dincer, 2014). in praising and giving the feedback, the teacher had close attention to individual progress and individual responses written in the journal. likewise, the praise and acknowledgment of achievement helped the students to build their reading efficacy since they were guided to see their accomplishment. the successful experiences would improve their self-concept as a successful reader. other than acknowledging students’ effort in reading and their progress, dialogue journal also helped the teacher to model as an example of a reader who could also provide recommendation to the students. teachers needed to make themselves an example of readers to their students (day & bamford, 2002) because students’ attitude and engagement in reading were highly correlated to teachers’ commitment and investment to their reading practice (loh, 2009). using the dialog journal the teacher could display that she was also a reader by discussing the books that the teacher was currently reading or books that were related to the stories read by the students. the discussion on the books read by the teacher was a proof of what gambrell (1996) called as explicit reading model which was even more useful to work as a model compared to reading together during sustained silent reading that is “more passive model of reader.” by discussing the books and stories, teacher had the opportunity to share her reading experiences that made it more explicit to students. having the teacher as a model reader, students would be more encouraged to sustain their reading practice (werderich, 2006). they would see that the teacher walk the talk, which motivated them to have a similar attitude toward reading as their teacher had (loh, 2009). the students, moreover, were also reported to get driven because the teacher helped them to realize that they could change the story whenever they found it too difficult to read due to the limited english proficiency. the suggestions taken as support to students help the motivation and eagerness to learn. furthermore, the responses given to students had made reciprocal conversation possible to happen. this condition created a safe environment to the students to selfexpress and expanded their ideas, thoughts, questions, and concerns as adolescent journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 118 readers (cole, 2002; werderich, 2006) that was accommodating to the students for their writing skill. more, the conversation in the dialog journal built a positive studentteacher relationship that contributed to the engagement of reading. it allowed students to talk to their teacher who had high expectation on their success in reading of which expressed high expectancy would help to increase students’ reading motivation (gambrell, 1996). besides building motivation through feedback, the dialogue journal enabled the students to obtain questions from the teacher serving as guidance for students to create meaning in the story. the students were guided to “personalize” the stories they read by linking the events on the stories to ones of their own, inviting students to be more engaged with the stories. not only did linking to students’ own experiences increase their reading engagement, but it also assisted the activation of their schemata that redirected and extended their thinking as part of the process of meaning-making. through the dialog journal, students were guided to link the new information they got from the stories to ones they already had. other than connecting to previous experiences and knowledge, schemata were also activated when students made predictions on the story. to enable and habituate the prediction, the teacher often commented on students’ responses and asked them to make a prediction related to the story. the prediction that students made helped themselves to activate their associated background knowledge and assisted their reading to be more efficient (nuttall, 1996 in xerri, 2015). it means that instead of becoming passive, the students continuously constructed new knowledge by building schemata which were not a fixed structure. using teacher’s commentary students modified the meaning along with the process of reading (nuttall, 2005). it denotes that the more practices of reading the students performed, the more opportunity they would integrate their schemata and the current stories they were reading, which in turns, built their reading more efficiently and helped them to gain improved understanding on the text. the process of text understanding was also assisted by the questions from the teacher that were used to clarify students’ understanding. most questions were detailed questions and general information about the stories. it was perceived to be encouraging in the sense of reassuring the student to be more careful in writing the responses and answering the questions. this finding resonated to the reciprocal teaching strategy that was ‘teacher assisted students’ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 119 comprehension’ to improve the students’ performance given through posing questions relevant to the stories (king & johnson, 1999 in todd & tracey, 2006). the questions were mostly to encourage students to refer back to the story and to examine the story in detail. detailed examination on the text was not what extensive reading promoted, nonetheless, the conversation with the teacher to create the sense of achievement and the sense of correctness in understanding the story was potential to motivate the students to reread the story and have a close look on it. experiencing repeated success in comprehending the stories would have their reading enjoyment and motivation improved (mori, 2015; xerri, 2015) and had their perceived value of reading improved. in addition to better text understanding, some of the students also mentioned that they got more accustomed to writing in english as they practiced writing the responses in the journal and in having written communication with the teacher. it means that besides providing themselves with abundant input and having their vocabulary enriched from their reading, the students were also actively engaged in producing the language. the reciprocal conversation in the journal aided the students to co-construct their linguistic knowledge by taking part in the production task (swain, 2006 in birkner, 2016). conclusion this study attempted to investigate students’ perception on the use of dialogue journal to improve students’ reading motivation. the researcher found out that the development reading motivation was supported through the facilitation of teacher’s responses that touched the affective and cognitive aspects of reading. the positive feedback through praise and acknowledgment of efforts and achievement had helped the students to build their selfefficacy that was essential in giving selfconcept of reading. the students were led to believe that they would succeed in the reading task, thus motivating them to read. through the dialogue journal, the teacher could exploit the conversation and provide instructional and conversational responses to scaffold students’ creation of meaning over the text they are reading. the success of meaning-making did not only boost their self-efficacy in reading but also helped the students to have better comprehension. moreover, the students built their value of reading through the involvement of meaning-making by relating their past experiences to the events in the stories and by expressing their thoughts on them. they journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 120 would have a sense of ownership to the story improved, thus engage the students more to read. another finding was to note that students also felt benefited from having their l2 writing enhanced through the practice of dialogue journal. though the dialogue journal successfully motivated the students to read, the researcher implemented this research in one semester in which more extensive results could have occurred if longer time was given. with more data, what specific feedback that impacts more efficiently to students in either cognitive or affective aspect can be further analyzed. it will contribute to enriching the methods the teachers may implement to strengthen students’ reading practice. the researcher also limited the analysis of the study in the sense that students’ extrinsic motivation getting the high grade was not one of the searched aspects. the course requirement could have also motivated the result of their eagerness to participate in dialogue journal and the grade they would like to achieve. references afflerbach, p., cho, b.-y., kim, j.-y., crassas, m. e., & doyle, b. (2013). reading: what else matters besides strategies and skills? the reading teacher, 66(6), 440–448. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1146 birkner, v. a. (2016). revisiting input and output hypotheses in second language learning. asian education studies, 1(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.20849/aes.v1i1.18 braun, v., & clarke, v. (2006). using thematic analysis in psychology. qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77-101. burnett, p. c. (2003). the impact of teacher feedback on student selftalk and self-concept in reading and mathematics. the journal of classroom interaction, 38(1), 11–16. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23874 243 burnett, p. c., & mandel, v. (2010). praise and feedback in the primary classroom: teachers’ and students’ perspectives. australian journal of educational & developmental psychology, 10, 145–154. cahyono, b. y., & widiati, u. (2006). the teaching of efl reading in the indonesian context: the state of the art. teflin journal, 17(1), 36–58. chang, a. c.-s., & renandya, w. a. (2017). current practice of extensive reading in asia: teachers’ perceptions. the reading matrix: an international online journal, 17(1), 40–58. cohen, l., manion, lawrence, & morrison, keith. (2000). research methods in education (5th ed.). london: routledge falmer. cole, j. e. (2002). what motivates students to read? four literacy personalities. the reading teacher, 56(4), 326–336. damayanti, i. l. (2017). from storytelling to story writing: the implementation of reading to learn (r2l) journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 121 pedagogy to teach english as a foreign language in indonesia. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 6(2), 232. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v6i2. 4870 davis, j. n. (1989). the act of reading in the foreign language: pedagogical implications of iser’s reader-response theory. the modern language journal, 73(4), 420. https://doi.org/10.2307/326877 day, r., & bamford, j. (2002). top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. 14(2), 136–147. day, r. r., & bamford, j. (1998). extensive reading in the second language classroom. relc journal, 29(2), 187–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882 9802900211 dörnyei, z. (2001). motivational strategies in the language classroom. retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/id/1042903 7 fuhler, j. c. (1994). response journal: just one more time with feeling. journal of reading, 37(5), 400-405 gambrell, l. b. (1996). creating classroom cultures that foster reading motivation. the reading teacher, 50(1), 14–25. gambrell, l. b., palmer, b. m., codling, r. m., & mazzoni, s. a. (1996). assessing motivation to read. the reading teacher, 49(7), 518–533. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20201 660 hirvela, a. (1996). reader-response theory and elt. elt journal, 50(2), 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/50.2.1 27 lee, h.-c. (2013). the reading response e-journal: an alternative way to engage low-achieving efl students. language teaching research, 17(1), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688 12457539 lee, i. (2008). student reactions to teacher feedback in two hong kong secondary classrooms. journal of second language writing, 17(3), 144– 164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.200 7.12.001 liao, m.-t., & wong, c.-t. (2010). effects of dialogue journals on l2 students’ writing fluency, reflections, anxiety, and motivation. reflections on english language teaching, 9(2), 139–170. loh, j. k. k. (2009). teacher modeling: its impact on an extensive reading program. reading in a foreign language, 21(2), 26. mann, s. (2016). the research interview: reflective practice and reflexivity in research processes. houndmills: palgrave macmillan. mori, s. (2002). redefining motivation to read in a foreign language. reading in a foreign language, 14(2), 91–110. mori, s. (2015). if you build it, they will come: from a “field of dreams” to a more realistic view of extensive reading in an efl context. reading in a foreign language, 27(1), 129– 135. neugebauer, s. r. (2013). a daily diary study of reading motivation inside and outside of school: a dynamic approach to motivation to read. learning and individual differences, 24, 152–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.20 12.10.011 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 122 protacio, m. s. (2012). reading motivation: a focus on english learners. the reading teacher, 66(1), 69–77. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23321 271 renandya, w. a. (2015). reading in a foreign language: what else is important besides skills and strategies? developing indigenous models of english language teaching and assessment, 81–94. renandya, w. a. (2018). more than just words: why reading matters in l2 learning. the 1st international conference on language teaching in indonesia. november 27-29, 2019. universitas muhammadiyah malang. robb, t. (2002). extensive reading in an asian context—an alternative view. reading in a foreign language, 14(2), 146–147. robson, c. & mckartan, k. (2011). real-world research: a resource for users of social research methods in applied settings (4th edition). wiley: italy ryan, r. m., & deci, e. l. (2000). intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999 .1020 saito, y., garza, t. j., & horwitz, e. k. (1999). foreign language reading anxiety. the modern language journal, 83(2), 202–218. https://doi.org/10.1111/00267902.00016 schiefele, u., schaffner, e., möller, j., wigfield, a., nolen, s., & baker, l. (2012). dimensions of reading motivation and their relation to reading behavior and competence. reading research quarterly, 47(4), 427–463. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23317 751 seker, m., & dincer, a. (2014). an insight to students’ perceptions on teacher feedback in second language writing classes. english language teaching, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n2p 73 werderich, d. e. (2016). the teacher’s response process in dialogue journals. reading horizons: a journal of literacy and language arts, 47(1), 28. wigfield, a., gladstone, j. r., & turci, l. (2016). beyond cognition: reading motivation and reading comprehension. child development perspectives, 10(3), 190–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.1218 4 woolley, g. (2011). reading comprehension: assisting children with learning difficulties. new york: springer. xerri, d. (2015). developing effective reading strategies in the esol classroom. language issues, 26(2), 61–64. volume 5, no. 2, 2020 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/651 ahmad fawad kakar has been teaching at the english department of herat university since 2012. he earned his master's degree in tefl from ferdowsi university, iran. kawita sarwari is a current instructor of english at herat university. she holds a master's degree in tesol from indiana university of pennsylvania (2018). her research interests mainly include language teaching pedagogy and efl large classes. mir abdullah miri is a lecturer of english at herat university, afghanistan. he holds a master's degree in tesol, and he has obtained his master's degree through fulbright scholarship from indiana university of pennsylvania. his research interests include second language writing, language pedagogy, and topics related to access and equity. creative teaching in efl classrooms: voices from afghanistan ahmad fawad kakar1), kawita sarwari2), mir abdullah miri3) herat university, afghanistan 1)fawadkakar007@yahoo.com 2)kawita.sarwary@gmail.com 3)miri.abdullah@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5252 mailto:kawita.sarwary@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 156 abstract this qualitative research aims to explore the reported experiences of five afghan efl instructors at the english department, herat university, concerning the creative teaching of english. it specifically investigated the challenges and the opportunities regarding the creative teaching of english that these teachers have encountered in their courses. the researchers employed constructivist perspectives of learning in which learners make meaning out of their previous experiences and knowledge (hill, 2014) as the theoretical framework to analyze and interpret the data. the data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed by using thematic analysis. the findings indicated that creative teaching made the learning process fun. it also revealed that creative teaching increased students’ participation and motivation because it put students in the center of the learning process. the findings also demonstrated that some students showed resistance toward change— moving from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach—when creative teaching was implemented. it also showed that some instructors needed the support of higher education administrators to incorporate creative teaching into their courses as there was a conspicuous lack of professional development needs in this regard. the study argued that the creative teaching of english positively impacted students’ academic achievements. this study could serve as a significant way to introduce information and strategies on creative teaching to l2 instructors in similar contexts as afghanistan. the results provided implications for creative teaching in efl classrooms as well as for the future of teaching english in esl and efl contexts. keywords: academic achievements; creative teaching; fostering creativity; student-centered approach ============================================================================== introduction teaching is not about covering a specific number of pages and delivering instructions to students. it is about considering students’ backgrounds, needs, and interests, resulting in allowing them to take responsibility for their own learning process through activating and developing their creativity and their critical thinking skills (hill, 2014; sarwari, 2018). unfortunately, due to several decades of war and conflict in afghanistan, the education system of the country has been fundamentally destroyed (babury & hayward, 2014). it is particularly apparent in the absence of educational research because the context is underrepresented in the field of english language studies (miri, 2019). besides, there is little or no published literature on afghan english teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching and learning. therefore, the purpose of the current study was to explore the attitudes of five afghan efl teachers toward the creative teaching of english. it specifically investigated the way they perceived this journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 157 concept, the challenges they encountered while applying creative teaching, and their suggestions on how to incorporate creative teaching into their language courses. this study mainly focused on answering the following research questions: 1. how do the five afghan university efl instructors define creative teaching? 2. what are the attitudes of five afghan university efl instructors toward the creative teaching of english? creative teaching means developing instructional strategies and techniques in novel and effective ways to enhance the attention and involvement of students, resulting in making the learning experience of a group of students enjoyable and meaningful (sale, 2015). in this research, we referred to creative teaching as a way of designing teaching strategies and teaching materials in innovative and useful ideas, in which students’ participation is encouraged, and the learners’ learning journey becomes fun and interesting. in other words, the classes need to be student-centered, where students’ active participation results in the successful implementation of creative teaching. the education system in afghanistan is mainly a teacher-centered style, and afghan english language teachers mostly utilize the grammar-translation method in their classes (miri, 2016; sarwari, 2018). students in this situation are frequently treated as the recipients of the knowledge; they are mostly asked to memorize texts and take tests. thus, many teachers who often employ a teachercentered approach to teaching and rely primarily on their textbooks do not prepare students to become life-long learners. if copying from the board or a book and listening to a teacher who speaks for a long time mostly happened in the classrooms in an education context, it indicates creativity does not appear to take place in such classes (sale, 2015). therefore, since the concepts of student-centered approach in general and creative teaching, in particular, are new in the context of afghanistan, there is an urgent need to explore the perceived reported experiences of afghan efl teachers concerning the importance as well as the challenges and possibilities of creative teaching of english in a mainly teachercentered context. the researchers utilized the constructivist perspectives of learning in which learners make meaning out of their previous experiences and knowledge (hill, 2014) as a theoretical framework to analyze journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 158 and interpret the data. according to hill (2014), “learning is affected by the context as well as the beliefs and attitudes of the learner; therefore, effective teaching occurs by stimulating students to ask their own questions” (p. 58). since this study explored the attitudes as well as the experiences of english language instructors of herat university, the constructivist perspectives of learning helped the researchers to seek answers to their research questions. this study serves to introduce information as well as practical strategies for integrating creativity into english language classrooms. english language teachers and students, especially in a similar context as afghanistan, will benefit from the findings of the current study, which reflects the afghan english language instructors’ attitudes and experiences towards creative teaching. both the challenges and the strategies discussed in this study enrich the perspectives towards incorporating creativity into english language classrooms. furthermore, it contributes to the body of literature related to creative teaching, especially in an afghan context, where research-related activities in general and in the field of tesol and applied linguistics, in particular, have been limited. literature review creative teaching csikszentmihalyi (2013) elaborated on the term creativity by describing five steps that help to achieve creativity. (1) preparation: developing a feeling of curiosity in a problematic situation. (2) incubation: insights and ideas blow below the level of consciousness. (3) insight: it is that moment when the problem and puzzle start to take place together. (4) evaluation: it is the time when the person decides if the insight is worth to be pursued. (5) elaboration: the translation of the thoughts into the final work (p. 79). according to doron (2016), creativity is not an inner talent that people are born with; creativity is an ability that can be developed and improved through intervention and practices. in the same vein, root-bernstein et al. (2017) stated that educating people for creativity should mean understanding actively rather than knowing passively. they (2017) added that to understand something, one should be able to re-create and the ability to create needs problem-seeking as well as problem-solving, which requires practice and exercises where best exercises include the emulation of journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 159 creative people and the different types of strategies they implement to find challenges and solve them. according to hong et al. (2017), most people perceive the term creativity as goodness, making innovations as well as promoting and enriching humanity. however, for some others, creativity is indescribable, mysterious, and incomprehensible in which the definitions may vary according to the individuals’ assumptions about the concept of creativity. in regard to creative teaching competence and creativity, sale (2015) mentioned that there are instructors who complain about their students becoming bored and that they do not reveal any interest in particular lessons but they [instructors] continue teaching using the same instructional strategies, and they obtain the same result. nevertheless, when it comes to creative instructors, they act differently in such situations, and what they choose to do differently may have positive effects, resulting in developing creative teaching competence. brewer (2015) asserted that creative teaching has a direct connection to all instructors regardless of their field of specialization. guzdial et al. (2018) perceived creative teaching as encouraging students to utilize their sense of curiosity to investigate, observe, and utilize their imagination to produce new ideas and insights while they work in pairs or small groups. creativity in english language classrooms: advantages and barriers according to ferrari et al. (2009), teaching is an innovative approach that allows students to become active participants and show creativity in their learning before, during, and after class. they (2009) think that warm-up exercises guide the learning process by addressing several pedagogical goals. first, they require a student to do opening work, reading the material before the class, and writing about what they already know about a topic to activate their prior knowledge. second, they require the faculty members to become aware of the students’ prior knowledge about the material that will be presented in class. analysis of warm-up responses can be an effective way to assess students’ knowledge; thus, providing a snapshot of students’ knowledge just before it is needed is essential. finally, addressing this prior knowledge in class as part of the class discussion increases a student’s comprehension of that day’s materials. this method is constructivist, which means encouraging students to be creative and connect to what is being gained and what they journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 160 already know about the topic. it also fosters a feedback cycle of preparation and active involvement recommended by established research in science education. piasecka (2018) viewed english language classrooms as the hub of creativity where students can have an enjoyable and meaningful experience through associating creative practices that encourage them to take risks of utilizing and practicing the new language. according to christie (2016), when both language and aspiration to speak in the foreign language are present, the main goal has to be to motivate the learners to utilize the language spontaneously, which will develop their risk-taking and sense of agency as well as their creativity resulting in successfully producing the language. according to rus (2020), to equip students with the market’s needs and required skills, efl and esl instructors must move to a more holistic approach to language teaching. furthermore, to provide students with the results as they expect and to help them improve their communicative skills, esp instructors have to make significant changes in the way they perceive language instruction and the role of communicative approaches and techniques. to achieve this, rus emphasizes that instructors must seek and implement creative, innovative ideas in their classes. creative teaching motivates students, which is a pivotal element in the process of learning. creativity and novelty have been considered significantly important to the 21stcentury academic society. these are essential not only for economic development but also for the social and individual wellbeing. therefore, creativity and novelty are crucial to be incorporated into language teaching. brewer (2015) mentioned that teachers who implement creative teaching techniques and strategies are independent, creative, and have substantial control over their teaching. besides, creative teaching of english develops students’ knowledge, abilities, thoughtfulness, and attitudes. it also provides learners and practicing teachers with informed and practical support (hagtvedt et al., 2019). although teachers and administrators value creativity in education, there are some barriers and challenges associated with practicing creative teaching. according to wang and kokotsaki (2018), teachers rarely recognize the essential nature of creativity as a process in the everyday context of teaching. furthermore, in most settings, creativity is considered as an extra to the teacher’s teaching responsibilities. the heavy workload on the teachers, such as relying on the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 161 standardized tests, covering course syllabuses and plans, having limited time to practice creative teaching as well as teachers’ lack of knowledge overall restrain the incorporation of creativity into teaching (newton & beverton, 2012; miri, 2018; wang & kokotsaki, 2018). furthermore, large class size and lecture-based methods of teaching limit student-teacher and student-student interactions, which results in students’ absent participation and does not allow creative teaching to happen successfully (sale, 2015; sarwari, 2018). in a similar vein, brewer (2015) stated that with an increase in the number of students, they are likely to become passive. the context can be depicted in the seminar and workshop settings where many people get together; the lecturers mainly rely on the traditional lecture style, and the learners are more of being passive observers than being active participants. it can result in not being allowed to implement and enhance creative teaching competence. fostering creative teaching one of the responsibilities of the instructors is fostering students’ creativity. thus, teachers are supposed to be aware of the practical ways to enhance students’ creativity. there are different ways, such as ‘social modeling, reinforcement, and classroom ecology’ through which students’ creativity can be enhanced. furthermore, a teacher’s behavior plays a pivotal role in fostering students’ creativity (soh, 2017). in a similar vein, wang and kokotsaki (2018) emphasized that the instructors significantly hold an essential role in realizing creativity within their field of teaching and providing their pupils with enough opportunities to foster their creative abilities. furthermore, the findings of their study indicated that the instructors valued the concept of creativity in efl classrooms and considered enhancing students’ creative thoughts as being crucial for both personal development and effective efl learning. moreover, the participants stated that using various art forms and playful activities as well as encouraging a stimulating classroom atmosphere for creative ideas help to facilitate creative teaching. teachers recognize that they are responsible for creating the conditions which can either encourage or discourage students from being creative. tanggaard and hjorth (2017) identified nine stipulations to make students create something on their own. these are part of creative processes, where students’ creative skills can be improved. the design stipulations were “(1) problem solving, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 162 (2) realistic tasks, (3) encrypted data, (4) distinct work procedures and deferred assessment, (5) individual idea generation and ‘brainwriting,’ (6) clear and significant productivity demands, (7) structured analysis, (8) cooperation and (9) feedback, (p. 222). research methods the current study is an exploratory qualitative design. as stated by galletta (2013), “qualitative research is the collection, analysis, and interpretation of comprehensive narrative and visual (i.e., nonnumerical) data to gain insights into a particular phenomenon of interest,” (p. 7). since the current study aimed to explore each instructor in connection to their experiences of creative teaching of english, the qualitative research design helped to better seek the answer to the research questions. the study participants were five instructors of the english department, faculty of languages and literature, herat university. to meet the criteria for this study, the participants were selected based on the following criteria, such as being current instructors of the english department of herat university, having at least five years of teaching at the english department, and willing to share their experiences on creative teaching. the following table includes some vital information about the participants of the current study. table 1. participants’ demographic information name (pseudonym) gender degree teaching experience ahmad male m.a. tesol 5 years sahil male m.a. tesol 12 years arash male m.a. tesol 5 years shakiba female m.a. tesol 10 years wasal female m.a. tesol 7 years the data collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews from five instructors of the english department of herat university were transcribed verbatim and were analyzed thematically. the data were divided into main themes and sub-themes and were coded and analyzed thematically. bazeley (2013) described “coding” as a significant and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 163 purposeful strategy for qualitative analysis. bazeley added that “it provides a means of access to evidence; it is a tool for querying data, for testing assumptions and conclusions” (p. 125). furthermore, the researchers listened to the recordings and went through the themes to maintain the research trustworthiness and ensure the accuracy of the emerging themes. further, the researchers shared the data transcriptions as well as the significant codes with the interviewed participants to make sure the data were accurately reported. results definition of creative teaching competence most of the participants believed that creative teaching competence means implementing various up-to-date teaching techniques and approaches in the class. the findings indicated that bringing variations in the class, exposing students to practices that they have not experienced, and encouraging them to deliver and practice things differently develop creative teaching. besides, some common threads among the teachers’ responses regarding creative teaching include avoiding the routine methods of delivering the content, using different techniques for starting and ending the class and changing the class seating arrangements. the findings also indicated that repetitiousness and monotony discourage creative teaching. for example, one of the participants stated, “if you search on dictionaries, the first word that comes up as a synonym for creativity is inventiveness; therefore, it means the ability to create new ideas and things out of nothing and without using others’ opinions and materials.” according to another participant, creativity in education means inventing the best possible methodologies and then implementing them in an educational context to make it enjoyable for learners, according to the findings. advantages of creative teaching almost all the participants postulated that the creative teaching of english helps students to learn easier and better, resulting in allowing the instructors to offer quality teaching. the findings revealed that there is no disadvantage to teaching creatively. for example, some participants stated that creative teaching encourages teachers to teach differently. in other words, creative teaching requires teachers to bring variations to their classes and avoid the routine way(s) of covering their classes. another participant journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 164 argued that when creativity in teaching comes to mind, teachers have to think of various socio-cultural, institutional, and pedagogical issues to deliver quality education. similarly, another participant noted that creative teachers usually think about designing and developing different up-to-date instructional materials and teaching activities to offer a safe space for students to participate in the class. according to this teacher, this method puts students in the center of the learning process and helps teachers to enjoy the sheer joy of their profession. the findings also showed that some students in a class where creativity is considered might experience variations, such as they are exposed to different types of exercises and practices. it was also found that having a different teaching method brings joy and fun to the class and prevents boredom, specifically in large classes where they are made up of more than 50 students, the majority of whom are demotivated and reluctant to learn. moreover, students’ active participation in the class is one of the major challenges that instructors in afghanistan struggle within their classes, according to the study findings. there are large classes made up of many students, the majority of whom are not motivated and are not eager to their field of study. however, they had to keep it because of the very unfair education system in afghanistan. according to the participants, one of the efficient techniques to motivating and encouraging students’ participation in the language classes in an afghan context is to think of teaching creatively and avoiding the routine and regular way of covering the course content. creative teaching inspires students to participate in different class activities, and it also takes students to a competitive situation where they enjoy their learning atmosphere. developing students’ critical thinking skills is a core concept of the developed countries’ curriculum and education system, according to the participants’ point of view. unfortunately, due to the several decades of war and conflict and a dearth of educational resources, afghanistan’s education system has paid no/less attention to critical thinking and critical pedagogies into the higher education curriculum. besides, lecture-based teaching and relying on memorization is the most popular approach to teaching and learning in afghanistan. seeking the interviewed instructors’ opinions regarding the advantages of creative teaching of english, most of them think that bringing creativity into the classroom helps to develop students’ critical thinking skills. introducing students to a journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 165 variety of exercises and activities and avoiding the regular and routine methods of teaching make students think actively and reach new ideas and perspectives relevant to what they are exposed to and what they experience inside and outside the class. in addition, most of the participants claimed that they support having a creative and dynamic classroom as it helps them offer quality and effective teaching. according to shakiba, teachers have to think of their students’ needs, interests, and goals. providing quality and effective teaching leads students to have an effective academic experience. therefore, creative teachers are more successful in offering effective teaching to their students compared to teachers who prefer routine and regular teaching techniques. several participants also pointed out that creative teaching leads to develop students’ critical thinking and problemsolving skills. for example, one of the participants stated that using various in-class activities not only brings creativity to the class, but it also allows students to use higher-order thinking skills. she added that it provides students with opportunities to have active participation in the class. similarly, another asserted that when teachers attempt to utilize creative teaching activities in their courses, students develop not only their analytical skills but also their collaboration and communication skills since they tend to work together to answer questions in the class. barriers to creative teaching the participants stated that the major issue with implementing creative teaching is large and heterogenous classes, where students are not provided with enough opportunities to take active in-class participation. in other words, classes are mainly teacher-centered, and instructors are not able to implement interactive-based and student-centered approaches. the findings demonstrated that the creative teaching of english requires instructors to practice and perform a wide range of communicative-based techniques. however, when it comes to large and crowded classes, the teachers are not able to reach out to each student and provide them with a chance to express themselves in the process of learning. further, the data revealed that the context is under-resourced, and the required teaching materials to support creative teaching in the language classes are limited. thus, the instructors encounter challenges in terms of accessibility to the resources and tools such as journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 166 technological, printing, and copying to support creative teaching. for example, ahmad stated that the teachers need the support of the administrators in higher education to provide them with enough resources to be able to practice dynamic and creative classes. instructors design activities and tasks where they can engage and motivate students to benefit the class and to foster their creative skills. nonetheless, due to a lack of resources such as printing, copying, and technological tools, they are unable to practice the provided activities. moreover, the participants argued that each instructor is responsible for teaching at least 16 class-meetings per week, and each class is made up of 40-80 students. thus, due to the heavy workload, the teachers are unable to allocate enough time to design tasks and exercises to motivate students to become active learners and enhance their creative skills. one participant stated that she barely has time to think of creating plans through which she can practice creative teaching due to the hectic schedule she has to cover. fostering creative teaching and learning techniques the participants talked about their strategies through which they believe they can foster students’ creativity despite all the challenges they encounter in their classes. the findings revealed that implementing communicative-based approaches to teaching and giving students opportunities to express their opinions, needs, willingness, and feelings are two of the significantly essential and effective strategies which help to enhance students’ creative skills and practice creative teaching competence. ahmad mentioned that to be able to implement creative teaching in language classes, you [instructors] have first to ensure that the students are actively engaged in the learning process, and they acquire the content by connecting and relating to them, not by passively memorizing the material. providing students with a wide range of activities and taking the class out of the conventional way of covering the content could be another strategy to fostering students’ creativity. three participants claimed that introducing students to different types of activities and exercises expose them to thinking critically and differently. in other words, bringing a variety of tasks and activities to the class brings joy, fun, and new concepts and ideas to the classroom. students who experience the class differently from the previous session are more engaged and active compared to those who experience the same journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 167 approaches to teaching throughout their academic journey. the instructors reported that they consider the dynamic and vibrant classes to be significantly important to practicing creative teaching in language classes. according to the participants, problem-solving and question-answer activities are other teaching techniques that help teachers to implement creative teaching and allow learners to develop their critical thinking and creativity skills. one participant stated that raising questions and seeking answers from students make them exchange ideas and knowledge and learn collaboratively, where it enhances students’ creativity and helps to practice creative teaching and learning. besides, several teachers maintained that exposing students to problems and asking them to offer solutions can awaken students’ critical thinking skills, which, in the long term, can result in enhancing their creativity. examples of such kind of activities, according to these participants, include think-pair-share, discussion, reflection, and reader-response. discussion when the teacher participants were asked about their definition of creative teaching, they mainly spoke about introducing students to a wide range of different types of activities and exercises. besides, making changes to the conventional way of teaching, helping students to produce the language and lead their own learning process, and exposing students to activities and tasks, particularly problem-solving tasks that require critical thinking are among the definitions expressed by the interviewees. according to tanggaard and hjorth (2017), students’ creative skills can be enhanced by providing them with problemsolving as well as authentic tasks, individual idea production, vivid and significant productivity demands, and collaboration. in the same vein, wang and kokotsaki (2018) study’s findings of the english language teacher’s conception of creative teaching were divided into themes such as “creative products, cognitive development, creative teaching approaches, and freedom in choice and expression” (p. 115). guzdial et al. (2018) perceived creative teaching as encouraging students to utilize their sense of curiosity to investigate and observe and to utilize their imagination to produce new ideas and insights while they work in pairs or small groups. the teacher participants also spoke about the active participation of students as well as their interest and motivation in classes journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 168 where creative teaching takes place. however, in large classes, which is common in the afghan context (sarwari, 2018), students are mainly passive, and the instructors deliver the instructions through lecture style. this situation makes the implementation of creative teaching approaches challenging. according to brewer (2015), with an increasing number of students, they are likely to become passive. the context can be depicted through the seminar and workshop settings where many people get together in which the lecturers mainly rely on the traditional lecture style, and the learners are passive observers than active participants. regarding the advantages and effectiveness of creative teaching in language classes, almost all the teacher participants agreed that creative teaching encourages students’ participation and develops students’ critical thinking skills and their selfconfidence. the findings of the study regarding the advantages of creative teaching are in line with rus (2020), where the researcher stated that creative teaching motivates students, which is a pivotal element in the process of learning. creativity and novelty have been considered significantly important to the 21st-century academic society. in a similar vein, brewer (2015) mentioned that teachers who implement creative teaching techniques and strategies are independent, creative, and have robust control over their teaching and their students. besides, the creative teaching of english develops students’ knowledge, abilities, thoughtfulness, and attitudes, as well as providing learners and practicing teachers with informed and practical support (hagtvedt et al., 2019). the findings showed that the use of the grammar-translation method in english courses is a common approach in afghanistan. on the other hand, there are large classes made up of more than 50 students. each instructor is supposed to teach a minimum of 16 hours per week. utilizing creative teaching techniques is a challenging task in classes where the lecturer is dominant, and the students are passive receivers of knowledge. moreover, the heavy workload and pressure on the teachers do not let them develop their understanding of developing creative teaching techniques and implement in their classes (newton & beverton, 2012; miri, 2018; wang & kokotsaki, 2018). brewer (2015) stated that teachers are frequently not sure about their knowledge, skills, and experiences of strategies that develop creativity as it is a difficult task for the teachers to recognize opportunities and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 169 chances that help to implement creative teaching techniques. conclusion and implications in a rapidly changing world, education systems need to make fundamental changes to prepare learners to meet the requirements of the job market. both educators and educational authorities should facilitate the process of incorporating creative teaching techniques into education systems. lack of teaching resources, large classes, heavy workload, pressure on the teachers, and lecture-based method of teaching constrain the process of incorporating creative teaching. educators need the support of educational authorities in facilitating their participation in professional development programs as well as in providing enough resources from teaching materials to classrooms and minimizing the size of the large classes. besides, teacher educators need to be equipped with up-to-date creative teaching techniques and strategies. in addition, teachers need to reflect on their teaching practices and conduct research to explore the tribulations and opportunities of creative teaching in connection to their teaching context. because the current study is qualitative research conducted in a conflict zone with unique socio-political features and the data cannot be generalized, the researchers expect that this study serves to raise attention to the importance of creative teaching of english. this study contributes to the body of literature related to incorporating creative teaching into language classrooms, especially in an under-resourced context like afghanistan. future researchers can conduct various research designs on creative teaching, especially experimental design, to explore the effectiveness of this teaching approach. since the findings of this study are limited to the voice of teachers, future researchers can collect voices of students concerning their teachers’ use of creative teaching. references babury, m. o., & hayward, f. m. (2014). afghanistan higher education: the struggle for quality, merit, and transformation. planning for higher education, 42(2), 1. retrieved from https://www.questia.com/library/journal /1g1-381056249/afghanistan-highereducation-the-struggle-for-quality bazeley, p. (2013). qualitative data analysis: practical strategies. sage. brewer, g. (2015). introduction: creativity and education. in gayle brewer & russel hogarth (eds.), creative education, https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1g1-381056249/afghanistan-higher-education-the-struggle-for-quality https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1g1-381056249/afghanistan-higher-education-the-struggle-for-quality https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1g1-381056249/afghanistan-higher-education-the-struggle-for-quality journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 170 teaching, and learning (pp. 1-8). hampshire, uk: palgrave macmillan. christie, c. (2016). speaking spontaneously in the modern foreign languages’ classroom: tools for supporting successful target language conversation. the language learning journal, 44(1), 74-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013 .836751 csikszentmihalyi, m. (2013). creativity: the psychology of discovery and invention. new york, ny: harper perennial. doron, e. (2016). short term intervention model for enhancing divergent thinking among school-aged children. creativity research journal, 28(3), 372-378. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2016 .1195616 ferrari, a., cachia, r., & punie, y. (2009). innovation and creativity in education and training in the eu member state: fostering creative learning and supporting innovative teaching. jrc technical note, 52374, 64. https://doi.org/10.2791/52913 galletta, a. (2013). mastering the semistructured interview and beyond: from research design to analysis and publication. nyu press. guzdial, m., liao, n., & riedl, m. (2018). co-creative level design via machine learning. retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.09212.pdf hagtvedt, l. p., dossinger, k., harrison, s. h., & huang, l. (2019). curiosity made the cat more creative: specific curiosity as a driver of creativity. organizational behavior and human decision processes, 150, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.1 0.007 hill, l. h. (2014). graduate students’ perspectives on effective teaching. adult learning, 25(2), 57-65. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f104515951 4522433 hong, e., part, r., & rowell, l. (2017). children’s and teachers’ conceptions of creativity: contradictions and implications in classroom instruction. in creative contradictions in education (pp. 303-331). springer: cham. miri, m. a. (2016). integrating writing activities in the english department literature courses at an afghan university (master’s thesis). the indiana university of pennsylvania. miri, m. a. (2019). the impact of the english language in afghanistan: an autoethnography. international journal of tesol and learning, 8(1), 1–14. retrieved from http://untestedideas.net/journal_article. php?jid=ijt201903&vol=8&issue=1 miri, m. a., & joia, j. (2018). writing anxiety in an afghan efl setting: voices from five afghan students. journal of foreign language teaching and learning, 3(1)14-29. https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3125 newton, l., & beverton, s. (2012). preservice teachers’ conceptions of creativity in elementary school english. thinking skills and creativity, 7(3), 165-176. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013.836751 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013.836751 https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2016.1195616 https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2016.1195616 https://doi.org/10.2791/52913 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.09212.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.10.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.10.007 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1045159514522433 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1045159514522433 http://untestedideas.net/journal_article.php?jid=ijt201903&vol=8&issue=1 http://untestedideas.net/journal_article.php?jid=ijt201903&vol=8&issue=1 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3125 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 171 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2012.02.00 2 piasecka, l. (2018). tinker, tailor: creativity in foreign language learning and teaching. in challenges of second and foreign language education in a globalized world (pp. 89-106). springer: cham. root-bernstein, robert, root-bernstein, & michele. (2017). people, passions, problems: the role of creative exemplars in teaching for creativity. in ronald a. beghetto & bharath sriraman (eds.), creative contradictions in education (pp. 143-164). new york, ny: springer. rus, d. (2020). creative methodologies in teaching english for engineering students. procedia manufacturing, 46, 337343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2020. 03.049 sale, d. (2015). creative teaching: an evidencebased approach. new york, ny: springer. sarwari, k. (2018). effective teaching of english in large multilevel under-resourced classes at an afghan public university. (thesis, indiana university of pennsylvania). soh, k. (2017). fostering student creativity through teacher behaviors. thinking skills and creativity, 23, 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.11.00 2 tanggaard, l., & hjorth, r. (2017). promoting abduction–a teaching experiment on creative learning processes in a high school classroom context. in ronald a. beghetto & bharath sriraman (eds.), creative contradictions in education (pp. 221-242). springer. wang, l., & kokotsaki, d. (2018). primary school teachers’ conceptions of creativity in teaching english as a foreign language (efl) in china. thinking skills and creativity, 29, 115-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.06.00 2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2012.02.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2012.02.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2020.03.049 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2020.03.049 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.11.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.11.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.06.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.06.002 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 volume 4, no. 2, 2019 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/581 1putri alfa sobri gabrina is an english teacher at english first, gading serpong, tangerang. she received her bachelor degree from universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. in 2018, she had an opportunity to deliver a paper at the 16th asia tefl conference in macau, china. her interests lie in psycholinguistic, second language acquisition and the use of technology in language learning. 2fitria rahmawati received her bachelor degree from universitas negeri jakarta (unj) in 2009. then in early 2014, she earned her master degree in english language studies from sanata dharma university, yogyakarta (usd). she has been teaching at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta since 2013 joining the english education department as a lecturer. her teaching areas include academic reading and writing, reading and writing for career development, listening and exploring the practice of edmodo use in efl classrooms: its beneficial features and activities 1putri alfa sobri gabrina, 2fitria rahmawati 1english first, tangerang 2universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta 1putrialfasobrigabrina@gmail.com 2fitriarahmawati@umy.ac.id doi: 10.18196/ftl.4241 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 107 speaking for formal setting, digital technology in education, and research methodology. additionally, her current research interests are in educational technology, blended learning implementation, and teaching english for listening and speaking skills. abstract the use of a learning management system (lms) in education, including in english as foreign language classrooms, is widely deliberated ever since the appearance of web 2.0 technology. its use as a virtual classroom works as an alternative approach of teaching that allows teachers and students to perform various tasks and functions. for students, it eases them to both learn and practice the target language. this paper aims to report insights on how efl students perceived the use of lms, especially edmodo. the researchers gathered data by interviewing four efl students of a private islamic university in yogyakarta. the results clarify their impression towards edmodo depicted in two main aspects; the features and activities when utilizing edmodo. the participants reported a positive belief in the integration of edmodo in language learning. the research also found that students' backpacks, quizzes, assignments, posts, and comments were useful features that assist them. besides, the participants explained how they integrated edmodo in the efl classroom, including undertaking quizzes, submitting the assignment, practicing writing, speaking, reading, and listening. this study suggested that edmodo is a valuable tool for learning languages. keywords: efl classroom, lms, edmodo, e-learning, features ============================================================================== introduction many studies and researchers investigated the perception of the students towards edmodo in the efl learning context. a result of the study that is conducted by ekmekci (2016) at ondokuz mayıs university, turkey, investigated students’ perceptions towards edmodo as an assessment tool found a positive result. the result of the study showed that students of ondokus mayıs university had a good perspective towards edmodo. students found that learning with edmodo was much fun. they also believed that learning through edmodo could decrease journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 108 their anxiety and increase their motivation to learn a language. similar to this, a study investigating students' preference for using edmodo as a learning platform found a good perception of edmodo among students. the students of a private university in selangor, malaysia, agreed that edmodo helped submit assignments, and they also agreed that the badge feature edmodo provided motivated them to perform better (balasubramanian, jaykumar, & fukey, 2014). moreover, a study conducted at centro escolar university, philippine, investigated the perception of the students on the effectiveness of edmodo. it found that edmodo could help students improve their learning (enriquez, 2014). this finding was also similar to what al-kathiri (2014) found in his study. an experimental study aimed to know the attitude found that edmodo is useful for acquiring english vocabulary, improving spelling and grammar, developing listening skills, and sharing with teachers and peers. additionally, the interesting features that edmodo offered encouraged students to participate in the learning process. hence, students felt that learning through edmodo could help them to learn and understand the material. correspondingly, a study conducted at thai university also found that the features that edmodo provided could motivate students to learn since they could get the authentic material and access it in an unlimited period independently (manowong, 2015). this study was in line with the finding that found in malaysia and saudi. the findings of the study conducted in malaysia and saudi revealed that edmodo was perceived as an online resource or digital library by the student for the students who could access the material outside the classroom (balasubramanian et al., 2014; alkathiri, 2014). hence, based on those research reports, the positive perceptions the students held indicated that edmodo was an effective additional tool in the classroom due to its features and benefits. additionally, qualitative research conducted by ruhunusa (2016) in universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta investigated the perception of the students towards the use of edmodo, facilitating writing skills, and it found positive findings. a study with three different objectives: features, significance, and the challenge of edmodo on writing skill context found that students agreed on some features of edmodo, helping them to develop their writing skills. this study also found that journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 109 the significant of edmodo on facilitating student writing skill was edmodo improving student confident in writing well-structured text, and training students to write academically. edmodo works as an educational institution for its benefits. edmodo is ideal for teaching and learning either as a major tool, semi-major as its use in a web-enhanced course with mix mode learning, or as a supplementary tool as its use in the webenhanced classroom (as a supplement to faceto-face). according to arroyo (2012), edmodo as a tool promotes student collaborations and knowledge construction. edmodo gives benefits to a practice of teaching and learning process. according to hourdequin (2014), the access that edmodo has provided could motivate students to learn. additionally, bravo and magrovejo (2016) found in their study that edmodo helped the students develop their writing and listening skills. due to the various findings of the benefits of edmodo, this study aims to investigate the significances of edmodo in the efl context based on the students’ perception. in particular, this study investigates which features of edmodo students find beneficial to assist them in learning the english language. investigating the features of edmodo is important since it determines how edmodo supports the learning and teaching process. also, this study explores what activities experienced by the students in learning english with edmodo in the efl classroom to give some insight into the teacher in applying interesting activities based on students’ preferences. in general, two main research questions formed for this study are as follows. 1. which features of edmodo do students find it beneficial to assist them in learning english? 2. what activities do the students experience in learning english with edmodo in the efl classroom? web-based learning in efl learning contexts some institutions have acknowledged the advantages of e-learning or web-based learning in education, including in efl learning contexts. therefore, to provide an effective and efficient learning process, some institutions have been integrating web-based learning into the learning process. also, there are some possible delivery models of applying web-based instruction into the learning process, some of which are as proposed by berge, collins, & dougherty (2000), namely journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 110 web-based instruction, web-enhanced course (mixed mode), and web-enhanced course (a supplement to face to face). the first delivery mode is a web-based instruction. sener (2015) defines web-based instruction as an instruction in the learning process in which all the activities are online. thus, the other name of this mode is a fully online course. in an online course or webbased instruction, there is no face to face instruction since all the materials, feedback, and the entire things related to learning are online. another mode is known as a webenhanced course (a mixed-mode instruction). this model refers to combining the use of the web with the face to face instruction. another term for this mode is called a blended course or hybrid (afif, 2014). according to bruner (2007), a hybrid is a term to describe a combination of classroom meetings and online courses. the last mode is using the web as a supplementary for face to face instruction called a web-enhanced course (a supplement to face to face instruction). in this delivery model, a web-based is to support classroom activities (berge et al., 2000). besides, sener (2015) defines this mode as an online course that only complements class sessions. in practice, an online course only plays a minor role in the learning process since the major role of this model is classroom or face to face learning. accordingly, the online course works as a supplementary tool. the edmodo and its features a platform such as edmodo is needed to support the face to face learning and to implement web-based learning. manowong (2015) believes that edmodo is a supportive tool that creates an effective learning environment. also, according to the research conducted by wheeler and jarboe (2001), they found that students who attended both traditional classes and online classes fair better compared to those who attend entirely traditional classes or entirely online classes (as cited schmidt, 2002). on the implementation of web-based learning with edmodo, the course design included is providing links or websites to visit, providing online reading, providing a classroom for face to face interaction, document distribution, and source information (berge et al., 2000). additionally, pop (2013) adds that the activities done with edmodo are sharing the link, submitting an assignment, sharing material and information. the various features that edmodo offered have successfully attracted teachers to use edmodo as a tool to support the teaching journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 111 and learning process. the features of edmodo can overcome shyness and motivate the students to participate in classroom activity (al-kathiri, 2014). additionally, cruz (2013) argues that using edmodo in the classroom could enhance student engagement; hence students could actively participate in every activity in the classroom (as cited in manowong, 2011). mokhtar (2016) also mentions the importance of using edmodo in the classroom. he states that edmodo could increase students’ collaboration in the classroom. abad (2016) also states that edmodo helps the teacher to conduct a virtual classroom allowing students to access the material and learn autonomously. in a word, the features that edmodo provides helps both teachers and students to collaborate beyond the classroom wall. some of the features provided by edmodo include group feature, teacher library, student backpack, assignment feature, quiz feature, badge feature, planner feature, post feature, calendar feature, alert feature, polling feature, and grade book. the use of edmodo in the learning process edmodo offers convenient features both for teachers and students. witherspoon (2011) perceives edmodo as a learning management system (lms) which facilitate students and teacher to collaborate through an online classroom. the activities done in web-based learning with edmodo include storing and sharing content, conducting and doing quizzes, sending and submitting an assignment, creating and voting polls, giving and getting feedback, giving and getting a grade, giving and getting a badge, and also commenting and discussing the lesson topic. from those activities, teachers can post quizzes, assignments, discussion topics, give feedback, assign grades, send links, store and share content, do pooling, and award badges and maintain a class calendar. while for students, they can respond and discuss the topics assigned by the teacher within the edmodo site. students can also interact with classmates through the site, even though not privately. it eases teachers to observe their students’ performance and progress (abad, 2016). besides, integrating edmodo in the learning process is also beneficial for the students to submit their tasks virtually, reducing the numbers of used papers, and most importantly, minimizes the probability of lost submitted works. teachers can also assess and grade their students’ tasks through the site. not only for the teachers and the students, but edmodo also provides parents journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 112 with the account so that parents can see their children's progress. methodology the researchers collected the data through an interview to get in-depth information from the participants regarding the use of edmodo and to answer the research question of this study. cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) define interviews as a “flexible tool for data collection, enabling multi-sensory channels to use: verbal, nonverbal, spoken and heard” (p. 409). specifically, the standardized open-ended interview was to help an interview guideline prepared before the interview to avoid missing responses and to promote the organization of the data patton as cited in cohen et al., 2011). during the interview, the participants received questions about how they felt when using edmodo and how they perceived the features and activity in edmodo. moreover, the researchers also asked short questions about demographic information of the participants at the very beginning of the interview process. research site. this study took place at the english education department (eled) of an islamic private university in yogyakarta. the institution has been addressing the advancement of technology in education. it provides some courses which prepare its students to be able to utilize and implement educational technology for their future career. also, the lecturers have used edmodo both as the supplementary tool and as a mixed-mode instruction during the learning activity. therefore, this setting was a suitable place to explore the perception of the students towards the use of edmodo. the researcher conducted this study during the odd semester of the academic year of 2017/2018. research participants. four students from batch 2014 of that department were selected to be the participants of the study. before the interview, each participant was aware that the data collected were to use for research purposes only. thus, a pseudonym was to keep the participants’ identities. the students from that batch were selected as they had enrolled themselves in all courses provided by the technology related to educational technology, which was in their fifth semester. thus, the researchers expected that the students could give rich information about their perception of the use of edmodo in language teaching. those students had also already created not only the edmodo students’ account but also the teacher’s account as in one of the courses offered. the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 113 students were required to develop learning materials and activities for an online meeting as if they were an english teacher. also, the researchers chose the participants who actively participated in every activity in edmodo. hence, by having those students, the participants could give rich information about the learning activity and the feature provided by edmodo since they had experienced learning with edmodo from both teacher and student perspective. data analysis. after the researchers conducted the interview, they transcribed and did member checking. the participants clarified the interview transcripts. the researchers asked the participants to check whether the transcriptions of the data were relevant and valid to what the participants said during the interview. the participants confirmed that the transcripts were relevant and provided the information shared during the interview. next, the researchers proceeded the data by giving the code or label to every finding and analyzed it by doing content analysis. the researchers categorized similar findings into one theme. the final step was reporting the finding and discussion of the study. findings beneficial features of edmodo that assisted language learning the data gathered showed several facilities of edmodo that assisted students in learning. student backpack, quiz feature, assignment feature, post, and comment were the features mentioned by the participants and considered as useful. the detail description of the finding is below. student backpack. one of the features of edmodo that most students found as a useful feature of edmodo was student backpack. gabby mentioned that “we also used the feature uhm... i forget what the name of that feature. nevertheless, with that feature, we could find folders of the material that had been shared in edmodo to access the material (gabby)”. she also added that “i think the feature eased the students, especially the students who were having an online learning activity. we felt assisted with this feature because all the materials were there in edmodo. so, we could access the material whenever we wanted to (gabby).” quiz feature. the quiz was one of the core features of edmodo that most people find advantageous. john and aurel mentioned the feature utilized when journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 114 integrating edmodo was the quiz. john stated that “we also used the quiz or test feature there. i forget the name, but yeah, we could both do and created quizzes like multiple choice and many things (john)”. in the same way, aurel acknowledged how the feature eased them in learning. she revealed that “i think the features of edmodo eased the student especially when doing the quiz because we did not need to rewrite the entire question, yet we could just answer all the questions directly (aurel).” assignment feature. another feature that students utilized when integrating edmodo was assignment feature. all participants mentioned assignments as a feature they used, and two out of four agreed to name this feature as the most beneficial one. they admitted that the feature helped them both in submitting the assignments given and also managing the deadline. the first participant, aurel, mentioned, “it eased the student because we did not need to submit the assignment to campus, but we could just submit it there (in edmodo). it also eased the students because we could know the due date, and we could measure whether we submit it late or on time (aurel)”. in the same way, gabby acknowledged that the assignment feature helped them in managing the due date. during the interview, she revealed that “there was also another feature to submit the assignment. and the coolest thing about it was, there will be a time limit there, so if you submit it before the deadline, there would be a note saying: on time (gabby)”. also, she added that the students still able to un-submit the assignment to revise it and re-submit it again if time allows. gabby said, “and if we were not really sure about the task, we could revise it by un-submitting the assignment and then re-submit it again.” post and comment features. edmodo did not only allow the students to submit the assignment, but it also facilitated students to communicate and share both ideas and material through the post and comment features. post was a feature that most people familiar with as three out of four participants mentioned post and comment as a feature that they operated in edmodo as sarah, the second participant of the study said: “i do not really remember the name of the feature, but what i am sure about, that feature was used to like post photo, notes and anything (sarah).” she also added that the post feature was the journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 115 most useful one as she stated that “the most helpful one for me was the feature in which we could upload and attach anything (post) because this feature allowed us to attach any files. for example, the teacher posted and attached video link for us to watch or pdf files to read. so, we did not just read the instruction, but at the same time, we also could get another material (sarah)”. similarly, john, the fourth participant, also supported the idea. he implied that “we always used sharing feature there, again, i don’t know the name. but we could post something on that feature, and we also could add links or videos there. at the same time, we also could discuss something on the comment feature available there (john)”. further, he also admitted that this feature eased students to communicate as he said, “this feature helped the student to communicate not only with teacher but also with the other students (john).” in the same way, aurel implicitly revealed her experience using post and comment features. she stated that “we did a writing exercise by delivering our opinion on a topic discussion given by simply dropping it on the comment box (aurel).” the activities experienced by the students in learning english with edmodo in the efl classroom students experienced several activities when using edmodo. the study reported that the implementation of edmodo in the efl classroom allowed students to practice not only receptive skills such as reading and listening but also productive skills, namely writing and speaking. also, there were some other activities conducted by the students with edmodo, including undertaking an online quiz and submitting an assignment. the followings are the details of the finding regarding the activities experienced by the participants in learning english with edmodo. undertaking an online quiz. the study found that undertaking assessment was one of the activities that students experienced when blending edmodo in the efl classroom. three out of four participants stated that participating in online assessment, including undertaking online quiz edmodo was the task they had done in the classroom. aurel implied that “another one was undertaking quizzes. it was like the teacher to post a quiz on edmodo, and we had to do it under several journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 116 time limit given. so, we needed to be really prompted (aurel)”. in the same way, sarah also mentioned: “there were many activities that we do in edmodo including participating in an online quiz and submitting the assignment (sarah).” also, john supported this idea by stating, “i forget the name (of the feature), but yeah, we could both do and create a quiz like multiple choice and many things there (john).” submitting an assignment. the assignment feature that edmodo provided allows the teacher and student to organize the task. as retrieved from www.edmodo.com, the function of the feature is to help both teacher and student to manage the assignment as the teacher could create the task and directly give feedback there while students could submit the task given easily. as a result, submitting an assignment becomes the activity that students most encountered. in particular, all participants in the study reported submitting the task as one of the activities they did when utilizing edmodo. the first and the third participant, aurel and gabby implicitly mentioned task submission activity in edmodo when being asked about the features. aurel mentioned that “it eased the student (to submit the task) because we did not need to submit the assignment to campus, but we could just submit it there (in edmodo) (aurel)” while gabby stated that “there was also another feature to submit the assignment. and the coolest thing about it was, there will be a time limit there, so if you submit it before the deadline, there will be a note saying: on time (gabby)”. on the other hand, other participants, john and sarah, stated the ide explicitly. john stated that “the activities that i have experienced in edmodo were uhm... like submit the assignment, discussion and do listening task (john)” while sarah supported it by saying “there were many activities that we do in edmodo including participating in an online quiz and submitting the assignment (sarah).” practicing productive skills. not only did edmodo support students in learning, but the participants also reported edmodo as a supplementary tool that allowed them to practice several language skills such as writing and speaking. three out of four participants reported that edmodo supported them in practicing writing skills. participants argued that the features facilitated them to practice writing http://www.edmodo.com/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 117 and speaking. the comment features allow them to practice their writing skills such as diction and structure while speaking skills. students stated that edmodo allows them to practice their speaking skills. they implied they could practice their fluency and accuracy in speaking by recording it. the detail related to this finding is below. practicing writing skill through discussion. besides submitting the assignment, edmodo facilitated students to be involved in classroom discussions. three out of four participants of the study mentioned that they practiced writing skills from discussion activity. the first participant, aurel, reported that “edmodo allows students to practice their writing skills. for instance, before responding to someone else’s post or opinion, we need to make sure the grammar and the word we use are correct”. sarah and gabby also mentioned such a statement. they mentioned that edmodo facilitates us to practice expressing an opinion in written text. similarly, stroud (2010) stated that edmodo improves students’ writing skills, specifically in their organizational skills and the ability to revise. in a word, edmodo facilitates the student to practice and improve their writing skills. practice speaking skills. besides writing, students also revealed that they practiced speaking skills. edmodo perceived as a tool that also could enhance student communicative skills and also facilitate students to practice speaking. aurel mentioned, “the subject in which i used edmodo was speaking and writing class. i had to record my voice when i am speaking, so yeah, i did a lot of practice in speaking before recording and uploading it to edmodo (aurel)”. similarly, gabby stated that “as for speaking, we had a task that got us to practice talking for several minutes and recorded them using another app. then, we upload the audio file to edmodo (gabby)”. further, this study also found that edmodo supports students to improve their pronunciation and their accuracy in speaking. such a finding was mentioned by aurel, who stated: “i think a good think about this recording task is that we could practice how to pronounce the word correctly and also check our structure before recording it (aurel).” a similar finding also discovered in an experimental study conducted in palembang. the study discovered a significant difference in the mean score between students’ pre-test and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 118 post-test. such findings indicated that edmodo promotes students speaking skills (tambunan, c. y., rosmalina, i., & erlina, e. (2017)). in general, students perceived edmodo as a tool that supports them to practice and to enhance their speaking skills. practicing receptive skills. the features embedded in edmodo allows the users to share material seemed to benefit students in practicing their receptive skills like reading and listening skills. all the evidence related to this finding is below. practicing reading skills. the features of edmodo allows the teacher to be more creative in teaching not to mention in teaching reading perceived as an uninteresting activity. santoso, s. i., rochsantiningsih, d., & sujoko, s. (2014) stated that the feature of edmodo makes reading more interesting and fun for students perceived edmodo as a new teaching aid. aurel also reveals a similar idea, and gabby mentioned that “we also can practice reading from the material that teacher gave like pdf or we also can read an article from the link that teacher shared related to the subject that we are learning (aurel).” additionally, gabby added that not only edmodo facilitated reading practice, but it also supported students reading comprehension. gabby mentioned, “besides reading the passage that the teacher posted, our understanding of the reading also will be tested by the quiz or questions following the reading (gabby).” likewise, an experimental student conducted by santoso et al. (2014) encountered a significant improvement in students' post-test. practicing listening skills. besides reading, participants also agreed to call edmodo as a tool to practice listening skills. gabby reported clearly how she practiced listening skills and how she got the audio. she stated that “we practice listening by listening to the audio or video that teacher attached (gabby).” the idea was supported by aurel, who mentioned: “besides writing, we also, of course, can practice a listening skill from the audio attached by the teacher, and then we need to answer questions related to the audio (aurel).” discussion this research discovered two major findings. the first finding reported the features considered as advantageous in assisting students in learning english, while another finding illustrated the students' journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 119 experience in learning english with edmodo. beneficial features of edmodo that assist language learning. based on the research conducted, the study discovered several features of edmodo that students found advantageous to help them in learning the language. the first feature was the student backpack. students perceived this feature as prosperous since it assisted them in learning specifically in accessing the materials. the definition of student backpack feature retrieved from www.edmodo.com supported this finding. the student backpack serves as a digital repository for students where they could manage the files they have collected, or they have shared with the groups. further, students also can organize their content by creating folders. abad (2016) also mentions the prosperity of the feature. he states that “students can instantly access their files 24/7 through their cloud-based “library” (p. 30). a study conducted by al-kathiri in 2014 also supported the finding of the study. alkathiri (2014) found that edmodo serves as students’ online sources for the students to open the material beyond the classroom. to sum up, participants of this study identified student backpack as prosperous, for it facilitates them to learn specifically to access materials beyond the classroom. it was not only a student backpack recognized as a language learning facilitating tool, but the quizzes feature also identified as a useful item of edmodo — serving as a core feature of edmodo, quizzes defined as a tool that assists both students and teacher in managing the assessment. this feature supported online assessment with five different question types such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, matching, and short answer. this advancement is such a justification for how an online quiz in edmodo is appealing for most of the students. two out of the participants of this study revealed that undertaking assessment in edmodo was easier to compare than traditional ones. one participant illustrated that having an online assessment in edmodo was exciting and practical, for they did not have to rewrite the questions given. in the same way, a study conducted by ekmekci (2016) also discovered that 53 out of 63 students preferred online assessment with edmodo compared to common assessment, for it was exciting and less anxious. in conclusion, the http://www.edmodo.com/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 120 participants of this study had a positive attitude towards this feature. another feature of edmodo identified as useful was the assignment feature. all participants of the study agreed to call this feature as useful one as it helped them to organize their assignments easily. participants also added that such a feature promoted them in completing the task, for they could do the assignment and submit it wherever places they were. further, the time limitation embedded in this feature also benefited students in managing their homework. similarly, a study conducted in selangor, malaysia, in (2014) also reported that the students had a positive attitude toward assignment features. the participants reported that assignment submission facilities eased students to complete and submit the task (balasubramanian, jaykumar, & fukey, 2014). different from the assignment submission feature, post and comment tools were assisting features of edmodo. the feature facilitating the students to attach any kinds of files, including file, audio, video, as well as link, made this feature the most used item in edmodo. the three out of four participants of the study utilized this post and comment feature when integrating edmodo. additionally, students also revealed that such facilities eased them to both share material and exchange information. four participants even clearly mentioned that post and comment feature facilitated communication between teacher and student or student to student. such discovery is in line with a study administered in thailand that found the item in edmodo improving student-teacher communication (thongmak, 2013). the activities experienced by the students in learning english with edmodo in the efl classroom. the data gathered showed that there are several activities that students experienced when integrating edmodo in the classroom. one of them was undertaking an online quiz in edmodo. the quiz feature available in edmodo allowed students to have an online assessment experience. besides, it also eased the teacher to administer the test because it will be scored automatically (edmodo, nd). additionally, conducting online quizzes also benefited the teacher, for it is less timeconsuming compared to pen and paper assessments (durak, 2017). journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 121 as the availability of assignment submission feature, the participants also experienced easy access to submit the task. all participants of the study encountered this activity when integrating edmodo either in the classroom or outside the classroom. the participants also mentioned that the due date set in edmodo raises their responsibility to complete the task as well as allows them to manage the assignments easily. equally important, the data also reported that edmodo allowed students to practice both productive (writing and speaking) and receptive skills (listening and reading). some participants of the study revealed that they practiced writing skills through discussion. they also illustrated that they were to deliver their idea on the several topics given in a comment box available in edmodo. the finding above justifies that edmodo did not only ease the students and teachers to manage the homework or task, yet it also facilitated students to have direct communication. the “social learning” title that edmodo has justified by its communicative features such as posting and comment box that attracts students to actively participate in classroom activity, including discussion as a bridge to practice writing. abad (2016) argues that social media like-features that edmodo has, such as posting, comment and chat room, fascinate students to participate in the classroom activity. thien (2013) also states that edmodo facilitates learning reflection and promotes collaboration, specifical discussion with teachers and peers (as cited in oyelere, paliktzoglou, & suhonen, (2016). further, a study found that edmodo could develop students’ writing skills (bravo & magrovejo, 2016; gay & sofyan, 2017). thus, edmodo facilitates students to experience and practice writing skills. on the other hand, it was beyond the researchers’ expectation that this research found that edmodo could facilitate speaking as edmodo does not have a feature specified for speaking practice. however, posting features that support different file types allow students to use another link to record them while speaking and upload it as an audio file. thus, students can practice their communicative skills, including speaking. in addition to productive skills, the study also resulted that edmodo facilitates receptive skills, including reading and listening. two participants explained how journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 122 they experience reading. the student backpack feature served as a source for them to get material and practice reading. accordingly, edmodo facilitated students to practice reading. looi & yusop (2011) define edmodo as a potential tool to teach reading. features that edmodo provided, such as posting that allows everyone to share any file, justify its potential in assisting students with their reading. further, a study conducted in saudi by alkathiri (2014) found that edmodo supported students to enjoy and appreciate their reading experience. to sum up, edmodo promoted students to experience in reading. similar to reading, students also practiced listening skills in edmodo. the participant explained that the teacher attached the material (audio or video) through the post feature. such finding is in line with the data found by al-kathiri in 2014. he found that edmodo promotes students’ vocabulary mastery, develops listening skills as well as improves grammar and spelling (al-kathiri, 2014). thus, edmodo did not only facilitate productive skill practice, but it also promoted receptive skill practice. conclusion and implication the participants of this study pointed out several useful features that assisted them in language learning. those were student backpack, quizzes, assignment, and post and comment features. the study discovered that those features promoted students in accessing the material, undertaking the test as well as communicating with teachers or peers. the study also reported that such features facilitated students not only to communicate but also to practice writing, speaking, reading, and listening. in other words, edmodo integration in the efl classroom is perceived as beneficial for students specifically to learn the language. further, the study also implies that edmodo is a useful tool to support learning. thus, the teacher should take it as a profit to create an interesting classroom. however, conducting further research that reviews the benefits and challenges of integrating edmodo in the efl classroom will be useful to get a wider image of how edmodo could assist language learning. besides, there is also a need to explore the use of edmodo from different perspectives such as teachers’ points of view to find out whether integrating such a learning journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 123 platform has an impact on the language learning process. references abad abad, e. f. (2016). the implementation of edmodo as a complementary resource to improve the english language learning of 2ndyear students of bachillerato at colegio experimental (doctoral dissertation). afif, l. b. a. (2014). motivating adult learner using blended learning in high education institution. international referred research journal, 5(3), p. 35-42. al-kathiri, f. (2014). beyond classroom wall: edmodo in saudi secondary efl instruction, attitude, and challenge. centre of science and education journal, 8(1), 189. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1075 186.pdf al-said, k. m. (2015). students' perceptions of edmodo and mobile learning and their real barriers towards them. turkish online journal of educational technology-tojet, 14(2), 167-180. ali, z. (2015). a case study of tertiary students‟ experiences using edmodo in language learning. international journal of language education and applied linguistics. american school and university. (2013, july 1). 21st – century skill for students. as&u magazine.www.asumag.com arroyo, c. g. (2011). proceeding from: 4th ict for language learning conference: on-line social networks: innovative ways towards the boost of collaborative language learning. florence, italy. retrieved from http://www.pixelonline.net/ict4ll2 011/common/ balasubramanian, k., jaykumar, v., &fukey, l. n. (2014, july).proceeding from 5th asia euro conference: a study on student preference towards the use of edmodo as a learning platform to create responsible learning environment. selangor, malaysia: subang jaya. berge, z. l., collins, m., & dougherty, k. (2000). design guidelines for webbased courses. instructional and cognitive impacts of web-based education, 32-40. bravo, m. v. r., & morgovejo, p. x. c. (2016). design of a didactic on the edmodo platform based on online activities for improving the listening and writing skills in the second year of tourism at the sudamericano institute (bachelor’s thesis). bruner, d. l. (2007).using “hybrid” effectively in christian higher education.christian scholars’ review, 36(2), p. 115. cohen, l., manion, l., &marrison, k. (2011). research methods in education.7th ed. london: routledge, ch. 34, p. 641 – 671. dang, t. t., & robertson, m. (2010). impacts of the learning management system on learner autonomy in efl learning. international education studies, 3(3), 3-11. dowling, s. (2011). web-based learningmoving from learning islands to learning environments. tesl-ej, 15 (2), 1-27. durak, g. (2017). using social learning networks (slns) in higher education: edmodo through the lenses of academics. the international review of http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1075186.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1075186.pdf http://www.asumag.com/ http://www.pixelonline.net/ict4ll2011/common/ http://www.pixelonline.net/ict4ll2011/common/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 124 research in open and distributed learning, 18(1). edmodo. (n.d). about edmodo. retrieved from https://www.edmodo.com/about ekici, d. i. (2017). the use of edmodo in creating an online learning community of practice for learning to teach science. malaysian online journal of educational sciences, 5(2), 91-106. ekmekci, e. (2016). integrating edmodo into foreign language as an assessment tool. participatory educational research. gay, e., & sofyan, n. (2017). the effectiveness of using edmodo in enhancing students’ outcomes in advance writing course of the fifth semester at fipummu. journal of english education, 2(1). grgurovic, m. (2011). blended learning in an esl class: a case study. calico journal, 29(1), 100. hafiz zakaria, m., watson, j., & edwards, s. l. (2010). investigating the use of web 2.0 technology by malaysian students. multicultural education & technology journal, 4 (1), 17-29. hamilton, victoria r., "blended learning and second language acquisition in the classroom" (2018). graduate research papers. 337. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/grp/33 7. hourdequin, p. (2014). proceeding from jalt conference 2014: edmodo: a simple tool for blended learning. ibaraki, japan: tsukuba. kongchan, c. (2013). how edmodo and google docs can change traditional classrooms. the european conference on language learning, 2013. looi, c. y., &yusop, f. d. (2011) potential use of social networking tool to assist reading comprehension: implications for practice and future research. jurnal pendidikan, 31(1): 189 201.http://www.academia.edu/37183 56/potential_use_of_social_networki ng_tool_to_assist manowong, s. (2015).undergraduate students’ perceptions of edmodo as a supplementary learning tool in an efl classroom. journal of social science, humanities and arts, 16(2), p. 137-161. mokhtar, f. a. (2016). rethinking conventional teaching in language learning and proposing edmodo as intervention: a qualitative analysis. malaysian online journal of educational technology, 2(4). motteram, g., & sharma, p. (2009). blending learning in a web 2.0 world. international journal of emerging technologies and society, 7(2), 83. oyelere, s. s., paliktzoglou, v., & suhonen, j. (2016). m-learning in nigerian higher education: an experimental study with edmodo. ijsmile, 4(1), 43-62. pop, a. (2013). proceeding from the 8th international conference on virtual learning: edmodo e‐portfolios in efl: a case study. rumania: university of bucharest. procter, r., williams, r., stewart, j., poschen, m., snee, h., voss, a., & asgari targhi, m. (2010). adoption and use of web 2.0 in scholarly communications. philosophical transactions of the royal society of london a: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 368 (1926), 4039 4056 ruhunusa, y. k. (2016). the english education departement of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta students’ perception on https://www.edmodo.com/about https://scholarworks.uni.edu/grp/337 https://scholarworks.uni.edu/grp/337 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 4, no. 2, 2019 125 the use of edmodo towards their writing skills (bachelor’s thesis). santoso, s. i., rochsantiningsih, d., & sujoko, s. (2014). improving the students' competence using edmodo posting. english teaching in indonesia, 1(5). schmidt, k. (2002). the web-enhanced classroom. journal of industrial technology, 18(2), p. 2-6. sener, j. (2015, july 7). definitions of elearning courses and programs version 2.0 [web blog]. retrieved from https://onlinelearningconsortium.org /updated-e-learning-definitions-2/ shams, i. e. (2013). hybrid learning and iranian efl learners’ autonomy in vocabulary learning. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 93, 1587-1592. stroud, c. (2010). edmodo: a white paper. retrieved from http://coe.winthrop.edu/. tambunan, c. y., rosmalina, i., & erlina, e. (2017). improving speaking achievement of the eleventh-grade students of sma methodist 2 palembang by using edmodo. the journal of english literacy education: the teaching and learning of english as a foreign language, 4(2), 188201. thongmak, m. (2013) social network system in classroom: antecedents of edmodo adoption. journal of elearning and higher education.http://www.ibimapublishin g.com/journals/jelhe/2013/65774 9 /657749.pdf toland, s., white, j., mills, d., & bolliger, d. u. (2014). efl instructors' perceptions of usefulness and ease of use of the lms manaba. jalt call journal, 10(3), 221-236. wichadeeq, s. (2017). a development of the blended learning model using edmodo for maximizing students' oral proficiency and motivation. international journal of emerging technologies in learning, 12(2). wilson, d. w., lin, x., longstreet, p., & sarker, s. (2011, august). web 2.0: a definition, literature review, and directions for future research. in amcis. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/ https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/ journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 78 article history: submitted: 19 december 2020 reviewed: 11 january 2021 edited: 12 january 2021 28 january 2021 accepted: 28 january 2021 classroom management: applying appropriate strategies to enhance effective teaching eko purwanti1, gitta vania2 1,2universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia 1ekopurwanti@umy.ac.id 2gitta.vania.2016@fpb.umy.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10638 abstract the teaching and learning process should be conducted effectively so that students can obtain the learning objectives. in so doing, teachers should have the ability to deliver the teaching materials effectively by conducting good classroom management. in this case, as prospective teachers, pre-service teachers should manage the classroom well to maintain teaching effectively. however, handling classroom management is not easy, and therefore pre-service teachers should apply appropriate strategies in managing the classroom. this research aims to investigate the strategies that pre-service teachers use to overcome the problems in managing the classroom during their teaching practices in a private senior high school. a qualitative research approach was employed to answer the research questions, in which in-depth interviews were administered to collect the data. besides, four pre-service teachers at an islamic university in yogyakarta volunteered as the participants in this study. this study’s results showed that the participants applied several strategies to respond to the problems emerging during their teaching practice. the strategies which these pre-service teachers applied to overcome the problems comprised 1) improving self-confidence, 2) preparing lessons carefully, 3) anticipating unpredictable situations, 4) responding to unpredictable questions wisely, and 5) handling with the students’ heterogeneity. having various ways of handling classroom management, these pre-service teachers could deliver the lesson effectively. therefore, this study is beneficial for those who are having teaching practice to keep the classroom run successfully. keywords: pre-service teachers; teaching practice; strategies; classroom management =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 mailto:ekopurwanti@umy.ac.id mailto:gitta.vania.2016@fpb.umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10638 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10638&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-02-20 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 79 introduction in conducting the teaching and learning process, teachers should create an effective learning environment in the classroom. effective learning is defined as a situation in which students are suitably engaged and participating in their learning (de freitas, 2018) to understand the material easily. besides, the effective learning also brings the benefit to teachers in achieving the learning objectives. in order to obtain student’ effective learning in the classroom, teachers should deliver the material effectively as it will give a good impact on students’ learning. effective learning is resulted from effective teaching. effective teaching happens when all education stakeholders, including parents, policymakers, community members, and educators, share responsibility for continuous improvement and student achievement (killion & hirsh, 2011). besides, they stated that effective teaching in each classroom could be achieved by striving for a culture of collaboration and shared accountability among school stakeholders. thus, effective teaching is a process, not the final goal. loes and pascarella (2015) said that effective teaching is associated with students’ gaining critical thinking, propensity for lifelong learning, academic motivation, graduate degree plans, success in the study, and deep learning approaches. furthermore, bistari (2017) affirmed that effective teaching indicators include success in managing the classroom, success in the communicative process, good quality of students’ response, good in the learning process, and success in the lesson's objectives. in building the success of effective teaching, teachers should be able to master classroom management well. classroom management is one of the most critical problems for teaching foreign languages (macías, 2018). he illustrated that a foreign language teacher might explain an issue of the foreign language correctly, but the way he/she explained the issue in front of the students might be wrong, for example, in pronunciation. thus, the effectiveness of teaching often depends on how teachers adapt their classroom management to teaching. classroom management is defined as any actions done by the teachers in the classroom to create a learning atmosphere that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation (burden, 2020). besides, classroom management refers to the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 80 wide variety of skills and techniques teachers use to keep students “organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class” (babadjanova, 2020, p. 281). good classroom management means everything related to maintaining the class environment to create a conditional class to achieve the learning goal. if the classroom can be managed effectively, the teaching and learning process's objectives can be obtained. therefore, teachers’ skill in classroom management becomes prerequisite for achieving instructional objective so that it can help to create a better learning and teaching process. in meeting this objective, effective teachers who can display strong classroom management skills are obligatory. in other words, good ability in managing the classroom should be possessed by each teacher. similarly, pre-service teachers as prospective teachers in the future should also display their strong classroom management skills, especially during their internship program at schools. it is a prevalent practice that pre-service teachers have teaching practices as parts of their internship program. under the supervision of a teacher mentor, these pre-service teachers conduct teaching practices in front of the students in a real classroom. as teaching practice is a relatively new experience for these pre-service teachers, they sometimes find challenges in managing the classroom in front of the students. as asserted by irawati and listyani (2020), one of the problems, particularly in a rural school, is a "behavioral problem". they added that classroom management behavioral issues include verbal interference, such as talking, singing, and laughing while the teacher discusses the subject. owing to these behavioral problems, students would not understand the content that the instructor discussed well. it would make students have a low level of knowledge and not get insight into learning. a similar situation was also experienced by pre-service teachers when doing teaching practice. in her research, rozimela (2016) stated that the difficulties faced by pre-service teachers in managing classrooms are related to handling disruptive students, controlling students in the class, grouping students, and giving time to the student while doing an oral assessment. besides, these pre-service teachers also found problems in attracting student's attention to pay attention to them. in this context, it can be said that to handle this situation, the pre-service teachers as prospective teachers should develop their skills on what to teach and how to teach during teaching practice by applying effective strategies. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 81 there has been a plethora of study discussing classroom management in foreign language classroom contexts (babadjanova, 2020; burden, 2020; irawati & listyani, 2020; macías & sánchez, 2015; merç & subaşı, 2015; rozimela, 2016). however, these studies focused on problems or challenges in classroom management. only a few of them discussed the classroom strategies done by pre-service teachers in secondary school contexts. therefore, it is very interesting to find out the strategies these pre-service teachers face in managing the classroom. this study then aimed to investigate how the pre-service teachers handled the challenges they found in their teaching practice or their classroom management strategies effectively. literature review effective teaching and teacher in the teaching and learning process, teachers should teach effectively to obtain the target of the lesson. macsuga-gage, simonsen, and briere (2012) stated that effective teaching involved both art and science. successful teachers have expertly woven together academic, behavioral, and social threads to create a special classroom tapestry. teaching a foreign language such as english as foreign language (efl) in a classroom needs more preparation and effort because a teacher should focus not only on the content knowledge of the language but also on the language itself as a medium of instruction. some strategies can be conducted to make effective teaching, such as having sufficient preparation prior to the class and designing a good lesson plan, as well as understanding the characteristics of the lessons (richards & bohlke, 2011). besides, effective teaching can be conducted by integrating neurocognitive plasticity, students’ learning potential, modifiability of students’ intelligence, the role of students’ emotions, and learning metacognition (wilson & conyers, 2020). in such a context, effective teaching is influenced by teachers as the main agent of teaching. thus, it can be said that effective teaching results from an effective teacher. richards and bohlke (2011, p. 15) mentioned that teachers play an essential role in creating effective teaching. they added that teachers must be ready to become “a sample of good behavior” and create a “positive attitude toward learning” for students in the classroom (p. 15). in so doing, they proposed ways by which teachers can create positive attitudes, such https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 82 as 1) creating a positive classroom climate, 2) arranging the class to promote effective learning, 3) managing the use of class time, 4) maintaining appropriate behavior in teachers’ eyes, and 5) creating a culturally sensitive classroom. most of these activities are, in fact, parts of classroom management that teachers should handle appropriately to make the teaching and learning process successful. to sum up, to build effective teaching, teachers must have good classroom management capacity. classroom management the concept of classroom management is as old as that of teaching. a plethora of researchers has done research related to classroom management (see ahmad et al., 2012; babadjanova, 2020; burden, 2020; irawati & listyani, 2020; macías & sánchez, 2015; martin et al., 2016; pereira & gates, 2013; rozimela, 2016). in general, classroom management is defined as the teacher's action to manage the class environment to achieve good results, both academic and social learning. macías and sánchez (2015) explained that classroom management is an action about managing the class environment to become good to establish the learning process successfully. classroom management is also a term used to describe the method of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly without disruptive actions by students compromising the delivery of instruction. thus, as mentioned earlier, classroom management is related to any action taken by classroom teachers to build a learning environment that promotes positive social interaction, active participation in learning, and self-motivation (burden, 2020). therefore, classroom management refers to the broad range of skills and strategies teachers use to keep students “organized, well-ordered, attentive, on-the-job, and academically effective in the classroom” (babadjanova, 2020, p. 281). in summary, appropriate classroom management infers the success of teaching and learning, not only in students' academic matters but also in students' social learning. thus, effective classroom management contributes to effective teaching. in order to obtain effective teaching, teachers must handle classroom management effectively. the way teachers handle their classrooms can affect how students behave because the classroom is an environment where students and teachers interact (irawati & listyani, 2020). however, they added that many teachers still faced problems related to classroom https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 83 management. in particular, they found out that teachers in a rural area faced problems related to students’ behavior in the classroom. a similar experience is also potential to be experienced by pre-service teachers. pre-service teachers are usually students of teacher training education who have schoolbased field experience. under the supervision of a coordinating teacher, these pre-service teachers gradually take on more responsibility for classroom management and teaching. in general, these pre-service teachers experience teaching practice starting from designing the lesson, delivering the lesson, and assessing students’ performance in the classroom. in conducting the teaching practice, many pre-service teachers face problems related to classroom management. the following section explains problems related to classroom management that teachers and pre-service teachers often face in detail. problems in classroom management in doing the teaching practice in an internship, pre-service teachers often meet the difficulties, especially if it is their first personal experience to teach in front of the real classroom. in this condition, the pre-service teachers should think harder to overcome the problems. some difficulties might appear during the teaching and learning process. the problems are listed by brown (2007), such as: feeling anxious, facing the disruptive student in the class, getting unpredictable questions from the students, having unpredictable situations during the teaching and learning process, lack of experience, and lack of time. besides, irawati and listyani (2020) reported that teachers in rural areas faced “behavioral problems”, which resulted in students acting misbehavior, such as disrespecting the teachers, sleeping in the classroom during lessons, daydreaming, and using many rude words. finally, pre-service teachers' other problems are most likely due to the students’ low motivation, students’ minimal english ability, and the pre-service teachers’ lack of classroom management skills (rozimela, 2016). in order to run the class effectively, these problems related to classroom management must be overcome. in this context, while doing the teaching practice, the pre-service teachers should handle the challenges as efficiently as possible. some of the strategies to handle the problems in classroom management are mentioned in the next section. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 84 strategies in classroom management improving self-confidence. pre-service teachers often feel nervous when teaching for the first time. their anxiety feeling often results from giving unclear explanations during the lesson, and this condition causes misunderstanding from the student. however, no matter how nervous they feel, they must be able to handle their anxiety. one way to solve this problem is to give clear, slow, and short instruction and provide a good visual aid. it helps students to focus on what the pre-service teachers say and understand the instruction clearly. also, merç and subaşı (2015) said that one way to ensure students’ understanding is by asking students to repeat the instruction. finally, cheng, chan, tang, and cheng (2009) argued that teachers’ beliefs would affect several things, such as shaping the teacher conception, the instructional strategies, and the class's performance. therefore, pre-service teachers must have the self-confidence to cope well with their anxiety. paying attention to disruptive students. students at schools have various attitudes and behaviors. some students are well behaved, while some others are disruptive. these disruptive students often distract pre-service teachers while teaching in the classroom. in solving these problems, merç and subaşi (2015) suggested pre-service teachers pay attention to them by making eye contact, giving reminders, showing interest in them, changing students’ seat rows, and having individual talk after class. such solutions are also stated by (ahmad et al., 2012), who mentioned that one way to solve these problems with disruptive students is paying attention to these students. finally, according to (al-amarat, 2011), to handle problems related to disruptive students in the classroom, the pre-service teachers can have discussions or consultations with their parents. preparing the lessons carefully. in some cases, when teachers do a group discussion or group activity, students like to do anything they want. some students may talk a lot with their friends, and some others remain silent in the group. this situation can disturb the class activity. in responding to such a situation, pre-service teachers should prepare the lesson carefully before the meeting. they should design appropriate learning activities that can accommodate both individual and group learning and assign all students in the class with different tasks suitable for their capacity. ahmad et al. (2012) mentioned that the pre-service teachers should make the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 85 students ask a question in a group with other friends or the teacher. besides, merç and subaşı (2015) also said that the pre-service teachers should monitor and give more attention to all the group rather than sit at the front desk. these activities can only be done if the pre-service teachers can design lesson plan carefully. clement (2010) argued that a good lesson plan prepared by preservice teachers helped them avoid classroom management problems. responding to unpredictable questions wisely. unpredictable questions from the students become one of the big problems for pre-service teachers. commonly, the teaching and learning process is concluded by question and answers session. in this opportunity, the students ask questions about the topic, and the teacher answers them. however, sometimes, there is a condition in which the students ask questions out of context. this situation can lead to teachers’ inability to answer the questions directly. it is then called unpredictable questions. brown (2007) said that the unpredictable question is a question that may not be related to the lesson, or it is related to the lesson but in the in-depth discussion and more complicated. this kind of situation must be responded to by the pre-service teachers well so that they know what to do in the classroom. besides, merç and subaşi (2015) affirmed that the teacher should make a discussion to answer the question or ask time to search for the answer. thus, if the teacher cannot answer directly, they can say that they will find the answer the other day and search for the answer at home. after getting the answer, the teacher should tell the student. anticipating unpredictable situations. according to brown (2007), the common problem is that the pre-service teacher usually prepares the lesson plan; in the middle of the plan, there is an interruption from the students, and the pre-service teacher plans are not going well. another case in the teaching and learning process is the interruption caused by teachers’ unfamiliarity about students’ names, students’ characteristics, or students’ manners. in some cases, the students intentionally disturb the teachers by paying no attention to the lessons and chatting with their peers. based on merç and subaşi (2015), the pre-service teachers can ignore the unimportant interruption. if the interruption only comes from one or two students, the preservice teachers can ignore all of them. unless the interruption is quite noisy, the teacher can give them advice. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 86 methodology in conducting the study, the qualitative approach was applied, which focused on the preservice teachers' strategies to manage their classrooms. also, an interpretivist approach (bryman, 2012; schwandt, lincoln, & guba, 2007; walsham, 2006) to investigate these opinions was applied. this approach was suitable for this study as it enabled the development of a greater understanding of the participants’ interpretations of classroom management and how they made meanings to those interpretations (bryman, 2012), which was imperative to meet the research focus. using descriptive qualitative as the research design, the researchers sought the participants' experiences concerning their teaching practices during the internship, particularly classroom management. v. a. lambert and c. e. lambert (2012) mentioned that descriptive qualitative is used to analyze, describe, and summarize the participants' specific experiences. this research was conducted in a private university in yogyakarta. using convenience sampling, four female pre-service teachers were selected as the participants. this type of sampling was applied because many participants were potentially selected (alvi, 2016). therefore, to minimize the fuss of the participants' selection, this convenience sampling was applied. in selecting the participants, the researchers chose the pre-service teachers who were available and close to the researchers and willing to be the participants voluntarily. cohen, manion, and morrison (2011) stated that the near, available, and accessible participants could be chosen in convenience sampling. in-depth interviews were conducted to collect the data. the data collected were transcribed, stored, sorted, and coded, as well as analyzed based on similar themes. in order to maintain its trustworthiness, member checking was done. all the participants confirmed that the data were correct. finally, to maintain the participants’ identity, pseudonyms of rose, orchid, tulip, and jasmine were used. findings and discussions this study aimed to seek strategies applied by pre-service teachers concerning classroom management when conducting teaching practices during their internship programs. as mentioned earlier, these pre-service teachers frequently found problems related to classroom management when doing teaching practices. in responding to these problems, several strategies https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 87 were applied. based on the participants' interviews, the findings revealed the pre-service teachers' strategies in handling their problems. these findings were then categorized into four themes: 1) improving self-confidence, 2) preparing lessons carefully, 3) anticipating unpredictable situations, 4) responding to the unpredictable questions wisely, and 5) handling with the students’ heterogeneity. the findings are explained further in the following section. finding 1: improving self-confidence. most of the pre-service teachers admitted they felt nervous prior to teaching practices. they were often worried about their lesson plan, their teaching materials, and even their students. their anxiety often affected their classroom management. the participants applied several strategies to solve these problems, such as talking to their students, asking for peers’ suggestions, thinking positively, preparing the lesson well prior to the class, and thinking positively during the class. one of the participants, rose, said: “i talk to my students when i feel nervous”. in this case, rose tried to handle her nervous feeling by building communication with the class students. unlike rose, orchid used another strategy. she said, “i asked my friends’ suggestion in teaching method”. then, she added, “also…i just pray to god and do positive thinking”. orchid chose to ask for her friends’ suggestions while building her positive thinking at the same time to overcome her anxiety. the other participant, tulip, stated, “i just searched and found a good topic to discuss before starting the class”. the participants’ responses indicated that they had their strategy for handling nervousness, insecurity, and unconfident. in handling these problems, the pre-service teachers should believe in their own belief in teaching and always think positively. while rose tried to build communication with the students in the class, orchid encouraged herself by maintaining a positive attitude, and tulip prepared herself before the class. these activities strengthened their beliefs that teaching should be done with positive thinking and preparation. it is according to cheng et al. (2009), who stated that teachers’ beliefs would affect several things, such as shaping the teacher's conception, the instructional strategies, and the class's performance. finding 2: preparing lessons carefully. based on the interviews, it was revealed that pre-service teachers often found problems related to time management. some pre-service teachers lacked time when teaching so that they could not finish their teaching materials, and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 88 some others had run out of the materials and had no idea to spend the time until the class was over. in solving this problem, they tried to do several strategies, such as designing good lesson plans and consulting the lesson plans with their mentor teacher. rose stated, “[i] designed a good lesson plan before class”. she also added, “[i] had a lesson plan consultation with the mentor teacher”. in this case, as a pre-service teacher, rose was mentored by the professional teacher during the internship program; therefore, she could always contact and ask for suggestions in preparing her teaching practice. the strategies used by these pre-service teachers mentioned above corroborates merç and subaşi (2015), who stated that the teacher should pace the lesson, do all the activity quickly, and give the activity as homework. as prospective teachers, the pre-service teachers should understand the classroom situation and do-good time management in every meeting to achieve the learning objectives. on the other hand, jasmine used a different way. she said that whenever she still had time while she already finished the teaching materials, she did “chatting and sharing about the future with the students [in the classroom]”. this way, jasmine could handle her classroom well while having more proximity with her students by chatting about students’ future goals. the strategy of preparing lesson plans carefully was also used when the participants found problems concerning their pedagogical skills. many of the pre-service teachers had limited experience in delivering the teaching materials in front of the students. as orchid said, “i tried to search how to manage a classroom appropriately through the internet”. thus, she prepared the lesson by searching for information from online resources. meanwhile, another participant, tulip, used her own experience with her previous teacher to prepare the lesson well. she said, ”i decided to follow what my lecturer taught to me”. when the participants found their strategy in handling their classroom management problems, clement (2010) stated that a good lesson plan is useful for the pre-service teachers to avoid classroom problems. the strategy applied by the participants also aligns with richards and bohlke (2011), who argued that having sufficient preparation before the class and designing a good lesson plan, as well as understanding the characteristics of the lessons, can be conducted to make effective teaching. finding 3: anticipating unpredictable situations. another strategy employed by the pre-service teachers in class was anticipating unpredictable situations. an unpredictable https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 89 situation often happened in the middle of the teaching process, causing a classroom management problem. if such a thing happened, the pre-service teachers chose a temporary class leader to help them prepare and control the classroom situation. this strategy helped the pre-service teachers in managing the classroom condition to be effective. there were several ways to anticipate unpredictable situations. one of them was from orchid, who said that “i choose a temporary class leader to help me lead the du’a and prepare lcd projector”. the findings referred that the pre-service teacher took action directly when facing the problems in the class. they chose the temporary class leader to help prepare and control the class. this way, the class could be managed well, and the teaching and learning process could run effectively. this condition is consistent with merç and subaşi (2015), who stated that the pre-service teachers could ignore the unimportant interruption; instead, they could do more positive ways to anticipate the problems, such as stated by the participants above. finding 4: responding to the unpredictable question wisely. the next strategy used by the student-teachers was responding to unpredictable questions. one of the participants had a special way to overcome unpredictable questions. jasmine said, “i said to the students to discuss the question [which i cannot answer now] in the next meeting”. in her situation, jasmine did not answer the questions directly as she did not know the answer, but she promised her students to find the answer and inform them in the next meeting. it happened because the student asked a question that was out of the topic. this strategy is, in fact, in keeping with merç and subaşi (2015), who said that the teacher should make a discussion to answer the question or ask for more time to search the answer. finding 5: handling with the students’ heterogeneity. the final strategy that preservice teachers applied in classroom management was related to students' different characteristics or heterogeneity. it is prevalent that a classroom consists of students with various characteristics and behaviors. a good teacher will be familiar with students’ names to understand their characteristics well. however, sometimes, this is not easy. some pre-service teachers also found such difficulties. in responding to this situation, they had to use a good strategy. tulip, one of the participants, told her experience and said, “in handling with an unfamiliar name, i decided to get close to the class leader. the aim to know the class leader is https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 90 to help me control the classroom condition”. in responding to her unfamiliarity with the students’ names, she decided to ask the class leader to help her memorize the students’ names. therefore, whenever she forgot about the names, she asked the class leader. this way, kenana used the class leader as her assistance in controlling the class. the strategy to involve the class leader to help her control the students in the class was effective because the class leader could understand more about what the students wanted or what they needed. besides, the strategy to ask for help from the class leader is also in line with wilson and conyers (2020), who asserted that integrating the role of students’ emotions in managing the classroom can be used to create effective teaching. in this case, the class leader acted as the teacher’s assistance to inform the pre-service teachers about unfamiliar names. this way, the pre-service teacher could focus more on the teaching and learning process. conclusion this study focused on strategies in managing the classroom while doing teaching practices conducted by the pre-service teachers. as prospective teachers, the pre-service teachers should have the ability to manage the classroom as well as professional teachers. in reality, many pre-service teachers lacked experience in teaching and trying hard to manage the classroom condition. based on these ideas, the researchers were interested in investigating the strategies that pre-service teachers used in handling the problems related to classroom management in senior high school education. in conducting this research, the researchers applied a qualitative approach to know the participants’ points of view based on their own experiences related to this research topic. using descriptive qualitative as the research design, the study was conducted in an islamic secondary school in yogyakarta, in which the students of the english language education department had their teaching practices for one semester. the research participants were initially six people; however, two of them withdrew their involvement due to their personal affairs. the findings were meant to answer the research question of how the pre-service teachers applied their strategies as an attempt to solve the problems in managing the classroom https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 91 while doing their teaching practice. based on the findings, several strategies were implemented in the classroom, comprising 1) improving self-confidence, 2) preparing lessons carefully, 3) anticipating unpredictable situations, 4) responding to the unpredictable questions wisely, and 5) handling with the students’ heterogeneity. this study is believed to be useful for several parties, and therefore, several recommendations are given to the following parties in the next section. recommendation based on the study’s findings, several recommendations are given to the following parties, comprising: pre-service teachers. as prospective teachers, the pre-service teachers must be able to manage all possible difficulties in managing the class. the students must also be able to overcome problems that arise in class as soon as possible using their strategy. moreover, the preservice teachers must prepare everything well before starting the class. the government or institution. an education institution or teacher training education must provide sufficient education to their pre-service teachers before assigning them to do a school-based internship and conducting teaching practice. this education institution must also provide learning about how to organize classes correctly and adequately so that the pre-service teachers are ready when they have to do teaching practice. future researcher. the researchers recommended future researchers who research the same topic to evolve and conduct the different focus areas of research to get more in-depth data about classroom management strategies for pre-service teachers. future researchers can also focus their research using a quantitative approach so that different findings will be revealed. references ahmad, i., rauf, m., zeb, a., rehman, s., khan, w., rashid, a., & ali, f. (2012). teachers’ perceptions of classroom management, problems and its solutions: case of government secondary schools in chitral, khyber pakhtunkhwa, pakistan. international journal of business and social science, 3(24), 173-181. al-amarat, m. s. (2011). the classroom problems faced by teachers at the public schools in tafila province, and proposed solutions. international journal of educational sciences, 3(1), 37-48. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 92 alvi, m. (2016). a manual for selecting sampling techniques in research. munich personal repec archive, 1-56. babadjanova, n. (2020). effective classroom management techniques for curriculum of 21st century. science and education, 1(7). bistari, b. (2017). konsep dan indikator pembelajaran efektif. jurnal kajian pembelajaran dan keilmuan, 1(2), 13-20. brown, h. d. (2007). principles of language learning and teaching (vol. 5). new york: white plains, ny. bryman, a. (2012). social research methods: oxford university press. burden, p. (2020). classroom management: creating a successful k-12 learning community: john wiley & sons. cheng, m. m., chan, k.-w., tang, s. y., & cheng, a. y. (2009). pre-service teacher education students' epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of teaching. teaching and teacher education, 25(2), 319-327. clement, m. c. (2010). preparing teachers for classroom management: the teacher educator's role. delta kappa gamma bulletin, 77(1), 41. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). planning educational research. research methods in education. new york: routledge editors. de freitas, s. (2018). are games effective learning tools? a review of educational games. journal of educational technology & society, 21(2), 74-84. irawati, p. r., & listyani, l. (2020). problems in classroom management encountered by three english teachers in a rural area in ungaran, semarang regency, indonesia. rangsit journal of educational studies, 7(1), 46-59. killion, j., & hirsh, s. (2011). the elements of effective teaching. learning forward, 32. lambert, v. a., & lambert, c. e. (2012). qualitative descriptive research: an acceptable design. pacific rim international journal of nursing research, 16(4), 255-256. loes, c. n., & pascarella, e. t. (2015). the benefits of good teaching extend beyond course achievement. journal of the scholarship of teaching and learning, 15(2), 1-13. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1059427.pdf https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1059427.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 93 macías, d. f. (2018). classroom management in foreign language education: an exploratory review. profile issues in teachersprofessional development, 20(1), 153-166. macías, d. f., & sánchez, j. a. (2015). classroom management: a persistent challenge for preservice foreign language teachers. profile issues in teachersprofessional development, 17(2), 81-99. macsuga-gage, a. s., simonsen, b., & briere, d. e. (2012). effective teaching practices: effective teaching practices that promote a positive classroom environment. beyond behavior, 22(1), 14-22. martin, n. k., schafer, n. j., mcclowry, s., emmer, e. t., brekelmans, m., mainhard, t., & wubbels, t. (2016). expanding the definition of classroom management: recurring themes and new conceptualizations. journal of classroom interaction, 31-41. merç, a., & subaşı, g. (2015). classroom management problems and coping strategies of turkish student efl teachers. turkish online journal of qualitative inquiry, 6(1), 39-71. pereira, n., & gates, j. (2013). perceived classroom management needs of pre-service teachers. kentucky teacher education journal: the journal of the teacher education division of the kentucky council for exceptional children, 2(1), 2. richards, j. c., & bohlke, d. (2011). creating effective language lessons: cambridge university press. rozimela, y. (2016). untold story: classroom management problems and their influence on studentteachers’ teaching. paper presented at the international seminar on english language and teaching. schwandt, t. a., lincoln, y. s., & guba, e. g. (2007). judging interpretations: but is it rigorous? trustworthiness and authenticity in naturalistic evaluation. new directions for evaluation, 2007(114), 11-25. walsham, g. (2006). doing interpretive research. european journal of information systems, 15(3), 320-330. wilson, d., & conyers, m. (2020). five big ideas for effective teaching: connecting mind, brain, and education research to classroom practice: teachers college press. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 volume 3, no. 2, 2018 bella mulia grandyna is an english teacher at a public high school in central lampung. she obtained a bachelor's degree from universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she has been awarded an eled graduate who received the best grades among students in the cohort. her research interests include (but not limited to) teaching english as a foreign language, cultural influence on international students, teaching techniques and learning media. a university efl teacher’s strategies in solving the teaching pronunciation problems bella mulia grandyna terbanggi besar high school, central lampung bellagrandyna@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3232 abstract this study aimed to deal with a university teacher’s experience in teaching pronunciation, particularly on the problems faced by teacher and the strategies used in solving the problems in teaching pronunciation. to achieve the objectives, two interviews were done to lily, an english teacher who has been given responsibility to teach pronunciation in a private university of yogyakarta. the collected data was obtained from narrative inquiry design in qualitative method. the findings of the study discovered that problems faced by lily in teaching pronunciation were familiarizing different sounds, timing, and students’ side problems. moreover, increasing teaching quality, introducing pronunciation rules, and using various teaching techniques and classroom activities became the strategies to solve teaching pronunciation problems. keywords: pronunciation; university teacher; teaching problems; teaching strategies. =========================================================================== mailto:bellagrandyna@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3232 journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 87 introduction the english language is known as popular language. “english as a global lingua franca is increasingly important or even compulsory to learn in all nations through the world” (panggabean, 2015, p. 35). english is very common learned and taught by people around the world for them to be able to communicate effectively with each other. panggabean (2015, p. 35) added that “in indonesia, learning and teaching english is conducted extensively in formal schools beginning from early education to university levels”. even though the students learn the english language, they do not normally use english even after completing the learning (mattarima & hamdan, 2011) indonesian language has different rules from english. the difference between how the word produced in indonesian and english native speaker is the factor of difficulty in english pronunciation e.g. in pronouncing enough /ɪˈnʌf/ and should /ʃʊd/ (tahereen, 2015). indonesian tend to pronounce “g” word /ɪˈnoug/ and pronounce “l” to /ʃʊld/ (yudanika, 2013). based on my previous observation, indonesian students in high school and college freshman tended to use indonesian language patterns or styles when speaking in english because students’ first language often interfered with english pronunciation. yoshida (2016) stated that students’ first language has a strong influence on the way they learn the pronunciation of a second language. some of them will not speak out because they are frightened of making mistakes, and most of them feel embarrassed. pronunciation ability is an important skill which needs to be learned by students because it is related to spoken communication. teachers need to assist the students in learning how to pronounce language because it can give a positive impact on students’ pronunciation ability. there are many problems appear because of the different nature of sounds and patterns in english. moreover, interesting strategies for teaching pronunciation are needed to make pronunciation learning pleasant. pronunciation teaching is in form of presentation of new words, sentence patterns, and several practice activities (brewster, ellis, & girard, 2004). the teacher needs to consider carefully the fact that pronunciation is not just about an individual’s sound which is only one aspect (brewster et al., 2004). tennant (2007) wrote in his article, there are only a few teachers who try and do some pronunciations, but the majority does very little or none. he added that the reasons to http://lingorado.com/ipa/ journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 88 avoid teaching pronunciation are divided into many aspects of pronunciation. the first aspect was difficult to teach, and the second aspect was pronunciation can be quite difficult to create a lesson around pronunciation point. teachers sometimes feel underprepared to teach pronunciation, and many of them struggle to learn the phonetic alphabet. one of the indonesian teachers in moedjito’s study (2016) said that she was very unwilling to teach pronunciation because she really did not know how and what to teach because pronunciation does not belong as a mandatory in curriculum guideline currently. in addition, to meet the goals of this research, two research questions were formulated as follows:  what are the problems faced by the teacher in teaching pronunciation at eled of a private university in yogyakarta?  what are the teacher’s strategies in solving the problems of teaching pronunciation at eled of a private university in yogyakarta? literature review problems in teaching pronunciation difficulty happens in teaching pronunciation when the teachers teach the learners to try to pronounce strange, new sounds in a new language in their life. stockwell (2013) mentioned that choosing the convenient tools and deciding accent to teach are the problems. the problems in pronunciation teaching written by stockwell (2013) are explained as follows: deciding accent there are countries where english is not their first language. the english variety is based on the different mother tongue that teachers around indonesia find it hard and still struggle to decide the accent to be taught and to integrate the standard of english in their lesson. there are two standards accent that mostly used in books called british receive pronunciation and general american. choosing a tool such as a textbook to integrate english into pronunciation practice is hard when the setting has different grammatical, lexical, and background cultures. for example, choosing a book for pronunciation teaching in a place that english is not the first or second language is hard because the students may not understand their course book. besides, english book is mostly written in english to have a clear explanation of english usage itself. on the other hand, yoshida (2016) argued that the problems in teaching pronunciation are fossilization and journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 89 hypercorrection. in his study, it focuses on the stubborn problems which develop wrong pronunciation and the way the teachers correct the wrong pronunciation too much. in addition, he also added that the problems often occur when teaching pronunciation including the fossilization and hypercorrection. for a more detailed explanation of those pronunciation problems mentioned, each problem is explained in the following paragraphs. fossilization fossilization is one of the most stubborn problems faced by teachers when teaching pronunciation. fossilization is a process that occurs when the learners’ progress on a point, but it is hard to make further progress. tahereen (2015) stated that the influence of local accent may affect learners’ english spoken skill concerning their pronunciation. therefore, the learners will develop the wrong pronunciation as practiced for years by years. the example of fossilization is when the students said finger as /finjər/ not /finggər/. even though they have known that /finjər/ is wrong, the habit to pronounce finger as /finjər/ always appear. it was hard for them to change the habit of saying that word. hypercorrection it is common problem in teaching pronunciation than fossilization. hypercorrection means “too much correction”. it occurs when a teacher has learned a rule and tried to apply it, but the teachers sometimes give too much correction on students’ mistake. for example, when the students do public speaking in front of the class, the teacher corrects the mispronounce word every time the students mispronounce it. it makes the students unconcentrated to deliver the meaning of their speech, but they focus on the pronunciation word, it also makes them nervous even scared of being corrected by their teacher. besides, hypercorrection is a much rarer source of the problem in teaching pronunciation (yoshida, 2016). meanwhile, tahereen (2015) stated that problems faced by the teachers while teaching pronunciation are not the same. the problem occurs from the spelling system which creates confusion in the way of teaching pronunciation. the problems mentioned by tahereen (2015) are explained as follows: english spelling system english spelling system preserves sound-letter and does not follow one-to-one correspondence between sound and letter. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 90 there are letters in english which have more than one sound. taheeren (2015) showed the example, /c/ can be sounded as /es/ and /keh/. these features create confusion among students. likewise, the teachers face this problem when they want to teach pronunciation, but they do not know the way to teach english spelling system. in addition, moedjito (2016) mentioned that in indonesia, there also includes the difficulty faced by teachers when teaching pronunciation. moedjito (2016) mentioned that the problem comes from the first language. the explanation of interfering from the first language according to moedjito is described in the following paragraph. difficulties in teaching pronunciation somehow appear because there are some english sounds that do not exist in indonesian language. english and teachers’ first language have the same sounds, but they have a different distribution. besides, the same spelling is not always pronounced in the same way. this case somehow causes a problem in teaching pronunciation. taheraan (2015) also has the same opinion that the differences between the native language and the target language can bring out problems. the more differences the students’ first language with the target language is, the more difficulties the students will face in achieving the correct target language’s pronunciation. strategies in solving the problems of teaching pronunciation there are various problems in teaching pronunciation faced by the teacher. to solve teaching pronunciation, the strategies are included to prevent teaching pronunciation problems. according to tahereen (2015), there are several techniques and activities to solve teaching pronunciation problems. the strategies are explained in the paragraphs below: determining focus and goals the teachers should focus on students’ achievement more. teaching pronunciation cannot go in a short period of time. the teachers should focus on making their students’ pronunciation intelligible and understandable. thus, the teacher should have consistency and plan in learning process regarding the integration of vocabulary. introducing international phonetic alphabet (ipa) symbols and knowledge of phonetic articulatory this knowledge will sooner or later help the students to understand everyone’s journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 91 sound and help them to know the articulation of every sound in pronouncing english sounds correctly. also, the practice can turn the students’ knowledge into skills. cook (2008) added that students are sometimes assisted by looking at verbal phonetic transcripts using ipa or by making their own speech transcripts. therefore, the phonetic script allows students to see the pronunciation of individual words. using communicative activities learners can achieve some skills along with pronunciation with some communicative activities. having a conversation or drama can be a very effective activity that the students can practice and correct their pronunciation skills simultaneously. cook (2008) added that pronunciation materials could utilize the real problems of communication as a basis for teaching. besides, he also illustrated that both natives and non-natives are confused due to the pronunciation ‘fifty’ /fifti/ and ‘fifteen’ /fift;n/ in real situations of stores. for the reason, the final /n/ sounds like nasalized vowel rather than a consonant. using dictionaries and smartphones the students sometimes tend to ask the correct pronunciation. using a dictionary can be used to check the pronunciation out on their own as they see the visual image in the dictionaries. the students can also use their smartphone in learning to hear and check pronunciation by using various softwares. however, the teacher should monitor the use of a smartphone so that the students do not lose their attention in the classroom. tutoring session and individual counseling this is very easy if both teachers and learners have time. tutoring session and individual counseling sessions can be arranged for students in which the teacher will talk personally about individual students’ issues in pronunciation. accordingly, this strategy helps teachers to focus on their students’ problems to reach their achievement. reading aloud this strategy is an easy and common strategy that the teachers can do to develop pronunciation understanding. the selected piece of writing includes difficult sounds which can be used in the class as a material. moreover, the learners can recite the text aloud so that the teacher and the learners can identify their problems in pronunciation. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 92 using minimal pairs and tongue twister creating sound awareness is very important to develop speech production. practice using minimal pairs and tongue twister can help the students in developing sound awareness. tongue twister can help the students especially those who have local accent influence on the production of their speech. additionally, other strategies are based on kelly (2000). in kelly’s book, the strategy is giving feedback. the detailed explanation of the strategy is described in the following paragraph. giving feedback the teacher gives feedback to the students in order to decrease the students’ mistake, especially in pronunciation. besides, providing further feedback will help the students’ accuracy in their language. the teacher should present different types of correction techniques or strategies. also, the teachers give feedback by practicing the rising and falling of their intonation, choosing true or false, and writing some corrections on board. by providing feedback, the students will be more confident in pronouncing english words. methodology this study applied a qualitative research method. this study explored the problems and phenomenon by exploring the participant’s experiences and thoughts. creswell (2012) stated that a qualitative research study explores a problem and develops a detailed understanding of a central phenomenon. in addition, he also mentioned that the purpose of qualitative research is to understand the participant’s experiences. the statements mentioned was in line with the purpose of this study which was purposed to investigate detailed information in teaching pronunciation such as experiences, opinions, problems, and strategies based on the participant. this research used narrative inquiry which present “data from a person’s experience and in person’s mind… it is the knowledge that reflects the individual’s prior knowledge” (clandinin, 1992 as cited in craig, 2011, p. 23). as clandinin and connelly (1996) mentioned narrative inquiry as “teacher stories – stories of teachers – stories of school” (as cited in craig, 2011, p. 24). the researcher focused on teacher’s stories which explained the “stories teacher live and tell, re-live and retell, whereas the stories of teachers are shifting stories that others hold or expect of teacher” (clandinin, d. j., huber, j., huber, journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 93 m., murphy, s., murray orr, a., pearce, m., steeves, p., 2006 as cited in craig, 2011, p. 24). research setting the research was conducted at eled of a private university in yogyakarta. english language education department established in 2010 and a accredited in 2016. this department aims to participate in improving quality, supporting facilities, providing teaching staff in indonesia including english language teacher who can apply their theoretical knowledge in good teaching. supported by 18 teachers holding doctoral and master’s degrees from local and abroad universities who teach compulsory courses and elective courses with higher education curriculum, this department provides more than 40 courses students can take and pronunciation was covered in course called capita selecta on linguistics. there are three major reasons for deciding this department as the research setting. firstly, the problems encountered in the statement of the problem were found in this department about the problems in teaching pronunciation. the researcher has been in this department for more than two years. that way, the researcher has already understood the situation and problems in this department further. secondly, this department has several experienced teachers who teach pronunciation. this means that the teachers have already had full of experience, information, and knowledge that are appropriate for this study. thirdly, the setting of the place is accessible because the participant and the researchers are part of this department. research participant this qualitative study was conducted to a participant called lily, a pseudonym. lily is one of the efl teachers in english language education department in one private university in yogyakarta who has been given the responsibility to teach pronunciation. lily was selected as a participant because she taught pronunciation in capita selecta on linguistics subject for four semesters and lily provided suitable information for this study. she had experience in teaching pronunciation in the mentioned subject. she was excited when i asked her to be my participant and she openly shared, discussed and reflected her experience in teaching pronunciation. lily has been working as a teacher of english for more than 20 years. she taught english in middle school, high school, and university levels. having a long teaching journey provided for sure very useful reflection to improve her teaching quality. graduated journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 94 from english literature department from one of the leading universities in indonesia made her have literary skills. she joined eled in 2010 and she taught capita selecta on grammar 1, capita selecta on grammar 4, capita selecta on linguistics and literary appreciation. in 2005, lily graduated from education department for her master’s degree from one islamic university in malaysia. she graduated from teaching english as a second language (tesl). lily has been teaching this subject before it changed to linguistics, and it was called capita selecta on grammar 2. research instrument the researcher used other tools such as an interview guideline, a notebook, and a recorder (voice recorder in her smartphone). the researcher used an interview guideline to make the interview systematic and sequence. also, in the interview, the researcher used notebook to take note of important information to follow-up questions. besides, the recorder used in conducting the interview was to ease the researcher in analyzing the information obtained from the recorded interview. data collection procedure the first procedure was preparing the instrument which was interview guideline. the second procedure was contacting lily. the appointment was set up by sending messages via whatsapp messenger. also, it was used to discuss the place and time for the interview. we met twice on teacher office as lily requested. during the interview, both lily and i used english and unconsciously used codeswitching between english and indonesian language. there were two interview sessions. the time allocation of the first interview took 35 minutes and 43 minutes for the second interview. data analysis there were three steps used in analyzing the data. the steps were transcribing the data, member checking, transcribing the second interview, and coding. the very first step in data analysis was transcribing the data. transcribing the data was done to avoid lost data. the researcher transcribed the data from the recording into words. cohen et al. (2011) stated that transcribing is a crucial step in an interview for there is the potential for data loss. after transcribing the data, the researcher did the member checking to get validity data. the researcher did once member checking of each participant. member checking is known as participant journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 95 verification (rager, 2005). in addition, creswell and miller (2000) mentioned that member checking consists of taking the data and interpretations back to the participants, so they can confirm the information. the result of member checking was the additional result of problems and strategies to solve the problems in teaching pronunciation and the participant’s approval of the transcriptions. after the researcher did member checking, the next step was transcribing the record of member checking data to complete and add data from the interview. the member checking also served as the second interview. according to cohen et al. (2011), transcription can present essential word by word, so it is one of the truthful ways to present interview result. in the transcribing the first and second interview, the researcher eliminated the filler words to easier the reader and researcher in understanding the participant’s statements. the participant clarified the statements she made and gave additional strategies which were become strict and do an individual session. in addition, the transcription of the interview and member checking were analyzed by the researcher. to analyze the data, the researcher did coding. coding is a translation of questions response and respondent information to specific categories for analysis (kerlinger, 1999). additionally, cohen et al. (2011) stated that “a code is simply a name or label that the researcher gives to a piece of text that contains an idea or a piece of information” (p. 559). the researcher used three types of coding. the first was open coding. in doing open coding, the researcher described and gave label in the interview transcripts. the researcher went through the text by marking the text with a label that describes its text (cohen at al., 2011). the second coding was analytical coding. in doing analytical coding, the researcher interpreted the code. cohen et al. (2011) mentioned that an analytic code is more than a descriptive code, but it becomes more interpretive. the last was selective coding. the category results integrated into the study. as said by cohen et al. (2011), “selective coding identifies the core categories of text data in integrating them to form a theory” (p. 562). findings lily has been teaching this subject before it changed to linguistics, and it was called capita selecta on grammar 2. the problems that she faced came from a different language system. she mentioned, “the problem, yes, of course, because the system is different from our language, there journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 96 is [are] many sounds that are not found in indonesian phonemes”. she added the students’ problem lied on vowels and they were not clearly pronouncing the words. she said in the interview “so it brings difficulties for our students and then long and short vowels, so when the students pronounce that they [are] not all [the time], but sometimes, they still make a mistake”, and she also added “if it is with the quality then usually the students do not pronounce clearly”. she revealed that the problems from this affect the meaning and her way of teaching. in the interview, lily stated, “this source of difficulties, of course, will affect the meaning also the way we teach”. thus, the problems came from the different system language made lily difficult to familiarize the different sounds, she also added, “the different sound that makes me as a teacher find difficulties and probably the students also faced that, how to familiarize the different sounds”. lily implemented tongue twister, reading aloud, reading dictionary, and using song to solve the problems came from a different language system. she told me, “so, there are tongue twister, reading aloud, and then reading dictionary… to solve because of the difficulties [of] that two different systems, we have to apply several strategies”. when she used reading dictionary and tongue twister, she explained the students’ feeling, she said, “although they got stressed because they have to memorize but i could see that they were happy, excited, when of course when they could not do then they got stressed”. when lily said she used reading dictionary, she preferred to use a printed dictionary because the students could apply and read the symbol or called phonetic transcription. she said “yes, printed, why? because they can apply, [symbol] like this, they have to read this [symbol]… eagle /ˈiː.ɡəl/ for example”. she stated that “phonetic transcription, the purpose is, or the outcome is that they can read dictionary by themselves”. by reading dictionary the students were able to differentiate the sounds of words even though they have the same spelling. additionally, lily added the strategy using song to solve the problem from different language system. she said, “using tongue twister, reading aloud, and song”. she explained how she implemented song, “sing together using rhymes. i use rhymes, it is like words that has [have] similar sound, rhymes, song and what i notice my students were happy when using song”. she told me that her students were excited and happy to learn using song, and it also made the students not feel bored. additional strategy also added after lily told that she used journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 97 repetition and imitation and various activities. for the repeating activity, she said “asking the students to repeat the word or to pronounce the word in a smaller group like the first row, group one, group two, group three”. she addressed again the point “tongue twister and then repeat, imitate, repeat, imitate, various activities”. the activities covered the way she taught about stress in pronunciation and gave feedback. she said, “yes, when one by one [,] of course we give feedback, giving feedback and giving visual model”. well, she gave the model by using stress pattern using dots and capital letter. she stated, “giving visual reinforcement, giving pattern of the stress using dots, and or put the stress syllable in the capital letter”. when she did this activity, it helped the student identify the stress because in indonesia people do not pay attention to the stress. she explained, “so it helps the students because [of] the different system in indonesian, we don’t pay attention a lot on stress”. related to the visual model, she used video to show the students the native speaker as the model and it also expected to reduce boredom. she stated “visualize, using video, if using video then they trust as the model, right? because it’s native speaker, so they trust more”. then. she added, “i expect it can minimize their boredom if they feel bored, when seeing the video, they will get interested”. lily revealed that her problem also came from time. she needed more time while she is teaching. she answered, “the second difficulty… lack of time to revise or to check the students’ pronunciation one by one, yeah it is difficult, and it’s timeconsuming”. she also addressed her problem in time was related to the time to prepare her teaching. in the interview she mentioned, “so the more time when teaching pronunciation, i need more time to like myself prepared, yeah get prepared”. then, she said that her time in teaching used to correct the students’ mistake. she said, “my difficulties is[are] time, lack of time to correct the students’ mistake, that’s the most important thing”. then, she added that she tried to find effective material and short time prepared and did reflection from her experience to find an effective way. it seems effective to find an effective way from her experience to reduce the time-consuming problem. the strategy she mentioned, “…find materials that seems [seem] effective, and can be prepared in shorter time because… we teach, i mean i teach, i have experience in teaching so i learn from the previous semester that material can be manipulated by doing this, and does not take a long time to prepare, so by learning, by reflection, i think journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 98 reflection we can find shorter time to prepare, as the time goes by, so learning from the practice experience, then i can solve the problems” lily also mentioned the strategy to solve problem from time. the strategy was to apply group reading activity to make it easier to spot her students’ mistake. lily said, “so to solve this problem i apply after the reading together in one class and divide into for the example the first row, the second row, so when they made mistake it will be easy to spot it, that’s my strategy”. she said that she applied this strategy hoping that she could easily spot the mistake rather than checking one by one because it is used to reduce the time-consuming problem. following the problems and strategies above here, lily mentioned another problem came from the students’ side. she said that the problem from students that they are still made mistake which is mispronounced the word. she stated, “so when students pronounce that, they [are] not all [the time], but sometimes, they still make mistakes, short and long [vowels] and then if it is with the quality [the correctness of pronunciation] then usually the students do not pronounce clearly”. other problems are the motivation, lazy and underestimate the practice. she said, “also the student's motivation sometimes, they are lazy to practice, what they heard, what they say, daily, seems like all are correct so they feels [feel] like what’s for, what’s wrong like they underestimate their pronunciation, i mean underestimate the practice”. another problem is from the different proficiency levels of the students in the classroom. lily said, “the different levels of the students, yeah, some are fast learners, some are slow learners that really need more help and more attention from the teachers”. when i asked about how is students’ problem became lily’s problem, lily then mentioned that she felt she had responsibility. here she said, “because we have responsibility in changing them, so when they feel difficulties [,] of course i have like empathize what problems actually they have”. she said that the different levels of student have different habit and she had to find different ways in teaching, so all levels of students can receive the lesson. she said, “we have to find special way, we have to think extra”. lily’s strategy to solve her teaching problem was asking the students to practice and give assignment and assessment. she said, “force them to practice by giving more assignment so it is very common for the students when it comes to the assignment then assessment, sorry, assessment they will work more seriously, yeah giving various assessment”. then she added “so, with… journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 99 force them to practice, force them to practice, it is hopefully they become familiar with the sound “. dealing with students’ behavior she used to be very strict and show that she is angry. the behavior was when the students were not doing pronunciation practices and show no excitement in learning pronunciation. she said “… when facing those kind[s] of students so forcing to be very strict, that’s my way, like solve the problem that coming from students’ behavior, i become very strict, getting angry sometimes, showing being angry”. she explained when she showed anger the students are afraid and then back to their responsibility and this strategy works. she said, “so like they are afraid and then try to do something, sometimes it works”. besides that, lily mentioned that individual session is also used as the strategy to solve the problems came from students’ behavior. lily said “… individual then i have plenty of time to address special students”. then she added, “i think individual session is effective to change the students’ behavior because they are like oh it wrongs something like oh it’s wrong”. according to lily, this strategy made her students more aware of pronunciation and it made her happy as a teacher. she stated, “… to be more aware, yeah of course when the students change their knowledge”. she also mentioned that she forced her students to practice pronunciation to solve the problem came from the different proficiency level. she said, “forcing the students [to practice] until both of us are tired”. discussions the strategies used by lily in solving the pronunciation teaching problems were divided into several categories, the categories were as follows: increasing teaching quality. the quality of the teacher is really required to make the students achieve the lesson. the problems came from the readiness and limited time in teaching this strategy could help the teacher to prepare effective teaching. gilakjani and sabouri (2016) also said that teachers should know the difference between the target language and mother tongue sounds because when the teachers know the differences and similarities, they can understand the difficult sound their students may encounter. teacher can do self-reflection from their past teaching to analyze and evaluate their teaching. teacher can evaluate their teaching to make an improvement to be better and effective. reflect the activities and the ways in teaching to shed and to select the effective one. preparing the effective ways and material can reduce time journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 100 consuming problem because we can prepare ways and material in a shorter time. introducing students to pronunciation rules. introducing students about pronunciation rules in this finding means that the two teachers believe that teaching the english pronunciation rules is important because students need to know that english and indonesian language have different language system. this is in line with tahereen (2015) who said that pronunciation needs to be integrated with tasks, stress patterns of words, syllable patterns and phonetic rules. according to gilakjani and sabouri (2016), there are three features teachers need to know namely segmental features about the sound determined in phonetic, voice-setting features about general articulatory speech, and prosodic features about stress and intonation. using various teaching techniques and classrooms activities. there are plenty of activities conducted by lily to solve their problem in teaching pronunciation. based on the exploration and analysis of the interview conducted, there were techniques and classroom which can be useful to solve teaching pronunciation problems. teaching phonetic transcription. introducing the important part of pronunciation is phonetic rules. teaching the phonetic rules in the first place can help the teacher manage time. regarding lily, teaching phonetic to her students made them read dictionary where they can check the sounds rules by themselves, so the teacher does not have to repeat and explain overtime. she said, “yeah at least not repeating many times, just check your dictionary” (lily, 2018). this is in line with tahereen (2015) who said that giving the knowledge of ipa symbols will eventually help the students understand the sounds and at first this activity may seem timeconsuming but when the students already understand it become practices to build knowledge into skills. panggabean (2015) showed the priorities in pronunciation teaching, and one of them is teaching ipa transcription. using dictionaries. lily stated that using dictionaries is a way to solve the problem where students feel hard to pronounce the word correctly. this also helps them to check the correct pronunciation when they master the phonetic transcription. lily said that dictionary is like giving the students the tools or preferences where the students face difficult words at higher levels. this strategy is in line with tahereen (2015) who said that students often tend to ask their teacher about the correct pronunciation but when journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 101 students check out the pronunciation by themselves, and they see the visual shape of pronunciation. also, the students will remember them. using dictionaries can help the students to practice english pronunciation. reading aloud. reading aloud is a kind of activity which can help the teacher to easily spot the mistake in pronouncing the words. teacher can hear the general mistake from their students made, and the teacher does correction. according to tahereen (2015) reading aloud is a very common strategy in class for teachers and students to do to develop intelligible pronunciation. lily said that the activities she used is reading together with repeat and imitate. lily divided the class into two or three groups. lily asked the first group to say the simple word like bird catch worm and the second group say the bird catch the worm followed by the third group say the bird is catching the worm. this activity also helps students who feel shy to say the word. the teacher can apply reading together, so they will do repetition together and pronounce the word loudly. this is in line with tahereen (2015) who said that this activity helps both teacher and students identify their limit in pronunciation and teacher can use some signs to show the right pronunciation while the students are reading together. according to the lily, she used the rhymes from song, storytelling from audio or video or handouts they prepared. using games and tongue twisters. games are mentioned by lily. sometimes in teaching, teachers are afraid of their teaching or the activities that make the students feel bored. lily used games to reduce the boredom and make the students excited in class. gilakjani and sabouri (2016) said that games can enhance students’ stimulation in pronunciation lesson because it is important to stimulate the students’ pronunciation. lily included tongue twisters in her teaching to make the students excited. she said that even though the students got stressed when they can’t do it, but they are happy. lily said the example of tongue twister like peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. gilakjani and sabouri (2016) said that tongue twisters also can enhance the students’ pronunciation stimulation. moedjito (2016) showed that teachers use tongue twister as the technique for teaching english pronunciation. this activity can help the students, especially who have strong local accent influence (tahereen, 2015). kelly (2000) stated that tongue twister can be particularly useful for working on difficult consonant phonemes. giving feedback. feedback is a very common strategy used by teachers. lily gave feedback to the students who make journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 102 mistakes. from my experience, teachers sometimes give feedback after the students pronounce words. according to kelly (2000), the teacher gives feedback to students to help decrease the mistakes and students will be more confident in pronouncing english words. lily said that the effective way the students will remember when teachers directly correct the mistakes. teachers can use this strategy when they check the pronunciation one by one to students, or when they check the pronunciation in group activities. individual session. the individual session is used to spot special students (lily, 2018). this activity she used in assessment to be more focus on assessing and checking the students’ ability in the previous learning. tahereen (2015) mentioned this strategy used where the teachers will talk about the student's individual problems and assign some practice to increase the student's pronunciation. this activity helps the teacher to focus on students’ problems and categorize the students’ ability given more attention to learning pronunciation. become strict. in this situation, lily explained that there are many times the students do not engage the pronunciation practice because they show no excitement. they just do not take it seriously and pronunciation homework. lily answered that “when facing those kind[s] of students so yeah forcing to be very strict, that’s my way, like solve the problem that coming from students’ behavior, i become very strict, getting angry sometimes, showing being angry” (lily, 2018). she said that how the students will learn and master the pronunciation if they do not do the practice even do not do the homework. she was not angry but only pretending and showing that she was angry to make the students focus on what the teacher was asked to do. thus, to make sure that the students want to practice their pronunciation, she had to put a strict and angry face. conclusion and implication as a teacher, pronunciation knowledge is one of the skills to teach language. having competency to teach pronunciation well can be a key to educate learners and add language skills to be used because pronunciation is the compulsory part of speaking (boyer, 2002). however, to teach well, teachers need to know how to do it. even though teachers know, they are still conscious of facing teaching problems. this study was conducted to identify a university teacher’s problem in teaching pronunciation and to investigate the strategies in solving the problems. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 103 to answer the first research questions, this study addressed some problems happened in teaching pronunciation. the findings showed that the problems faced by lily as a university teacher involved in three categories. firstly, the problem was to familiarize the different sounds. the second finding was problems came from time included the lack of time to revise and need time to prepare in teaching. for the last finding, it was about the problem which came from the students’ side namely mispronouncing, lack of motivation, lazy, underestimating the practice, and the different levels of students. the second research questions answered the strategies found from lily. the strategies were covered into three main topics. the first strategy was about teaching quality where teachers need to increase and improve her teaching quality from many sources, find effective material, and do reflection to prepare the material in shorter time and evaluate past teaching to improve the next teaching performance. the second strategy was introducing students the pronunciation rules where this strategy suggested the teacher to introduce the knowledge of pronunciation to the students to make them understand and build basic knowledge of pronunciation. the third strategy was teaching techniques and classroom activities where the teachers could implement technique or classroom activities such as read aloud, do individual session, use games, tongue twisters, practice using dictionaries, practice using storytelling through song, video or audio, give feedback, teach phonetic transcription and become strict. in conclusion, in teaching pronunciation, the teacher should have readiness and myriad of knowledge. because as a teacher who teaches students in the country where english is not their second language with different background, the teacher must know how to teach pronunciation and make the students understand english pronunciation. besides, teachers’ knowledge is the key to successful pronunciation teaching in order to reduce the chance of a problem arising. references boyer, s. (2002). understanding english pronunciation: an integral practice courseteacher's book. glenbrook: national library of australia. brewster, j., ellis, g., & girard, d. (2004). the primary english teacher's guide. england: penguin books. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7 ed.). london: routledge. cook, v. (2008). second language learning and language teaching. london: hodder education. journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 2, 2018 104 gilakjani, a. p., & sabouri, n. b. (2016). how can efl teachers help efl learners improve their english pronunciation? journal of language teaching and research, 7(5), 967-972. doi:10.17507/jltr.0705.18 kelly, g. (2000). how to teach pronunciation (1st ed.). harlow: pearson education limited. mattarima, k., & hamdan, a. r. (2011). the teaching constraints of english as a foreign language in indonesia: the context of school based curriculum. sosiohumanika, 4(2), 287-300. moedjito. (2016). the teaching of english pronunciation: perceptions of indonesian school teachers and university. canadian center of science and education, 9(6), 30-41. panggabean, h. (2015). problematic approach to english learning and teaching: a case in indonesia. canadian center of science and education, 8(3), 3545. doi:10.5539/elt.v8n3p35 stockwell, c. (ed.). (2013, august 26). challenges of teaching pronunciation in esl classrooms. retrieved september 10, 2017, from bright hub education: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/e sl-teaching-tips/127944-challenges-ofteaching-english-pronunciation/ tahereen, t. (2015). challenges in teaching pronunciation at tertiary level in bangladesh. international journal of english language & translation studies, 3(1), 09-20. tennant, a. (2007). pronunciation matters: sound reasons for teaching pronunciation. solution for english teaching, 1-5. retrieved july 19, 2017, from onestopenglish.com: ht yoshida, m. t. (2016). beyond repeat after me: teaching pronunciation to english learners. united states: tesolpress. yudanika, f. (2013). improving the students' english pronunciation of grade xi of sma n 2 bantul through oral diary using mobile phone recorder. yogyakarta: universitas negeri yogyakarta. writing is one of the skills that is considered to have an essential significance in second language (l2) learning because it serves as both a tool for communication and a means of learning, thinking, and organizing knowledge or ideas. unfortunately, l2 learners have also considered among the most difficult skills to master as it involves problem solving in addition to the deployment of strategies to achieve communicative goals (graham, 2010; kurt & atay, 2007). for l2 learners, the difficulty in l2 writing is doubled because they need to transfer ideas from their first language rahmah fithriani 1-13 abstract introduction cultural influences on students’ perceptions of written feedback in l2 writing is a lecturer at the department of english educa�on, state islamic university of north sumatra. she received her doctorate in language, literacy, and sociocultural studies from university of new mexico. her research interests include feedback in l2 wri�ng and the use of l1 in l2 teaching & learning. the influence of students’ culturally constructed view of the feedback process is a significant topic of discussion in studies about feedback in l2 writing. research has shown that hierarchical relationship cultures and face-saving strategies have significant influence on students’ perceptions of feedback process in l2 writing, particularly in asian societies. aiming to investigate whether these findings resonate in indonesian efl context, this qualitative study collected data through writing drafts, reflective journals, question¬naires and interviews with seven students who took an after-class writing course. findings showed that students found teacher feedback more valuable than peer feedback, which indicated the influence of hierarchical culture. however, they were not concerned about practicing face-saving strategies to maintain group harmony and cohesion, which is quite common to find in other asian societies. this study suggested that cultural influences, particularly face-saving strategies do not have as much influence on indonesian efl students’ perceptions of written feedback in l2 writing as those in other asian efl students. keywords: perception, cultural influence, teacher feedback, peer feedback, l2 writing journal of foreign language teaching & learning volume 3, no. 1, january 2018 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 2 into the target language and organize those ideas into new and different patterns than those in their first language (l1). these challenges that learners encounter in l2 writing call for teachers and researchers to find better ways for instructing writing. providing feedback is one of the most appropriate ways of instruction to help l2 learners successfully learn a writing skill (hyland & hyland, 2006). research has shown that written feedback is a crucial part of the writing process (cohen & cavalcanti, 1990). many studies investigating the effect of written feedback on students’ l2 writing have also indicated that written feedback process helps students improve the quality of their writings (e.g. chandler, 2003; ferris, 2006; jahin, 2012; kamimura, 2006). however, few exist that focus on how feedback is perceived by students. ward, grinstein, and keim (2015) describe perception as the process of recognizing, organizing, and interpreting sensory information in order to give meaning to the environment. it is sometimes distorted by a number of aspects residing in the perceiver, in the object or target being perceived, or in the context of the situation in which the perception is made. specifically, lewis (2011) stated that aspects such as the cultural context have a profound influence on that which is being perceived. furthermore, carson and nelson (1996) emphasize that writing is a socially constructed act, thus the pedagogical practices of writing instruction often reflects the cultural values in which it is being done. considering the relationship between culture, perception, and writing instruction, it can be assumed that culture may play an important role in shaping students’ perception of the effectiveness of feedback implementation in l2 writing instruction. research investigating how cultural traits have significant bearing on students’ perceptions of feedback process in l2 writing has reported different findings. educational practice in cultures of hierarchical relationships places a great emphasis on “maintaining a hierarchical but harmonious relation between teacher and student. students are expected to respect and not to challenge their teachers” (hu, 2002, p. 98). thus, students from these cultures find teacher feedback authoritative and tend to incorporate all teacher comments in their revision (miao, badger, & zhen, 2006; tsui & ng, 2000). as a consequence, these students are also more likely to have negative views of feedback from fellow students and be reluctant to incorporate peer feedback in their writing (carson & nelson, 1994; nelson & carson, 1998). interestingly, miao, badger, and zhen (2006) and tsui and ng (2000) reported different findings showing that learners from hierarchical cultures value teacher feedback more highly than peer feedback but still recognize the importance of peer feedback. furthermore, research findings showed that students coming from collectivist cultures which are much practiced in asian countries generally work toward maintaining group harmony and mutual face-saving to maintain a state of cohesion (carson & nelson, 1996; lee, 2008, nelson & carson, 1998). this means that peer feedback may be less successful in a collectivist culture because of students’ unwillingness to criticize others. given the importance of students’ cultural influences on feedback processes in l2 writing and the inconclusive findings of how cultural traits have significant bearing on students’ perceptions of feedback process in l2 writing, it is necessary to conduct this study to further explore students’ perceptions of written feedback in l2 journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 3 writing classrooms in a different context, particularly in indonesian efl context. furthermore, since most of previous studies focusing on cultural influences on l2 writing feedback were conducted in esl context, it is interesting to find out whether the results as reported in the existing literature will also resonate those in this context. this study may contribute to the growing body of literature and provide more information for esl writing teachers who want to implement written feedback in their classrooms. literature review the influence of culture in l2 writing has been highlighted in many studies (e.g., lee, 2008; scollon, 1999; tsui & ng, 2000) showing how cultures influence the pedagogical practices in efl classrooms, particularly in most asian societies. these studies also emphasize the differentiating characteristics of l2 writing instruction in esl and efl contexts. however, some other researchers (e.g., holliday, 1999; kubota, 1999, 2001, 2004) have criticized the attempts to essentialize and polarize the cultural differences of esl/efl students. in her critics, kubota (2004) stated that although “cultural difference is an important topic of discussion in second language education, it should not be conceptualized as fixed, objective, and apolitical based on an essentialist and normative understanding of culture” (p. 21). it is especially true when imaging the esl learners in countries where english is used as the first language such as australia and the united states where classrooms are usually demographically heterogeneous. esl learners in those classrooms tend to have the urge to assimilate with the general norms and practices that are functional in class. as explained by bhowmik (2009), when esl learners from different socio-cultural backgrounds work together in feedback activities, the issues of culture could be minimized because each student is likely to come out of her comfort zones and participate in class activities more actively. this current study would refer to the research investigating how cultures influence the pedagogical practices in efl classrooms. it was not aiming to emphasis the cultural differences between students in esl and efl contexts, particularly those from southeast asian countries with those in english-speaking countries. the reason is because this study was conducted in a demographically homogenous classroom, similar to the following referred studies. research on cultural influences in feedback process some research investigating feedback in l2 writing has reported different findings on whether cultural traits had a significant bearing on students’ perceptions of feedback process in l2 writing. miao, badger, and zhen (2006) and tsui and ng (2000) investigated how students from hierarchical cultures perceived and incorporated the feedback they received from teachers and peers differently. the studies of carson and nelson (1996; 1998) on cultural influences in feedback activities reported that students’ view of cultural values affected the feedback effectiveness in collaborative l2 writing. tsui and ng (2000) focused their study on l2 writing revision after peer and teacher feedback. this study was conducted in a hongkong secondary, in which english was used as the medium of instruction. twenty-seven students participated in this study. the findings revealed that teacher comments were perceived more effective and useful than peer comment. there are journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 4 two reasons behind these results; firstbecause the students believed that the teacher was more experienced, and second, they also viewed the teacher as a figure of authority whose words should be followed. these findings show how cultural values shape students’ perceptions of the feedback they receive from teacher versus a peer. this is in accordance with the cultural value of traditional chinese education stating that “students are expected to receive and retain, with an open mind and without preconceptions, the knowledge imparted by their teachers and textbooks” (hu, 2002, p. 100). the influence of hierarchical culture was also highlighted by miao, badger, and zhen (2006) in their study. they argued that the power distance between teachers and students from hierarchical culture is ‘problematic’ in the feedback process since students are always expected to abide by what the teachers say, and they are not supposed to challenge the teachers and their opinions. they also explained that in chinese society the confucian cultures ascribe a lot of respect to teachers which students at all levels usually follow. another cultural value which has been found to have an impact on feedback activities in l2 writing is face-saving strategy which is much practiced in collectivist societies. carson and nelson (1996; 1998) conducted two studies investigating three chinese esl students taking an advanced composition class in a us university interacted and reacted in peer response groups. since chinese people practice collectivist culture in which the primary goal of the group is to maintain the relationships that constitute the group, they argued that writing groups used in composition classes in the united states might be problematic for chinese students because of the cultural differences. furthermore, they stated that students of collectivist culture tend to practice face-saving strategy in a group interaction to maintain cohesion and group harmony among the group members. the findings of both studies affirmed their argument. the analysis in the first study (carson & nelson, 1996) showed that the chinese students’ reluctance in initiating comments during group interactions. when they provided comments to their peers, they monitored themselves carefully to ensure they did not start conflict within the group. these findings supported their hypothesis that the values of collectivist society affected the chinese students’ interaction style. in the second study, nelson and carson (1998) compared chinese and spanish students’ perceptions of peer feedback group. although the analysis indicated that both the chinese and the spanish-speaking students preferred the provision of negative comments showing their mistakes, they were found to have different views in terms of the needed amount and kind of talk in identifying the problems. this study also reported contradictory finding from the chinese students who perceived problem-identification as the goal of peer feedback but were reluctant to identify and recognize them. in conclusion, peer feedback in this study was less successful for students of collectivist cultures because of unwillingness to criticize others. some general features of indonesian culture hofstede and hofstede (2005) explained that people living in the same social environment at least partly share the same culture, thus it is known as a collective phenomenon. culture includes some aspects, such as: language, art, and social journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 5 activity, and interaction (tabalujan, 2008). since classroom context reflects a social unit within the larger unit of a society (maulana, helms-lorenz, irnidayanti, & van de grif, w, 2016), culture, thus plays an important role in pedagogical practices, including in l2 writing classrooms. the influence of culture in l2 writing is also highlighted by tickoo (1995) who argued that one of the differentiating characteristics of l2 writing instruction in esl and efl contexts is how cultures influence the pedagogical practices in classrooms. this is particularly significant in most asian societies which are heirs to rich and established cultures and traditions. in addition, research also shows that l2 writing pedagogy in efl context especially that in asia, is confronted by the issue of culture, which plays a critical role in effective l2 writing instruction (bhowmik, 2009). among the issues of culture that influence the effectiveness of l2 writing instruction as reported in some research findings are the hierarchical relationship between teachers and students (e.g., miao, badger, & zhen, 2006; scollon, 1999; tsui & ng, 2000) and collectivist society that practices face-saving strategy to maintain group harmony (carson & nelson, 1996; lee, 2008, nelson & carson, 1998). the two cultural values of hierarchical relationship and collectivist society are also found in indonesian cultures. hierarchy is considered very important in indonesian society, in which ople's status should be respected at all times. the teacher–student relationship in indonesian classrooms reflects this hierarchical structure suggesting obedience to higher authority figures (maulana et al, 2016). teachers are the ones who are responsible for managing order and neatness in classrooms and students are expected to follow their rules : the teacher is seen to be a moral authority and students are expected to defer to all their superiors, including teachers. teachers are also viewed as the fountain of knowledge – while knowledge is viewed as a more or less fixed set of facts to be transmitted and digested by thirsty learners, later to be regurgitated in test (a deficit model of learning). (lewis as cited in novera, 2004, p. 478) one related aspect of hierarchical culture is the concept of power distance, which can be defined as a measure of interpersonal influence between two persons (hofstede, 1980). an example of a large power distance in educational settings is that between a teacher and a student, which is much found in indonesian classrooms. teachers are viewed as the holders of knowledge which is passed on to the students. thus, it could be assumed that students of large power distance countries like indonesia tend to have less value on their peers’ opinions than students from countries with a lower power distance do. indonesia is also known as a collectivist society that put the importance of a group in a higher position than that of an individual (hofstede & hofstede, 2005). the interactions within indonesian society show a high contact among its members who express a substantial amount of interpersonal closeness (hall, 1966) and emphasize conformity, social harmony, and family interdependence (chao & tseng, 2002; uchida & ogihara, 2012). for this reason, saving face strategy is a very important practice. indonesian students tend to be reluctant to ask questions to their teacher during classroom activities, even when they are invited to do so. this is a strategy commonly used to avoid showing an attitude of challenging teacher’s authority or/and demonstrating one’s arrogance or journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 6 ignorance – to risk the possibility of punishment or personal humiliation (loss of social face)” (lewis as cited in novera, 2004, p. 478). to maintain class harmony and cohesion, students tend to practice mutual face-saving strategy by avoiding debates and confrontation when interacting with other class members. thus, peer feedback could be a problem in indonesian classes since it may be difficult for indonesian students to provide negative feedback on their peers’ writings. they probably say what they think the writers want to hear rather than what might be helpful. thus, it is interesting to find out whether the cultures of hierarchical relationship and face-saving strategy in indonesian society also influence the l2 writing pedagogical practices in indonesia efl context, as reported in other efl contexts in asian society. methods this study applied a qualitative case study approach. using purposive sampling technique, the researcher recruited seven 6th sixth semester students majoring in english education at a state university in medan, indonesia. data for this study were collected through a variety of instruments including writing drafts, reflective journals, questionnaires, and interview, to ensure that nuances of students’ perceptions in every stage of written feedback process were captured. thematic content analysis with three coding stages was used as the main data analysis. in the first stage of coding, significant quotes and passages on the copies of all reflective journals and written feedback surveys were manually coded using color pencils. the initial findings were then recorded in researcher’s note as guidance in preparing the interview questions. in the initial coding stage, the findings from pre-coding stage were transferred to a table sheet in a microsoft word file. all significant quotes and passages were labeled as ‘data extract,’ which was further analyzed at the sentence level for coding and temporary categorizing. the findings from this stage of coding were later analyzed again in the final coding stage. this process was iterative before reasonable saturation for categories and sub categories could be reached. the writing course this study was conducted in an after-class writing course consisting of seven meeting in total. each meeting was divided into two sessions, with one session lasting for one hour (see table 1). during the course, students completed two writing tasks of argumentative essay; agree &disagree and comparison & contrast. furthermore, as part of the writing tasks, students completed a sequential series of tasks including writing the first draft of an essay, providing written feedback on peers’ essays, revising the draft after written feedback sessions, and producing the final draft of the essay. in an effort to get the maximum benefits of peer feedback in this study, the first meeting of the writing course was used to introduce peer feedback through the ala (academic literacy for all) protocol (mahn & bruce, 2010) and train the students how to give feedback on an essay journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 7 findings the results of data analysis showed that the hierarchical culture in indonesian society played a role in shaping students’ perceptions of the value of written feedback. the students reported to value more teacher feedback than peer feedback. however, the culture of power distance and collectivist society did not seem to have much influence in students’ perceptions because they were not reluctant to voice their disagreements with the teacher and peers and did not hold back when criticizing peers’ drafts. the findings will be presented in two themes, as the following: theme one: valuing more teacher feedback than peer feedback indonesian society considers hierarchy a very important aspect in social life. one principle of hierarchical culture is obedience to higher authority figures. as a result, students from hierarchical cultures where teachers are ascribed the highest power and ultimate source of knowledge in classroom interactions may perceive different values of written feedback provided by teachers and peers (miao, badger, & zhen, 2006, scollon, 1999; tsui & ng, 2000). the analysis of the data in this study also showed that students valued teacher feedback more than peer feedback, which was reflected from the amount of written feedback incorporated in their writings. as shown in the figure 1, although the total number of teacher’s suggestions/corrections was smaller than that of peers’, students yet incorporated more teacher than peer feedback in revisions. a closer look at the data from interview revealed that these different values resulted from three reasons: different levels of confidence in teacher and peers as feedback providers, different levels of confirmation of written feedback usefulness, and discrepancy of teacher and peer feedback incorporation. meeting session i session ii 1 introduction peer feedback training 2 teacher’s presentation (agree & disagree essay) peer feedback 1 writing 1 (first draft) revision 1 (second draft) reflective journal 1 3 peer feedback 2 teacher feedback revision 2 (third draft) reflective journal 2 4 revision 3 (final draft) written feedback survey 1 reflective journal 3 5 teacher’s presentation (comp. & contrast essay) peer feedback 1 (global issues) writing 2 (first draft) revision 1 (second draft) reflective journal 4 6 peer feedback 2 reflective journal 5 revision 2 (third draft) teacher feedback 7 revision 3 (final draft) written feedback survey 2 reflective journal 6 table 1. writing course schedule journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 8 students showed different levels of confidence to written feedback they received from teacher and peers. when referring to teacher feedback, they used words like “trust,” “believe,” and “sure” of teacher’s competence. in addition, they also showed high confidence in the quality of teacher’s comments by stating that they were “more trustworthy,” “more accurate,” and “more qualified.” in the following excerpt, the student explained why he trusted teacher feedback more than peer feedback. i think teacher feedback is more qualified. i personally trust teacher feedback more than all my peers’ feedback. because i can also see the result from teacher feedback looks better and fits better in my essay, compared to feedback from my peers. (excerpt 1, interview) on the contrary, when talking about peer feedback, students tended to use words showing low confidence like “distrust,” “doubt,” and “uncertain.” furthermore, they also claimed that peers have lower competence as feedback provider by stating that they “have equal knowledge,” or “have no or little experience.” i think that my word is correct, it doesn’t need revising. but she thinks that my word is wrong. well, it was happened because we have a different understanding about it. i don’t know which the correct one is. therefore, it is one of the lack of getting feedback from the peer because we have the same level in knowledge. that is why i cannot believe 100% the feedback from peer. (excerpt 2, reflective essay) in the reflective essay, the student expressed her disagreement with her peer’s correction. she also stated that one of the drawbacks of peer feedback was because the feedback provider and the feedback receiver were at the same level in knowledge thus peer feedback cannot be totally trusted. different values of teacher and peer feedback were also indicated by how students perceived the usefulness of written feedback in their revisions. in terms of the usefulness of written feedback in the revision, all students responded positively. however, when referring to teacher feed figure 1: distribution of written feedback received and used journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 9 back, they confirmed its usefulness in absolute but the usefulness of peer feedback with reservations. in the students’ words, teacher feedback was ‘very,” “definitely,” or “totally” useful while peer feedback was ‘‘basically,’’ ‘‘sometimes’’ or “less” useful. this different acceptance of written feedback can be seen in the excerpt below: i think teacher feedback is worthier than peer feedback. it was really helpful and very detailed in all aspects from grammar, idea, to the conclusion were commented by the instructor. (excerpt 3, interview) the student quoted in excerpt 3 explained the usefulness of teacher feedback by using the word “very” to intensify the degree of how helpful and detailed the teacher’s comments she received. furthermore, she praised teacher feedback on all aspects of writing which shows her trust in teacher’s knowledge and competence. meanwhile another student (quoted in excerpt 4) used the word “enough’ which is a lower degree of intensifier when talking about the quality of peer feedback that she received. she also only praised one particular aspect of writing, in this case grammar where she thought her peer was competent to comment about. about 50% [of peer feedback was used in revisions], because i think my friend’s suggestions are good enough, especially about grammar. (excerpt 4, written feedback survey) the last indication that students valued teacher feedback more than peer feedback is the different amount of teacher and peer feedback incorporation. as seen in figure 1, students incorporated higher percentage of teacher feedback (86%) in their revisions, meanwhile for peer feedback, only 69% was used in revisions. this discrepancy of feedback incorporation was also admitted by students as highlighted in the following excerpts: i took 50% of comments from my peer because i think [only] 50% of the comments are right and useful for my essay… most of the comment i have from teacher feedback, 90% of comments i took because i think the comments from teacher’s feedback is really helpful. (excerpt 5, written feedback survey) i used 40% of my peer feedback in my revision. i do that because i think the correction is wrong… i used 80% (of teacher feedback) in my essay because i think my teacher has more knowledge than me. (excerpt 6, written feedback survey) both students quoted in excerpts 5 and 6 admitted of using much higher teacher feedback than peer feedback in their revisions. despite their different reasons for doing so, the fact that they incorporated more teacher than peer feedback also indicated that they value teacher feedback more. in summary, students gave more credits to teacher comments more than peer comments. in this case, students have higher confidence in teacher feedback which resulted in higher percentage of teacher feedback incorporation in revisions. however, it should be noted that student valued both teacher and peer feedback although with different levels of confirmation theme two: claiming authority as feedback providers and receivers. another principle in hierarchical culture is the high-power distance between teachers and students. thus, educational practice in cultures of hierarchical relationships places a great emphasis on “maintaining a hierarchical journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 10 but harmonious relation between teacher and student. students are expected to respect and not to challenge their teachers” (hu, 2002, p. 98). in addition, indonesians as collectivist society also practice face-saving strategy to maintain cohesion and group harmony among the group members. however, the data analysis demonstrated that despite the high-power distance between teachers and students and the practice of face-saving strategy in indonesian society, the students in this study were not hesitant to claim their authority as feedback receivers and feedback providers. when receiving feedback from teacher and peers, students were not reluctant to voice their disagreement and reject the feedback for personal reasons such as “i don’t think the comments are correct,” i dissatisfied with the feedback provided,”. in addition, as the writers, they were also aware that they were the decision makers in deciding what comments to incorporate or ignore in their revisions. they rejected the feedback using some reasons such as “the original draft is better,” “suggestions/revisions changed the intended meaning,” and “feedback interfered with writer’s voice and style. in the interaction below (excerpt 7), the student showed how he claimed his authority as the writer of the essay. although he confirmed the quality of the feedback, he rejected to use it in his revision because he saw this contribution as intrusive. it can be said that students valued teacher feedback and confirmed its quality, but it was not necessarily for them to agreewith and incorporate it in their writings. interviewer: in your reflective journal, you wrote that you took only 50% of teacher feedback. why? student: the teacher gave me only two suggestions. i took one but ignored the other because i think the suggestion [which was ignored] was not applicable in my writing. the other i think was acceptable although a little bit difficult to make it flow with my sentences, with my idea. i admitted the first comment was good, but if i kept using it in my revision…what can i say…the idea didn’t flow so i had to rewrite everything. (excerpt 7, interview) when serving as feedback provider, students did also not hesitate to give comments on her peers’ drafts which was shown in their statements like, “i provided as much feedback as necessary, “i gave feedback based on one’s understanding,” “i gave feedback to help improve peer’s essay,” “i did not hold back when giving criticism,” and “i believe that the writers will not be offended with my feedback.” those statements indicate that students realized that being a feedback provider allowed them to speak as a teacher might. they also knew that the purpose of their giving comments on peers’ drafts was to state their opinions on what peers needed to do to improve their writings. when providing criticism, they also did not hold back just because of not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings. as a result, students in this study were not concerned with maintaining group harmony and practicing face-saving strategies. as long as i think it is necessary, i will give feedback on my peers’ drafts. because i believe that my friends know that i had no intention to insult or offend them. i personally also expected that my friends be honest to me when giving feedback. when they think it’s good, they can praise it. when they think it’s not good, they can criticize it. even when they think my essay was good, i still expected them to provide me much feedback. (excerpt 8, interview) journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 11 the interview excerpt above clearly illustrates that the student’s only intention was to help her peers improve their writing by not holding anything back when providing feedback. she furthermore explained that she expected the same treatment from her peers. this indicated that she was not concerned about practicing face-saving strategies to maintain harmony with her peers by subordinating honesty to politeness. discussion the finding showing that the students valued teacher feedback more than peer feedback is in line with those of miao, badger, and zhen’s (2006) and tsui and ng’s (2000). miao, badger, and zhen (2006) reported that the students in their study “value teacher feedback more highly than peer feedback but recognize the importance of peer feedback” (p. 193). similar to this, tsui and ng (2000) found out that their students favored teacher comments. they furthermore explained that the reasons were because the students thought that “the teacher was more experienced and a figure of authority and that teacher's comments guaranteed quality” (p. 160). two among the reasons, namely: “the teacher was more experienced” and” the teacher's comments guaranteed quality” were also mentioned by the students in this study to explain why they valued more teacher feedback. interestingly, the other reason saying that the teacher was a figure of authority whose words should be followed did not seem to be a reason. although hierarchical societies tend to accept more power distance, including the distance between a teacher and a student, the students did not hesitate to disregard teacher’s suggestions and to voice their disagreement with them. this indicates that power distance did not have any significant influence in students’ perceptions of written feedback. the second finding showing students’ willingness to criticize peers’ writings and to voice their disagreement with peers’ comments is quite the contrary of carson and nelson’s (1996). the results of their study showed that that “the chinese students’ primary goal for the groups was social-to maintain group harmony-and that this goal affected the nature and types of interaction they allowed themselves in group discussions” (p. 1). they furthermore described some characteristics of the chinese students’ interactions: (1) reluctance to criticize drafts because they thought might be hurtful to other group members; (2) reluctance to disagree with peers because it would create conflicts within the group. it can be assumed that such different findings between this study and that of carson and nelson (1996) may lie in three reasons; (1) students’ understanding of the written feedback purpose; and (2) the nature of feedback interactions. in the beginning of this study, the students were introduced to the concept of written feedback through the ala protocol. through this activity, students got a very good understanding of the purpose of peer feedback throughout the composing process that is to help improve the quality of the writing and develop writing skills of both feedback receivers and providers. they characterized their interactions in the peer feedback activities as task oriented. they focused on providing comments that helped improve their peers’ essays and viewed the social dimension of maintaining the state of cohesion as subordinate to the task dimension. thus, although indonesians belong to a collectivist society which journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 12 practices face-saving strategies to maintain cohesion and group harmony among the group members, the students’ mutual understanding of the written feedback purpose in this study seemed successful to prevent them practicing those strategies which may not work toward the fulfillment of the purpose. another speculation to explain the contrast findings is that the nature of interactions between students in carson and nelson’s (1996) study was different from that in this study. in the former, students provided feedback through discussions in groups of three or four consisting of speakers of different mother tongues. in the latter, students worked in pairs or groups to provide written feedback on drafts. this means that students in this study did not involve in face-to-face interactions where the feedback provider would look at the face of the writer when giving suggestions or criticism. furthermore, face-to-face interactions would also allow the feedback provider to read the feedback receiver’s emotions through verbal and nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, which perhaps could be a factor that made students of collectivist society practice face saving strategies in peer feedback to maintain group harmony. thus, the nature of interactions in this study might make it easier for students to be as honest as possible when providing feedback. conclusion and suggestion the findings of this study may contribute to the existing literature showing how cultures influence the pedagogical practices in efl classrooms, particularly in most asian societies. some cultural influences, particularly hierarchical culture still plays a role in shaping students’ perceptions of the different values of written feedback they received from teacher and peers. however, providing students with a fundamental understanding of the purpose of feedback activities through the ala protocol seemed successful in minimizing those influences. with some adjustment to accommodate the different contexts of where it is implemented, teachers who would like to incorporate peer feedback in their teaching practice could also make use the ala protocol to introduce the students with the concept of peer feedback. this study might lead to similar research studies that may collectively provide a more extensive framework for understanding cultural influences on indonesian efl students’ perceptions of written feedback in l2 writing. the replication of this study in a formal classroom setting with a larger size of participants could be conducted to increase the generalizability of the results. furthermore, since this study involved written feedback only, it might be interesting to investigate whether there are similarities or differences in terms of cultural influences in the combination of written and oral feedback in l2 writing. references bhowmik, s. k. (2009). l2 writing pedagogy in efl contexts: an exploration of salient practices in teaching and learning. the journal of asia tefl, 6(3), 351-373. carson, j. g., & nelson, g. l. (1996). chinese students' perceptions of esl peer feedback group interaction. journal of second language writing, 5(1), 1-19. chao, r. k., & tseng, v. (2002). asian and american parenting. in m. bornstein (ed.), handbook of parenting (pp. 59–94). mahwah: erlbaum. graham, s. (2010). facilitating writing development. in d. wyse, r. andrews, & journal of foreign language teaching & learning vol.3 no. 1, january 2018 13 j-hoffman (eds.), the routledge international handbook of english language, and literacy teaching (pp. 125–136). new york, ny: routledge. hall, e. t. (1966). the hidden dimension. new york, ny: double day. hofstede, g. (1980). culture’s consequences: international differences in work-related values. thousand oaks, ca: sage. hofstede, g. & hofstede, g. j. (2005). cultures and organizations: software of the mind. new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. holliday, a. (1999). small cultures. applied linguistics, 20, 237–264. hu, g. (2002). potential cultural resistance to pedagogical imports: the case of communicative language teaching in china. language, culture and curriculum, 15(2), 93–105. kubota, r. (1999). japanese culture constructed by discourses: implications for applied linguistics research and english language teaching. tesol quarterly, 33, 9–35. kubota, r. (2001). discursive construction of the images of u.s. classrooms. tesol quarterly, 35, 9-38. kubota, r. (2004). the politics of cultural difference in second language education. critical inquiry in language studies: an international journal, 1(1), 21–39 kurt, g., & atay, d. (2007). the effects of peer feedback on the writing anxiety of prospective turkish teachers of efl. journal of theory and practice in education, 3(1), 12-23. lee, i. (2008). understanding teachers’ written feedback practices in hong kong secondary classrooms. journal of second language writing, 17(2), 69–85. lewis, a. (2001). the issue of perception: some educational implications. educare, 30(1), 272-288. mahn, h., & bruce, m. (2010). the academic literacy for all project: a professional development model meeting the professional development needs. in c. j. casteel & k. g. ballantyne (eds.), professional development in action: improving teaching for english learners (pp. 39-41). washington, dc: national clearinghouse for english language acquisition. available at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/files/uploads/3/pd_in_action.pdf. maulana, r., helms-lorenz, m., irnidayanti, y., & van de grif, w. (2016). autonomous motivation in the indonesian classroom: relationship with teacher support through the lens of self-determination theory. asia-pacific education researcher, 25(3), 441–451. miao, y., badger, r., & zhen, y. (2006). a comparative study of peer and teacher feedback in a chinese efl writing class. journal of second language writing, 15(3), 179–200 nelson, g. l., & carson, j. g. (1998). esl students’ perceptions of effectiveness in peer response groups. journal of second language writing, 7, 113–131. novera, i. a. (2004). indonesian post graduate students studying in australia: an examination of their academic, social, and cultural experiences. international education journal, 5(4), 475-487. scollon, s. (1999). not to waste words or students: confucian and socratic discourse in the tertiary classroom. in e. hinkel (ed.), culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 13–27). cambridge: cup. tabalujan, b. (2008). culture and ethics in asian business. the melbourne review, l4(1), 13-19. tickoo, m. l. (1995). reading-writing research and asian tefl classroom: providing for differences. in m. l. tickoo (ed.). reading and writing theory and practice, (pp. 259-279). singapore: relc. tsui, a. b. m., & ng, m. (2000). do secondary l2 writers benefit from peer comments? journal of second language writing, 9(2), 147–170. uchida, y., & ogihara, y. (2012). personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective. international journal of wellbeing, 2, 354–369. ward, m., grinstein, g., & keim, d. (2015). interactive data visualization: foundations, techniques, and applications (2nd ed.). new york, ny: crc press. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 20 article history: submitted: 6 november 2020 reviewed: 4 january 2021 edited: 14 january 2021 28 january 2021 accepted: 28 january 2021 word recognition and reading skills to improve reading comprehension mayra yadira chamba1, maria rossana ramirez-avila2 1,2universidad casa grande, ecuador 1mayra.chamba@casagrande.edu.ec 2mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10174 abstract this research aimed at showing the influence of word recognition, and using skimming and scanning skills to improve reading comprehension. participants were a group of 15 students whose ages ranged from 14 to 16. they had problems in reading comprehension and vocabulary. this action research was conducted at a private language institute. the instruments to collect data were preand post-surveys, prepost-tests, learning logs, skimming and scanning forms, and an interview. they provided quantitative and qualitative information. results showed that there was a statistically significant improvement in parts of speech knowledge from the preto the posttest. the result was an average improvement of 28.2% in student performance. cohen’s d was calculated with a result of 1.09 which means there is impact in learning. there was also a steady improvement in skimming and scanning which was exemplified by the ability to correctly complete a form after reading texts. lastly, students’ perspectives were positive to this innovation. therefore, it is advisable to apply the same innovation with other learners in order to compare results of improvement of reading comprehension and overall proficiency. keywords: skimming; scanning; word recognition; reading comprehension; language school =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 mailto:1mayra.chamba@casagrande.edu.ec mailto:2mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10174 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10174&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-02-06 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 21 introduction reading and language proficiency are connected. studies have found positive correlations between students who read substantially and high academic performance. this helps them expand their vocabulary and consequently gain knowledge in other academic content areas, in the target language (l2) and in their mother tongue (short et al., 2018). in this regard, the programme for international students assessment (pisa) performed an assessment to measure the level of reading proficiency among member countries of the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2016). results indicated that only 12 out of 42 countries have made progress since 2000. the others have either declined results or have remained at the same proficiency level. these results force educators to reconsider the different aspects that influence literacy acquisition in students’ l1 in addition to that of a foreign language (oecd, 2016). ecuador has specific proficiency objectives related to english language education which include the skill of reading. one of the objectives is to apply correct reading comprehension techniques to understand any type of texts (ministerio de educación, 2012). despite the efforts to meet them, ecuador english levels are low. the ef english proficiency index (epi) reports that the english level in latin america (50.33%) is lower than in europe (56.64%). this represents a low proficiency and a moderate proficiency respectively (education first, 2020), and ecuador is in the 93rd place with a very low proficiency. the national institute of statistics and census in ecuador (inec) reported that 26.5% of people do not possess the habit of reading in l1. some of the reasons are a lack of interest in reading, lack of time, and difficulties maintaining concentration. similarly, in this report people stated that they like to read at home more than at school; and, prefer mainly to read newspapers (instituto nacional de estadisticas y censos, 2012). at the level of primary and secondary school and language institutes research related to the impact of incrementing vocabulary to improve reading comprehension is scarce in the local context. there is research that studied the connection between vocabulary and reading comprehension in international higher education institutions. laufer and ravenhorst-kalovski (2010) collected data from 745 israeli students who were enrolled in an english for academic purposes class. the authors concluded that vocabulary size contributes to a better reading comprehension. another study established that knowing the meaning of words was an effective https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 22 tool to understand passages. authors also found that it influences reasoning in reading comprehension. it was carried out with one hundred and fourteen fifth graders from five different public elementary schools of an urban area in the north of israel (shahar-yames & prior, 2018). participants of a private language institute were obtaining low scores in the reading section of tests. this study focused on word recognition through parts of speech, and the use of skimming and scanning as a means to improve students’ reading comprehension. therefore, the following research questions were addressed: (1) to what extent will students identify parts of speech in context? (2) to what extent will students improve their reading comprehension as result of word recognition and the use of skimming and scanning? (3) what are students’ perspective of this process to improve reading comprehension? literature review reading skills reading is considered a step-by-step procedure which fosters development of higher-order thinking skills. the basic elements of reading are to decode the message, comprehend the message, analyze it, and integrate the whole idea of a text. (karademir & ulucinar, 2017). some researchers advocated that children and teens have an important performance in reading accomplishment when they have a vast prior wisdom and words range domain (kieffer & lesaux, 2012; shahar-yames & prior, 2018; snow, 2002). reading instruction possesses five elements which are: phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension. they all allow the reader to obtain the basic reading skills to be an acceptable reader (gunobgunob-mirasol, 2019). abdullah (2018) added that reading can be improved by the use of some activities and techniques such as skimming and scanning. jose and raja (2011) pointed out that scanning is stopping reading until the information is found to answer a specific question while skimming is the process of grasping the main idea of the whole text. granda and ramírez-avila (2020) described reading comprehension as the act of processing and understanding a text. it allows readers to make connections between their prior knowledge and the same or new content to understand it. activities that raise reading comprehension are repeated reading, timed-reading, and rate–building reading (abdullah, 2018). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 23 vocabulary according to mofareh (2015), vocabulary is defined as the units of speech or writing needed to convey a message in written and spoken forms. harmon and wood (2018) stated that the aim of vocabulary instruction is to improve and advocate for deep reading understanding. similarly, in another finding it was evidenced that students may achieve the basic knowledge of lexical size to obtain an in-depth reading comprehension (rosado & caro, 2018). maximo argued that researchers believed that devoting a lot of time to learn vocabulary is essential to master a language (as cited in mofareh, 2015). in line with this, laufer and ravenhorst-kalovski (2010) confirmed that vocabulary is a good predictor for reading. for greater improvement on the teaching of vocabulary, mofareh (2015) mentioned some strategies and techniques teachers can apply such as focusing on form and on meaning, recalling shortand long-term memory, employing real objects, using cooperative learning strategies, incorporating a wide variety of learner preferences, applying total physical response, introducing lexical sets within a defined cultural context, drilling, and spelling. nevertheless, mcquillan (2019) concluded that free reading was 1.70 more efficient to learn vocabulary rather than teaching vocabulary in short and long periods. mccarten (2007) devised three main categories to organize lexical sets to help learners memorize a wide range of new words: real-world groups, language-based groups, and personalized groups. the greater the range of lexical sets that a language learner knows, the better their communicative abilities can be even when using inaccurate grammar structures due to their expanded range of comprehensible expression. however, without an adequate vocabulary repertoire, the ability to convey any concept is drastically hindered (wilkins, 1972). there is an impact of vocabulary in the development of reading. learners get better scores when taking test because of the guessing of the meaning of some words and by relating meaning with the root of a word itself. in addition to raising communicative competence by developing vocabulary knowledge, learners also gain the peripheral advantage of performing better in written evaluations. a study conducted by senoo and yonemoto (2014) stated that new words are only acquired when the learners have needs: the need to know what the word means, the need to find the significance of that word by themselves, and the need to compare the different meaning of words. motivation is also important for reading so a good attitude to learn and acquiring new https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 24 words is also vital. thus, readers may understand the text but if they are not motivated they may not be a good reader (gunobgunob-mirasol, 2019). parts of speech one way to improve the lexical width and sets of students is by identifying the parts of speech. in this study, participants will read and classify new words into their parts of speech. this classification will meet mccarten’s (2007) organization of words to help students memorize them. additionally, skehan as cited in ellis (2005) advocated that students should possess a vast range knowledge of expressions and parts of speech to compile accuracy. porosoff (2018) contributed with the definitions of some parts of speech: adjectives describe traits; verbs show behaviour; adverbs show how the actions are performed; nouns show who or which the performers of the actions are; conjunctions are used to combine or mix ideas in statements; and, pronouns replace the antecedents. methodology this was an action-research with analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. ravid (2015) defined action research (ar) as a tool used by practitioner researchers in their context to deal with problematic situations. additional, burns (2008) made a revision of the purposes of ar from different authors’ perspectives. she mentioned: to describe and understand the processes carried in classroom settings that lead to change, and to explain classroom procedures supported by academic findings, among others. for burns (2008), action research brings improvement and change in a variety of contexts. in this case, the context was the classroom. ar is a cyclical process. it starts by defining a problem, researching for possible solutions, applying an intervention, assessing the results, and continuing the process (ravid, 2015). in this study, the cycle was implemented once. it is important to highlight that students applied the classification of words and skills seven times during the study. during that time, the teacher was observing, monitoring, and providing feedback as it is seen in table. 1. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 25 table. 1. action research phases phase problem possible solution application assessment action students in a language school reported low grade in reading tests. knowing the meaning and function of the words (classifying parts of speech) and reading skills. see the classroom procedures detailed below for the description of this phase. they are included in the results section. participants students (n=15) from a private english language institute participated in the study. there were eight females and seven males. participants’ ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen years old. their english level was intermediate to upper-intermediate (equivalent to level b1 of the common european framework of reference for languages, cefr). their proficiency was determined based on the program they were immersed inteens 6. the researcher, who also served as the class teacher, invited students to participate in the study. they were informed that their participation was voluntary. they were also assured that their test scores and survey responses would be kept confidential and would not affect their course grades. the study integrated the use of google sheets in drive. students had to insert new words and classify them into the different parts of speech. regarding the access to technology, fourteen out of fifteen students answered they had access to the internet. in the pre survey related to the use of the application, all students had an e-mail account, but only three of them knew how to use it. classroom procedures in order to help students improve their reading comprehension, this innovation aimed to extend students’ word recognition through classifying new vocabulary into parts of speech and applying reading skills (skimming and scanning). the classification of words was done in groups. each group shared a sheet document in drive. students had a gmail account, they knew how to share documents and how to navigate within the google sheets. there were three students who https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 26 had shared a document before. thus, a training on how to use google sheets was planned and delivered for those that had not used this application before. parts of speech were introduced and practiced. the teacher selected passages according to students’ level and interests. new words for students were selected from passages and introduced at the beginning of the lesson with a variety of techniques: pictures, videos, definitions, and synonyms. this new vocabulary was classified in the shared sheet according to the vocabulary function in context (parts of speech). the teacher’s role was to guide and scaffold the activities during the process as well as to provide feedback. to improve reading comprehension, the teacher introduced a form which included skimming and scanning activities. the teacher and students completed it together at the beginning. later on, students completed it individually. once the form was filled in, students compared with a classmate. the forms were corrected in class. in every other class, students conducted individual practices regarding skimming and scanning. instruments the following instruments were used in the study: (1) a demographics survey; (2) a pre-and post-tests about reading; (3) learning logs; (4) a pre-post survey about vocabulary; and, (5) skimming and scanning forms, and (5) a semi-structure interviewed. the surveys, learning logs and interview were presented in the target language and in students’ mother tongue, to ensure that the questions and instructions were easy to understand and answer. demographic survey: the researcher took this survey to gather information relevant to participants´ background such as age, gender, profession, english language proficiency and english language experiences. this information was used to describe the participants. pre-test and post-test: the pre-test was administered to determine if students recognized and classified words correctly into their parts of speech. it contained twenty items. the post-test was used to assess the participants’ vocabulary improvement and effectiveness of the study, respectively. the text of the posttest was longer and had fifteen multiple choice questions. both tests were graded over 10 points. three efl specialists validated the content of these tests for this study. the passages were taken from the placement test of the book students were using. learning logs: learners wrote their reflections about what they learned at the end of the class. similarly, the information obtained was a referent to compare and analyze the results. in these logs, there were open-ended questions which referred to vocabulary and reading https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 27 comprehension reflections. this qualitative data was transformed to quantitative information. students completed six learning logs. pre-post surveys about vocabulary: they were used to have a general idea of the perspective and knowledge students had about vocabulary and reading comprehension. they were taken from granda and ramírez-avila’s (2020) study. the authors reported a cronbach’s alpha of 0.903 for the pre-survey and 0.902 for the post-survey. skimming and scanning form: these forms were introduced by the teacher-researcher. the first one was introduced and done by the teacher as an example. following forms were completed by students. the teacher provided feedback about them. for the analysis, three of them were chosen. these forms were graded over 10 points. interview: it was conducted at the end of the study. students answered to eight questions. they were open questions. they asked about vocabulary in terms of difficulty, confidence using the new words, perspectives about improvement, importance of vocabulary learning, and the incidence of vocabulary knowledge in understanding texts. four participants were randomly chosen to be interviewed. it was carried out in spanish to obtain reliable information. data analysis the study was conducted over a period of six weeks during the september through january semester. quantitative data was analyzed with the use of spss statistical software. means, standard deviations, and p value were run to examine differences between preand post-test scores. qualitative data were analyzed by identifying patterns in student responses to open-ended questions in the learning logs and the interview. after reading students had to complete skimming and scanning worksheets, they were graded; for the purpose of the analysis, three forms were considered: the first, the one in the middle, and the last. results are shown in a figure to visually compare the means. information from the instruments was triangulated to validate results. to determine the impact of this study the cohen’s d was reported. results research question 1: to what extent will students identify parts of speech in context? results are presented in table 1. the mean of the pre-test was 5.53 (sd=2.41). the mean of the post-test was 8.35 (sd=2.77). cohen’s d was calculated and it resulted in 1.09, which indicates a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 28 great effect. the p value was 0.005 which means the results did not happen coincidentally. it is shown in table. 2. table. 2. pre-post test results n mean standard deviation standard error mean cohen’s d pre-test 15 5.53 2.40 0.62 1.09 post-test 15 8.35 2.77 0.71 in the pre and post survey from items 8 to 12 that are related to the improvement of the identification of parts of speech, the data was compared. results show that there was an improvement from the results of the pre-survey with a mean of 4.04 to a mean of 4.59 obtained from the post-survey. figure 1 also shows students’ perspectives of improvement related to different categories of words functions at the end of the innovation. it is evident that in the post test there was a positive change of improvement. figure 1. parts of speech improvement taken from the pre and post surveys from vocabulary note: blue color is the results of the pre-survey and red color displays the results of the posttest. from the data collected of the learning logs, there were two open-ended questions in four learning logs which were applied. this qualitative information was transformed to quantitative to make a better analysis. in table. 3, there is a summary of students’ answers. most of the students referred to the acquisition of the new words and their functions as nouns, verbs, 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 funtion words recog. noun recog. verb recog. adj. recog. adv. vocabulary improvement function of words noun verb adjectives adverbs https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 29 adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections. thus, students considered they learned to classify words into parts of speech. table. 3. learning logs and vocabulary development opinions and comments log 1 log 2 log 3 log 4 parts of speech 14 7 3 4 new words x x 6 5 other answers related to reading comprehension 1 8 6 6 total 15 15 15 15 furthermore, within the interviews, participants mentioned that their level of vocabulary knowledge had increased. here some extracts from what they said in the interviews: participant 1: “i think my vocabulary has increased.” participant 4: “my confidence has increased.” research question 2: to what extent will students improve their reading comprehension as result of word recognition and the use of skimming and scanning? the analysis of the scaffolding forms showed that learners steadily increased their reading understanding of most of the activities during the research. those activities were graded over 10 points. figure 2 displays the scores of the skimming and the scanning worksheets applied. it is important to highlight that the difficulty of the readings increased during the process from an intermediate passage to a high intermediate one. figure 2. skimming and scanning worksheets 7.4 8.17 9.03 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 dear life coach-skimscan everyday misteries-skimscan super brain-skim-scan scafolding forms https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 30 figure 3 compares the pre and post survey between the items 6 and 7 regarding the knowledge of the skimming and scanning from students’ perspectives. the improvement is notorious with a mean= 4.93 for both strategies. figure 3. skim and scan strategies improvement for reading comprehension note: blue color is the results of the pre-survey and red color displays the results of the posttest. the pre and post surveys about reading comprehension were compared in order to determine their improvement. figure 4 presents the variation in the participants’ perspectives related to improvement. figure 4. pre-post survey reading comprehension note: blue color is the results of the pre-survey and red color displays the results of the posttest. the learning logs also evidenced that after every class, most students learned the strategies: skimming and scanning. eleven students referred to the scanning and eight to the skimming strategy in the learning logs. 0 2 4 6 skim scan skimming and scanning for reading comprehension 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 4.50 5.00 und.text und. phrases familiar words first reading rereding text reading comprehension impact https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 31 research question 3: what are students’ perspective of this process to improve reading comprehension? an analysis of the learning logs showed they had a good attitude with the use of the innovation to learn parts of speech facilitated with the e-tool. a revision of the google drive sheet also reflected they all worked and introduced words in the different categories. table. 4 shows that most students met their expectations with this innovation. table. 4. students’ perspectives frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid yes 13 86.7 86.7 86.7 no 2 13.3 13.3 100 total 15 100 100 additionally, the interview supported the data about the improvement they had achieved and the difficulties they had when they classified the words into their parts of speech at the beginning. here is an extract of some of the words taken from the dialogue of the interview videos: participant 1: “i think the most difficult part in the reading was parts of speech.” participant 2: “for me the most difficult thing is to identify the parts of speech”; participant 3: “no, it was so easy because we have to put the words and do some easy things”; participant 4: “the most difficult part for me was the meaning of vocabulary words and parts of speech.” however, two out of the four students interviewed, mentioned that in the end, they had a good experience about knowing how to classify the parts of speech into the excel-spreadsheet into the google drive: participant 1: “the tool is humm… that is… it was easy…that i know…. the words that i know i put in the sheet. besides this, the sheet was to improve my vocabulary because i recognize new parts in the sentence or texts.”; participant 2: “it was easy because i can put the words in order and my friends helped me in some things for example when i put the answers according to the readings… my friends help me to know how the readings and what are the things i have to do.” discussion the current study examined the impact that vocabulary, skimming and scanning skills had on the process of improving reading comprehension. findings of this study reflect an improvement of d = 1.09. the impact of the intervention is large. the skimming and scanning forms that students complete during the study also showed a steady improvement. it is important https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 32 to recall that the level of difficulty of the passages also increased during the intervention. abdullah (2018) recommended that skimming and scanning can improve reading comprehension. this study included not only the reading strategies (skimming and scanning) but also word recognition through the classification of words into their parts of speech. this coincides with karademir and ulucinar’s (2017) step-by-step procedure that starts by decoding the message to later comprehend it. additionally, maximo (cited in mofareh, 2015), harmon and wood (2018), and rosado and caro (2018) stated in their study, the fundamental role of vocabulary to booster reading comprehension, the bigger range of vocabulary they possess the better for deeper text’s comprehension. these findings match some author’s conclusions that vocabulary size contributes to reading comprehension (gunobgunob-mirasol, 2019; kieffer & lesaux, 2012; laufer & ravenhorst-kalovski, 2010; shahar-yames & prior, 2018; snow, 2002). in this research, students learned to identify the different parts of speech, and they classified them after each reading which displayed a steady progress. in the post survey related to vocabulary improvement students positively changed their perspective about vocabulary recognition. while the pre survey, the mean was equal to 4.04, on the post survey, there was a mean of 4.59. students knowing the function and meaning of the words and their better comprehension of the texts might have changed their perspectives. furthermore, gunobgunob-mirasol (2019) stated that word recognition is one of the elements that allow the reader to be considered an acceptable reader. students’ performance on the scaffolding forms was acceptable as their improvement was evidenced through the grading done after every lesson. while building word recognition skills, reading comprehension was impacted. the scaffolding forms scores, for example, captured that there was a significant improvement in their ability to read after the process, which is aligned to what capotosto et al., (2017) mentioned that learners have better performance when they have a vast range of vocabulary knowledge. in the learning logs, students referred to two main strategies in this investigation which were skimming and scanning. abdullah (2018) mentioned that apart from other language elements the skimming and scanning skills can booster reading comprehension. due to the practices done during classes, most students mentioned in the post survey that they could use https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 33 the skimming and scanning techniques. identifying the main idea and specific information may have helped students to also improve the results in the posttests. tang et al. (2016), in their study, mentioned that it is vital for learners to develop an affirmative learning attitude, set clear objectives, and increase a course for language awareness and use. motivation is also important for reading so a good attitude to learn and get new words is also vital. thus, a reader may understand the text but if they are not motivated s/he may not be a good reader (gunobgunob-mirasol, 2019). results of students’ perspectives showed that participants of this study felt satisfied with the skills and resources applied in this innovation. so, they recommended to continue with the same practices to improve reading. this implies that when students notice they are learning and understanding through the proposed activities they become engage and participate in the lessons. conclusion in this study, learners differentiated parts of speech in order to recall and expand their vocabulary, and were trained to use skimming and scanning. post results of the study showed that learners’ word knowledge and reading strategies were to a great extent effective to improve reading comprehension. during the classes, students defined words well, created almost accurate sentences, and classified the words in the shared document. the shared document let students see the new words of their classmates which also expanded vocabulary knowledge. in an analysis of the classification of words in the shared document, ninety percent of the words that were introduced, were classified appropriately. this practice helped students to retain the meaning of the words. participants claimed to have learned more about how to classify parts of speech in context. the study also sheds light on the great potential of making use of existing technology like a shared document in drive for learning. limitations it has to be considered that there were not studies conducted at school, high school or institutional levels in order to have a better support of cases previously conducted. time was another influential factor on getting a better consistency of the data obtained. sometimes, the different activities planned during the process of the intervention was sort of rushed because students were in a hurry most of the time due to the limited sixty minutes they had in class. the influence of the teacher as the researcher may also affect the veracity of the data, as some of them https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 34 might feel the whole process was graded even when they were told that none of the activities in this study would be considered as part of their grades. recommendations the classification of words into their parts of speech can be applied to improve the other skills of the language. more time should be given to students to work on all the activities. students have to attend classes during the whole process, so if they missed one class they had to catch-up in an extra class as an alternative for the analysis of the results later. furthermore, the planning of the instructional design has to have a variety of activities so that all the participants are addressed with one of their learning styles. finally, this research can be applied to a different group of students who do not have the researcher as their teacher, or an assistant might help apply the research. references abdullah, m. (2018). reading speed and comprehension enhancement in hybrid learning delivery mode. advances in language and literary studies, 9(3), 25-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.3p.25 burns, a. (2008). action research in second language teacher education. in a. burns & j. richards (eds.), the cambridge guide to research in language teaching and learning. (pp. 289297). cambridge: cambridge university press. capotosto, l., kim, j. s., burkhauser, m., oh park, s., mulimbi, b., donaldson, m., & kingston, h. c. (2017). family support of third-grade reading skills, motivation, and habits. aera open, 3(3), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858417714457 ellis, r. (2005). principles of instructed language learning. asian efl journal, 7(3) 209-224. retrieved from https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/9016/quarterly-journals/principles-ofinstructed-language-learning/#squelch-taas-tab-content-0-3 education first. (2020). ef english proficiency index. retrieved from https://www.ef.com/epi/ granda, g. k. a., & ramírez-avila, m. r. (2020). classifying vocabulary in google sheets to improve word recognition and reading comprehension in efl learners: an action research study. atoz: novas práticas em informação e conhecimento, 9(2), 24 – 31. https://doi.org/10.5380/atoz.v9i2.73526 gunobgunob-mirasol, r. (2019). vocabulary size, reading motivation, reading attitudes and reading comprehension performance among filipino college learners of english. international journal of evaluation and research in education (ijere), 8(1), 64. https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v8i1.15335 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.3p.25 https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858417714457 https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/9016/quarterly-journals/principles-of-instructed-language-learning/#squelch-taas-tab-content-0-3 https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/9016/quarterly-journals/principles-of-instructed-language-learning/#squelch-taas-tab-content-0-3 https://www.ef.com/epi/ https://doi.org/10.5380/atoz.v9i2.73526 https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v8i1.15335 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 35 harmon, j., & wood, k. (2018). the vocabulary-comprehension relationship across the disciplines: implications for instruction. education sciences, 8(3), 101. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030101 instituto nacional de estadísticas y censos. (2012). hábitos de lectura en ecuador [reading habits in ecuador]. retrieved from http://www.celibro.org.ec/web/img/cms/estudio%20habitos%20de%20lectu ra%20inec.pdf jose, r., & raja, b. w. d. (2011). teachers role in fostering readings: effective and successful reading. i-manager’s journal on english language teaching, 1(4), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.1.4.1599 karademir, e., & ulucinar, u. (2017). examining the relationship between middle school students’ critical reading skills, science literacy skills and attitudes: a structural equation modeling. journal of education in science, environment and health (jeseh), 3(1), 29-39. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1125758.pdf kieffer, m., & lesaux, n. (2012). direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness in the english reading comprehension of native english, spanish, filipino, and vietnamese. language learning, 62(4), 1170-1204. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00722.x laufer, b., & ravenhorst-kalovski, g. (2010). lexical threshold revisited: lexical text coverage, learners’ vocabulary size and reading comprehension. reading in a foreign language, 22(1), 15-30. retrieved from http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl mccarten, j. (2007). teaching vocabulary: lessons from the corpus, lessons for the classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. mcquillan, j. (2019). the inefficiency of vocabulary instruction. international electronic journal of elementary education, 11(4), 309-318. https://doi.org/10.26822/iejee.2019450789 ministerio de educación. (2012). estándares de calidad educativa [educational quality standards]. retrieved from http://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf mofareh, a. (2015). the importance of vocabulary in language learning and how to be taught. international journal of teaching and education, 3(3), 21-34. https://doi.org/10.20472/te.2015.3.3.002 organization for economic cooperation and development [oecd]. (2016). pisa 2015 results (volume i): excellence and equity in education. paris: oecd publishing. retrieved from https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264266490en.pdf?expires=1564898092&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=5295096e7538242ce8 feea06b4fe3ed6 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030101 http://www.celibro.org.ec/web/img/cms/estudio%20habitos%20de%20lectura%20inec.pdf http://www.celibro.org.ec/web/img/cms/estudio%20habitos%20de%20lectura%20inec.pdf https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.1.4.1599 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1125758.pdf https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00722.x http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl https://doi.org/10.26822/iejee.2019450789 http://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf http://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://doi.org/10.20472/te.2015.3.3.002 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264266490-en.pdf?expires=1564898092&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=5295096e7538242ce8feea06b4fe3ed6 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264266490-en.pdf?expires=1564898092&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=5295096e7538242ce8feea06b4fe3ed6 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264266490-en.pdf?expires=1564898092&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=5295096e7538242ce8feea06b4fe3ed6 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 36 porosoff, l. (2018). how our word choices can empower our students. phi delta kappan, 100(3), 51-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721718808265 ravid, r. (2015). practical statistics for educators. maryland: rowman & littlefield. rosado, n., & caro, k. (2018). the relationship between lexis and reading comprehension: a review. english language teaching, 11(11), 136. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n11p136 senoo, y., & yonemoto, k. (2014). vocabulary learning through extensive reading: a case study. the canadian journal of applied linguistics, [online] 17(2), pp.1-22. retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1064814.pdf shahar-yames, d., & prior, a. (2018). the challenge and the opportunity of lexical inferencing in language minority students. reading and writing, 31(5), 1109-1132. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-018-9830-0 short, d., becker, h., cloud, n., hellman, a., levine, l., & cummins, j. (2018). the 6 principles for exemplary teaching of english learners. danvers, ma: anita draper. snow, c. (2002). reading for understanding. santa monica: rand education. tang, e., chung, e., li, e., & yeung, s. (2016). online independent vocabulary learning experience of hong kong university students. iafor journal of education, [online], 4(1). retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?q=online+independent+vocabulary+learning+experience+of+hong +kong+university+students++eunice+&id=ej1100577 wilkins, d. (1972). linguistics and language teaching. london: edward arnold national middle school association. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721718808265 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n11p136 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1064814.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-018-9830-0 https://eric.ed.gov/?q=online+independent+vocabulary+learning+experience+of+hong+kong+university+students++eunice+&id=ej1100577 https://eric.ed.gov/?q=online+independent+vocabulary+learning+experience+of+hong+kong+university+students++eunice+&id=ej1100577 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 56 article history: submitted: 28 october 2020 reviewed: 30 october 2020 edited: 18 november 2020 16 january 2021 30 january 2021 accepted: 1 february 2021 autonomous learning during covid-19 pandemic: students’ objectives and preferences teguh ariebowo sekolah tinggi teknologi kedirgantaraan, indonesia teguh.arie@sttkd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10079 abstract students’ voices remain one of the essential sources to evaluate and develop learning materials in which students as the center. this study attempts to evaluate the current english teaching and learning process in a school of aerospace technology. the researcher felt the urge to evaluate it since the teaching and learning process suddenly turned the direction into online learning due to the covid-19 pandemic globally. specifically, this study explored the students’ objectives and preferences in learning english during the current situation. initially, the researcher asked students in one of his classes randomly to be interviewed as the study's preliminary data. a questionnaire was developed from the interview to survey all students of his classes, with 166 students in total. besides interviews and questionnaires, the data were also collected from the documentation owned by the academic affairs. from the data, it was found that students were basically aware of their learning objectives that corresponded positively to the curriculum developer's objectives. their preferences in online learning showed how autonomous they were as english learners. however, some findings from the documentation indicated criticism to the teachers that revealed another learner autonomy level. keywords: needs analysis; online learning; autonomous learning =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 mailto:teguh.arie@sttkd.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10079 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10079&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-02-20 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 57 introduction the first case of covid-19 was found in wuhan, china, in december 2019. a report issued by who stated that the chinese government underwent a retrospective investigation and found that the onset symptoms have occurred since early december 2019 (whob, 2020). the novel coronavirus happens to be human to human infection. it was mentioned that the rapid spread of coronavirus due to human droplets as the mode of transmission (whoa, 2020). who clarified that droplet transmission occurs when a person stays close (within 1 meter) with someone with symptoms such as coughing and sneezing. therefore, his/her mouth, nose, and eyes are at risk of being exposed to potentially infective droplets from the respiratory system (whoa, 2020). airborne transmission is also predicted to be one of the transmission modes. however, it was clearly mentioned that it may occur in specific circumstances and procedures, where aerosols are generated and performed. meanwhile, indonesia's first covid-19 case was only found on 2nd march 2020, two months after the world’s first case. from january to march 2020, several national regulations were produced by the governments at different levels, from the president to ministerial (djalante, et al., 2020). the president of indonesia had only taken a real action of law in one month and eleven days after the first case by issuing presidential decree number 9 of 2020 entitled task force for rapid response to covid-19. the critical decision related to fiscal response precisely was not coming from the president. however, the first fiscal regulation in response to covid19 came from the ministry of finance through the decision of minister of finance 6/km.7/2020. the president of indonesia only issued the significant decision related to the national fiscal allocation in response to the rapid spread of covid-19 on the government regulation in lieu of law number 1/2020 entitled national budgeting policy and the stability of budgeting system for covid-19 pandemic disaster and/or managing threats for national economy and/or the stability budgeting system (djalante, et al., 2020). in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the ministry of education and culture closed 530,000 schools after the first local case was found in march 2020. hence, the government developed a learning from home guidance based on global guidelines and established distance learning alternatives through online, tv, and print materials on its minister of education circular letter number 15 of 2020. distance learning is understood as the learning process https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 58 where the learners may not be physically present at the school (sadeghi, 2019). as a matter of fact, the majority of the learning medium today is the internet network, which is commonly called online learning. in fact, most schools in indonesia have not fully implemented online learning based on the schools' condition since many students in indonesia’s rural or remote areas cannot access the internet. despite the fact that students living in this era are part of generation-z and known as a digital native, indonesia's teaching and learning process cultivate problems and complaints from students, teachers, and parents. moreover, indonesia's education system has now adopted the 21st century learning concept, where schools and universities should not wait for such a pandemic happening today to implement online learning. however, it is contrary to the fact that this current status provides significant problems in implementing online learning (churiyah, sholikhan, filianti, & sakdiyyah, 2020). teachers find it difficult to decide the suitable tools to practice distance learning (indonesia inside, 2020). it reflects the real condition of the indonesia education system. the researcher captured some articles discussing readiness and questioning whether or not students, teachers, or schools and universities ready to conduct online learning (anza, luthfi, & saragih, 2019; churiyah et al., 2020; & waryanto & stayningrum, 2014). in this covid-19 pandemic situation, being ready to conduct online learning is an absolute fact. the most important thing to prepare is adapting and dealing with the barriers and then finding the solution. considering the situation mentioned above, the english teachers in a college called sekolah tinggi teknologi kedirtagantaraan (college of aerospace technology) conducted an evaluation of the english program and its teaching and learning materials. according to brown (1995), teachers or materials developers should start the process with need analysis in evaluating teaching and learning materials. furthermore, richards (2001) mentioned that a sound educational program should be based on a comprehensive analysis of learners’ needs. hence, to execute the evaluation program, a need analysis was conducted by exploring the students’ needs, particularly in terms of learning objectives and preferences in two research questions: (1) what are the students’ objectives in learning english? (2) what are their preferences in learning english in the covid-19 pandemic situation? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 59 literature review needs analysis richards (2001) pointed out that needs analysis is a procedure to collect information about learners’ needs. the gathered information is then analyzed to find out language skills a learner needs, to identify a change of direction of the curriculum, to identify the gap between what the students learned and what the students really need, or simply to collect information regarding difficulties faced by the learners especially in the learning process. shortly, a need analysis is needed when it is within the purposes desired by the material developers. several procedures can be employed to administer a need analysis such as questionnaire, self-ratings, interviews, meetings or focused group discussion, observation, learner language samples, task analysis, case study, or even analysis of available information (richards, 2001). the researcher could not find any article or book mentioning that a particular method best suits need analysis. a need analysis can be administered using only one method or multiple ones. for instance, danise lawson’s needs assessment explained in graves (2000) mentioned seven procedures. they comprised asking the students to write feedback about his course, write their english experience, write their personal goals and objectives, fill out the questionnaire, write anonymous feedback cards, be involved in in-class discussions, and participate in student-teacher conferences. despite the number of procedure a researcher takes to administer a need analysis, one thing for sure is that a researcher must go through the need analysis cycle: 1) decide what information to gather and why, 2) decide when, from whom, and who gather it, 3) gather information, 4) interpret it, 5) act on it, and 6) evaluate the effect of the action (graves, 2000; hutchinson & waters, 1984; nation & macalister, 2010; and richards, 2001). furthermore, there are types of information commonly gathered from learners in a need analysis to make the interpretation and action more precise and close to the learners’ need, lack, and want (nation & macalister, 2010). the information consists of 1) who the learners are, 2) the learners’ language proficiency levels, 3) the learners’ intercultural competence levels, 4) their interests, 5) their learning preferences, 6) their attitudes, 7) the learners’ goals, 8) the target context such as situation, roles, topics, and content, 9) type of communication skills they will need and tasks they will perform, and 10) language modalities they will use (graves, 2000). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 60 hence, in this study, information gathered from the need analysis would be utilized to provide a basis for evaluating the existing english program for air transport management students. regarding the type of information gathered, procedure, and who administered this need analysis, the researcher explained them in the methodology section. learner autonomy objectives and preferences for more than 30 years, autonomous learning has become a popular topic to discuss in foreign language (fl) teaching (borg & al-busaidi, 2012). it was started by holec (1981) whose definition is later widely used. he claimed that an autonomous language learner could control his learning situation by setting his learning objectives, constructing the content to be learned and its progress, choosing the method and techniques to be applied, monitoring the learning process, and determining the evaluation. little (1991) proposed a little bit different definition, although it brings a similar sense implicitly. it was stated that autonomy by itself is a capacity to detach, make a critical reflection and decisions, and take independent action. the discussion on learner autonomy's definition continues and extends to the notion of level and version of autonomy. nunan (as cited in chitashvili, 2007) introduced the five levels of autonomy that refer to the learner actions comprising ‘awareness’, ‘involvement’, ‘intervention’, ‘creation’ and ‘transcendence’ (see table 1). he also involved two dimensions in getting the full depiction of learner autonomy, namely ‘content’ and ‘process’. for instance, at the lowest level of learner autonomy, learners are aware of pedagogical goals. therefore, most learners at this level know what materials they are using. consequently, they can select their learning strategy since learners identify the implication of the tasks contained in the materials. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 61 table 1. david nunan’s autonomous learning level as cited in chitashvili (2007) level learner action content process 1 awareness students are aware of their learning objectives and the content they are learning. students can identify the learning strategy applied and identify their preferred learning styles/ strategies. 2 involvement students are involved in choosing their objectives from a range of options offered. students select choices from the options. 3 intervention besides being involved in selecting choices, students are also invited to modify and adapt the learning goals and the content. students modify and adapt the tasks. 4 creation students make initiatives to create their learning objectives. students can create tasks that suit their learning objectives. 5 transcendence students can go beyond the classroom and connect the content of researchers, the classroom, and the world beyond. students become teachers and researchers. in the next levels of involvement, intervention, creation, and transcendence, they can select their goals and content from various options, modify and adapt, create, and make links between them, respectively. conspicuously, nunan remained consistent dealing with the learner autonomy level around the language learning framework. therefore, in this study, the researcher employed the learner autonomy level by nunan (as cited in chitashvili, 2007) to analyze the students’ autonomy levels. research conducted by cirocki, anam, and retnaningdyah (2019) uncovered that learners in indonesia had low motivation in learning english, which was closely related to learning autonomy. the study also found that learners were not quite ready to be autonomous learners; it was proven by their survey result on learners' dependency on teachers exhibiting a high score. resonate to cirocki et al. (2019), research conducted by lengkanawati (2017) also mentioned that teachers in indonesia thought that indonesian learners very much depended on their teachers. it is also inferred in this study that autonomy was not yet common among indonesian students. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 62 methodology as mentioned in the literature review that no single absolute procedure that suits any particular need analysis process, this needs analysis was administered using three procedures, consisting of a semi-guided interview, likert scale and open-ended questionnaire, and analysis of available information or usually called documentation. first of all, the semi-guided interview was employed to gather information from the 20 students of the fifth semester randomly selected. the questions in the interview guideline were derived from the framework proposed by graves (2000). not all type of information proposed by grave was used to make questions in the interview guideline since some of the information has been existing or not applicable, such as who the learners were, the learners’ intercultural competence levels, and their interests and attitudes. the researcher has provided the interview guideline in appendix 1. during the interview, the researcher took notes to record all the answers. table 2 displays information captured by the researcher in the preliminary study. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 63 table. 2. the results of preliminary research learning objectives being able to speak english fluently without bothering tenses as long as it is understandable building the vocabulary related to air transport management improving listening skill improving reading skill improving writing skill content topic problems faced by airline companies issues related to aviation safety issues related to aviation security human resource management marketing communication speaking skills giving information giving instruction delivering presentation responding complaints giving opinion second of all, after having the above results, the researcher used the interview result to generate a questionnaire spread to 166 participants from all students in the fifth group. one of the researcher's considerations to conduct the interview prior to the questionnaire was richards’ (2001) statement that it is useful to carry out some interviews before designing the questionnaire to the appropriate topics and issues. the questionnaire is provided in appendix 2. since this study used a survey as the approach, the descriptive quantitative model was selected to analyze the data. to get the triangulation data, the researcher gave a set of open-ended questions to 40 students randomly selected. the open-ended questions were sent via whatsapp, and the students made their answered recorded and sent back. the open-ended questions were mostly asked about their online learning experiences related to their learning goals and learning preferences, such as content topic, text type, and speaking skills. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 64 last but not least, the office of academic affairs of this aviation college had surveyed the online learning process during the covid-19 pandemic. to get ample data related to the learning preferences, the researcher decided to use some of the survey results from the office of academic affairs. context before embarking to the discussion of each result of the survey, a brief overview of the context and curriculum is explained. six majors comprising bachelor degree, diploma and diploma certificate are available in this aviation college. this study was conducted in english class taught in air transport management (atm) major. the atm has the most students amongst the majors. as in other universities, english becomes one of mandatory subjects in all majors. however, each major has its own authority to develop the curriculum including english. in atm, english is taught in six semesters. due to the limited classroom, the english subject in this major was required to run the class with 40 students in one group. to some extent, the number of students in one class has been a never-ending problem faced by the english teachers in indonesia including, in this school. numbers of studies discussing class size's impact on students’ achievement have been conducted for a couple of decades. it led to the policy of decreasing the number of students in one class in many countries, such as the united states of america, japan, china, and european countries (koc & celik, 2014). this policy's belief is common to support that smaller classes positively impact the children's academic achievement. without any doubt, the learning situation should be able to establish a positive and encouraging learning atmosphere. in achieving them, teachers must be aware that there are two kinds of motivation standing in a learner–intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (harmer, 2007). the classroom setting may become one of the extrinsic motivations. students in this aviation college mostly agreed that the class size was much bigger than they expected. they admitted that such a situation, to some extent, affected their motivation to learn english. in one of the answers in the open-ended questions survey with students, it was said that: “when i first study english in this college, i thought that the english class was not this big. i thought i would be only a maximum of 20 students in one class. it finds me hard to express and practice my english since the teacher has to accommodate each learner who wants to proact their speaking. it is tough since the number of the meeting is very limited.” https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 65 the above-situation was worsened by the minimal number of face-to-face meeting classes as one of the online learning consequences due to the covid-19 pandemic situation. due to limited internet access that students experienced, teachers decided to limit the synchronous online meeting based on the survey result done by the office of academic affairs. concerning the curriculum, students were given the basic general english in semester one to three. teachers admitted that there was no research prior to the process of developing its curriculum. teachers involved in developing the curriculum believed that most freshmen students’ english proficiency levels were low when they first entered the school. the teachers’ belief was confirmed by the survey result of students’ perception towards their english proficiency level, as shown in table 3. findings and discussion english proficiency level table 3 tells how most students perceived themselves as beginner english learners. when they first entered the college, 74% perceived that they were at beginner english level. it was divided into two sub-levels, namely a1 and a2, 49% and 25% respectively. 10% of the students believed that their english entry level was b1, and only 9% thought they were in the upper intermediate level. very few, around 7%, were confident enough to admit that they belonged to the advanced level. table 3. students’ perceptions on their english proficiency levels cefr english proficiency level entry level (%) current level (%) beginner a1 25 11 a2 49 27 intermediate b1 10 34 b2 9 19 advanced c1 7 9 c2 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 66 at the students’ current levels in their fifth semester of study, overall, students perceived that they improved their english proficiency level. only 38% remained perceiving themselves at the beginner level, with 11% in a1 and 27% in a2. 34% of them proudly said that they currently belonged to the intermediate level. 10% more students than at the entry-level believed that they were now in upper-intermediate level. however, none of the students believed that they were at the c2 level as they did not at their entry-level. the data in table 3 showing how students perceived themselves related to english proficiency is, in fact, in line with the quantitative data presented by nurweni and read (1999), saying that most first-year students of some universities in indonesia, on average, knew not even close to 3,000 words. as referenced by nation (2006) and schmitt (2014) students believed to be able to read unbridged general text with adequate understanding. in fact, those students’ vocabulary knowledge was only at 1226 english words, which was considered as severely inadequate (nation, 2006; schmitt, 2014). this fact resonates with the data revealed by (milton & alexiou, 2010) that the english vocabulary size for level a1 cefr was less than 1,500. length of english learning experience the truth found in discussion point 2 is more inconvenient when knowing that students in indonesia mostly have experienced learning english in school for at least nine years. in indonesia’s educational curriculum, english subject is not taught until the students are in grade seven although, in some elementary schools, especially the private ones, english subject has been provided for students from the first to sixth grade (see table 4). however, in this research, most students experienced learning english for more than ten years in school. when the learning experience is understood as durational units that can be recalled (vedeler, 2015), how long a learner studies english does not correspond exponentially to his/her english proficiency. sadly, although indonesian students experience many years of english instruction in formal education, the outcome seems far from satisfying (lie, 2009). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 67 table 4. students’ experiences in learning english english learning experiences (years) number of students (%) 3 – 6 7.83 7 – 9 18.07 10 – 12 27.10 >12 46.99 knowing the fact that many students were still in the low level of english proficiency, the english curriculum designers in most universities in indonesia decided to generally mandate the freshmen to study english from the very beginning level. in other words, the university authority set them to restart learning english. consequently, the first and second semesters allowed students to learn basic english through general english (widodo, 2015). students learned more complex topics in the third and fourth semesters, such as daily conversation in a work setting and considering cross-cultural understanding. a very interesting finding was revealed from the first question of the open-ended written interview to 50 respondents. most of them answered that they studied english because they had to fulfill the curriculum’s requirement. in this case, the author could infer from the answers that the motivation owned is only to have a good grade. high achiever students admitted that they came to the class punctually and did the best at any quiz because they wanted the best grade in every course. meanwhile, lower achiever students tended to fulfill the minimum requirement mandated by the school merely. learning objectives a follow-up question was raised to dig into the real objective of the students to study english. the respondents were in the 6th semester when being interviewed. most students claimed that studying english in college prepared them to face the working environment that required them to speak english daily. they were entirely aware that working in the field of air transport management obliged them to be capable of conversing in english. besides working in airports or airlines, some students planned to pursue a master’s degree in air transport management, where english was mostly required. in table 5, it figures out what students wanted to pursue in learning english. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 68 table 5. students’ learning objectives learning objective percentage to be fluent, whether they are grammatically correct 86.74 improving listening skill 77.71 building up the vocabulary size in the area of air transport management 59.63 improving reading skill 43.97 in this study, the students were required to choose two out of four learning objectives. from 166 respondents, 86.74% chose to be fluent in english without bothering grammatical aspects. they wanted to be able to strike on a conversation in english without hesitation and worry about their grammar. they admitted that they did not really bother about the grammatical aspect as far as the audience understood what they conveyed in the conversation. in the second place, about 77.71% of the students seemed to improve their listening skills as it is vital in a conversation. this empirical fact was very much related to what krashen (1982) has implied that speaking is the production skill of the listening skill. to be able to speak a language, learners must improve their listening. in the third and fourth place were building up the vocabulary size and improving reading skills, respectively. it implied that learners remained seeing the speaking skill as the primary indicator of language proficiency. learning preferences speaking skills became the most popular language skill among the learners. concerning that, this study also explored the learner’s preferences in learning speaking. the researcher picked the five most mentioned language functions that could be used in any professional setting. the five language functions were gathered from the preliminary research, comprising responding to a complaint, giving information, instruction, opinion, and delivering a presentation. see table 6. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 69 table 6. language functions language function percentage giving information 86.14 delivering a presentation 62.04 giving opinion 59.63 responding a complaint 51.80 giving instruction 51.20 from five options of the language functions available in the questionnaire, giving information was the most selected one. this result indicated that students were fully aware of and selected what duties they would have in the future. as a matter of fact, the curriculum developer's desired jobs are mostly in the airport and related to service, where giving information to passengers is one of the duties. delivering a presentation was the next option the students selected. once again, this fact confirmed that students were aware of the future jobs that required them to deliver a presentation. one of the desired jobs projected by the curriculum developer of this school was the manager in an airline company or airport management industry, in which delivering a presentation is one of the skills commonly required for a manager candidate. related to the learning and teaching mode, the academic affairs survey showed that students preferred to study synchronously rather than asynchronously. they admitted that teachers tended to give assignments without giving any explicit instruction and explanation. therefore, students believed that by having a synchronous online meeting, they could have direct instruction and explanation before confirming any ambiguity regarding the task. figure 1 shows the students' preferences in running the synchronous meeting based on the survey conducted by the academic affairs. all three choices of the mode were mainly used by the teachers in conducting the synchronous online meeting. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 70 figure 1. students' preference in having a synchronous online meeting they also mentioned that the biggest challenge in having an online meeting was the internet connection. after the announcement issued by the ministry of education stating that all teaching and learning activities should be administered through distance learning, students decided to rejoin with family members in their hometown. in fact, many students came from remote areas, where internet connections remained a struggle. related to the poor internet connection, massive internet data used impacted financial issues for students. opting for asynchronous online meeting platforms using fewer internet data should be the best choice. topic preferences in relation to the third choice of learning objectives saying that students wanted to improve their air transport management vocabulary, they made choices and selected issues faced by airlines company as the first topic they wanted to learn. the second most selected topic to learn was a marketing communication. the third most selected topic by the students was issues related to human resources management. for detailed information, see table 7. table 7. topic preference topic to discuss in the content percentage issues faced by airlines company 73.49 marketing communication 68.67 issues in human resource management 57.83 issues in aviation safety 53.61 issues in airport security 37.34 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 71 the student also had their preferences in terms of text type. from the preliminary research, five types of text were mentioned by the students, namely email, product review, report, argumentative essay, and procedure text. from the survey results, most students chose email to be learned. the following text types they wanted to learn were report and procedure text, respectively. this result significantly showed how autonomous they were since they knew what to learn and made choices. concerning the autonomous learning level coined by nunan (as cited in chitashvili, 2007), in this research, the students were more than aware of their english learning. they could confidently identify their english proficiency level, as the experts and previous researchers have been believing. moreover, in this study, the results also proved that they could choose their learning objectives, learning preference, and the topic they preferred to study. the researcher ensured that the students participating in this study were at the intervention level since they were involved in selecting learning objectives and learning preferences. conclusion and implication from the above presentation of the findings and discussion, the researcher attempts to point out some critical issues. in the initial explanation, the preliminary research showed a positive deed that most teachers have underestimated. the fact that students could make choices and decide their learning objectives and learning preferences was quite surprising since the two previous studies mentioned in the literature review revealed that english learner in indonesia was far from being autonomous. as this study's first aim was to find out the learning objectives, students apparently could generate their own learning goals. they mostly wanted to be fluent in english without bothering grammatical aspects. from the result above, it could be concluded that students could decide their priority. they could adapt their learning objectives by choosing the preferred language functions and topics to discuss in the lesson, giving information and issues faced by airline companies, respectively, as the second aim of this study was to determine the learning preferences. choosing the online meeting platform was one reason students could decide the learning strategies that suited them well. they were beyond their awareness of being an autonomous learner. they stated where to stand and decide how to run to achieve their learning goals. hence, to conclude this https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 72 study, the researcher would posit that students in indonesia generally had a moderate level of learner autonomy, according to what nunan proposed in chitashvili (2007). this research involving only 166 students as respondents, the researcher was fully aware that this research could not represent indonesian students’ situation related to autonomous learning. therefore, the researcher urged the future researcher to conduct research in an immense scope that can represent indonesia as a whole. the future researcher may involve several colleges or universities. on the other hand, this research was also lack of validation process for the questionnaire and its result. however, the framework employed to construct the questionnaire was derived from the expert. last but not least, this research's impact would be in the hands of teachers, material developers, and school authority. teachers and material developers can give more materials that embrace the 21st-century skill, where autonomous learning is promoted. it is the era for teachers to stop doubting and underestimating students’ abilities to be autonomous learners. however, teachers and school authorities must work hand in hand to develop the best-suited curriculum and tasks that help students be more autonomous and independent life-long learners in the long run. references anza, f., luthfi, a., & saragih, a. (2019). introduction e-learning in educational sector case study senior high school in dki jakarta. asean journal of community, 3(1), 139-162. borg, s., & al-busaidi, s. (2012). learner autonomy: english language teachers' beliefs and practices. british council elt research paper, 1-34. brown, j. d. (1995). the elements of language curriculum: a systematic approach to program development. new york: heinle & heinle. chitashvili, n. (2007). the concept of autonomy in second language learning. georgian electronic scientific journal: education science and psychology, 11(2), 17-22. churiyah, m., sholikhan, f., & sakdiyyah, d. a. (2020, july). indonesia education readiness conducting distance learning in covid-19 pandemic situation. international journal of multicultural and multireligious understanding, 7(6), 491-507. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 73 cirocki, a., anam, s., & retnaningdyah, p. (2019, july). readiness for autonomy in english language learning: the case of indonesia high school students. iranian journal of language teaching research, 7(2), 1-18. djalante, r., lassa, j., setiamarga, d., sudjatma, a., indrawan, m., haryanto, b., . . . warsilah, h. (2020). review and analysis of current responses to covid-19 in indonesia: period of january to march 2020. progress in disaster science, 1-9. graves, k. (2000). designing language course. boston: heinle & hainle. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. cambridge: pearson longman. holec, h. (1981). autonomy and foreign language learning. new york: pergamon press. hutchinson, t., & waters, a. (1984, april). how communicative is esp? elt journal, 38, 108 118 . koc, n., & celik, b. (2014). the impact of number of students per teacher on student achievement. global conference on contemporary issues in education (pp. 65-70). auburn: globe-edu. krashen, s. d. (1982). principles and practice in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon. lengkanawati, n. s. (2017, january). learner autonomy in the indonesian efl settings. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 6(2), 222-231. lie, a. (2009). education policy and efl curriculum in indonesia: between the commitment to competence and the quest for higher test scores. teflin, 18(1), 1-14. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy. dublin: authentik language learning resources. milton, j., & alexiou, t. (2010). developing a vocabulary size test in greek as a foreign language. 14th international conference advances in research on language acquisition and teaching. greek applied linguistics association. nation, i. p., & macalister, j. (2010). language curriculum design. new york: routledge. nation, i. s. (2006). how large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? the canadian modern language review, 59-82. nurweni, a., & read, j. (1999). the english vocabulary knowledge of indonesian university students. english for specific purposes, 18(2), 161-175. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 74 richards, j. c. (2001). curriculum development in language teaching. liverpool: cambridge university press. sadeghi, m. (2019). a shift from classroom to distance learning: advantages and limitations. international journal of research in english education, 80-88. schmitt, n. (2014). size an depth of vocabulary knowledge: what the research shows. language learning, 913-951. vedeler, d. (2015). duration and experience: the temporality of development. in l. m. simão, d. guimarães, & j. valsiner, temporality: culture in the flow of human experience. tempe: information age publishing. waryanto, n. h., & stayningrum, w. (2014). e-learning readiness in indonesia: a case study in junior high school yogyakarta. international seminar on innovation in mathematics and mathematics education 1st (pp. 645-654). yogyakarta: department of mathematics education, yogyakarta state university. who. (2020, march 22). newsroom. retrieved june 2020, from world health organization: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-transmission-of-viruscausing-covid-19-implications-for-ipc-precaution-recommendations who. (2020). coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19): situation report-94. new york: world health organization. widodo, h. p. (2015). the development of vocational english materials formal social semiotic perspective: participatory action research. adelaide: university of adelaide, australia. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 75 appendix 1 interview guideline 1. how long have you been studying english? 2. if you are asked to reflect yourself, can you recall what english proficiency level you had when you entered this school? 3. moreover, on which level are you now? 4. do you think that the hours of the english meeting in this current english course is adequate? 5. what do you want to achieve as english language learners? 6. what do you expect to get when you finished this english course? 7. what language skills do you wish to learn? 8. is there any specific topic related to air transport management that you want to learn in this english course? please mention. 9. what kind of reading text do you want to learn in this english course? 10. in your opinion, what kind of speaking skill or conversation that you will perform in your future occupational setting? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 76 appendix 2 questionnaire part 1 please fill out the form. name : sex : age : please choose that best suits you. 1. how long have you been studying english? a. 3 – 6 years b. 6 – 9 years c. 9 – 12 years d. more than 12 years 2. what is your english proficiency level when you entered this college? a. a1 (beginner) b. a2 (upper beginner) c. b1 (pre-intermediate) d. b2 (intermediate) e. c1 (advanced) f. c2 (native-like) 3. what is your english proficiency level now? a. a1 (beginner) b. a2 (upper beginner) c. b1 (pre-intermediate) d. b2 (intermediate) e. c1 (advanced) f. c2 (native-like) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 77 part 2 please choose three out of five. 1. what is your objective in learning english? a. to be fluent, whether or not they are grammatically correct b. improving listening skill c. building up the vocabulary size in the area of air transport management d. improving reading skill e. improving skill in writing formal text 2. what speaking skills you think you need in your occupational setting? a. giving information b. delivering a presentation c. giving opinion d. responding a complaint e. giving instruction 3. what topics do you wish to learn in this english course? a. issues faced by airlines company b. marketing communication c. issues in human resource management d. issues in aviation safety e. issues in airport security https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 37 article history: submitted: 6 november 2020 reviewed: 10 december 2020 5 january 2021 edited: 15 january 2021 28 january 2021 accepted: 28 january 2021 efl speaking fluency through authentic oral production jairo israel lopez1, andres paredes becerra2, maría rossana ramírez-ávila3 1.3universidad casa grande, ecuador 2centro de educación continua de la escuela politécnica nacional, ecuador 1jairo.lopez@casagrande.edu.ec 2aparedes@cec-epn.edu.ec 3mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10175 abstract this article describes the development of speaking fluency through authentic oral production in a six-week action research study of a public high school in guayaquil, ecuador. the methodology included a pre-test and a post-test that measured quantitative aspects of student’s spoken fluency (speed, pauses, repetitions, and corrections), a survey with closed-ended questions that collected learners’ perspectives towards their own speaking fluency, and an interview that addressed students’ opinions towards the elements of this action research. twenty-four students’ audio recordings were analyzed and the results indicated that there was a significant increase of students’ speaking fluency. results also showed that student’s perspectives on the innovation were positive since it raised awareness of their mistakes, helped them feel more confident, and let them practice the target language with autonomy outside the school boundaries. however, some considered that time and the lack of equipment and technological skills were issues that made the activity look less pleasant. this paper affirms that authentic oral production, facilitated by vlogging, helps students develop speaking fluency. other efl teachers and professionals in this field who would like to improve the fluency of their students in their oral production may consider reading this paper. keywords: speaking; fluency; authentic production; vlogging; high school =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 mailto:jairo.lopez@casagrande.edu.ec mailto:aparedes@cec-epn.edu.ec mailto:mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10175 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10175&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-02-15 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 38 introduction many language learners agree that the ultimate purpose of learning a language is to speak it with a high level of proficiency and to develop communicative efficiency (rahman & deviyanti, 2018). this would be possible only if the educational systems provide a regulatory framework that facilitates the acquisition of speaking competence. in this regard, the ecuadorian english language learning standards establish that at the end of high school students must be able to get involved in conversations about their everyday life naturally (ministerio de educación, 2012). teachers and efl learners experience different limitations in the ecuadorian education system. making connections with student’s background experiences is one of the lowest parameters considered in classes (naula, 2016). it is known that using the target language in authentic and meaningful tasks has a significant impact on language development (richards, 2015; swain, 2000). however, in classroom-based learning, teachers usually focus on linguistic instruction rather than the practical use of the language (arevalo as cited in calle et al., 2012). in respect to this, richards (2015) argued that a classroom environment lacks authenticity, and stated that learning can happen in a scenario different from school. another issue is that not every student has the same opportunity to interact. in a research study carried out in two cities of ecuador, briones huayamave and ramírez-avila (2011) found out that most of the time teachers dominate the classes with monologues, interacting only with the students with higher level of the target language. this situation prevents students with lower speaking skills from practicing english in class and developing language competence. sari (2017) pointed out that learners can lack speaking skills even when their knowledge about the use of language is good (word and sentence formation, for example). the author makes a direct connection between this issue and the lack of confidence and motivation. students who lack speaking skills feel reluctant to participate actively. this might prevent them from acquiring a foreign language due to the fear of being mocked or criticized by their classmates (krashen, 2013; miller, 2003, as cited in hamston, 2003). therefore, there is a direct link between confidence and developing speaking skills. the use of information and communication technologies (ictss) has proven to be a positive feature in education, making the content more accessible to learners (mishra & koehler, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 39 2006). besides, technology fosters a positive attitude on students and helps them develop critical thinking skills (ilter, 2009). this will not only depend on the implementation of icts, but on how effective the teacher is when using these tools in order to encourage students’ engagement. teachers also face challenges that may prevent some of them from using icts in efl classrooms. looking for authentic materials as well as learning how to handle hardware and software take a high extra effort (abunowara, 2016). however, according to solano et al. (2017), using traditional teaching approaches and avoiding icts slow down the development of communicative competence in a foreign language. the same authors explained that 9 out of 10 students agreed that using technological tools helped them improve english language proficiency. youtube represents a great source of native, authentic input. video logs or vlogs, for example, are a democratic way of communication and a way to create meaningful, enjoyable products for students (sari, 2017). students that make vlogs as part of their english classes, gradually gain confidence and participate more in speaking activities regardless their complexity. safitri and khoiriyah (2017) reviewed a series of studies and reported that only watching vlogs as a mean of input is not enough since participants consider that most vloggers’ backgrounds differ from their culture; hence, the task itself fails to be authentic if students do not produce their own recordings. participants of this study had problems in speaking. they only practiced in english class hours which were limited to five forty-minute hours. they were not motivated to speak english outside their school time. their participation in class was limited. this article raised the possibility of improving their’ speaking fluency through authentic oral production using online video hostings such as youtube. two questions were answered by the end of this research: to what extent does authentic oral production improve fluency? what is the perspective of students towards authentic oral production? literature review fluency different authors agree that fluency is the ability to keep a natural conversation known as speech rate, without many filled or unfilled pauses, and using a small number of fillers, and use of formulaic language (bøhn, 2015; housen & kuiken, 2009). richards (2009) gave more https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017691077 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017691077 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 40 importance to ongoing communication over communicative competence. in summary, fluency is the ability to use a language naturally and effectively without many fillers and pauses. segalowitz (2010) made a differentiation of three facets of fluency. cognitive fluency involves the mental processes behind the speaker’s ability to communicate. utterance fluency relates to the observable characteristics of fluency; these are speed, breakdown, and repair. the speed is conceived as the mean of syllables pronounced, the breakdown as the number the silent pauses, filled pauses and the mean length of silent pauses, and the repair as the number of repetitions and corrections. perceived fluency refers to the reaction of the listener towards the linguistic and nonlinguistic features of the speaker’s speech. this research work focused on utterance fluency. authentic production in language acquisition, authenticity refers to the use of material taken from real contexts, intended for native-speakers, rather than material made for language learners (van lier, 1996). according to richards (2001), english instruction must be delivered in such a way that students’ performances represent real world situations. in this regard, the output that students produce in class must reveal their own identity in such a way that students use what they learn in other contexts outside the classroom boundaries. richards (2015) also pointed out that authenticity is regularly affected by different features of classroom-based learning, such as big size classrooms, time limitation, teachers’ low english proficiency, and test-driven curriculum. swain (2000) argued that “student’s meaningful production of language [output] would … seem to have a potentially significant role in language development” (p. 99). on the other hand, krashen (1998) claimed that comprehensible output “does not make a real contribution to linguistic competence” (p. 180). however, authentic production is significant because, even if it does not lead to acquisition by itself, it (1) is a means by which students get input from the teacher or their partners, (2) helps learners notice their own mistakes and errors to improve production skills, and finally (3) it is the only way a teacher can assess students’ learning success (ellis, 2005). information and communication technologies (icts) drigas and ioannidou (2013) sustained that information and communication technologies (icts) are all kinds of technologies that provide people the opportunity of receiving, manipulating, and sharing information. according to castaño and cabero (2013), the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 41 use of icts contributes to interaction due to the advent of mobile devices, cloud computing, and the progressive development of new software applications. talking about language instruction, the implementation of icts enhances collaboration, facilitates communication, and the delivery of teacher-student feedback and among peers (bustos sanchez & coll salvador, 2010). for this study, icts were considered as a group of tools that enabled students to use the target language outside the school boundaries, at their own pace, and provided them with multiple opportunities to assess themselves and their classmates. vlogging vlogging derives from blogging and refers to the act of recording videos of oneself discussing any topic and uploading it to a video hosting website such as youtube (snelson, 2015; kirschner in safitri & khoiriyah, 2017). while a blog (web-log) relates to a website with small articles, a vlog (video-log) does it to a website composed of a collection of small videos. one of the characteristics of vlogs is that vloggers can produce them in a variety of contexts and settings without the need of expensive equipment (snelson, 2015). besides, vlogging provides average people the opportunity to share and interact with different audiences regardless if their main purpose is to have fun, to improve their speaking skills, or just to connect with family and friends. vlogging gives students more time to organize their ideas and practice several times before obtaining a final product (jaramillo, 2016). furthermore, it raises learner’s awareness of their own mistakes and helps them focus on how to structure their sentences when speaking in other contexts. method this work was an action-research with the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. burns (2008) mentioned action research has evolved since 1980. the author pointed out it moved from little impact in teachers’ education to a venue for professional development. this development has changed the view of teachers from operators to problem solvers. researchers included in burns’s (2008) review have discussed the benefits of ar for learner-centered curriculum design and classroom-based research. in this type of research, mertler (2016) stated the teacher identifies an aspect of the teaching-learning practice that needs to be solved or improved, then collects meaningful students’ data in order to use it as “the basis for wellinformed educational decision-making” (p. 3). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 42 the definition of mertler (2016) was followed in this study. a problem was identified, students needed to improve their spoken fluency (as stated in the introduction), definitions, concepts and related studies were searched (they are described in the literature review), a strategy was chosen, planned, and applied (see the description under classroom procedures), data was collected and results are reported. this cycle was observed once. however, students were trained to use the strategy and practiced it several times as stated in the classroom procedures section described later. reliability and validity was ensured in this study. instruments were validated by three efl experts. to raise reliability of the scores of the posttest, another teacher was trained to grade the posttests and avoid bias from the teacher-researcher. cronbach alpha was calculated to test the reliability of the survey. regarding ethical considerations, a consent letter was received to proceed with these research. because participants were minors, parents authorized their children participation in this study. all data was kept confidential. students’ names were not disclosed. numbers were used to replaced names. participants the participants were 24 students from a public school in guayaquil, ecuador; only four of them were male. their english proficiency level was b1.1 in which learners must be able to participate in conversations about different topics of their life and the world in general (council of europe, 2003). they were in senior high school of sciences and had five periods of 40 minutes of english classes per week. they were also part of the international baccalaureate diploma programme (ibdp), which means they should meet a standard profile: inquirers, communicators, and risk takers among others (international baccalaureate organization, 2016). regarding technology use among students, all the participants had a computer at home and one of them did not have access to the internet. four students did not have a smartphone and twenty-three students considered that were moderately or highly skilled in their use. twelve students accessed to the internet mostly from their phones. nineteen students used their phones for learning purposes and two said they never used them for school. four students had already uploaded videos of themselves talking about any topic in spanish to the internet; two of them had uploaded their videos to youtube. only four students were familiarized with the term vlogging. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 43 classroom procedures at the beginning, the teacher included training lessons. they consisted in introducing students to the main concepts of vlogging. the tasks encouraged students to develop their understanding about these concepts by combining their previous knowledge with their classmates’. the projection of samples from youtube allowed students to have a better idea of what vlogs look like. training lessons also involved how to plan and perform the content of students’ recordings. the students gathered in groups and followed instructions extracted from a website specialized in providing steps and tutorials. in this part, they did not record their performances. they only made a vlog drill in front of their classmates. there were opportunities for feedback inside the groups and among the different groups. after the vlog drill, students planned, and recorded one preliminary version of a vlog in groups during the class hour. at this time, the teacher monitored each stage to produce a vlog. during the planning stage, the students used the computer laboratory to do their research work about a topic given by the teacher. then in the recording stage, they recorded their videos outside the classroom but inside the school boundaries. this way, students could look for places where they would not be interrupted, where the illumination was appropriate, or there were not sounds that affected the recording of their videos. students practiced and recorded their video as many times as they needed before they submitted it to the teacher. students conducted this practice six times. at the end, students planned, recorded, and uploaded one vlog on their own. for this, they created a youtube channel and shared its link with their partners. since uploading a video to a hosting took a considerable amount of time and a fast internet connection, the students had to upload their videos in the computer laboratory of the school. the teacher projected the students’ videos to the class. there were chances for feedback after each video, orally and by commenting on the different youtube channels. instruments the students filled a demographic survey that consisted of 15 closed-ended questions adapted from christensen and knezek’s (2009) construct validity for the teacher’s attitudes toward computers questionnaire. items that addressed student’s background were used and others were added. they were related to the use of hardware and applications involved in this https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 44 study. the demographic survey provided information about the sample’s access to the equipment and technology needed and their skills in using them. the instrument also addressed the participants’ use of mobile devices for learning. to determine to what extent authentic oral production improves fluency, the researcher applied a speaking pre-test and a post-test. the researcher considered a twenty-second extract of a speaking test that followed the international baccalaureate’s internal assessment oral guidelines (international baccalaureate organization, 2015). the research measured three quantifiable aspects of utterance fluency: speed (mean length of syllables), breakdown (silent pauses, filled pauses and length of silent pauses), and repair (repetitions and corrections; bosker, et al., 2013; tavakoli & skehan, 2005). calculations followed the procedure stated by bosker et al. (2013): 1) the time of the speech divided by the number of syllables; 2) the number of silent pauses and filled pauses by the spoken time, and the sum length of silent pauses by the number of silent pauses; and, 3) the number of repetitions and corrections by the spoken time. the spoken time equals the duration of the spoken fragment not counting the silences of >250ms. the perception of the students towards the innovation was measured with a 12 closedended survey with a likert scale which was applied before and after the implementation. the items of the survey addressed the participants’ opinion of their own fluency and vlogging. it was adapted from different studies on the use of icts for learning purposes (anil, 2016; charles & issifu, 2015; mackeogh, 2003). a cronbach’s alpha of 0.728 indicated that the survey was internally consistent and each of its items contributed with unique information. a semi-structured interview helped the researcher get a deeper insight on students’ perspectives of spoken fluency and vlogging. it was applied to a smaller sample of six participants who were selected according to their results in the quantitative instruments. two who had the same results in both, the pretest and posttest, two who had a moderate improvement, and the two students with the highest improvement. their english teacher conducted the interview individually inside the educational institution in school hours. this interview included six open-ended questions and were adapted from interviews conducted in research works that studied learners’ perspectives on the use of youtube and vlogging to improve students’ confidence to speak english, and the use of icts for learning purposes (sari, 2017; soa et al., 2017). it was applied after the innovation. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 45 data collection and analysis to determine the effectiveness of the innovation, the researcher contrasted the results of the speaking pretest and posttest. the value of the effect size made it possible to determine the impact of authentic oral production on the development of speaking fluency. the researcher analyzed the perspectives of students collected in the survey and described the results of items 1-4 which relate to learners’ opinions towards their own fluency. after recording and transcribing the interviews, it was possible to obtain in depth positive and negative opinions which were organized in categories as well. this led to the identification of the students’ engagement and motivation during the implementation of the activities; how motivated, confident or reluctant they felt when participating in vlogging. results the first question to answer was to what extent authentic oral production helps students improve speaking fluency. table 1 shows that the participants increased their speed in 21% (m= 2.44 to 2.95), and reduced the number of silent pauses in 45% (m= 0.16 to m= 0.09), reduced filled pauses in 29% (m= 0.14 to m= 0.10), reduced repetitions in 48% (m= 0.13 to m= 0.07), and reduced corrections in 34% (m= 0.07 to m= 0.04). with a confidence interval of 95%, the p=0.000 shows that this difference is statistically significant (p < 0.001) and is not consequence of random chance. as table. 1 shows, the average effect size of the innovation was 1.01. this result indicates that vlogging contributed to the development of speaking fluency, considering cohen’s (1988) suggestions that > 0.8 represents a large effect. analyzing the values of each acoustic measure independently, the innovation had a large impact on the increment of speed (0.93), the reduction of silent and filled pauses (1.50 and 0.90), and word repetition (1.57). however, there is only an intermediate effect on the results of the length of silent pauses (0.54) and corrections (0.60). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 46 table. 1. pre-test and post-test results pretest posttest aspect acoustic measures n m sd m sd md sig. (p) es speed mean of syllables 24 2.44 0.48 2.95 0.42 -0.52 0.000 0.93 breakdown silent pauses 24 0.16 0.06 0.09 0.04 0.07 0.000 1.50 filled pauses 24 0.14 0.07 0,10 0.05 0.04 0.001 0.90 mean length of silent pauses 24 0.40 0.16 0.58 0.20 -0.18 0.000 0.54 repair repetitions 24 0.13 0.04 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.000 1.57 corrections 24 0.07 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.02 0.000 0.60 pre-test post-test total 24 0.56 0.14 0.64 0.14 -0.08 0.000 1.01 note: n= sample m= mean sd= standard deviation md: mean difference sig (p): significance es= effect size the second question to answer is what the perspectives of students towards speaking fluency and vlogging are. for this purpose, the research included a survey and an interview. table. 2 shows that the students’ general perspective of their own fluency improved from the initial stage (m=2.75) to the end of the intervention (m=3.42) in 24%, being the reduction of word repetition the highest item with a 29% and their speed the lowest one with a 17%. a p = 0.000 shows that this difference did not happen by chance. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 47 table 2. descriptive statistics for students’ perspectives about their speaking fluency pre-survey post-survey items m m md sig. (p) 1. i consider that i speak english with an appropriate speed 2.88 3.38 -0.50 0.000 2. i consider that i do not make many pauses when i speak english. 2.50 3.25 -0.75 0.000 3. i consider that i do not repeat words when i speak in english. 2.58 3.33 -0.75 0.000 4. i consider that i do not reformulate sentences constantly when i speak in english. 3.04 3.71 -0.67 0.000 total 2.75 3.42 -0.67 0.000 note: m= mean sd= standard deviation md: mean difference sig (p): significance the open-ended interview led to the identification of twenty positive opinions regarding the innovation. the researcher divided them into 5 categories: speaking skills, affective, technology, timing, and autonomy. the opinions are detailed in table. 3. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 48 table. 3. students’ perspectives about the innovation aspects categories total speaking skills i think that now i speak faster than before (s2 and s4) 2 i think that i don't repeat words as i did before. (s1, s2, and s5) 3 i raised awareness of my mistakes by watching again the videos. (s2) 1 affective i felt comfortable doing the activity (s1 and s5) 2 i eventually felt more confident when speaking (s3) 1 talking about real life issues made the activity more meaningful to me (s4 and s6) 2 technology using new technologies helps me to learn better. (s1 and s5) 2 vlogging combines technology i am familiar with (s1 and s4) 2 timing i liked that i had enough time to prepare my speech before i recorded the video. (s4) 1 autonomy i can practice my speaking skills outside school. (s1 and s4) 2 i can use other vloggers' videos on youtube as a guide. (s5) 1 i can do it at any place and at any time before the submitting deadline. (s2) 1 total 20 in spite of the positive opinions of the innovation, some students also reported negative perspectives about it. regarding the effect of vlogging on fluency, one student stated not having seen a big improvement since the initial stage. two students affirmed that they felt embarrassed of being watched online, one stated that being aware of committing mistakes all the time was an issue, and another student stated feeling anxiety. students also mentioned three negative aspects about the use of icts; the extra effort that it takes to learn how to use a new technology, the lack of the specialized equipment, and the lack of fast internet connection. finally, three students affirmed that the whole process of vlogging also requires a lot of time, starting from the preparation of the topic, recording the video (including the several discarded attempts), and uploading it to the internet. discussion the study revealed that, after six weeks of implementation, the authentic oral production contributed to the development of speaking fluency. the highest impact the innovation had on https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 49 fluency is on speed since students increased the number of syllables they pronounce in a given time. besides, though in a discreet grade, students also decreased the number of silent and filled pauses they made. the study also showed that after different sessions of vlogging, students decreased the number of corrections. the multiple video recording sessions made them aware of their own mistakes when speaking. according to ellis (2005), noticing one’s mistakes and errors helps learners improve their production skills. an unusual finding was that even though students reduced the number of silent and filled pauses, the mean length of silent pauses increased. it is possible that during the intervention, students preferred to elongate the moments of silence as a strategy to avoid using fillers or repeating words. this would have given students more time to think and make sure of what they were going to say before speaking again. a low number of corrections and fillers are characteristics of a fluent conversation (bøhn, 2015; housen & kuiken, 2009). students who felt comfortable with vlogging also noticed that their speaking fluency increased after its implementation. these results agree with solano et al. (2017) studies which affirm that technological tools help students improve english language proficiency. on the other hand, the student that affirmed not having improved in fluency also reported feeling embarrassed during the activity. this is highly related to miller’ (as cited in hamston, 2003) and krashen’s (2013) ideas that the fear of being mocked and lack of confidence have a negative impact on the development of speaking skills. the findings also indicate that students considered that vlogging demanded them to use the target language authentically making the activity more meaningful than others. swain (2000). explained that meaningful output has the potential to help students develop a foreign language. the use of icts proved to be positive since it made information more accessible and fostered learner’s autonomy. the findings demonstrated that students saw as positive how easy they could access to content for learning purposes such as examples and tutorials. students also reported as positive the possibility to work at any time and at any place. this agrees with richard’s (2016) statement that students make progress in their spoken english when they are provided with opportunities to use it outside the classroom boundaries. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017691077 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017691077 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 50 conclusions teachers, in their role as facilitators, have the responsibility to encourage learners to become autonomous learners and new technologies open up a world of possibilities to learn independently. authentic oral production provides students the opportunity to use the target language at their own pace, become aware of their performance constantly, and take actions in order to improve their speech. findings in this study state that students improve speaking fluency in terms of speed, and reduction of pauses, word repetition, and corrections. this research work may open new horizons for the use of icts to create authentic output in efl instruction in public schools. findings show that students who get involved in vlogging show interest and enthusiasm because they consider such tasks as authentic and meaningful. besides, vlogging does not require expensive equipment or software that the majority of students are not familiar with. however, the lack of technology management skills and proper equipment can make vlogging look more difficult and affect students emotionally due to their concern to accomplish the assignments on time. students were not familiar with software needed to record, edit, and upload videos. the effort and time that it took to learn how to use new technology made the activity look less pleasant. teachers should make sure that students can do the different activities. another issue is the stress that students may feel toward being watched on video hosting sites like youtube or social networks like facebook. the study revealed that it could affect the perspective of their own performance. limitations this research work was limited in sample (n=24). this study did not include a control group. the participants were all students of the ibdp, which means they were expected to have a standard profile. this fact increased the chances to find students more motivated to participate actively in this course compared to an average classroom. technology represented an issue due to lack of skills to handle it as well as outdated or lack of resources. recommendations a larger number of participants, and a more heterogeneous group will increase the confidence to generalize findings. instruments that measure other aspects of speaking would give an idea of the impact of the innovation on speaking skills competence in general. an in-depth demographic study that contrasts the students’ access to technology, and their performance https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 51 before and after the innovation would offer a clear view of how the lack of technology affects the development of english language skills. positive and negative feelings that students experience during the activity would provide a better understanding of the effects of vlogging on the emotional facet of learners. future research regarding how well equipped public schools are in terms of icts and how skilled are students using these would offer a more accurate perspective of to what extent the ecuadorian system is prepared for this kind of innovations. it would also provide valuable information to develop plans that in the long run help schools create the conditions to seize the opportunities that icts could provide to their students. references abunowara, a. m. (2016). using technology in efl/esl classroom. international journal of humanities and cultural studies, 1(2), 7-23. retrieved from http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/article/download/29/26 anil, b. (2016). top-up students second language talk time through vlogs. indonesian journal of efl and linguistics, 1(2), 129-143. https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefll.v1i2.9 bøhn, h. (2015). assessing spoken efl without a common rating scale: norwegian efl teachers’ conceptions of construct. sage open, 5(4), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015621956 bosker, h. r., pinget, a. f., quené, h., sanders, t., & de jong, n. h. (2013). what makes speech sound fluent? the contributions of pauses, speed and repairs. language testing, 30(2), 159-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532212455394 briones huayamave, m. k., & ramírez-avila, m. r. (2011). implementing instructional coaching using a partnership philosophy model to train teachers in reading skills. (master’s thesis, casa grande, guayaquil, ecuador). retrieved from http://dspace.casagrande.edu.ec:8080/bitstream/ucasagrande/237/1/tesis353bric.pdf burns, a. (2008). action research in second language teacher education. in a. burns & j. richards (eds.), the cambridge guide to research in language teaching and learning. (pp. 289297). cambridge: cambridge university press. bustos sanchez, a., & coll salvador, c. (2010). los entornos virtuales como espacios de enseñanza y aprendizaje. una perspectiva psicoeducativa para su caracterización y análisis. [virtual environments as teaching-learning settings. a psycho-educational perspective for its categorization and analysis]. revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 15(44), 163-184. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/article/download/29/26 https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefll.v1i2.9 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017691077 https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015621956 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532212455394 http://dspace.casagrande.edu.ec:8080/bitstream/ucasagrande/237/1/tesis353bric.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 52 retrieved from http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s140566662010000100009&lng=es&tlng=es calle, a. m., calle, s., argudo, j., moscoso, e., smith, a., & cabrera, p. (2012). los profesores de inglés y su práctica docente: un estudio de caso de los colegios fiscales de la ciudad de cuenca, ecuador. [english teachers and their teaching practices: a case study of public high schools in cuenca, ecuador]. maskana, 3(2), 1-17. retrieved from http://dspace.ucuenca.edu.ec/bitstream/123456789/5405/1/maskana%203201.pdf castaño, c. & cabero, j. (2013). enseñar y aprender en entornos m-learning. [teaching and learning in m-learning environments]. madrid: síntesis. charles, b. a., & issifu, y. (2015). innovation in education: students’ perceptions of implementing ict in learning in second-cycle institutions in ghana. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 197(1), 1512-1519. retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82486919.pdf christensen, r. w., & knezek, g. a. (2009). construct validity for the teachers’ attitudes toward computers questionnaire. journal of computing in teacher education, 25(4), 143-155. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej844212.pdf cohen, j. (1988). statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). hillsdale, nj: lawrence earlbaum associates. council of europe. (2003). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. drigas, a., & ioannidou, r. (2013). special education and icts. international journal of emerging technologies in learning, 8(2), 41-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v8i2.2514 ellis, r. (2005). principles of instructed language learning. system, 33(2), 209-224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.12.006 hamston, j. (2003). review of miller, j. (2003) audible difference. esl and social identity in schools. australian review of applied linguistics, 26(2), 124-126. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.26.2.10ham housen, a. & kuiken, f. (2009). complexity, accuracy, and fluency in second language acquisition. applied linguistics, 30, 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp048 ilter, b. (2009). effect of technology on motivation in efl classrooms. turkish online journal of distance education, 10(4). 136-158. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed506782.pdf https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1405-66662010000100009&lng=es&tlng=es http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1405-66662010000100009&lng=es&tlng=es http://dspace.ucuenca.edu.ec/bitstream/123456789/5405/1/maskana%203201.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82486919.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej844212.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v8i2.2514 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.12.006 https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.26.2.10ham https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp048 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed506782.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 53 international baccalaureate organization. (2015). language ab initio guide: update to first exams 2015. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org international baccalaureate organization. (2016). guide to the international baccalaureate programme. retrieved from https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/recognition/dpguideforuniversities-en.pdf jaramillo, p. (2016). the effect of blending learning using video-based blogs and the speaking skill development in students attending 1st year of bachelor at "marcel laniado de wind" high school, in machala, in the first term, 2015-2016 school year (master’s thesis. universidad de las fuerzas armadas espe, quito, ecuador). retrieved from http://repositorio.espe.edu.ec/handle/21000/11737 krashen, s. (1998). comprehensible output. system, 26(2), 175-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(98)00002-5 krashen, s. (2013). second language acquisition: theory, application and some conjectures. mexico city: cambridge university press. mackeogh, k. (2003). student perceptions of the use of icts in european education: report of a survey. oscail national distance education centre, dublin city university. retrieved from http://doras.dcu.ie/569/1/mackeogh_icts_european_education.pdf mertler, c. a. (2016). leading and facilitating educational change through action research learning communities. journal of ethical educational leadership, 3(3), 1-11. retrieved from http://cojeel.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jeelvol3no3.pdf ministerio de educación. (2012). estándares de calidad educativa. [standards of educational quality] retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf mishra, p., & koehler, m. j. (2006). technological pedagogical content knowledge: a framework for teacher knowledge. teachers college record, 108(6), 1017-1054. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x naula, r. (2016). problems in the acquisition of english as a foreign language in tenth grade in técnico salesiano high school (master’s thesis, universidad de cuenca, ecuador). retrieved from http://dspace.ucuenca.edu.ec/handle/123456789/25995 rahman, a., & deviyanti, r. (2018). the correlation between students’ motivation and their english speaking ability. jurnal ilmiah esai, 6(1), 66-83. https://doi.org/10.25181/esai.v6i1.1015 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 http://www.ibo.org/ https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/recognition/dpguideforuniversities-en.pdf http://repositorio.espe.edu.ec/handle/21000/11737 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(98)00002-5 http://doras.dcu.ie/569/1/mackeogh_icts_european_education.pdf http://cojeel.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jeelvol3no3.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x http://dspace.ucuenca.edu.ec/handle/123456789/25995 https://doi.org/10.25181/esai.v6i1.1015 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 54 richards, j. (2001). postscript: the ideology of tesol. in r. carter & d. nunan (eds.), the cambridge guide to teaching english to speakers of other languages (pp. 213-217). cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j. (2009). teaching listening and speaking from theory to practice. cambridge university press. richards, j. (2015). the changing face of language learning: learning beyond the classroom. relc journal: a journal of language teaching and research, 46(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688214561621 safitri, n., & khoiriyah, i. (2017). students’ perceptions on the use of english vlog (video blog) to enhance speaking skill. asean/asian academic society international conference proceeding series, 5(1), 240-247. retrieved from https://aasic.org/proc/aasic/article/download/298/295 sari, p. (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. international journal of language teaching and education, 1(1), 38-44. https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4596 segalowitz, n. (2010). cognitive bases of second language fluency. new york: routledge. snelson, c. (2015). vlogging about school on youtube: an exploratory study. new media & society, 17(3), 321-339. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813504271 soa, h., shin, c., wong, l., seoa, m., & davaasuren, b. (2017). language learning with mobiles, social media and gamification in mongolia: possibilities and challenges. workshop proceedings of the 25th international conference on computers in education 299-307. new zealand: asia-pacific society for computers in education. solano, l., cabrera, p., ulehlova, e., & espinoza, v. (2017). exploring the use of educational technology in efl teaching: a case study of primary education in the south region of ecuador. teaching english with tehnology. 17(2), 77-86. retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1140683 swain, m. (2000). the output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. in j. p. lantolf (ed.), sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 97-114). oxford: oxford university press. tavakoli, p. & skehan, p. (2005). strategic planning, task structure and performance testing. in r. ellis (ed.), planning and task performance in a second language (pp. 239-277). amsterdam: john benjamins https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688214561621 https://aasic.org/proc/aasic/article/download/298/295 https://doi.org/10.22437/ijolte.v1i1.4596 https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813504271 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1140683 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 55 van lier, l. (1996). interaction in the language curriculum: awareness, autonomy and authenticity. london: longman. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 1 article history: submitted: 30 november 2020 reviewed: 9 december 2020 edited: 7 january 2021 25 january 2021 accepted: 28 january 2021 the english use of indonesian students in australia: expectations, perceptions, and strategies lazuar azmi zulferdi department of english literature, faculty of literature, culture, and communication studies, universitas ahmad dahlan, indonesia lazuar.zulferdi@enlitera.uad.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10476 abstract this paper explores the use of english in australia based on the perspectives of indonesian students. studies on perception, expectations, and strategies on social experience have been carried out. however, most of these studies have not established models that consider the relationship among the three elements of expectations, perceptions, and strategies of indonesian students in the host country, particularly in australia. this paper attempts to capture the holistic picture of english varieties in the australian higher education context to draw upon the three elements. demographic questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were employed to obtain data from fifteen indonesian students studying in three universities in melbourne, australia. this paper's findings suggested that indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies varied due to limited awareness regarding english varieties, culture gaps between australia and indonesia, and the prominent role of individual self-reflection. it is hoped that this paper may shed light on people’s understanding of the challenges, experiences, and the general wellbeing of international students who choose to study in australia for their tertiary education. keyword: expectation; perceptions; self-reflections; strategies; world englishes =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 mailto:lazuar.zulferdi@enlitera.uad.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10476 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i1.10476&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-02-01 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 2 introduction the trend of studying abroad, particularly regarding tertiary education, has become more prominent. many students go abroad to study in the host countries, mostly english-speaking countries, such as australia. for years, as one of the overseas study destinations, australia has undergone an increasing number of international students. according to the department of education and training [det] (2016, para. 1), over 230.000 international students in december 2016 were enrolled in australia's several universities. of these numbers, indonesia becomes one of the top ten countries among foreign countries of student enrollment in melbourne, victoria, australia (international student enrollment data, 2016). indonesian students choose australia due to its abundant lists of world-class universities, conducive campus atmosphere, and relatively close distance from indonesia (novera, 2004). in academic situations such as classrooms filled with multilingual and multicultural backgrounds, indonesian students communicate using english to their fellow indonesian counterparts and international students and australian classmates. many studies have been conducted in examining international students, especially in terms of profiling their sociolinguistic repertoire. most of the studies were carried out in american (e.g., mukminin, 2012; lopez & bui, 2014) and european (e.g., thao, 2015) higher education contexts than in the australian context. the studies have reviewed international students in australia, for example, those undertaken by sawir (2005) and sawir, marginson, forbes-mewett, nyland, and ramia (2012) investigating international students australian higher education context. moreover, many studies on challenges faced by students, particularly international students in australian tertiary institutions, also indicate that language-related issues become one of the primary sources of difficulty (paton, 2007; sawir et al., 2012), in which most difficulties are likely associated with students’ english language proficiency. nonetheless, given the current sociolinguistic profile of english and the role of globalization, different varieties of english have emerged. therefore, it is pertinent to conduct a study to increase awareness of language use, mainly english. even though many studies have investigated international students in general, there has been little attention to indonesian students’ perspectives regarding english in australian postsecondary institutions. therefore, it is needed to conduct this research since indonesia becomes https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 3 one of the top ten countries among foreign countries of student enrollment in melbourne, victoria, australia (international education, 2014, 2015) thus, this paper explores indonesian postgraduate students' perspectives regarding their expectations, perceptions, and strategies regarding english use in australia. this paper also intends to discover the students' strategies whenever intercultural communication issues occur during their study and their strategies to enhance more successful intercultural communication. moreover, the present study specifically looks at the relationships among indonesian students' three english elements in australia. three research questions are addressed in this paper, namely, 1) what are the expectations among indonesian postgraduate students regarding the use of english in australia before they come to australia, (2) what are the perceptions of english use among indonesian postgraduate students during their studies in australia, and (3) what are the strategies to deal with english use during their studies in australia. it is hoped this paper can contribute to the development of theories and practices regarding the relationships between expectations, perceptions, and strategies among indonesian students concerning english in the australian higher education context. this paper also intends to enrich the current literature regarding the development of world englishes, english as an international language (eil), specifically in terms of indonesian perspectives. furthermore, the results suggested in this paper can be taken into account in preparing indonesian postgraduate students before studying in australia. literature review world englishes one of the most influential concepts of the different kinds of english has been put forward by kachru (1992) regarding the three-circle model of world englishes (we), namely the ‘inner circle’ where english is the first language of the majority of the speakers, and it has an official status, such as usa, uk, australia, and new zealand. the ‘outer circle’ nations, where english is an institutionalized second language, or it has grown as one of the official languages alongside the national and local languages, are singapore, bangladesh, and india; while the ‘expanding circle’ where english does not have an official status yet it is mainly taught in schools as a subject and foreign languages, such as indonesia, china, and japan. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 4 as the expanding-circle country, indonesia uses english as a foreign language among indonesians and employs english as a lingua franca (elf) when communicating to its fellow south east asian (asean) members. in light of this, indonesians do not seem to directly develop their english variety along with their local languages, while for example, other nations in the asean region have already developed and increasingly exposed themselves to their english varieties, e.g., malaysian english and singaporean english daily. besides, as one of the inner circle societies, australia provides australian english among its many different english varieties. alongside the two ‘standard’ american english and british english, australian english has its characteristics, such as diphthongs' distinctive pronunciation and rising intonation (bernard, 1988; guy and vonwiller, 1989, cited in kirkpatrick, 2007). ‘standardness’ of english in the context of international communication, the concept of english ’standardness’ has considerably become ‘blurred’ (xu, 2016, p. 196), which brings into question the notion of a ‘standard’ english. the spread of english and the shifting notion of ‘standardness’ are also related to the fact that english has been used widely as a medium of communication by the global citizens who frequently travel from one place to another. the english language has also been experiencing a paradigm shift. the sociocultural reality of english speakers today has made the role and status of english shifted from monolithic ‘standard’ english (e.g., american english, british english, and australian english) into the emergence of english varieties (e.g., malaysian english, singaporean english) as well as departing from ownership of english into gaining access of english (kachru, 1992). intercultural communication intercultural communication occurs whenever individuals or groups from different languages or cultural backgrounds interact (sharifian & jamarani, 2013). as a result, people share the values during social interactions since they integrate their cultural features into their communication with their interlocutors. bowe, martin, and manns (2014) illustrated that speakers in intercultural communication “typically bring their sociocultural expectations of language to the encounter,” and they further explained that “speakers’ expectations shape the interpretation of meaning in a variety of ways” (p. 1). factors such as the amount of information https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 5 embedded in the context between multilingual and multicultural backgrounds become characteristics of intercultural communication interaction (zhu, 2014). indonesian international students mainly connect with other people using english during intercultural communication as they reside in dense suburbs where people have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. also, they interact daily with a large number of learners who come from varied nationalities. therefore, it is expected that indonesian students are being exposed to varieties of english during the academic and social life. competences in intercultural communication the rapid development of english and the dynamics of contact among people from different cultural backgrounds demand certain competence types to facilitate successful and smooth intercultural communication. ‘metacultural competence’ is defined as “competence that enables interlocutors to communicate and negotiate their cultural conceptualizations during the process of intercultural communication” (sharifian, 2013, pp. 7-8). sharifian further explained that meta cultural competence is employed ‘through the use of conceptual negotiation strategies’ and it comprises three main components such as ‘variation awareness’, ‘explication strategy’, and ‘negotiation strategy’ (pp. 7-8). for instance, this process is reflected when two language communities incorporate english to encode their cultural conceptualizations. another competence regarding learning english has been proposed by canagarajah (2006) and termed ‘multidialectal competence’. canagarajah asserted that ‘in a context where we have to constantly shuttle between different varieties of [of english] and communities, proficiency becomes complex’, and that ‘one needs the capacity to negotiate diverse varieties to facilitate communication’ (p. 233). he underlined that an individual does not have to be ‘proficient’ in all english varieties and emphasizes negotiation skills such as speech accommodation in elf and intercultural communication. xu (2017) explained that the concept of ‘proficiency in eil appears to require more than just mastery of grammar and lexicon in eil context’, but rather as to ‘exploring the various system of cultural conceptualizations and practice’ (p. 709) in embracing one’s communicative strategies during eil communication. the awareness of differences across cultures and the development of negotiation abilities among students is essential in intercultural communication. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 6 studies on expectations, perceptions, and strategies several studies have explored perceptions, expectations, and the use of strategies in an academic setting (e.g., pudyastuti & atma, 2014; he, 2013; bjorkman, 2011). using a survey research design, pudyastuti and atma (2014) highlighted efl teachers’ perceptions of englishes. twenty-two efl teachers were participated to fill the survey to elicit their voices and preferences concerning teaching preference using english varieties. their findings indicated that although most participants had positive perceptions about englishes, they also generated awareness that other english varieties could be incorporated into the english teaching practice. therefore, there has to be research exploring the strategies carried out by the indonesian students when interacting with other english varieties. thus, this research attempts to fill the gap by exploring the expectations, perceptions, and strategies of indonesian students' english use, particularly those studying in australia. moreover, in he’s (2013) study, he investigated the reasons for chinese’s foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa). employing a questionnaire survey and focused interview, comprehensive data from 332 participants at two universities in china were obtained. he found 14 primary reasons regarding the chinese students’ flsa and a comparison between teachers’ and students’ perceptions. based on the findings, students’ perceptions affected how students acquired language during language learning. he (2013) argued that understanding the reasons is an essential phase in minimizing the flsa and improving learning effectiveness. another research is undertaken by bjorkman (2011) to investigate the role of pragmatic strategies in english as a lingua franca context in swedish higher education. the data comprises comprehensive lectures and student group-work sessions at a swedish technical university adopting a corpus-based study. the findings showed that lecturers used fewer pragmatic strategies than students who employed more during group-work sessions. repetition was considered a prominent strategy employed by either students or teachers in class. meanwhile, studies regarding the expectation involving indonesian international students in australian tertiary education are still limited. novera (2004) undertook research examining indonesian postgraduate students in australia. her study investigated 25 indonesian postgraduate students in terms of their adjustment experiences during their studies in australia. her research confirmed that cultural issues were apparent during indonesian postgraduate students' academic journey using a qualitative-based open-ended questionnaire. the study results https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 7 revealed that academic english was the main problem faced by indonesian students and australian academic requirements. the research conducted by novera (2004) examined the adjustment experiences of indonesian students in australia without considering the elements of perceptions, expectations, and strategies to overcome academic english. therefore, the present explores the above three elements focusing on english use, particularly among indonesian students in australia. additionally, despite many studies on perception, expectations, and strategies, most of these studies have not established models that consider the relationship among indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies in the host country. by examining students from similar cultural backgrounds, this paper explores, describes, and proposes a model of indonesian students' expectations, perceptions, and strategies regarding the use of english in australia. method this research employed qualitative interpretation since the qualitative approach underlines the descriptive, understanding, and clarification part of a human experience (dörnyei, 2007, p. 126). dörnyei (2007) also defines qualitative research as “fundamentally interpretive” (p.38) since the researcher’s interpretation of the data was involved in processing the research outcome. therefore, the qualitative method could elaborate on this study's topic since it attempted to explore the indonesian student’s english use experiences regarding expectations, perceptions, and strategies. respondents fifteen participants (seven males and eight females) agreed to participate in the study. all of them were postgraduate students in three major universities in the state of victoria, australia. adapted from dörnyei and csizér (2012), the participants' criteria were based on their study length, with a minimum of five months’ stay in melbourne, australia. these fifteen participants had stayed and studied in australia for at least nine months up to 1.5 years. it was done to delve into a more in-depth experience regarding english among the participants over some time. their names are displayed anonymously. further details and demographic information of the participants are presented in the table. 1 to protect the participants' identity. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 8 table. 1. demographic characteristics of research participants source: author’s observation participant age gender pre-departure english language training length of stay participant 1 26 male no 1.5 years participant 2 32 female no 1.5 years participant 3 30 male no 10 months participant 4 26 female no 10 months participant 5 35 male yes, one month in indonesia 10 months participant 6 26 female no 14 months participant 7 25 female yes, more than 16 years 10 months participant 8 24 female yes, more than 3 years 14 months participant 9 27 male yes, six months intensive in indonesia 10 months participant 10 26 male no 1.5 years participant 11 24 female no 1.5 years participant 12 28 male yes, one month in indonesia 14 months participant 13 32 female yes, one year in indonesia 1.5 years participant 14 24 female yes, one month in indonesia 10 months participant 15 33 male no 1.5 years instruments a demographic questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used to obtain the data. all participants in the study were self-selected or voluntarily. they were contacted through their leaders of indonesian society and the postgraduate student community on their campuses. the questionnaire asked participants to provide additional contact information if they were willing to participate in a follow-up interview. the questionnaire comprised questions providing detailed information about participants, namely age group, gender, prior english learning experiences, and length of stay in australia. semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit data from the participants and confirmed some information from the demographic questionnaire. the interviews were conducted to obtain general ideas as well as in-depth information from each participant. each one-on-one interview lasted between 30 minutes and 45 minutes. to ensure that all participants amplified their voice, they were given the flexibility to respond to interview questions in indonesian or english. the data were transcribed selectively to address the research questions of the present study. during the transcribing phase, the researcher contacted the participants through email to ensure their reliability and accuracy. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 9 data analysis using the research questions above as the guideline, the researcher analyzed the interview data to identify overall themes and patterns. the data analysis procedures are described as follows: 1. selecting excerpts/useful information from the participants’ responses 2. categorising the selected excerpts of participants’ responses into a table consisting of three main categories, namely expectations (e), perceptions (p), and strategies (s) 3. coding for both participants and the selected responses and organising them into a table. 4. identifying the critical themes of each category (expectation, perception, and strategies) from the participants’ responses. in this stage, the researcher then used numbers to identify the responses' occurrences and frequency. 5. analysing the salient themes and patterns by generating descriptive, contrastive, and comparative analysis from all participants’ responses in the three categories. 6. interpreting the data and drawing conclusions based on the relevant theories and frameworks. findings expectations participants of this study had various expectations regarding english in australia before coming to australia. among all the expectations articulated by all the participants, the most salient expectations were that (1) australians would speak british english, particularly in academic settings, for the reasons that australia was a british colony and it was one of the commonwealth countries of the uk; (2) there would be many different varieties of english in australia, specifically on university campuses such as indian english, malaysian english, and chinese english. however, two participants did not expect to come across the prominent english variety in australia, australian english. in terms of the tendency of english variety, i expect that the english accent in australia tends to follow a british accent but not completely the same. there are some differences in terms of intonation and verb. [participant 12] i expect that australians speak a ‘thicker’ english than british english. to myself, the term ‘thicker’ here refers to the similarity with the british’s accent but in a more difficult way to understand. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 10 [participant 2] from the response above, participants mainly considered the spoken aspect of the english varieties. indonesian students had the general expectation that english in australia was only different because it was ‘thicker’ than british english. they did not expect differences in the use of english in australia in terms of vocabulary, grammar. also, this study participants expected that english in australia was more casual and informal, especially during the academic setting. as seen in the following response: i imagine the english use in australia will be different compared to english use in indonesia. back in indonesia, we use english in such an academic way where we emphasize the proper english structure and grammar, but here the english use is very casual [participant 7] perceptions the most noticeable perceptions were that most participants generated self-reflection concerning english and related their experiences in acknowledging the english variety in australia. these self-reflections influenced how they perceived the language and shaped their awareness of the english language during their studies. i don’t directly see the english varieties here, but one thing i underline is my reflection on how they insert their culture when they speak english and also how they think because of their culture. so i think when they talk, there is part of his culture that appears when speaking english. for example, when chinese people speak english, there is a chinese style when they talk [participant 8] participants had similar perceptions regarding the use of english compared with their expectations before they came to australia. these similar perceptions were related to several points, such as the basic knowledge of the ‘standard’ english (british english and american english) in terms of grammar; the experience of exposure to english spoken in australia; the tendency to follow british english accent; and the possibility of improving english skills. of these perceptions, specific english variety in australia, i.e., australian english, was not discussed. participants did not relate any of their perceptions with the possible english variety other than the two standard english. as seen in the following excerpts: my perception about english use is still the same, in terms of things like the unclear accent, its own distinct characteristics. i say so because i ever joined a student exchange to australia https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 11 for a couple of months during my undergraduate, so i already had the perception that australian english is rather hard to understand [participant 4] my perception of english use in australia is the same compared to when i was still in indonesia. here i feel like my listening and speaking skills are developed after i keep in touch with the people here on a daily basis [participant 13] there were also participants having different perceptions regarding a variety of english than their expectations before coming to australia. however, these perceptions were not related to the general knowledge of the so-called standard english, as mentioned in previous perceptions; it was related to australian english. participants perceived that australian english was different in several ways from british english and american english. according to them, the distinctions of australian english referred to the accent, intonation, and pronunciation. furthermore, one particular participant regarded australian english as the ‘combination’ of american and british english. once i arrived here, my perception of english is not the same. australian english is different from british english, and it is more difficult to understand australian english because it sounds like mumbling… [participant 6] my perception of english use is totally different. it is like australians speak a combination both of american english and british english [participant 3] strategies all responses were categorized into two main groups considering the third research question addressing strategies: (1) strategies to minimise the miscommunication in comprehending the english use, and (2) strategies to enhance and improve intercultural communication. in the first group, most participants tended to clarify and ask the counterparts directly when they discovered unclear statements or words. these unclear statements included the english variety that the counterparts used. it included questions such as ‘could you please explain the sentence again?’. as seen in the following excerpt: although i live with indonesian people, i also have friends coming from china and the local people australians. when something (is) not clear, for example, misunderstanding, happens, i usually ask directly to them to clarify things. for example, ‘could you please explain this sentence again?’ this is usually i do when i am experiencing difficulties to understand [participant 7] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 12 the second group dealt with improving intercultural communication that almost half of the participants (six out of 15) tended to familiarize themselves with the culture of the counterparts (either australian or international students) first and took the initiative to start the conversation (e.g., raising questions in classroom situations). these participants considered that cultural distinctions could generate possible bondings in mediating the issues in their english use, such as miscommunication and misunderstanding. according to them, these strategies were useful to increase their self-esteem to play a role not only in the academic situation but also daily, as described in the following: i usually familiarize myself with the culture of my counterparts here so that you can respect each other. and also, i tried to mingle with australians to make it easier to communicate with them. [participant 11] indonesian students had tendencies to generate self-reflection on improving their strategies to communicate with others using english. these reflections allowed them to incorporate other factors, such as comfortability and ‘pressure’ from australian counterparts that can influence their communication and interactions. for instance, one participant mentioned that he needed to see whether to feel comfortable before exchanging and sharing information; otherwise, he would not have much interest or willingness to do so. while other participants experienced the psychological burden when having a conversation using english with the locals. interestingly, although all these reflections articulated by the participants seem to be negative, they immediately entailed supportive and positive influence for the participants to improve their english communication skills, as seen in the following: i feel like there is some kind of inner pressure when australian students do not understand what i am saying. it is just different when it is with indonesian classmates. it gives me reflection that i need to practice my english harder so that people will understand me better. [participant 4] when miscommunication happens, it is actually hard to explain. i usually reflect on myself and tried to invite their counterparts to see the solution. it gives me time to reflect that i need to learn english more deeply. [participant 15] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 13 discussion english ‘standardness’ as the current status of ‘standardness’ of english is challenged in the literature, the expectations and perceptions as the participants reported in this paper may still hold the belief that they will be exposed to the ‘standard’ english varieties, given the fact that indonesia is one of the expanding-circle countries (kachru, 1992) which regards english as a foreign language. most of the participants have previously been exposed to the so-called ‘standard’ english while in indonesia, e.g., american english and british english. this case happens since indonesia, being an expanding circle country, acknowledges that its students were taught using ‘standard’ american english and british english. they expected that they would encounter what they would have imagined and experienced as the ‘standard english’ exclusively in australia. this research's findings are in line with the research conducted by pudyastuti and atma (2014), stating that most of the students in indonesia are taught using american and british english due to the ease and familiarity of learning these two varieties compared to other english varieties. students in indonesia, having a limited knowledge concerning other english varieties, would feel difficult and unfamiliar to comprehend these varieties, as the researcher captured in the present study. australia is an inner circle country; therefore, english is widely used, and it refers to different (english) varieties. thus, the participants’ previous expectations and perceptions of the ‘standardness’ have been challenged and problematized when they encounter different english varieties in australia. participants were still accustomed to the traditional monolithic ‘standard’ variety of english. since most of the participants were exposed to american english and british english before they arrived in australia, they consider it relatively easy to understand these two major varieties. they were somewhat entrenched in this notion of ‘standardness’ and how it is related to the ‘ease’ of learning and using english. thus, when they arrived in australia and were exposed to australian english and other english varieties, they might feel that these varieties were not so ‘standard’ to anticipate some ‘difficulties’ in understanding people during their communication with others. this phenomenon contrasts with the statement presented in the literature by sharifian (2013) that one of the meta cultural competencies should be mastered by international students. this competence includes ‘varieties awareness’ that underlines the awareness and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 14 familiarity of existing english varieties, specifically during intercultural communication. most participants in this study were not fully aware of the english variety in australia, i.e., australian english. according to trudgill (1984, as cited in jenkins, 2015, p. 24), ‘standard’ english is defined as a ‘set of grammatical and lexical forms which are typically used in speech and writing by educated native speakers’. most participants perceived that they would communicate using the ‘easiest’ english variety in the sense that one would regard or prefer a variety that is considered manageable for them to practice. the findings showed that american english is regarded as the ‘standard’ english variety by most participants (nine out of 15) since their previous exposure to this variety is prominent. they also do not experience difficulties or complexities in practicing the variety. furthermore, other participants (six out of 15) regard australian english as relatively straightforward as they find australian english is not complicated as their expectations. the role of self-reflection the involvement of the participant’s self-reflection is prominent during the data collection phase. they have established relationships among the three categories. these participants' self-reflections had affected one another and influenced the way participants generated strategies, mainly when they communicated with others using english, as illustrated in the diagram 1. diagram. 1. relationship of self-reflection among the three categories source: author’s observation expectations strategies perceptions self reflection s https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 15 the majority (ten out of 15) of the participants generated self-reflections about their perceptions to adopt relevant strategies to minimize miscommunication or misunderstanding and improve successful intercultural communication. at this stage, indonesian students reflect on what strategies might work and what might not work based on their english use perceptions. additionally, the participants employed self-reflections about to whom they speak. as discussed throughout this paper, indonesian students may have different english strategies when communicating with international students or local australian students. based on the excerpts of the participants' responses, the most salient strategies about participants' self-reflections to communicate using english were narrowed down into two categories: comfortability and australians' role in giving correction to participants' english spoken skills. first, comfortability refers to one’s degree of desire or preference to communicate using english depending on whom he/she is interacting with. the self-reflection becomes the medium to reflect on english communication strategies, mainly to classmates being an international student. this action is also associated with cultural differences among the interlocutors and affects how individuals adjust their english strategies. as bowe et al. (2014, p. 119) pointed out, ‘cultural differences in the perceptions of the role and ways of speaking are important’ and understand ‘the language used to interpret linguistic meaning in a given interaction’. the participant underlined her encounters in the communication, e.g., close friend or stranger, in generating comfortability in speaking english. she was comfortable speaking in english only to her close friends rather than to the newcomers in the class. she then also has to adapt to whether the particular strategy might work or not. the strategies might have been different. for example, if she deliberately interacted with australian classmates, she would be ‘careful’ speaking english. secondly, australians' role giving ‘correction’ also becomes one of the participants' sources to adapt their english strategies. the role of so-called ‘inner pressure’ encourages participants to reflect on english communication skills. this particular feeling provides chances for the participants to improve their english skills when interacting with people, whether it is australian or international students. thus, the ‘inner pressure’ that has been internalized by the participant to adapt and adjust strategies, in this case, to the australian counterparts, has emerged. generally, the self-reflections may come up whenever the participants feel that their perceptions do not meet previous english use expectations. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 16 this paper underlined the participants' general strategies to overcome the language break downs during intercultural communication from these self-reflections. several strategies were captured on how participants minimized miscommunication. these strategies included ‘clarifying or asking the unclear statements’ such as ‘could you please clarify your statement?’ (e.g., in the response uttered by participant s2-1) indicated by more than half of the participants (eight out of 15). another notable strategy falls in the type of “repeating strategy”. according to the previous study findings, repetition as one of the pragmatics strategies was the most frequently used by students (bjorkman, 2011). since indonesian international students reside in an english as a lingua franca atmosphere, for instance, australia, applying these strategies during intercultural communication is essential for their english language learning and essential for developing their communicative competence in the australian society's daily interactions. given the current changing sociolinguistic profile of english in australia, it is thus recommended that indonesian students need to develop multidialectal competence (canagarajah, 2006) and meta cultural competence (sharifian, 2013; xu, 2017) for dealing with how individuals can express and negotiate cultural conceptualization among the speakers of english in the process of intercultural communication. it can be argued that negotiation strategy and explication strategy would bridge miscommunication and misunderstanding among indonesian students. conclusion and implication the present study on exploring expectations, perceptions, and strategies regarding english use in australia among indonesian students found that students’ responses had changed over time and were diverse. they varied due to limited awareness regarding varieties of english, significant gaps of culture between australia and indonesia, and the role of individual selfreflection. the majority of participants expected that australians would speak british english since australia was historically a british colony, and it was one of the uk's commonwealth countries. the findings also indicated that most participants generated self-reflections in perceiving the english use. they employed self-reflections to highlight the influence of english during their studies and daily communication. the strategies accomplished by participants to solve miscommunication also indicated similarities and differences. those were categorized as clarifying or asking unclear statements, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 17 repeating sentences, searching word synonym/paraphrasing, and seeking help and support from fellow international, australian, and indonesian students. of these, ‘clarifying or asking’ was the most frequently used strategy. since this study is still limited at identifying specific responses on expectation, perception, and strategies regarding english use, future studies should employ different methods to attain more detailed results. this study only involved limited participants; thus, it might not touch the holistic picture of this study's three main aspects. despite the limitations, this study can be considered one of the materials for future english language programs and in-house training to prepare students prior to departure. further study is suggested to involve other research subjects from efl countries other than indonesia, such as china and japan, which also dominate international students' prevalence in australia. acknowledgements the author would like to express his gratitude to the indonesian endowment fund for education (lpdp lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan scholarship) ministry of finance, the republic of indonesia support scholarship in completing this journal article. the author would also like to convey his gratitude to his supervisor dr. zhichang xu for his comments and insights into the earlier writing process and its completion. references bjorkman, b. (2011). pragmatic strategies in english as an academic lingua franca: ways of achieving communicative effectiveness? journal of pragmatics, 43, 950-964. bowe, h., martin, k., & manns, h. (2014). communication across cultures: mutual understanding in a global world (2nd edition). cambridge: cambridge university press canagarajah, a. s. (2006). changing communicative needs, revised assessment objectives: testing english as an international language. language assessment quarterly, 3(3), 229242. department of education and training [det]. (2016) international student data 2016. retrieved may 15, 2017, from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-studentdata/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx dörnyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-student-data/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-student-data/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 18 dörnyei, z., & csizér, k. (2012). how to design and analyze surveys in second language acquisition research, in mackey, a & susan m., g. (eds.) research methods in second language acquisition: a practical guide (pp. 74-94). malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. he, d. (2013). what makes learners anxious while speaking english: a comparative study of the perceptions held by university students and teachers in china. educational studies, 39(3), 338-350. international student enrollment data. (2016). international student data. melbourne: author. retrieved april 25, 2017, from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-studentdata/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx kachru, b. b. (1992). the other tongue: english across cultures (2nd ed). urbana, il: university of illinois press. kirkpatrick, a. (2007). world englishes: implications for international communication and english language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. lopez, i. y., & bui, n. h. (2014). acculturation and linguistic factors on international students' self esteem and language confidence. journal of international students, 4(4), 314-329. mukminin, a. (2012). a phenomenological study of indonesian graduate students' experiences on the acculturation process at an american university. ph.d. dissertation. the florida state university. novera, i. a. (2004). indonesian postgraduate students studying in australia: an examination of their academic, social and cultural experiences. international education journal, 5(4), 475-487. paton, m. j. (2007). why international students are at greater risk of failure: an inconvenient truth. journal of diversity in organizations, communities, and nations, 6(6), 321-324. pudyastuti, n., & atma, n. (2014). englishes: indonesian efl teachers’ perception. parole: journal of linguistics and education, 4(1), 76-82. sawir, e. (2005). language difficulties of international students in australia: the effects of prior learning experience. international education journal, 6(5), 567-580. sawir, e., marginson, s, forbes-mewett, h., nyland, c., & ramia, g. (2012). international student security and english language proficiency. journal of studies in international education, 20(2), 1-21. sharifian, f. (2013). globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning english as an international language. multilingual education, 3(7), 1-11. sharifian, f., & jamarani, m. (2013). language and intercultural communication: from the old era to the new one, in sharifian, f. & jamarani, m. (eds.) language and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-student-data/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/international-student-data/pages/internationalstudentdata2016.aspx journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 1, january 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 19 intercultural communication in the new era (pp. 1-19). new york and london: routledge. thao, n. t. t. (2015). the roles of linguistic confidence and integrative motivation on cross-cultural adaptation of asian degree students finland, (master thesis). university of jyväskylä. xu, z. (2016). teaching academic english in context, in w. renandya and h. widodo, (eds.), english language teaching today. switzerland: springer. xu, z. (2017). developing meta-cultural competence in teaching english as an international language, in. f. sharifian (ed.), advances in cultural linguistics, (pp. 703-720). zhu, h. (2014). what are culture-specific ways of communication and why?, in exploring intercultural communication: language in action. (pp. 95-111). london and new york: routledge. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/720 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/610 noor qomaria agustina is a graduate student at doctoral program of curriculum and instruction at kent state university, ohio, usa. she is also the faculty member of english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia. her research interest is in teachers’ digital literacy and professional development. nur azima has worked as a teacher at ses school pekanbaru, a reputable school in pekanbaru, riau. nur an alumnus of language education department, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. she has research interest in peer observation. edwin januardie is working as a staff at postgraduate program of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. he received his bachelor’s degree from english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. his research interest is on peer observation. teachers’ perception and the implementation of peer observation at the language center in a private university 1)noor qomaria agustina, 2)nur azima, 3)edwin januardie 1)kent state university, ohio, united states of america 2)ses school pekanbaru 3)universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta 1nagustin@kent.edu 2azimanur23@gmail.com 3edwinjanuardie@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5146 mailto:nagustin@kent.edu mailto:azimanur23@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 40 abstract one way for teachers to learn is by peer observation to reflect the practice of teaching, which in turn will give input to improve the competence in the teaching-learning process. conducting the process of peer observation needs the commitment from different parties and raises some problems. the institutions need human resources and budget allocation to build the system, and to maintain its running. on the other hand, the teachers are reluctant to be observed because they will feel insecure, fear to change the routine, and have more works to do. this research was to answer the following questions: (1) how did teachers perceive and engage in the practice of peer observation at the language training center?; (2) how was the implementation of peer observation at the language center? the research design for this study was the qualitative case study and took place at the language center of a private university in indonesia. purposeful sampling was to determine the participants. the answers to those two questions were the teacher's perception in the form of how they perceive the aim of peer observation as the monitoring evaluation and the benefit of it. then, the implementation of peer observation and feedback for the next implementation. keywords: teacher perception; peer observation; language centers =========================================================================== introduction teacher professional development (tpd) may lead to the improvement of the teachers’ competence that will help the students gain success. furthermore, science and technology rapidly change and need attention from the teachers to catch up with the things to adapt by improving the knowledge and skill. when the teachers do not learn, they will be left behind and extinct. the teacher's ability to teach is important to achieve the goals of education, and the students are easier to do the learning. therefore teachers should have the opportunity to always learn throughout their careers. because of the reasons mentioned above, education institutions make efforts to make the teacher learn. there are various ways to conduct teacher learning. one of them is by teacher learning from the teacher. one form of this kind of learning is by conducting peer observation to ensure the quality of teaching practice. the peer observation aims to make sure and maintain the effectiveness of educational services at the institution (byrne, brown, & challen, 2010). bovill (2010) stated that the purpose of peer observation is to improve the teaching and learning procedures by ensuring the critical reflection toward a teachers who observe each other in order to increase the quality of teaching and learning. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 41 the research by tosriadi, asib, marmanto, and azizah (2018) supported the earlier statement that teachers perceive peer observation as one way to pursue professional development, help them solve the problems in teaching and the opportunity to learn to improve the quality of teaching. peer observation is the means to reflect the practice of teaching, which in turn will give input to their partner to improve the competence in the teachinglearning process. the trust and respect among teachers who are observed and become the observer will determine the effectiveness of the process. dos santos (2017) highlighted this idea in his research that meaningful peer observation and how the teachers make sense of it can improve the teaching strategies, and they can do reflection to deliver their best practices. it is very crucial to provide guidelines and resource in increasing the quality of the observation (atkinson & bolt, 2012 in harris et al., 2008). according to gosling (2002), peer observation is often to train new teachers to develop both individual and institutional capacity. if this process successfully provides feedback to parties who are involved in the teaching-learning process, the increase in teacher’s competence in teaching practice can be guaranteed (gosling, 2002). conducting the process of peer observation needs a commitment from parties involved in the teaching-learning process. for the institutions, the process means the human resources and budget allocation to build the system. therefore, if there is no commitment from the institutions, this process may become a mission impossible. besides, this is a kind of continuous process. there must be efforts to maintain its running. a study by doyle (2012) revealed that structured peer-to-peer lessons and observation in meaningful collaboration and a transparent environment improved the perception of school as a learning organization. on the other hand, from the teacher point of view, there are also some problems. usually, the teachers are reluctant to be observed because they will feel insecure since nobody likes criticism. the fear of changing the routine and the stay in the comfort zone because they are afraid to change and put effort into their teaching-learning is another problem. besides, doing the peer observation process means more works for the teachers. those reasons are the problems that arise in conducting peer observation. it is very interesting to research this topic concerning the importance of the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 42 process of peer observation and challenge in the sense that the peer observation conducted in this institution is systematic and promoted by the institution for more than two years. besides, as the language centers in a university is a supporting unit, so there is no standard for evaluation and career path for the teachers teaching there. thus, the peer observation conducted by this institution can be seen as a genuine motive to improve teachers’ quality for the students’ achievement. there are units in one of the private universities in yogyakarta that conducted the process of peer observation. there is still a need to evaluate the program so that the program will run smoothly and meet the aims of peer observation and give valuable inputs for both the teachers and institutions. this research intends to answer the following questions: (1) what is the teacher's perception of the implementation of peer observation? (2) how is the implementation of peer observation at the language center? this research has an objective to know the implementation of peer observation at the language center in the intended private university in yogyakarta. tpd is only a part of the education system. however, this part resembles the whole system considering the significant role of the teacher in education as the actor who implements the education process. the education business is specific because it relates to humans; consequently, the process should resemble the humanistic value. this project may yield an emphatic understanding of the tpd process to achieve the goals of educating people and achieve the best of students’ performance. the implication of this research is to improve teacher’s quality that will lead to better students’ performance. definition of peer observation peer observation of teaching is a formative process between the teacher and the observer who work together and observe each other’s teaching. the observer gives feedback to the teacher who is doing the teaching (“peer observation,” 2017). whereas swinglehurst, russell, & greenhalgh (2008) stated that peer observation is a process when an educator observes another educator, it usually occurs in college. another expert also stated that peer observation of teaching is a formal process of a teacher whose activities are identified, disseminated, and developed (donnelly, 2007). many educational institutions use peer observation for tpd. in the professional development of teachers, teachers can select co-workers to attend and observe their classroom teaching (torku et al., 2017). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 43 moreover, crandall and miller (2014) stated that knowing the specific need for practicing teachers makes professional development is considered effective. same as language teachers who know the need of the students who are considered effective. glatthorn (1995) (as cited in villegas-reimers, 2003) mentioned that “teacher development is the professional growth a teacher achieves as a result of gaining increased experience and examining his or her teaching systematically.” the purpose of the definition is that teachers cannot continue to hold on to their early learning techniques. so the teachers need to find ways to grow their skills. however, teacher awareness is a necessary condition for changing practice. professional development, according to ganser (2000), is grouped into two, which is formal experience such as workshops and mentoring and informal experience such as reading the latest research. through peer observation as reflective teaching, the professional development of teachers can have an improvement. hendry and oliver (2012) described, “peer observation is the process of colleagues observing others in their teaching, with the overall aim of improving teaching practice.” to conduct peer observation, the teacher can ask their colleagues or other teachers directly to observing his/her teaching and discuss what happened during the teaching process. this kind of peer observation is unstructured peer observation. on the other hand, peer observation can also be in a structured way. such as invite colleagues to observe the teacher afterward share the result of observation, feedback, and ideas about the strategy of teaching, student enrollment, and time management in teaching. hammersletfletcher (2009) stated that “in peer observation, the observer should act to provide the observe with as an objective view of teaching session as possible, and review and reflect on that experience with the observe in a way that informs future thinking.” in peer observation, trusting one another is one of the keys to getting a better result. the selection of the right partner can also be one of the considerations in the selection of colleagues. then as much as possible, colleagues have thoughts that inform the future. models of peer observation gosling (2002) had categorized three models of peer observation, namely evaluation model, development model, and peer review model. evaluation model is an observation by superior toward a teacher. the aims of this model identify underperformance, confirm journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 44 probation, appraisal, promotion, quality assurance, and assessment. this model evaluates the external and internal of an institution include select the staff for judging eligibility for promotion. development model, this model is conducted by an expert teacher to others in the department. it aims to demonstrate competence or improve teaching competence and assessment. this model observed teaching performance, class, and learning material. peer-review model intends to be a formative process where teacher observes each other with giving constructive feedback without judge each other. the aim of this model is engagement in a discussion about teaching, self, and mutual reflection. it observes teaching performance, class, and learning material, and it is beneficial for both of them. according to mcmahon, barrett, and o'neill (2007), the categories do not have a base on who does what but who controls the data flow. it is fundamentally about the power in reporting professional competence. that is a way (mcmahon et al., 2007) categorized two models of peer observation, 1) type-a: control by observing, 2) type-b: control by others. each of these is in the following. type-a: control by observing, in this model, access to information is in the hands of an observed teacher. so, the area of the information based on the request of the teacher observed. type-b: control by others; in this model, access to information is not in the hands of the teacher. the information that the observer takes without their consent, control, and contribution. mcmahon et al. (2007) stated that one of the reasons to conduct peer observation is to achieve a qualification. hence, in peer observation, we need to involve the thirdparty that will able to award qualification, and it implied the type-b model as described above. process of peer observation the system of peer observation is a collaborative process to facilitate and enhance the professional development of teachers or staff of teaching. the point is that the process of peer observation is a dialogue with others about the pedagogical concepts to develop someone’s practice (byrne, brown, & challen, 2010). according to bovill (2010), there are three stages during the process of peer observation, namely: the briefing meeting before peer observation. a briefing meeting is the first journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 45 stage of peer observation. so, before the one who observed and the observer does the observation, they should discuss how the observation will be and what part of teaching that the teacher wants to observe. also, they should decide about where and when the observation will be, who the learners are, and what level of the learners. the observation of teaching. during the observation, the observer does not take part in the classroom, but students have to know the reason for observer presence, and students understand that their performance is not under observation. the teacher should teach as usual they teach and try to behave normally to create the usual classroom situation. while the observer has to focus on the process of the way the teacher teaches unless the teacher has asked the observer to observe the content and subject. post observation meeting or feedback. post observation meeting is the last stage of peer observation. the point is that the observer gives comments and feedback for the teacher. usually, the observer has taken note of this session. however, it will be good if this session held immediately after the observation because both the teacher and observer can recall the details of the session. in giving the feedback, the observer should give constructive feedback about what works well and suggest the teacher for improvement. furthermore, siddiqui, jonas-dwyer, & carr (2007) had the same judgment about stages of peer observation. the first is preobservation; in this stage, both the observer and the observed discuss to gain an understanding of the session to be observed. the second is the actual observation where the observer observes during the teachinglearning process. the third stage is the postobservation and involves reflection and debriefing between observer and teacher. peer observation as a reflective teaching by using peer observation as a reflection of teaching, teachers can be better understood which parts should be improved. reflection is a process of remembering and valuing an experience for a particular purpose. motallebzadeh et al. (2017) argued that “reflective teaching has been an effective way to develop and empower teachers.” in the reflection of teaching, teachers see what they have taught in class, why the teacher taught it in the classroom, and how the teaching outcome at the time, whether it works or not. this reflection of teaching has the purpose of collecting data on the teaching process and looking for teacher weaknesses in teaching to be addressed in order to be more effective journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 46 in classroom learning. in doing a reflection of teaching, teachers can use the tools and ways. like fatemipour argument (2009) stated that in collecting teaching reflection data, teachers could use the teacher's diary, peer observation, student feedback, and audio recording. with the teacher's diary, teachers can see whether the teaching or techniques used from day to day have increased or not. not only that, but the teacher can also note the advantages he had in teaching the class. so that teachers can use these advantages as one method that can be applied by other teachers. then feedback from students can also be a good tool because students see firsthand what is going on in the learning process. students can give input when the learning finishes. sometimes we often encounter teachers who do not need input from students. they feel they have a higher level than students. however, some teachers need input from students in order for teachers to get their shortcomings in the teaching process. so that teachers can anticipate these shortcomings and can slightly improve the quality of their skills in teaching in the classroom. as written above, one way of collecting data is through peer observation. the observer attends his/her class and gathers information during the lesson. when the observer in class, she or he should noiseless and not disturb the teaching and learning process. in peer observation, the teacher will get results from an observation performed by another teacher. it aims to improve the quality of teachers in classroom learning. peer observation becomes one of the most effective ways of doing a reflection of teaching. research methodology this study used a qualitative methodology that the purpose of this research is not to test a certain hypothesis but to describe some variables and conditions naturally (arikunto, 2007, p. 234). in the research result, the researcher explained the phenomena being studied based on the data gathered before. the explanation was about the description of the implementation of the peer observation at the language center and the english language department. the research took place at the language center at a private university in yogyakarta. the time to conduct the research was from february until july 2018. the participants of this research were two people who have a decision-maker position to reveal the implementation of peer observation. the other participants were the teachers to dig on their perception about the running of the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 47 peer observation process. the teachers are the english language instructors at the center and comprise of two males and two females, and they had the experience of conducting the full cycle of the peer observation either as the observer or the one observed. altogether, there were 6 participants. the data collection methods used the document study, observation, and indepth interview. the document study was to study the policies, sop, and other written sources to understand the process of the implementation of peer observation. the indepth interview, both with the teachers and decision-makers, were to reveal their perception. data analysis is the process of bringing the order, structure, and interpretation of the mass of collected data (sugiyono in adib 2012 p.38). the document study and transcribed interview were categorized using the qualitative data analysis software to sort out and list different phenomena. after coding process completed, then the process of reporting began. the ethical and trustworthiness issues were along the process of the research. finding and discussion this research was to answer the following questions: “what is the teacher perception on the implementation of the peer observation?” and “how is the implementation of the peer observation at the language center?” this section of this paper is to explore the answer to the research questions on the implementation of peer observation and what is the teacher's perception of the implementation of peer observation. the answers to those two questions were the teacher's perception in the form of how they perceive the aim of the peer observation as monitoring evaluation and the benefit of it. then, the implementation of peer observation and feedback for the next implementation. the teachers’ perception of the aims of peer observation the aims here refer to the perceived aims that the people involved in these activities. there are two kinds of aims considered in this research; they are the source of evaluation and feedback. evaluation and monitoring. the first reason to conduct the evaluation is that it is a must for an institution to evaluate the performance of the teachers. after all, teaching is not a single activity. carrie and lily stated their opinion about this. “…. we all believe that the faculty members should get evaluation, there should be an evaluation, evaluation in conducting the work …” (carrie) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 48 “…in general, do the monitoring and evaluation…to make sure that the instructors do their main job, to do the teaching as scheduled, on time, and so on.” (lily) there is an expectation that the results of the evaluation and monitoring, in general, are the increased quality of the teaching-learning itself. sandra and rodney stated their opinion about this. “to increase or make the teaching and learning quality better in this department. if there are any weaknesses, they can be improved, because they are evaluated.” (sandra) “so, to improve the teaching quality, then it can be used as the evaluation tool.” (rodney) the aims of the peer observation activities here were said as the media to conduct the evaluation that leads to the improvement of the teaching-learning process. feedback. another perspective about the aims of the peer observation is the source of feedback, and it is a kind of informed feedback because suggested by the colleague. from this feedback, they can learn from each other because, in this part of activities, there are sharing session as well. “so, in observation, the teacher gave about her teaching by her colleague, the professional that they can view from the professional perspectives.” (jodie) “we do it (the peer observation) in a friendly manner. the aim is to learn with each other. the aim is first to evaluate, and then the second is to learn from each other so that they can give feedback to other teachers.” (carrie) furthermore, lily also emphasized this matter. “we also want to exchange ideas with the teacher. actually, the focus is not to evaluate to seek the weaknesses, but more on the things that can be shared. any feedback to make betterment in the future. so, the main intention is to do the sharing to improve the teaching-learning process. the aim is more on the sharing.” (lily) the statement is in line with the understanding of the teachers that the peer observation at the end will improve their teaching performance and self-confidence. “as a teacher, if we are observed, and then we get the input, we can increase our confidence.” (sandra) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 49 “to see the teacher performance directly in doing the teaching in the classroom, from what is seen, what is conveyed as the evidence to improve the teaching method like in choosing the material, methodology. so i can say that it is for professional development.” (rodney) according to gosling (2002), there are three models of peer observation, namely evaluation model, development model, and peer review model. both evaluation and development models involved peer observation as the means of evaluation, monitoring, and assessment. the observer and the ones to be observed have different levels, they are not collegial, and there is a judgmental part in both. even though the participants called peer observation as the evaluation and monitoring process, but the sense of it does match with the definition offered by gosling. the activities are more in line with the peer review model that “this model intended to be a formative process where teachers observe each other with giving constructive feedback without judge each other. the aim of this model is engagement in a discussion about teaching, self, and mutual reflection. it observed teaching performance, class, and learning material, and it is beneficial for both.” teacher perception of the benefits of peer observation there are at least two benefits gained from the peer observation activities viewed from the individual and institution point of view. benefits for the individual teachers. there are some benefits that the individual can gain during the process of peer observation. to mention some, they are that this activity yields the motivation to learn from each other, adopting good practices and avoid the weaknesses. sandra and rodney mentioned her perspective on this. “the benefit is because i can learn from others, so it was a lesson that very valuable for me. by the time i finished the observation i can compare with another teacher, i can recognize my strengths and weaknesses, meaning i can learn about myself.” (carrie) rodney conveyed the same tone as carrie. “i became to know how i teach seen from the other person's perspective because i often think that my teaching is already fine, but then there was some feedbacks that made me realized to improve here and there. when i observed another teacher, i got ideas, good journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 50 practices that i did not do in the classroom, which is proven more effective.” (rodney) another aspect that the teacher can gain is the process of reflection. the motivation to learn from each other raises the awareness to reflect their practices. “….to see, to reflect, all educators should learn from their teaching practices, whether they are successful or not, so they have to learn from what they have done.” (jodie) “so, the awareness is stronger because when we do our daily teaching as the routine activities, we often forgot that we must perform quality teaching. we often think that we already fulfill the teaching standard. when there is someone observed us, we realized that there are weaknesses, and we did not do our best. we have more awareness to reflect the things stronger than before.” (sandra) “observation helps us to reflect, how we teach so far, is there any aspect that should be improved, which one is good and can be continued and so on. we will be able to see that our teaching is like a mirror.” (fred) from the reflection practices, there is intention and awareness to improve the teaching quality as a part of tpd. “the influence it is for their self-development because self-reflection is the starting point for professional development. they start to think about another teaching strategy, different teaching methodology to overcome the problem in class, so more on the self-reflection then arise the motivation to improve the teaching performance.” (lily) the impact of the awareness to do professional learning will influence the quality of the teaching itself and selfconfidence. “peer observation improved the quality of teaching, for me also to improve my selfconfidence during the teaching.” (sandra) there are at least three benefits for the individual gained. the first is that peer observation can be useful as the means to learn from each other. the next is that it provides self-reflection for the teachers, and the last, those practices can lead to improving the quality of teaching. benefits for the institution. other than the benefit for the individual teachers, there benefits for the institution. at least there are two advantages to the institutions. the first is the quality teaching will impact student learning that increases student satisfaction, and the second provides the institution with journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 51 the tools to do the monitoring and evaluation. rodney and sandra stated the benefit of the students. “i think it gives the benefit to the institution like the one with the measurement on the student satisfaction index. the institution wants to increase the index every year, how the quality of teaching will impact the students’ satisfaction.” (rodney) “the students will obviously get the benefit when the teacher well prepared, then the teaching is fun, not only when the class is observed, the student will get the best experience….the most important consideration is the students….the one who gets the most impact from the teachers are the students.” (sandra) the other benefits for the institution are the monitoring and evaluation through peer observation, as explained through fred, pat, and lily’s opinion. “there are many advantages for the institution; the management will know the practical condition in the real situation to make further decision. the data from the peer observation will be needed.” (fred) “from the observation, we know the teaching quality of each teacher that we used as the decision to make teachers level, from that we decide to give them additional jobs or responsibility.” (pat) “of course, the influence for the institution is that we can assure or monitor the quality of the teachers. after the observation, we found out with the performance that needs to be improved, we will give them special sessions or additional training. it also possible that the result of the peer observation is the decision to conduct workshop that is needed by the teachers to improve their teaching quality.” (lily) the benefit for the institution lies on the awareness to serve the students better and to monitoring the teachers’ quality to improve the teaching-learning process. the implementation of peer observation the implementation of the teacher observation will be presented in the table below. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 52 table 1. the implementation of the teacher observation frequency per semester for 2 years (4 times) role mentoring system: the full-time teachers observe the parttime teacher in his or her peer sharing group, but not in reverse. the observation is based on the peer sharing group, where a full-time teacher becomes the pic of around 6-7 part-time teachers. this system makes the full-time teacher does not have the opportunity to be observed by the colleague. preobservation the coordinator of the human and resource development prepares the documents like a checklist and rubric. there is no questionnaire for the students at the time of observation, but the student feedbacks are gathered at the end of the semester the observer makes an appointment with the member of the sharing group individually to learn the rubric and checklist as well as to discuss the aspects that will be observed during the peer observation. while observation the teacher sits in the classroom for the whole time to observe the class and sat at the back so as not to disturb the teaching-learning process. the observer observes the class, takes notes, fill the rubric, and checklist provided. post observation the observer or the pic of the sharing group keep the documents and keep them as the data for the institution. these documents are reported at the center’s meeting at the end of the semester as the consideration to make decisions and improvement. the observer makes an appointment to discuss the result of the observation and the possibilities of improvement. the coordinator of the human resources and development report the result of the peer observation to the manager of the language center at the end of the semester. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 53 feedback for the next implementation it may become a crucial part of the implementation of the peer observation activity because this session captures the voice of the teachers. there are at least six aspects to consider in conducting peer observation. sustainability. it is hope from the teachers that the peer observation program can be continuous because the teachers gain the most benefit from it. “it can be conducted each year; i hope it can be conducted continuously.” (jodie) “i experienced the peer observation every semester since the program runs. it is important to be conducted routinely.” (fred) the teachers have the willingness to take part in the activity, and they expect to have peer observation at least once a year. scheduling. even though there is an urgency in these matters that both the authority and the teacher agree that it is not easy for all parties when conducting such activities. the commitment from both teachers and institution are needed. “if we have more schedule, we are getting busier, all of us are busy.” (sandra) “the challenge is actually more on the system. the challenge is to arrange the schedule is difficult, with 300 classes and many teachers, the challenge is in the scheduling.” (lily) the teacher's motivation to participate is high, but there are technical problems in matching the schedules between the observer and the teacher. reward system. the next input is the reward system that can be in the form of financial benefit. the teacher expects to get honorarium when they do extra work for peer observation. “i just want money, no, seriously i want money” (carrie) “there is not any like the increase in wages or teaching honorarium, but we are trying to find the system that suitable for that.” (pat) documentation. documentation is an important part of the peer observation as the track record either for the institution or for the individual as the basis to make the review and evaluation. ” this program is well documented…one day we want to look again our journey…to see the journey of our teaching or any activities that related to the observation….or if someone wants to do research on it, it has complete files.” (sandra) “we have not had the system to analyze the data…..we discuss the result with the teachers, but we have not analyzed the rubrics or the checklist yet comprehensively. that is our weakness” (pat) conclusion the aims of peer observation are for evaluation and monitoring. peer journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 54 observation has two benefits, and these are; for individual teachers and institutions. the teacher can learn from others, gain some reflection, and improve the teacher's quality of teaching. institution quality teaching will impact student learning, which increases student satisfaction. also, peer observation provides the institution with the tools to do the monitoring and evaluation. some aspects must implement peer observation; sustainability, scheduling, reward system, documentation. recommendation based on the result of this study there are some recommendations from the researcher for some parties that are related to this study such, teacher, institution and further researchers for teacher. the researcher hopes that teachers get information about peer observation. the researcher also hopes that the teacher can do self-reflection on their teaching, and those practices can lead to improve and maintain the quality of their teaching. based on the result of this study, the researcher recommends the institution to take additional information from this research. also, from the finding of the research, the researcher hopes that the institution will conduct some programs such as training or seminar to monitoring and evaluating the teachers’ quality. further researchers need to conduct that related to this topic and use the result of this study as a reference and also should investigate a similar topic but using different focus, such as teachers’ perception or any aspects that relate to this topic. references atkinson, d. j., & bolt, s. j. (2012). using teaching observations to reflect upon and improve teaching practice in higher education. journal of the scholarship of teaching and learning, 10(3), 1-19. bell, a., & mladenovic, r. (2008). the benefits of peer observation of teaching for tutor development. higher education, 55(6), 735-752. board, j. (2011). classroom observationpurposes of classroom observation, limitations of classroom observation, new directions. bovill, c. (2010). peer observation of teaching guidelines. glasgow: university of glasgow academic development unit. byrne, j., brown, h., & challen, d. (2010). peer development as an alternative to peer observation: a tool to enhance professional development. international journal for academic development, 15(3), 215-228. chapelle, c. a. (2003). computer applications in second language acquisition: foundation for teaching, testing, and research. cambridge: cambridge university press. cohen, l., manion, l., and morrison. (2011). research methods in education. ny: routledge journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 55 donnelly, r. (2007). perceived impact of peer observation of teaching in higher education. dos santos, l. m. (2017). how do teachers make sense of peer observation professional development in an urban school? international education studies, 10 (1), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v10n1p 255. doyle, m. j. (2012). using peer-to-peer observation to improve teacher collaboration. a dissertation. capella university. umi number: 3544518. farrell, t s. c. (2007). reflective language teaching: from research to practice. ny: continuum fatemipour, h. (2009). the effectiveness of reflective teaching tools in english language teaching. the journal of modern thoughts in education, 4(4), 7390. ganser, t. (2000). an ambitious vision of professional development for teachers. nassp bulletin, 84(618), 6-12. glatthorn, a. (1995). teacher development. international encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education, 2. gordon, p.s. (2003). professional development for school improvement. pearson: boston gosling, d. (2002). models of peer observation of teaching. generic centre: learning and teaching support network. retrieved, 8(10), 08. green, a. (2011). reflective english teacher. mcgraw-hill: england hammersley‐fletcher, l., & orsmond, p. (2005). reflecting on reflective practices within peer observation. studies in higher education, 30(2), 213-224. hendry, g. d., & oliver, g. r. (2012). seeing is believing: the benefits of peer observation. journal of university teaching & learning practice. journal of university teaching & learning practice, 9, 1–9 jones, g. r. (2007). organizational theory, design, and change. new jersey: pearson education international marsh, c. (2008). becoming a teacher: knowledge, skills, and issues. pearson education australia: nsw martin, g. a., & double, j. m. (1998). developing higher education teaching skills through peer observation and collaborative reflection. innovations in education and training international, 35(2), 161-170. mcmahon, t., barrett, t., & o'neill, g. (2007). using observation of teaching to improve quality: finding your way through the muddle of competing conceptions, confusion of practice, and mutually exclusive intentions. teaching in higher education, 12(4), 499-511. motallebzadeh, k., hosseinnia, m., & domskey, j. g. (2017). peer observation: a key factor to improve iranian efl teachers’ professional development. cogent education, 4(1), 1277456. peer observation of teaching. (2017). retrieved december 27, 2017, from https://www.ed.ac.uk/instituteacademic-development/learningteaching/staff/teaching-feedback/peerobservation-of-teaching/aims race, p., & fellows, l. b. t. (2009). using peer observation to enhance teaching. leeds met press. senge, p. m. (2000). schools that learn. new york: double day. shaping the way we teach english: successful practices around the world, module 13: peer observation and module 14: reflective teaching swinglehurst, d., russell, j., & greenhalgh, t. (2008). peer observation of teaching in the online environment: an action research http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v10n1p255 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v10n1p255 https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/teaching-feedback/peer-observation-of-teaching/aims https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/teaching-feedback/peer-observation-of-teaching/aims https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/teaching-feedback/peer-observation-of-teaching/aims https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/teaching-feedback/peer-observation-of-teaching/aims journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 56 approach. journal of computer assisted learning, 24(5), 383-393. torku, e., akey, b. c. a., mustafa, t., & adu, e. (2017). assessing the role of peer observation in second language acquisition: a review of cases in china, hongkong, and australia. european journal of contemporary research, 6(1). tosriadi; asib, a.; marmanto, s.; azizah, u. a. (2018). peer observation as a means to develop teachers’ professionalism. international journal of multicultural and multireligious understanding, 5 (3), june 2018, pp. 151158. http://dx.doi.org/10.18415/ijmmu.v5 i3.140 villegas-reimers, e. (2003). teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. paris: international institute for educational planning. yiend, j., weller, s., & kinchin, i. (2014). peer observation of teaching: the interaction between peer review and developmental models of practice. journal of further and higher education, 38(4), 465-484 http://dx.doi.org/10.18415/ijmmu.v5i3.140 http://dx.doi.org/10.18415/ijmmu.v5i3.140 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/651 diana elizabeth arguello san martin is an efl teacher. she has experience teaching groups of all ages, especially children. maria rossana ramirez-avila currently coordinates the graduation process for the master program for english teachers. she has presented workshops and lectures at a local, national, and international level. she is the chair of the higher education interest section of tesol. irma guzman is a retired educator. she currently proofreads and evaluates thesis papers. storytelling through picture description to enhance young efl learners' oral production diana elizabeth arguello san martin 1), maria rossana ramirez-avila 2), irma guzman3) unidad educativa mariscal sucre 1), universidad casa grande2), experimenta el mundo3), ecuador 1)darguello@mariscalsucre.edu.ec 2) mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec 3)lonkguzman@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5250 abstract this study aimed at improving oral development in the primary school of ecuador, where teaching english at an early age focuses mainly on expanding reading and writing as productive skills. the purpose of this action research was to individually examine how the use of storytelling through picture description as visual support could benefit communicative skills among a group of second-grade students from a private school in guayaquil. the study considered vocabulary, organization, and fluency as the basis of oral development using quantitative and qualitative instruments. a pre and post-a1 level speaking assessment measured the improvement of vocabulary and fluency. results showed that there was an improvement of four points in the descriptive statistics (minimum, maximum and mean). the paired t-samples test revealed the study was highly reliable with a score of p = 0.000. there are few studies related to teaching english as a foreign language in early education worldwide and south america. in ecuador, no studies were found. therefore, the implications of this study are addressed to school authorities and other efl teachers to upgrade the proficiency of their students from early grades. keywords: young learners; storytelling; picture description; oral development mailto:darguello@mariscalsucre.edu.ec mailto:lonkguzman@gmail.com journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 116 introduction teaching english to young learners is increasing around the world as schools are introducing english as a subject in formal education from early ages (ghosn, 2002). in ecuador, the english language standards (ells) are designed and developed based on the common european framework of languages (cefr) as a way to identify and establish specific language descriptors (ministerio de educación, 2012). in 2012, based on the ells standards, the ecuadorian government decided to implement the english teacher and learning standards as a way to organize and define language domains and skills to improve teaching methodologies and language learning processes (ministerio de educación, 2012). in 2016, the ecuadorian ministry of education updated its primary and secondary subject curricula, including english as a subject into the primary school section (ministerio de educación, 2016). teaching english to young learners (teyl) is a challenging task for educators. there is an increasing number of children learning english as a foreign or second language (pinter, 2017). this early exposure for children learning a foreign language demands more prepared professionals (cameron, 2001). building a variety of language learning experiences allow children to develop early literacy skills as the basis to support their oral language competence. as a result, teaching english as a foreign language (tefl) requires educators to plan and design activities bearing in mind that students do not have enough opportunities to interact in the target language outside the classroom (nunan, 2011). therefore, the designing and planning of efl primary classroom activities imply adapting different resources as a way of producing authentic communicative tasks towards specific objectives. most studies have focused on researching how storytelling activities can improve language skills at secondary and college-level efl learners (chou, 2014; marzuki, prayogo, & wahyudi, 2016). in marzuki, prayogo, and wahyudi (2016), interactive storytelling was used as a strategy to enhance speaking skills in junior high indonesian efl learners, while in chou (2014), games, songs, and stories were applied to increase vocabulary in middle school of taiwanese learners. it has created a gap where research needs to be conducted in younger primary school contexts. the present study has explored how storytelling through picture descriptions can build the basis for oral production in young learners. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 117 participants of this study were spanish speaking primary school learners who have been studying english as a school subject for the past two years. teachers in this private school have addressed their teaching efforts to improve efl learning mostly on literacy skills (reading and writing) rather than oral competence. even though they are pre-a1 level learners, they struggle when understanding and trying to communicate using simple vocabulary in english due to limited exposure inside and outside the classroom. thus, this study reports the effect of storytelling by describing pictures to improve vocabulary, organization, and fluency as the basis of oral production in young primary school students. as the researcher is also the teacher, this study provided the steps of action research. literature review this study focuses on the use of storytelling through picture descriptions to improve very young learners' oral production. the independent variable is observed as using storytelling through picture description, whereas the dependent variable is oral production development. these variables are explored as well as the terms and concepts involved with participant's age, teaching approaches, and study focus to evaluate pedagogical knowledge to implement the use of storytelling in the young efl class. teaching english to young learners "young learners" are defined as children within the chronological age period from birth to puberty years (nunan, 2018). for educators, it is essential to be aware of planning and designing activities based on the physical, emotional, and cognitive stages children undergo throughout this process (duckworth, 1964). according to the findings, children's logical reasoning is still not fully developed at seven years old, but as they grow, their brains start to rearrange thoughts to classify and build operational mental structures. as a result, stories can, therefore, improve children's literacy skills in early educational stages (yazici & bolay, 2017). this step allows learners to imagine and understand story sequencing stages, making connections to their environment. seven-year-old learners present particular characteristics, such as short attention span, a need for attention and approval from their teacher, an inner motivation, curiosity, and eagerness to talk about themselves. these peculiar aspects represent essential components that should be carefully considered for educators to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 118 improve classroom methodologies aimed at engaging children in either individual or group activities (harmer, 2003). storytelling, vocabulary games, and picture description activities enhance their creativity as they develop vocabulary, reading, and speaking skills. as tomlinson (2013) affirmed, children learn from what surrounds them, what they can see, hear, and touch, as well as from experiences. the age, as mentioned above, developmental limitations define and delimit the appropriate tasks within the instructional learning process (nunan, 2011). the method of speaking or oral communicative activities in the classroom has been limited to repetitions of short conversation and the use of formulaic sequences (becker & roos, 2016). it is mainly due to teachers' assumptions that authentic activities are complex for young learners. mackey, kanganas, and oliver (as cited in becker & ross, 2016) sustained that children like to interact in oral communicative activities. however, those types of practices are not frequent in young learners' efl classes. storytelling in young learners oral production storytelling is defined as "a process, where a person (the teller), using vocalization, narrative structure, and mental imagery communicate with other humans (the audience), who also use mental imagery, and in turn, communicate back to the teller" (craig, 1996, p. 2). therefore, stories can promote a natural interaction by exchanging real information between the teller and the audience. as richards (2006) described in the communicative language teaching (clt) core assumptions, learners need to be engaged in interaction and meaningful communication for language competency to be increased. in another discussion in a study conducted in china, storytelling demonstrated an enhanced ability to selfevaluate student's oral performance (kim, 2014). on the other hand, according to cameron (2001), oral production tasks for young learners rely on classroom language because of efl learners' limited foreign language practice outside the classroom. individual or pair work speaking activities must be prompted by the teacher's repetition and modeling, resulting in a scaffolding process, conducting learners to their zone of proximal development (zpd), and therefore, achieving an autonomous role in their learning process (vygotsky, 2012). as reported by lisenbee and ford (2017), storytelling is considered a tool to create a reliable connection between journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 119 academic content and real-world experiences. this analysis supports the evidence that designing speaking tasks for small children involves a careful application of teaching and learning principles, learners' characteristics, needs, and objectives outcomes (lindahl, 2018). these researchers support storytelling as a guided activity not only to challenge learners to talk about themselves, but they require learners to express ideas by using words to convey meaning (gower, phillips, & walters, 1995). stories have to be carefully selected according to the teacher's objectives to achieve the best results (thornbury, 2005). finally, in a study conducted in colombia, other factors were also mentioned when applying storytelling as a resource to increase oral production goals, where storytelling class activities could foster speaking development, leading-learners towards learning process awareness (bocanegra & ramirez, 2018). storytelling narrative elements the review of the literature shows that it is essential to mention narrative story elements as a way small learners organize their ideas and sequence events when orally producing a story to achieve better results in young learners' language development. as stated by morrow (1985), story structures include a setting (time, place, and characters), as well as a plot: beginning, middle, and the end or resolution of the events. by making children aware of the narrative elements, telling stories can increase language, ensuring learners' engagement, and comprehension by making sense of the world around them (fog, 2010). other findings concluded that storytelling also enabled and increased critical thinking, cognitive engagement, and visualization as a way to understand written texts (agosto, 2016). picture description in young learners oral production "picture" is defined as "a design or representation made by various means such as painting, drawing, or photography" (merriam-webster, 2019). images can allow young learners to breakdown a short story sequence, process ideas, and use simple, familiar words to convey meaning. moreover, the potential of visuals aids was explored as the most common and effective strategy to help students associate meaning to words while keeping engagement and motivation (macwan, 2015). szpotowicz (2012) stated that speech elicitation tasks for young learners require authentic and meaningful language where visual aids such as pictures serve as a useful journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 120 resource to structure the activity, set objectives and analyze outcomes. in an article published by the sage journals related to language teaching research (boers, 2018), a summary of three research studies focused on the use of pictures description related task activities as a way to elicit language input for data collection such as grammar feature samples, oral proficiency samples, and a picture story as a prompt for a writing task. for educators and classroom researchers, picture description facilitates assessing children's language skills acquisition progress. for instructional speaking practice, storytelling is used as a way to elicit personal anecdotes by asking learners to produce orally using pictures as visual aids (thornbury, 2005). for afraz, taghizade, and taghinezhad (2018), the use of pictorial aids in developing speaking proficiency can facilitate the interaction while enhancing speech and motivation, while in lavalle and briesmaster's research (2017), picture descriptions were analyzed to determine a positive effect on communicative skills. vocabulary in young learners oral production merriam-webster's online dictionary defines the word "vocabulary" as "all the words known and used by a particular person, and all the words that exist in a particular language or subject" (2019). understanding these "words" involves knowing its form and meaning, as they allow learners to recognize its grammatical functions and word associations in context (thornbury, 2005). in this line, storytelling has been explored as a technique to increase young efl students' motivation and vocabulary, showing positive effects in language production performance. as chou (2014) affirmed in his study, the relationship between young learners and their cognitive processes were shown to be positively influenced by games, stories, and songs. they encouraged and increased vocabulary knowledge. therefore, explicit vocabulary instruction during storytelling sessions encourages children to actively participate while providing opportunities to relate word meaning to their lives. fluency in young learners oral production according to nunan (2018), in young learners speaking instruction, fluency should be understood as "the ability to maintain a stream of speech without lengthy pauses or hesitation" (p. 3). then fluency refers to the ability to speak without interruptions. at beginner levels, fluency can be achieved by engaging students in fun journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 121 learning by doing activities that involve interaction, and the use of recycled or new vocabulary (nunan, 2018). the use of storytelling through picture description empowers primary school learners with a boost in oral production by stimulating real authentic communication with their peers and teachers. being aware of the different challenges students face when speaking, this section explored the benefits of storytelling in young learners' oral production. therefore, to improve students' fluency in spoken production through storytelling, the following research questions are posited: to what extent does storytelling through picture description increase young learners' fluency in their oral language production? to what extent can picture descriptions increase vocabulary in second-grade students? methodology the present study is based on action research with qualitative and quantitative analysis. the concept of action research in the educational field refers to a classroom intervention performed by teachers to improve and reflect on their practice. the researcher-teachers administer a strategy to improve their teaching approach, thus promoting students' learning objectives (anwar, 2016). kemmis and mctaggart (as cited in burns, 2014) affirm that action research involves planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. table 1 summarizes the process conducted in this action research. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 122 table 1. action research phases phase action plan the researcher identified a problematic situation that students had difficulties in expressing themselves. there was little oral participation in english classes, and research-based strategies were searched. act story-telling was chosen. see the classroom procedures described below. observe the teacher took notes during the process. a pre and post-test were given to students to measure improvement. reflect two other english teachers from the school were asked to observe some classes, take notes, and take the post-test to raise the reliability of the tests. data were collected and analyzed. the results were compared and contrasted with the theory included in the literature review. description of participants a group of 26 seven-year-old students represented the participant sample group for this action research study consisting of thirteen (13) boys and thirteen (13) secondgrade girls. they came from a private primary section school located in the north of the city of guayaquil. the majority came from a medium socioeconomic status, where both parents worked or managed their businesses. most learners were catholics, and a minority belonged to other religious groups. they have been attending english classes since pre-k. at the moment of this study, they were attending english classes four times a week for a period of seven months (may november). classroom procedures activities were aimed at telling a short story by describing pictures to increase vocabulary and fluency as the main components for oral development in young efl learners addressing the study objectives. this innovation started at the end of the school academic year, at a private school, with 26-second primary students as participants for the study. in line with the student's pre-a1 spoken production level, they should be able to retell a simple short story using basic sentences to describe to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 123 adapt it to their environment (council of europe, 2018). using picture descriptions to elicit vocabulary in second grade efl learners were applied as the innovation for this research study. the activities were conducted three hours per week for six weeks to build up confidence when making simple sentences to create and report a short story orally. by describing a picture, the researcher measured the effects of storytelling through picture descriptions to increase oral language competency. a six-week lesson plan based on the backward design model was used to implement this strategy. at the beginning of the innovation process, the teacher-researcher used a speaking pre-test. subsequently, the researcher used songs, audio stories, videos, jigsaw storytelling sequencing, role plays, and a picture book class project as a strategy to develop oral proficiency through picture descriptions. a final oral speaking task activity was carried out as a show and tell where students created a short story about their beach vacations using a picture book as visual support to produce a narrative. variables of the study independent. storytelling through picture description to improve oral development vocabulary organization fluency dependent. young learners' oral production sampling procedures a sample of 26 students who represented the one-second grade class was randomly selected among six other second grade classrooms from the primary school section. classes were held at the school. the researcher had a role as the leading teacher using the textbook provided by the institution. instruments for the study, the researcher applied a speaking test at the beginning and the end, field notes, and a rubric to answer the research questions: to address the first research question: to what extent does storytelling through picture description increase young learners' fluency in oral language production? the instrument applied was an a1 cambridge starters speaking pretest to measure the participants' performance regarding vocabulary, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 124 organization, and fluency as the oral components considered to enhance language-speaking achievement. the test was adapted from "super minds 1," which is a cambridge university press book series used by the institution throughout the primary school section. nevertheless, two other english teachers were asked to collaborate in the test adaptation, observation, and rubric designing. the pre and post-test consisted of a three-section speaking evaluation. in the first section, personal questions were asked to demonstrate understanding and facilitate interaction. in the second part, the examiner explained the activity: first, using a game, then the researcher asked some questions about a picture to elicit learners' description abilities. in the third part, participants were shown sequence cards to promote storytelling ideas organization to create a short story from the picture shown using basic story narrative elements. after the six week intervention period, the same evaluation was applied as a posttest, following the same pattern as the pretest. it provided a clear perspective about the effect generated in the students' oral production components addressed after the intervention sessions. to answer the second research question: to what extent can picture description increase vocabulary in second-grade students? the instrument used was an oral performance rubric. it measured if there was an increase in the number of words used by children when describing a picture. the vocabulary grading criteria were organized according to the number of words: 0 – 1 (needs improvement), 3 4 (fair), 5 7 (good), and 8 10 (excellent). the rubric also included speaking criteria components such as organization, vocabulary, and fluency. they were used to assess overall speaking achievements in oral production. the researcher contemplated that each part would be graded from one to four, being 1 the lowest score and 4 being the highest score on the speaking test. a total of 16 points was considered as the highest score on the whole speaking assessment. this procedure existed during the speaking evaluation to estimate the oral production increase if participants improved in any or all the components included in the rubric. additionally, teacher field notes were weekly recorded to analyze students' oral development progress throughout the intervention period. field notes were used to observe the oral components for storytelling descriptions: vocabulary, fluency, and sequence of ideas. according to orellana, johnson, rodriguez-minkoff, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 125 rodriguez, and franco (2017), field notes integrate theory and practice as they allow teachers to observe children's interactions and student-teacher interactions in diverse situations and contexts. therefore, field notes were taken by the researcher as a qualitative instrument to record young learners' progress. they were observed during class activities where storytelling through picture description was applied as the method to increase efl spoken production. comments from learners' reactions, perceptions, behavior, and feelings contributed to monitoring their progress throughout the research process. keeping weekly records allowed the teacherresearcher to analyze to what extent the innovation managed to accomplish the goal. field notes served as a supplement for the other two instruments analysis. it was also used as a self-reflection for the researcher to understand the studied phenomena. data analysis the results obtained from the pre and post-test, along with the oral performance rubric final results, established the quantitative data collected from the first and last evaluation during the innovation process. the teacher field notes complemented the qualitative data on participants' oral interactions, narrative sequence, vocabulary, and fluency advancement on oral development using picture description. data from the quantitative and qualitative instruments were triangulated for a more in-depth analysis. the contribution of the statistical package for the social science program (spss) in academic research has become an essential tool as it enables investigators to store, analyze, and interpret descriptive and inferential statistics (bala, 2016). thus, pre and post-test results were recorded into an excel spreadsheet document. then the file was exported to the (spss) program to get descriptive statistics, like mean, minimum, maximum, frequency, and standard deviation. grades were obtained from rubric components observed from each participant speaking evaluation. these statistics were entered into an online calculator to achieve the effect size of the innovation. according to cohen (1988), a 0.2 is considered a small effect size, 0.5 is a medium effect size, and 0.8 or higher is large effect size. a t-test helped to determine if the results were statistically significant and due to the application of storytelling. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 126 results quantitative data from pre and posttests using oral performance rubric this section summarizes how using storytelling through picture descriptions benefited efl young learners' oral performance. the research findings are based on the study research questions. the innovation-focused on to what extent implementing storytelling through picture description increased young efl learners speaking production, contemplating three main components: organization, vocabulary, and fluency. differences between prior knowledge (pre-test) and outcome oral performance (post-test) in a randomly selected experimental second-grade class were calculated. evidence validates that by describing a picture, participants were able to tell a short story demonstrating an advance in their language speaking skills. rq#1. to what extent does storytelling through picture description increase young learners' fluency in their oral language production? the results are shown in table 1. from a group of 26 participants, the pre and post variables illustrate a minimum score of one as the lowest score and a maximum of three in the pre-test. a minimum of two and a maximum of four happened in the post scores. the grading average in the pre-test shows 1.92 while in the post speaking test, an average of 2.73, which means students enhanced their fluency when orally creating a short story. a standard deviation of 0.74 in the pre-test shows students' achievements were more spread from the mean average score than 0.67 in the post-test average scores, which indicates that after the intervention, most learners reached grades closer to the average of 2.73. table 2. results of pre and post-test: fluency n minimum maximum mean std. deviation pre-test 26 1.00 3.00 1.92 0.74 post-test 26 2.00 4.00 2.73 0.67 rq#2: to what extent can picture description increase vocabulary in secondgrade students? in accordance to what extent storytelling through picture description can expand vocabulary knowledge, the study concluded that students acquired new words journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 127 by providing details about the story. a standard deviation of 0.69 in the pre-test compared to 0.75 in the post-test shows participants' scores were closer to the average total grades when assessed on using a new vocabulary to create a story from a picture description about their last holiday vacations. table 2 displays descriptive statistics of the pre and post-test for vocabulary. table 3 results of pre and post-test: vocabulary n minimum maximum mean std. deviation pre test 26 1.00 3.00 2.077 0.69 post test 26 2.00 4.00 3.35 0.75 in line with the total scores from the pre and post-tests, a minimum total score of 7 was considered as the lowest total score from the test administered to the 26 students. a maximum of 11 was observed as the overall highest score. this result explains that students enhanced their oral production performance as a result of applying storytelling activities in their english classes, after a variety of formative assessments where storytelling was used as the mechanism to engage and produce authentic and meaningful interactions inside the classroom. table 4. pre and post total overall results n minimum maximum mean std. deviation pre-test 26 3.00 7.00 5.23 1.11 post-test 26 7.00 11.00 9.15 1.15 the paired t-samples test revealed the study is highly reliable with a score of p = 0.000. this result implies that the application of a speaking assessment test where children had the opportunity to describe a picture and tell a short story with simple words can be remarkably useful. thus, this supports that storytelling through picture descriptions can boost students' speaking production at an early age, and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 128 consequently, their overall oral development performance. a cohen's d of 3.48 shows that applying storytelling through describing a picture in a sample of 26 young learners has a significant impact on learning and that the study proved to improve their oral skills positively. qualitative data from field notes on picture description data were gathered in field notes by the researcher and two other teacher participants' before, during, and after the intervention. in the beginning, the researcher realized most of the students struggled with oral interactions, as they showed insecurity and anxiety when trying to use vocabulary words to organize ideas to describe a picture. during the intervention, as they explored storytelling activities using songs, audio stories, role plays, and a picture book, they progressively displayed oral production advancement, which was ultimately demonstrated through a show and tell storytelling performance. the teacherresearcher contrasted how innovation positively influenced participants' ability to communicate orally in a foreign language. after the intervention, notes recorded how participants acquired confidence by interacting and using vocabulary words. the different activities planned like songs, games, jigsaw, role-playing, and creating a picture book; assisted learners in demonstrating positive results towards their capability to organize ideas into a simple story sequence on their own, guided by a picture book. discussion findings from pre and post-test in regards to the findings, this action research revealed that the impact of storytelling through picture descriptions could boost oral production in young children. the utilization of images or drawings to provide details and construct a short story facilitates speaking production, considering students' characteristics and limitations. similar positive results were reported by previous studies such as lindahl (2018) and gower et al. (1995). their studies agreed that planning for small children speaking activities involves careful consideration of learners and teaching objectives to help students organize, connect, and eventually transfer language into their real lives. findings from the oral performance rubric journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 129 as for the importance of organizing ideas from using narrative story components, morrow (1985) affirmed that it was useful for kids to understand and structure spoken language. as children practice through guided oral performance tasks, they were able to enhance their creativity and imagination, which in turn helped improve their emerging critical and reasoning (agosto, 2016). in agreement with the study results, using pictures as a visual resource to support participants' wordmeaning associations can enhance language competency (macwan, 2015). it was also affirmed by afraz, taghizade, and taghinezhad (2018), who declared visual description could enhance learners' interaction facilitating meaning communication. study results certainly support those research projects as the innovation aimed to promote real interactions between participants while generating curiosity, engagement, and discovering ways to simplify speaking opportunities. characters and story familiar topics proved to be an effective strategy to benefit not only language oral development but language competence in all the skills. this result aligns with mackey, kanganas, and oliver (as cited in becker & ross, 2016), who sustained that children like to interact. it may be a complicated activity, but one that certainly boosts their motivation to speak. findings from field notes finally, in a study conducted in colombia, other factors were also mentioned when applying storytelling as a resource to increase oral production goals, where storytelling class activities can foster speaking development, leading-learners towards learning process awareness (bocanegra & ramirez, 2018). during the intervention process, learners increased their confidence level by showing an ability to make sense of the words needed to create a story providing details about what they saw and connecting ideas to develop a story beginning, middle, and ending. on the other hand, according to cameron (2001), oral production tasks for young learners rely on classroom language because of efl learners' limited foreign language practice outside the classroom. individual or pair work speaking activities must be prompted by the teacher's repetition and modeling, resulting in a scaffolding process, conducting learners to their zone of proximal development (zpd), and therefore, achieving an autonomous role in their learning process (vygostsky, 2012). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 130 conclusion this study presents some critical contributions in terms of unveiling different ways of improving learners' foreign language skills. storytelling is just one way to promote authentic student's communication inside and outside the classroom. there are endless opportunities to facilitate young learners' language acquisition. due to limited efl learners' interaction outside the school setting, students showed anxiety and lack of confidence when trying to express themselves. this situation decreased as they were able to communicate and transfer the meaning of their ideas into a coherent anecdote. seven-year-old learners presented particular characteristics such as short attention span, a need for attention and approval from their teacher, an inner motivation, curiosity, and eagerness to talk about themselves. these peculiar aspects represent essential components that should be considered for educators to improve classroom methodologies aimed at engaging children in either individual or group activities (harmer, 2003). results from the statistical tests acknowledge a compelling increase within the pre and post speaking tests. referring to the first research question on to what extent can storytelling through picture description can improve young learners' oral development. in line with results, using the strategy of picture description allowed participants to use images as visual support to connect ideas to create a story from a reallife experience. besides using visual resources, playful collaborative activities involving other senses and movement promoted a nurturing learning environment. according to the second research question about to what extent vocabulary enhances young learners' oral development through storytelling and picture description, results showed a significant increase in the number of words participants used to provide simple details about an image. it enabled students to construct a meaningful short story related to their background. the outcomes from the study indeed illustrate that stories can be used as a practical approach to improving young learners' language competence, filling the gap in research studies about how storytelling can actively support language development in earlier cefr levels. it is then highly recommended to examine other journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 131 language skills like reading or writing skills to enhance overall performance. limitations among some of the limitations encountered in this action research study, participants' age (7 years old), prea1 spoken language overall production level, class size, short attention span, mixed ability group, long class schedules, a minimal access to technology due to the high amount of students, and other school curricular activities which affected the time allowed to develop class activities required for the study. the innovation was carried out at the end of the school year when students were not as motivated and eager to perform as the first months of the school year. recommendations even though the present study proposes mostly traditional storytelling approaches, it is recommended that digital storytelling practices be explored to measure if results can overcome actual findings. a more extended intervention period is also suggested to provide a more formative assessment towards outcomes. it is also advised to apply this research to older students with a higher level either in primary or high school levels so that a more sophisticated vocabulary and methods could be investigated. other language skills and subskills could also be examined as a way to test if storytelling has the same results if applied to other skills such as listening, reading, or writing. references afraz, s., taghizade, l., taghinezhad, a. (2018). the usefulness of pictorial aids in developing female iranian intermediate efl learners' speaking proficiency. international journal of education and literacy studies, 1(6), 3849. retrieved from https://journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/ ijels/article/view/4182. doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.6n.1p.38. agosto, d. e. (2016). why storytelling matters: unveiling the literacy benefits of storytelling. children and libraries, 14(2), 21-26. doi:10.5860/cal.14n2.21 anwar, n. p. (2016). action research a tool to build the capacity of teacher educators. journal of educational research, 19(2), 105-116. retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1 869029964?accountid=174323 bala, j. (2016). contribution of spss in social sciences research. international journal of advanced research in computer science, 7(6), 250-254. retrieved from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/ 82a2deb2d4622d800642515e05837cfd/ 1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1606379 becker, c., & roos, j. (2016). an approach to creative speaking activities in the young learners' classroom. education inquiry, 7(1), 9-26. doi: 10.3402/edui.v7.27613 https://search.proquest.com/docview/1869029964?accountid=174323 https://search.proquest.com/docview/1869029964?accountid=174323 https://search.proquest.com/openview/82a2deb2d4622d800642515e05837cfd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1606379 https://search.proquest.com/openview/82a2deb2d4622d800642515e05837cfd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1606379 https://search.proquest.com/openview/82a2deb2d4622d800642515e05837cfd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1606379 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 132 bocanegra bonilla, c., & ramirez valencia, a. (2018). speaking activities to foster students' oral performance at a public school. english language teaching, 11(8), 65-72. doi: 10.5539/elt.v11n8p65 boers, f. (2018). picture prompts and some of their uses. language teaching research, 22(4), 375–378. doi: 10.1177/1362168818785219 brown, h. d. (2000). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). white plains, usa: longman. burns, a. (2014). action research. in j. brown & c. coombe. the cambridge guide to research in language teaching and learning, pp. 187-204. first edition. cambridge: cambridge university press. cameron, l. (2001). challenges for elt from the expansion in teaching children. elt journal, 57(2), 105-112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.105 council of europe. (2018). common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge, u.k: press syndicate of the university of cambridge. chou, m. h. (2014). assessing english vocabulary and enhancing young english as a foreign language (efl) learners' motivation through games, songs, and stories. international journal of primary, elementary, and early years education. 42(3), 284-297. doi: 10.1080/03004279.2012.680899. cohen, j. (1988). statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. craig, r. (1996). storytelling in the classroom: some theoretical thoughts. storytelling world, 9, 7-9. retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed405 589.pdf duckworth, e. (1964). piaget rediscovered. journal of research in science teaching, 2(3), 172-175. doi.org/10.1002/tea.3660020305 fog, k. (2010). storytelling: branding in practice. copenhagen, denmark: samfundslitteratur press. ghosn, i. k. (2002). teachers and students interactivity around the textbook: an exploratory study of children's development academic second language literacy in primary school english classes in lebanon (doctoral thesis, university of leicester). retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ir ma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/33099 4113_teachers_and_students_interactin g_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory _study_of_children_developing_academi c_second_language_literacy_in_primary _school_english_language_classes_in_l ebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1 d7f/teachers-and-students-interactingaround-the-textbook-an-exploratorystudy-of-children-developing-academicsecond-language-literacy-in-primaryschool-english-language-classes-inlebanon.pdf gower, r., d. phillips, & s. walters. (1995). teaching practice handbook. london: heinemann. retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/acti on1.pdf harmer, j. (2003). the practice of english language teaching. longman. london uk. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n8p65 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818785219 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818785219 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.105 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed405589.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed405589.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/irma_kaarina_ghosn/publication/330994113_teachers_and_students_interacting_around_the_textbook_an_exploratory_study_of_children_developing_academic_second_language_literacy_in_primary_school_english_language_classes_in_lebanon/links/5c5fd49a45851582c3da1d7f/teachers-and-students-interacting-around-the-textbook-an-exploratory-study-of-children-developing-academic-second-language-literacy-in-primary-school-english-language-classes-in-lebanon.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 133 kim, s. (2014). developing autonomous learning for oral proficiency using digital storytelling. language learning & technology, 18(2), 20-35. retrieved from: http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/acti on1.pdf lavalle, p. i., & briesmaster, m. (2017). the study of the use of picture descriptions in enhancing communication skills among the 8thgrade students-learners of english as a foreign language. i.e., inquiry in education, 9(1), 1-16. retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ie/vol9/i ss1/4 lindahl, k. (2018). tasks for teaching speaking to beginners. the tesol encyclopedia of english language teaching, 10(1), 1-6. doi:10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0254 lisenbee, p., & ford, c. (2017). engaging students in traditional and digital storytelling to make connections between pedagogy and children's experiences. early children education journal. 46, 129–139. doi: 10.1007/s10643-0170846-x macwan, h. j. (2015). using visual aids as authentic material in esl classrooms. research journal of english language and literature (rjelal), 3(1), 91-96. retrieved from: https://bit.ly/2t5dw65 marzuki, m., prayogo, j. a., & wahyudi, a. (2016). improving the efl learners' speaking ability through interactive storytelling. dinamika ilmu: jurnal pendidikan, 16(1), 15-34. retrieved from: https://journal.iainsamarinda.ac.id/index.php/dinamika_il mu/article/view/307 ministerio de educación. (2012). ecuadorian in-service. english teachers standards: the english language learning standards. retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/up loads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_ 2012_ingles_opt.pdf ministerio de educación. (2016). basic elementary education syllabus. retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2016/02/ mineduc-me-2016-00020-a.pdf morrow, l. (1985). retelling stories: a strategy for improving young children's comprehension, concept of story structure, and oral language complexity. the elementary school journal, 85(5), 647661. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1001518 nunan, d. (2011). teaching english to young learners. anaheim, ca: anaheim university press. retrieved from: https://bit.ly/2a5lcxz nunan, d. (2018). teaching speaking to young learners. the tesol encyclopedia of english language teaching, 13, 1-8. doi: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0715 orellana, m. f., johnson, s. j., rodriguezminkoff, a. c., rodriguez, l., & franco, j. (2017). an apprentice teacher's journey in "seeing learning." teacher education quarterly, 44(2), 7-26. retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1140384 picture. (2019). in merriam-webster's online dictionary. retrieved from: https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/picture pinter, a. (2017). teaching young language learners. oxford university press. http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/action1.pdf http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/action1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0254 https://bit.ly/2t5dw65 https://journal.iain-samarinda.ac.id/index.php/dinamika_ilmu/article/view/307 https://journal.iain-samarinda.ac.id/index.php/dinamika_ilmu/article/view/307 https://journal.iain-samarinda.ac.id/index.php/dinamika_ilmu/article/view/307 https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/02/mineduc-me-2016-00020-a.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/02/mineduc-me-2016-00020-a.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/02/mineduc-me-2016-00020-a.pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/1001518 https://bit.ly/2a5lcxz https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1140384 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 134 putcha, h. (2012). super minds level 1. cambridge university press. richards, j. c. (2006). communicative language teaching today. new york, ny: seameo regional language centre. szpotowicz, m. (2012). researching oral production skills of young learners. center for educational policy studies journal, 2(3), 141-166. retrieved from: https://ojs.cepsj.si/index.php/cepsj/arti cle/view/377/206 thornbury, s. (2005). how to teach speaking. harlow, united kingdom, pearson longman. tomlinson, b. (2013). applied linguistics and materials development. london, uk: a&c black. vygotsky, l. s. (2012). thought and language. london, england: mit press. retrieved from: https://bit.ly/2a2ma8y word. (2019). in merriam-webster's online dictionary. retrieved from: https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/word yazici, e., & bolay, h. (2017). story-based activities enhance literacy skills in preschool children. universal journal of educational research, 5(5), 815-823.doi: 10.13189/ujer.2017.050528 https://ojs.cepsj.si/index.php/cepsj/article/view/377/206 https://ojs.cepsj.si/index.php/cepsj/article/view/377/206 https://bit.ly/2a2ma8y https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/word https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/word volume 5, no. 1, 2020 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/610 aisha ganesh ratnasari received her bachelor’s degree from english language education department of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. currently, she is working as a temporary staff at faculty of medicines and health science of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. her research interests include teaching media, teaching method, curriculum, and second language acquisition. efl students’ challenges in learning speaking skills: a case study in mechanical engineering department aisha ganesh ratnasari universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta aisyahgr17@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5145 abstract for particular reasons, english speaking mastery might be important due to its position as one of the most highly used languages. this research aimed to answer the research questions, namely challenges faced by the students in learning speaking skills and strategies implemented by the students to overcome the challenges. using a case study as the research design, the study involved three participants, who were two mechanical engineering department students and one english teacher in the same department. the data were obtained from interviews and students’ speaking grades from classroom presentations. the result showed four challenges, such as lack of vocabulary, nervousness, unsupportive environment, and lack of grammar knowledge. besides, there were five strategies, such as code-switching, seeing the audiences as the statues, using google translate machines, making a personal approach to the english teacher, and encouraging self. keywords: speaking skills; challenges in speaking; case study; strategies to overcome challenges in speaking =========================================================================== journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 21 introduction english is the most used language by people all over the world. english is also a unifying language when two or more people with different backgrounds meet in a conversation. harmer (2007) stated that the role of english as lingua franca makes english widely used by many people. moreover, abrar et al. (2018) stated that foreign learners had spoken english all over the world. thus, english will help people to have a conversation and to avoid misunderstanding in giving information. english in indonesia is a foreign language where english is not the main language, but the students still can learn it, and most schools oblige students to learn it. english as a foreign language (efl) students still faced some challenges, either spoken or written in learning english. as mentioned by abdulrahman (2013), every student has challenges in learning english. jin (2014) added that english helps enhance students’ capabilities, especially in students’ proficiency. language skills, the way how the students use the language, becomes the focus of learning english. there are two types, such as receptive skills and productive skills. masduqi (2016) explained about receptive skills and productive skills as follows. receptive skills, listening, and reading skills, is the condition where the students receive the information from the teacher. meanwhile, productive skills, speaking, and writing skills is the condition where the students produce the language. speaking is the main skill compared to other skills, such as writing, reading, and listening. speaking is the main of the language because it shows people’s language measurement (shteiwi & hamuda, 2016). besides, speaking is important for the students to master because it can make the students can communicate easily (nazara, 2011). the researcher observed that mechanical engineering department students, one of efl students’, faced some challenges in speaking in english. first, the students felt that they were lack vocabulary. second, the students felt confused when they wanted to speak when the teacher asked them to speak. third, the students were lack exposure in english because english only taught in one week. thus, the mechanical engineering department students felt that speaking in english was quite challenging. the previous study had discussed challenges in speaking skills with its strategies from teacher perspectives. according to al-esaifer and alshareef journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 22 (2018), the common challenges of speaking faced by the students are mother tongue and linguistic, for example, vocabulary. similarly, this research only discussed the strategies to overcome the challenges from teacher perspectives. however, none of the previous studies studied both challenges and strategies from students' perspectives. based on the explanations above, the researcher is interested in investigating the challenges faced by mechanical engineering department students in the english classroom. it aims to find out about the challenges they faced. also, the researcher is interested in investigating the strategies implemented by the mechanical engineering department students in the english classroom. it aims to know the things they do to overcome the challenges in the english classroom. by reading this research, future researchers and other parties will know the suitable methodology for overcoming the problems. literature review type of language skills there are two types of language skills, such as receptive skills and productive skills. masduqi (2016) stated that receptive skills are the situation when the students receive information from the teacher. there are two skills included in receptive skills, such as listening and reading skills. meanwhile, masduqi (2016) also stated that productive skills are the skills when the students produce the language. there are two skills in productive skills, such as speaking and writing skills. speaking skills speaking skills are one out of four skills in language skills. speaking is the situation when people express their minds into a language. febriyanti (2011) stated that speaking is the condition when people transfer their ideas into verbal and nonverbal communication. nowadays, the students need to master speaking skills in english language learning because, by speaking, they will know someone’s language measurement (nazara, 2011). further, nazara (2011) also stated that speaking mastery is important due to the position of english as the universal language. challenges of speaking english for efl students in the environment, speaking is a tool for communication, and people will see students' proficiency in speaking in english (ihsan, muslem & aziz, 2018). the students, especially efl students’, can not journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 23 learn it fast. it should be step by step and need to be developed (ihsan et al., 2018). there are some challenges faced by the students, such as lack of vocabulary, fear of mistake and shyness, anxiety, lack of confidence, and lack of motivation. lack of vocabulary. this issue is the first challenge faced by the students in learning speaking skills. dewi and jimmi (2018) stated that lack of vocabulary is the condition when the students cannot build the sentence because of limitation words. similarly, vocabulary is an important part of learning english. dewi and jimmi (2018) supported by stating that the range score of vocabulary was 48, and the range score of speaking was 23. further, dewi and jimmi (2018) stated that the students who lack the vocabulary will have an impact on themselves when they want to have interaction and would have less confidence. fear of mistake and shyness. these psychological factors are the emotional feeling of the students when they want to speak in english (juhana, 2018). juhana (2018) stated that the students would forget what they want to say because of shyness, students’ fear of whether they make a mistake or not when speaking in english, and also they are worried about being laughed by their friends. juhana (2018) mentioned that 37% of the students mostly chose fear of mistake, and 26% of the students chose shyness. moreover, these psychological factors have influenced students’ speaking performance. further, teachers can make a personal approach and create a better learning atmosphere in the classroom. lack of confidence. this psychological factor is a student feeling that occurs when the students realize that their speaking partners do not get their points when speaking in english (juhana, 2018). similarly, the students’ feel a lack of confidence because they feel their english is not good, and they keep silent. additionally, 13% of the students chose a lack of confidence as one of the challenges in speaking english (juhana, 2018). to make the students’ have high confidence, the teachers should give positive encouragement to the students. lack of motivation. in language learning, especially when speaking in english, motivation is vital for students. jin (2014) stated that motivation is important to make students successful in language learning. juhana (2018) added that 6% of the students chose a lack of confidence because they do not have motivation when they see their teacher’s way of teaching. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 24 similarly, the teacher should show their enthusiasm by showing their activeness using english to communicate and during their teaching process (juhana, 2018). strategies of speaking english of efl students the problem faced by efl students is that they understand what other people talk about, but they have less confidence when speaking in english. in this case, speaking is not merely about the way how people communicate but also how they try to share the information (abrar et al., 2018). there are some strategies used by efl students’ in overcoming challenges such as self-assessments, metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies, interpersonal strategies, and communicative-experiential strategies. self-assessment. in this strategy, the teacher asks the students to do selfassessments. the students state their strengths and weaknesses in speaking in english. mahdi (2015) stated that this strategy could have a good impact on the teacher because they could know the capabilities of every student. similarly, the teacher will know the capabilities through the questionnaire the teacher distributed. additionally, the students can write their strength and their weaknesses in speaking in english (mahdi, 2015). metacognitive strategies. the students implement this strategy during the learning process. the students applied several ways, such as setting the purpose of speaking in english, self-monitor, and evaluation for their academic achievement and set the material to be discussed (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). similarly, the total participants in their research were 6 participants. 6 participants chose to set the purpose of speaking in english. two participants chose self-monitor and selfevaluation also, 4 participants chose to set the discussed material (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). thus, it can help the students to enhance their speaking performance in the classroom. cognitive strategies. in this strategy, 5 students chose to translate, and 6 students chose repetition, also guessing the meaning of vocabulary as their strategies to overcome the problem (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). additionally, heryanti and hazairin (2017) also stated that students chose to guess the meaning, and 5 students make some clues of vocabularies as their strategies to overcome the problem. by doing those strategies, the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 25 students believe they can enhance their speaking performance later on. social strategies. this strategy aims to make the students an active learner in learning speaking skills. the students applied several ways in this strategy, such as 6 students chose cooperation ways, 4 students questioned for clarification, and 2 students chose self-talk (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). additionally, the students use questioning for clarification and self-talk in order to prepare themselves in some instances, such as speaking in public, speech, or presentation (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). interpersonal strategies. in this strategy, the students need to rehearse for their speaking performance in the classroom. heryanti and hazairin (2017) stated several ways in this strategy, such as 6 students ask the other people to give some suggestions, 5 students chose to practice and rehearsal also 6 students try to speak up with other people. furthermore, students can overcome their challenges in speaking in english. communicative-experiential strategies. in this strategy, 6 students can make an effective sentence by finding the synonym. the students need support from the teacher to overcome their challenges in speaking in english (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). additionally, 4 students will easy to speak up by guessing teachers' body language (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). previous studies the first study was conducted by abrar et al. (2018), which aimed to document indonesian efl students’ teachers’ experiences in speaking english. this study used a qualitative phenomenological study to gather the data. in this research, the participant was 8 people. the results of this research were language barriers such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and fluency, psychological factors such as anxiety, attitude and lack of motivation, learning environment such as lectures, peers, and topic of speaking, and practicing the language such as self-practice, practice with tutors also practice uses media and technology. the second study was conducted by nazara (2011) that aimed to investigate the perceptions of students of english speaking skill development. to gather the data, the researcher used mix methods such as qualitative study using interviews and a quantitative study using a questionnaire. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 26 the questionnaire contained 16 statements with 40 respondents. meanwhile, the interview lasted for 20 – 25 minutes, with five respondents administered in a voluntary system. this interview aimed to re-check participants’ points of view rather than make generalizations. the result was showing that 45% of participants knew their speaking level was high, while 55% of participants were not. thus, the participants wanted to speak in english, and for that matter, speaking mastery was important for them. the third study was conducted by juhana (2018), which aimed to find out psychological factors that hindered students from speaking and the causes of the factor as well as possible solutions to overcome the factors. this study used three techniques of gathering data, such as observations, questionnaires, and interviews. the result showed that there were five psychological factors in speaking in english, such as fear of mistake (37%), shyness (26%), anxiety (18%), lack of confidence (13%), and lack of motivation (6%). based on this research, the solution depended on how the teacher could motivate the students and asked them to participate actively in the learning process. conceptual framework the previous research explained about challenges and strategies from students’ point of view. in this research, the researcher would like to explore the other challenges and strategies from students’ points of view about speaking skills that might appear. moreover, the researcher also used the previous research as references to enrich the data in this research. research’s conceptual framework is in the figure below. efl teaching and learning of mechanical engineering department students in learning speaking skills in english classroom. strategies to overcome the challenges in speaking in english among mechanical engineering department students in english classroom. challenges in speaking in english among mechanical engineering department students in english classroom. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 27 figure 1. conceptual framework methodology research design the researcher used a qualitative data approach as the research design to collect the data. the qualitative data approach explored information from participants, and the result was in the form of words (creswell, 2012). the researcher decided to use qualitative because she wanted to get in-depth data based on the phenomenon. to deepen the data, the researcher used a case study to get the exact data about the phenomenon based on real-life context. yin revealed that in order to investigate the phenomenon, a case study was used (as cited in merriam, 1998). additionally, the researcher used a case study because of its two characteristics. first, it bounded by time and place as well as what mentioned by creswell (2012) that case study was specific to the case. second, a case study used multiple data collection. in this research, the researcher used to interview and students’ speaking grades in order to gather the data. in the case study, there was no limitation in collecting the data (creswell, 2012). the interview was for the english teacher and the students. the english teacher confirmed students’ speaking performance in the classroom. besides, the researcher searched for information about the speaking class atmosphere in an interview with the experienced students. other than that, the researcher also asked the time of the speaking class to achieve specific information. research setting mechanical engineering department, specifically at one of private university in yogyakarta, was the setting of this research. the goal of the english subject was english for specific purposes (esp), where the english teacher only taught about english terms related to the department. meanwhile, the stakeholders of the department did not want to know whether the students were capable or not. in the end, the students faced some challenges in learning english, especially in speaking in english. there were two reasons why the researcher took this place. first, the students had learned english in two semesters, such as a third and fourth semester. the material were different between both semesters. in semester 3, the english teacher taught about reading and listening skills, but in semester 4, the english teacher taught about writing journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 28 skills and presentation. in this department, the students did not learn about speaking skills. speaking skills used by the teacher in order to make the learning atmosphere became interactive. additionally, speaking used specifically in a presentation in semester 4. further, the students had some challenges in speaking in english. to assess students’ speaking performance, the english teacher had made a scoring rubric in several categories. there were organizations, content, and presentation, which each of them had different worth. the total worth of categories was 100 which had divided into 5 and made it in the form of a percentage. additionally, the highest score for the presentation was 20%, and the english teacher would give it when the students’ delivered the presentation. second, there was a program named english study club (esc) held by the organization, himpunan mahasiswa mesin (hmm), in the mechanical engineering department. the researcher had experienced teaching english in the program for around one year. this program aimed to make the students became easy in learning english, especially speaking in english. the duration for every meeting was 90 minutes with the material about toefl, grammar, and speaking skills. by seeing the experience of the researcher and also the material, the researcher finally chose this department as the setting of this research. additionally, it could make the researcher easier to conduct this research and enrich the explanation when collecting the data. research participants this research used non-probability samples. cohen, manion and morrison (2011) stated that this kind of sample only represents itself from a wider population. similarly, the researcher used purposive sampling, which took the sample from participants’ points of view in order to look for the participants based on charateristics. in this research, three participants used the pseudonym, such as olaf, elsa, and anna, to keep privacy. olaf and elsa, participant 1 and participant 2, were the students of the mechanical engineering department. they were selected based on the criteria and based on the researcher’s experience when teaching english in english study club (esc). additionally, anna, participant 3, was an english teacher in the same department. anna was selected based on criteria and based on her experience when teaching english for two years, from journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 29 2016 and 2017 in the same department. further, anna’s statement added to enrich the data of this research. as mentioned above, there were three criteria to select the participants. first, to limit the scope of this research, the participants should be the students of the mechanical engineering department of that university. second, the participants had been enrolled in an english class and had passed the class. by doing so, the researcher could easy to interview the participants because they had experienced to join the class. third, the participants should articulate. further, the researcher could know the problem with the phenomenon in a real context. the researcher also had the criteria for the teacher since the participants were not only the students. on the other side, the criteria were that only the teacher should be an english teacher in the mechanical engineering department of that university. additionally, the researcher also asked students’ speaking grades that assessed through classroom presentations from an english teacher. furthermore, the data of this research had gotten from two points of view which were the students and the english teacher. data collection technique one of the characteristics of the case study was multiple data collection. the researcher used the interview and students’ speaking grades to seek the data related to the topic. the interview happened when there was a hot topic related to the real-life context (cohen et al., 2011). also, the standardized open-ended interview was used in this research because it contains the research step (cohen et al., 2011). similarly, the researcher used open-ended items in order to ask deeper into the participants related to the research topic. data collection procedure the researcher had done several procedures. first, the researcher made an interview guideline to collect the data. the second step was to select the participants based on the criteria. then, the researcher contacted the selected participants and managed the time and place also their availability to interview. during the interview, the researcher used bahasa indonesia in order to avoid misunderstanding of information. on the other side, bahasa indonesia is also the participants’ first language. besides, the researcher used a cellphone to record the conversation for 25 minutes for each journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 30 participant. by doing so, the researcher could get comprehensive data in this research. further, the research did follow up question to two participants, olaf and elsa, for 25 minutes. the researcher asked about the strategies directly they implemented directly to overcome the challenges. therefore, the data more specific and comprehensive. data analysis there were several ways to analyze data, such as transcribing, member checking, coding, and content analysis. transcribing. it is the process of changing the data from oral into a written language (cohen et al., 2011). in this step, the name had been changed into pseudonym names by the researcher in order to keep the privacy. member checking. member checking aimed to re-check the data, whether right or not. the participants could add some missed information if any, and they are allowed to give the clarifications toward the data. also, the participants had been gotten the data from the researcher through email. furthermore, all participants approved the data in this research. coding. in this step, the researcher used a label that contains an information (cohen et al., 2011). similarly, there were four steps of coding, such as open coding, analytic coding, axial coding, and selective coding. open coding. it was the first step in coding, in which the researcher made a column in order to arrange the data, including translated statements, themes, categories, time, and place to conduct the interview. strauss and corbin indicated that open coding was generated and defined as the phenomenon on the data (as cited cohen et al., 2011). moreover, the researcher gave the data a title or name based on researchers’ criteria after grouped into several categories (cohen et al., 2011). analytic coding. the second step after open coding was analytic coding. in this step, the data were more specific because there was more explanation about the data (cohen et al., 2011). in short, the researcher gave a code after participants’ explanation with p1.1.1 where p1 means first participant, 1 means first research question, and the last 1 means the number of participants’ statements for every research question. axial coding. it was the third part of coding. the researcher put the data into journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 31 the same categories in order to get the finding of this research. further, the researcher connected the same data into one group (cohen et al., 2011). selective coding. the last part after all steps of coding was selective coding. in this step, the researcher connected the data into several categories (cohen et al., 2011). to get the finding of this research, the researcher made a brief explanation in selective coding. content analysis. it was the last step in coding, where the researcher made the summarize of the research (cohen et al., 2011). krippendorff defined content analysis as the situation when the researcher made a meaningful summarize of the research’s data (as cited in cohen et al., 2011). findings in this research, the researcher interviewed three participants, such as two mechanical engineering department students and one english teacher in the same department. the researcher had changed the name into pseudonym names to keep the privacy of the participants. the students, olaf, as participant 1 and elsa, as participant 2, while the english teacher, anna, as participant 3. furthermore, the researcher also used students’ speaking grades to compare with students speaking performance in the classroom. there were two main findings in this research — first, the challenges faced by efl students in learning speaking skills. second, the strategies implemented by efl students to overcome the challenges. these statements were according to the students, but the english teacher supported it by seeing their performances in the classroom. olaf, as participant 1, was the sophomore of the mechanical engineering department. he had a different english background when he was in school and university. in university, he had to participate actively in the classroom, and he had to ask a question when in a classroom presentation. meanwhile, in school, he thought that english is hard because he did not like english. on the other side, he thought that the english teacher was great. based on the english teacher’s data on students’ speaking performance, his speaking grade was 13% out of 20% in a classroom presentation. additionally, he still found some challenges in speaking in english. there are two challenges faced by olaf in speaking in english. first, lack of journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 32 vocabulary. he considered that the frequency of reading an english book could be the cause of why these challenges occurred. “i seldom read an english book, so i feel my vocabulary is limited” (p1.1.1). anna, the english teacher, considered the same way. “his vocabularies is still limited” (p3.1.4). moreover, when olaf delivered the presentation, he still brought the notes. additionally, anna asserted the same way “his english has not really fluent but he was confident and diligent. so he can follow the material, but when it comes to presentation emm.. he still needs notes”(p3.1.4). the second challenge was nervousness. nervousness happened when olaf had to deliver a presentation in front of the public, his english teacher, and his friends in the classroom. as mentioned by olaf, “because i did not get used to speak in front of the classroom using english, so i got nervous” (p1.1.2). besides, he also asserted that he was nervous when asked to come forward in front of the classroom and when he wanted to ask a question, as mentioned by olaf, “when i want to come forward in the classroom. i got nervous because i do not get used to speak in the public”(p1.1.2), and “i got nervous not only when i want to come forward but when i want to ask”(p1.1.2). additionally, he believed that this challenge commonly happened to everyone. there were two strategies implemented by olaf, such as codeswitching and seeing his friends as statues. first, olaf did code-switching to overcome his vocabularies. he used code-switching to make the other people, his english teacher, and his friends understood what he would like to say. “i mix the language with bahasa indonesia”(p1.2.1). he added that his english teacher understood what he said. second, seeing olaf’s friends as statues, he was trying to calm himself and then seeing his friends as statues. he also made it into an informal situation so that he believed that it could reduce his nervousness. also, it was in line with his statements, “stay calm and see the audience as statues” (p1.2.2) and “i do not make it serious so it can reduce my nervousness”(p1.2.2). further, he believed that it could reduce his nervousness when speaking in english. elsa, as participant 2, was a sophomore in mechanical engineering department. elsa’s english background was quite different from olaf. she had good ability in english since she was in senior high school. it happened because her school status already rintisan sekolah bertaraf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 33 internasional (rsbi) and students’ worksheet was bilingual. besides, her teachers also used english when they wanted to communicate with the students. in conclusion, elsa’s environment supported her to speak using english, and it had a positive impact on her english ability. elsa’s speaking grade was 16% out of 20% based on teacher’s data on students’ speaking performance. unfortunately, she still found some challenges in speaking in english, along she studied at the university. the first is the unsupportive environment in the classroom. she argued that an environment had an impact on her. she mentioned, “i just do what my friends do because if i want to be the active student, i think they would not like it.. so i follow them”(p2.1.1). similarly, she implemented that the environment had an impact on her ability to speak in english. the second challenge was “vocabulary”(p2.1.2). she needed guidance from the teacher because she believed that her vocabulary did not become rich. she confirmed that “the facilitator had not improved students’ ability”(p2.1.2). additionally, there was the reason why she needed many improvements in vocabulary. the third is the grammar. elsa needed a follow up from the teacher because when she wanted to deliver a presentation or writing, the teacher only corrected it. similar to what she confirmed, “when i want to do a presentation or writing, the teacher only corrected, and there was no follow up from the teacher”(p2.1.3). besides, english teacher, anna also confirmed that every student, especially elsa, wanted to speak, they often see whether grammar was right or not. further, this often happened to the students, as anna mentioned: “that is the problem because even the other people before they speak they see the grammar first”(p3.1.1). to overcome the challenges, elsa had three strategies, such as encourage herself, the use of google translate machine and personal approach to the english teacher. first, she was encouraging herself as well as she stated: “encourage myself in the classroom”(p2.2.1). she believed that when she encouraged herself, she could one step ahead from her friends. further, its way could overcome the challenges. second, elsa used a google translates machine. elsa used google translate machine to search the unknown vocabularies. she revealed that “browsing on the internet.. google translate”(p2.2.2). when elsa and her friends did not know the meaning of vocabularies, she browsed the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 34 meaning used google translate machine. further, she confirmed, “for example, when my friend and i already prepared the material for the presentation, and we do not know the meaning. so we are just browsing in the classroom”(p2.2.2). third, elsa made personal approach to the english teacher. she asked whether her grammar was right or not. moreover, she confirmed, “approach to the teacher whether grammar is correct or not”(p2.2.3). further, the english teacher gave her feedback to the students. discussions there were two main topics such as challenges faced by the students in speaking in english and strategies implemented by the students to overcome the challenges. in those main topics, there were similarities and differences between olaf and elsa. lack of vocabulary was the similarity of challenges faced by both participants, olaf and elsa, while there was no similarity between the strategies implemented by both participants. also, the result of this research was according to the participants' experiences in speaking english. further, scholar arguments would support their explanation. challenges in speaking in english. it was the first main topic in this research. in this topic, there was a similarity between olaf and elsa, and it was a lack of vocabulary. olaf and elsa still faced other challenges such as nervousness faced by olaf and elsa faced unsupportive environment also lack of grammar knowledge as the other challenges. the detail was below. lack of vocabulary. the first challenge faced by the students was lack of vocabulary. both participants, olaf and elsa, faced these challenges in learning speaking in english. olaf and elsa had different causes, even though both of them faced the same strategies. olaf thought he was lack of vocabulary because he seldom read a book. that is why he felt his vocabulary was limited. meanwhile, elsa felt she had a limited vocabulary because there were no improvements from the facilitator. moreover, vocabulary had an important role in learning a foreign language (khan et al., 2018). similarly, when the students had a rich vocabulary, it could help them in communication. nervousness. the second challenge was nervousness. in these challenges, only olaf faced nervousness when he was speaking in english. it happened because he did not use to speak in front of the public. in the classroom, nervousness also journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 35 happened when his english teacher asked him to speak or asked a question when there was a presentation. further, he realized that this problem commonly happened to everyone. nervousness naturally happened to everyone when they had to speak (moghaddam & ghafournia, 2019). additionally, nervousness could have an impact on the students' language learning and students’ oral communication. unsupportive environment. this third challenge faced by elsa became a problem because elsa felt when she wanted to be an active student, her friends would not like it. she made much effort into learning english. also, an unsupportive environment would have an impact on the students. further, one of the impacts was that the students would feel demotivated to learn and lost their creativity in language learning (alharbi, 2015). lack of grammar knowledge. the fourth challenge faced by the students was lack of grammar knowledge. grammar was a common problem when the students wanted to speak using english. the students tend to see the use of grammar first before they speak. elsa also felt the same way before she spoke in front of the classroom. she tended to see her grammar before she spoke, and it had affected her ability when she had to do a presentation and writing. moreover, her english teacher did not follow up on her grammar, both speaking and writing. further, grammar was a big concern when the students speaking in english because they were fearful of a mistake they would make during speaking (abrar et al., 2018). similarly, the students still enhanced themselves to speak using english. strategies implemented by efl students. this part explained the strategies used by two participants to overcome the challenges. both participants, olaf and elsa, had different strategies in this case. olaf implemented code-switching and seeing his friends as statues but elsa implemented encouraging self, using google translate machine and personal approach to her english teacher. the detail was below. code-switching. it is the first strategy implemented by olaf to cope with his challenges. besides, his english teacher also understood what he said in the classroom. additionally, code-switching was the situation when the students mix the language into bahasa indonesia in communication. by doing code-switching, it could make the speaker ease in journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 36 communication with other people (hartmann, choudhury & bali, 2018). seeing the audiences as the statues. the second strategy implemented by olaf to overcome the challenges was nervousness. as he mentioned, he needed to make himself relax when he asked to come in front of the classroom. also, he saw his friends as the statues, so he believed his nervousness reduced. unfortunately, there was no support from the research related to challenges in speaking in english. using google translate machine. it was the first strategy implemented by elsa to cope with her challenges. elsa used google translate machine as her first strategy to overcome her challenges. she used it to search an unknown vocabulary, and she believed that google translates machine could enhance her and the other students’ capabilities. additionally, most of the students used google translate machine to enhance their capabilities in english language learning (bahri & mahadi, 2016). making a personal approach to the english teacher. it was the second strategy implemented by elsa. to overcome her challenges in grammar knowledge, she made personal approach to her english teacher. she needed feedback from the teacher, whether her grammar right or not. additionally, her english teacher gave feedback to elsa. to sum up, heryanti and hazairin (2017) believed that when the students asked a suggestion from other people, it could enhance their performance in the classroom. encouraging self. elsa was encouraging herself in the classroom as the third strategy to overcome the challenges. elsa believed that she could one step ahead in front of her friends. additionally, selftalk, as one of the learning strategies were used by the students to prepare themselves in the classroom (heryanti & hazairin, 2017). based on the result of this study, several aspects affect students’ performance in the classroom. there were students’ english background and students’ grades. further, the students who had high grades could not guarantee that she/he did not have any challenges in learning english, especially speaking. additionally, it needed guidance from the teacher to support students’ performance. conclusion and implications speaking is the most difficult skill because the students need to share their ideas in oral so that it needs much practice. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 37 the teacher can use visuals to make the learning atmosphere interactive. additionally, the teacher can give oral feedback to students’ speaking performance. the implementation of english in indonesia was english as a foreign language where the students still learn it, but it was not as a main language. one of the efl students, mechanical engineering department, still faced some challenges in learning english, especially in learning speaking english. in short, there are three participants, such as two students and one english teacher. the name had been changed into pseudonym names into olaf, elsa, and anna in order to keep the privacy of the participants. however, this research used a case study because of this research based on a phenomenon that happened in real-life. other than that, the researcher interviewed the participants and used students speaking grades to make a comparison with their performances in the classroom. fortunately, there are four findings of challenges in learning speaking in english, such as lack of vocabulary, nervousness, unsupportive environment, and lack of grammar knowledge. moreover, there are five findings of strategies such as using google translate machine, codeswitching, seeing the audiences as the statues, making a personal approach to the english teacher, and encouraging self. in short, the high grade of students does not guarantee that the students do not have any challenges. the environment and english background of the students can affect students’ performance in language learning, especially speaking. additionally, future researchers can observe students’ performance directly in the classroom. further, the future researcher also can broaden the limitation of the study in order to get various data. references abdulrahman, h. (2013). what are the difficulties and problems in learning english? retrieved from: https://www.bayt.com/en/specialties/q /57074/what-are-the-difficulties-andproblems-in-learning-english/ abrar, m., mukminin, a., habibi, a., asyrafi, f., makmur, m., & marzulina, l. (2018). “if our english isn’t a language, what is it?”indonesian efl student teachers' challenges in speaking english. the qualitative report, 23(1), 129-145. al-esaifer, f. s. a., & alshareef, h. m. a. (2018). speaking challenges that encounter 2nd and 3rd year efl university students. premise: journal of english education, 7(1), 49-56. alharbi, a. h. (2015). improving students' english speaking proficiency in saudi public schools. international journal of instruction, 8(1), 105-116. bahri, h., & mahadi, t. s. (2016). google translate as a supplementary tool for learning malay: a case study at journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 38 universiti sains malaysia. advances in language and literary studies, 7(3), 161167. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education (7th ed.) london: routledge. creswell, j. w. (2012). education research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). boston: pearson. dewi, n., & jimmi, j. (2018). the correlation between vocabulary mastery and self-esteem on students' speaking skill. wanastra, 10(1), 78-83. febriyanti, e. r. (2011). teaching speaking of english as a foreign language: problems and solutions. jurnal bahasa, sastra, dan pembelajarannya, 1(2), 133146. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching. england: pearson education. hartmann, s., choudhury, m., & bali, k. (2018). an integrated representation of linguistic and social functions of codeswitching. in proceedings of the eleventh international conference on language resources and evaluation (lrec-2018). heryanti, r., & hazairin, i. n. (2017). learning strategies used by the fifthsemester students to increase their speaking proficiency at english study program in jambi university. jambienglish language teaching jurnal, 2(1), 27-36. ihsan, m., muslem, a., & aziz, z. a. (2018). using the participation point system in teaching speaking skills. english education journal, 9(2), 176-191. jin, m. (2014). a case study of non-english major college students' motivation in english language learning. open journal of modern linguistics, 4(2), 252-259. juhana. (2018). 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), 100-110. khan, r. m., radzuan, n. r., shahbaz, m., ibrahim, a. h., & mustafa, g. (2018). the role of vocabulary knowledge in speaking development of saudi efl learners. international peer reviewed journal, 9(1), 406-418. mahdi, d. a. (2015). motivating reluctant efl students to talk in class: strategies and tactics. theory and practice in language studies, 5(8), 1703-1709. masduqi, h. (2016). integrating receptive skills and productive skills into a reading lesson. proceeding the 2nd international conference on teacher training and education, 2(1), 507-511. merriam, s.b. (1998). qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. moghaddam, m. s., & ghafournia, n. (2019). elaboration on foreign language anxiety in l2 speaking: a study of iranian efl learners. international journal of foreign language teaching & research, 7(26), 137-156. nazara, s. (2011). students' perception on efl speaking skill development. journal of english teaching, 1(1), 28-43. shteiwi, a. a., & hamuda, m. a. (2016). oral communication problems encountering english major students: causes & remedies. international journal of social science and humanities research, 4(2), 19-26. volume 5, no. 1, 2020 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/610 dalia lissette aguilar vacacela dalia is an efl teacher. her research interests focus on improving pronunciation. maria rossana ramirez maría coordinates the graduation work of english teachers pursuing their master’s degree. her research interests address teacher training and reading. self-awareness strategy using podcasting to improve tense and lax vowel pronunciation sounds in beginner efl-adult learners 1)dalia lissette aguilar vacacela, 2)maria rossana ramirez avila 1)centro ecuatoriano norteamericano, ecuador 2)universidad casa grande, ecuador 1dalia.aguilar@casagrande.edu.ec 2mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec doi: 10.18196/ftl.5148 abstract this action research study measured the effectiveness of a self-awareness strategy and podcasting to help beginners, efl-adult learners, to pronounce tense-lax vowels in english accurately. the participants were 17 adult students with an a1.2 english level. the researchers implemented the innovation in a language school in a coastal city in ecuador, south america. the results were using quantitative data gathered from a pre and post-test, divided into two parts, a scripted and extemporaneous one. the final scores produced a large effect size of 2.27 for tense vowels and 4.89 for lax vowels, indicating that most of the students were able to pronounce more than the 80% of tense and lax vowels accurately. these results demonstrated that the self-awareness strategy and the podcasting had a great impact on tense-lax vowels pronunciation in adults. despite the favorable results, further and deeper research is necessary with a larger sample, time, and training. keyword: self-awareness; tense-lax vowels; podcasting; pronunciation mailto:dalia.aguilar@casagrande.edu mailto:mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 80 =========================================================================== introduction nowadays, teaching english speaking has supposed great importance. many educational types of research have focused on spoken language skills (tomlinson, 2013). english adult students establish themselves challenging objectives for personal and professional development. they need to speak fluently and accurately (richards, 2006). however, most adult learners, who start learning english after high school, find pronunciation difficult regardless of the intelligence, level of education, gender, or knowledge of language structure (gilakjani, ahmadi, & ahmadi, 2011). in ecuador, a graduation university requirement is to obtain a b1 level according to the common european framework (cefr) (consejo de educación superior, 2016, p. 20). post-high-school students continue their english language studies to obtain their proficiency and degree. besides, ecuadorian learners have a poor english performance, ranking the country in the 65th place of 88 countries in latin america with a low level, according to education first (2018). moreover, in a private language school in a coastal city in ecuador, adult beginner students also face pronunciation problems. their difficulties depend on how well they use the language within the school studies. teachers, including the researchers in this study, have encountered pronunciation issues in different aspects of segmental and supra-segmental features such as intonation, stress, vowels sound, and rhythm. however, throughout the formative assessments and the evaluations done during the content courses, most students do not overcome problems pronouncing segmental aspects like tense and lax vowels. according to woolfolk (2016), one factor that affects the pronunciation in adults is the absence of certain l2 (second language) sounds not developed in the l1 (mother tongue). another factor is the lack of confidence due to the fear of making mistakes. the researchers proposed the implementation of a self-awareness strategy using podcasting to provide a group of adult learners, in a private language school, the opportunity to overcome their pronunciation problems in segmental features such a tense and lax vowels sounds. second language acquisition (sla) has been using self-awareness strategies and podcasting for several years. podcasting has helped learners to develop pronunciation journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 81 due to its broad ways of being applied, such as individual and group activities in diverse topics (ducate & lomicka, 2009). also, kang (2016) conducted a study to find out the effect of strategy instruction, including self-awareness, and the use of podcasting on speaking and listening skills. the study demonstrated an improvement in students speaking skills after learners experiment with different guided podcast activities with topics chosen according to their likes. likewise, ingels (2011), in her dissertation, applied a self-monitoring strategy, an aspect of self-awareness, to improve students’ pronunciation. in the end, the investigation validated that learners can use this strategy to enhance specific pronunciation features. besides the fact that self-awareness strategies and podcasting tools have been applied in several studies to enhance students’ pronunciations. they have focused on general pronunciation developments instead of specific aspects such as tense and lax vowel sounds. this study clarifies some of the gaps in these aspects administered to adult efl learners with an a1.2 level according to the common european framework (council of europe, 2018). this investigation applied an action research method because it is cyclical and conducted in classrooms. the benefits are for both: teacher/researcher and students (diaz-maggioli, 2004). the development of the research study integrated the steps mentioned by sagor (2000): selecting the focus, clarifying theories, identifying research questions, collecting data, analyzing data, reporting results, and taking informed action. in the first step, the researchers detected problems of the pronunciation of tense and lax vowels and focused on improving that aspect. thus, they implemented a repetitive self-awareness technique with the help of podcasting concepts and technology, to help learners overcome the before-mentioned problems that spanish speakers faced during their learning. the objectives of the study were to measure the impact of a self-awareness technique while listening to self-made podcasts to improve tense and lax vowel recognition and pronunciation. literature review this section clarifies theories to continue with the steps of action research. in this regard, there is a debate between the acquisitions of the second language in adults. some investigators think that adults found it very hard and complicated learning a new language due to uncertain factors. others believe that they can acquire it quickly because of their high cognitive level, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 82 logical analysis, self-assessment, and awareness abilities (deng & zou, 2016). gilakjani, ahmadi, and ahmadi (2011) mentioned that age affects pronunciation acquisition, making adults having more problems than children (p. 78). however, woolfolk (2016) affirmed that the absence of certain l2 sounds not developed in the l1 affects an adult’s pronunciation. he explained that the neurons are responsible for general development in some areas of the brain. when humans are babies, these are pruned, so when a native language does not have certain sounds that the second has, adult learners, encounter difficulties with pronunciation development in a foreign language. lane (2010) mentioned that english vowels pronunciation, for example, is one feature that most of the learners around the world find difficult since this language has a large number of phonetic vowels. two terms refer to the tension of the muscles inside the mouth required to produce the sounds narrowing the situation students struggle with the contrast of tense-lax vowels these. the tense vowels require more muscular tension to maintain the tongue farther from the center of the mouth as /iy/ in the word “leave.” in contrast, when the tongue moves toward a more central position in the mouth, the tension relaxes a little, producing the lax vowel /i/ as in the word “live.” the minimal pair leave-live also exemplifies the particular situation of spanish speakers. in this language /i/ and /i/ represent a single vowel /i/ like in the word “si”/si/. another example is the vowel /u/ in “luke,” which is tense and the vowel /ʊ/ in “look,” which is lax. both vowels in spanish are identified only with the vowel /u/ as in the word “tu”/tu/. therefore, spanish adult students find it challenging to identify and pronounce these vowels because these two sounds are not inside their registers, and the muscles to pronounce them have not had a development. however, as cenoz and lecumberri stated, they can be improved and developed with discrimination through a clear perceptual model of the vowel and constant practice (as cited in lane, 2010). another factor that affects the complete development of the speaking skills of a second language in adults is the lack of confidence. they fear to make mistakes opposite to children; they feel nervous and sometimes shy. goodwin affirmed that in teaching pronunciation, there is a set of goals of instructions examined, namely: 1) to enable our learners to understand and be understood, 2) to build their confidence in journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 83 entering communicative situations, and 3) to enable them to monitor their speech based on input from the environment” (as cited in nurani & rosyada, 2015). due to the factors mentioned above-, pronunciation lessons should have a neat plan to help learners overcome their problems. educators need to implement a variety of activities and strategies in the learning process (nurani & rosyada, 2015, p. 109). moreover, nurani and roysada stated that pronunciation is one of the essential learning aspects for increasing communication skills since a clear pronunciation gives the confidence that the speaker needs to express and communicate with others (p. 109). self-awareness strategy learning a language requires a wide range of strategies depending on the age, environment, culture, and goals since they have a significant benefit in students’ learning. this research study applied a selfawareness strategy to support students’ pronunciation. steiner (2014) defined selfawareness as an inward evaluation, in which learners use self-reflection to compare and analyze their progress with the reality and the feedback of others. also, she mentioned that the purpose of self-awareness is that students generate self-knowledge, evaluate, change, and improve their weaknesses. it seems like a competition with themselves, finding solutions to their problems and progress toward the expected goals. without self-awareness skills, learners get frustrated, and it causes problems with their learning. they do not understand the problems, so they give up and fail, reiterated steiner. therefore, self-awareness is a suitable strategy to sustenance the improvement of adults’ pronunciation that will generate confidence and long last learning. moreover, brown (2000) stated the seventh sla principle about the importance of creating self-confidence in learners by using sequential techniques into the classes which scaffold students’ acquisition. learners obtain the satisfaction of accomplishing a step while challenging themselves into the next one. shi (2017) maintained that the constant use of learning strategies increases the confidence of learners and motivates them into the process. also, the strategies support autonomous and independent learning, helping students to be responsible and take control of it. she stated, “teachers are encouraged to choose appropriate teaching techniques and learning strategies for students and teach them how to understand learning strategies to enhance levels of selfdirected learning” (p. 24) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 84 correspondingly, richards (2006) mentioned the importance of communicative language teaching (clt) to help learners acquire better a second language. he stated in assumptions of clt 5 and 6 that discovering rules, reflecting, and analyzing help real learning; also, trial and error-correcting bust learners to use the language more accurately and fluently. so, a well-implemented strategy will help learners to overcome language problems. therefore, this study applied a selfawareness strategy to support the improvement of adults’ pronunciation based on clt and sla principles. as previously mentioned, adults face issues due to the influence of their mother tongue; hence, they might not become aware of the magnitude their pronunciation affects the communication with people; how difficult it is to others understand them. thus, adults need several opportunities to listen to english models and notice how different their pronunciation might be (yates & zielinski, 2009). yates and zielinski are saying that awareness is imperative to enhance adults’ pronunciation. consequently, this autonomous communicative strategy will benefit adults to progress in their communication development. in order to support learners to be aware of their pronunciation, the researcher designed a self-awareness form, based on a compilation of strategies from different authors described in ingels’ dissertation (2011). in her paper, she mentioned peterson and eckstein. eckstein developed a taxonomy categorized into four stages of pronunciation, and peterson developed a list of 12 strategies to improve the learner’s pronunciation. the researcher compiled these strategies into three stages to create a student-form as a self-awareness strategy: (a) input/practice: formally practicing with sounds (pronouncing a difficult word over and over; repeating aloud after tapes); (b) hypothesis forming; hypothesis testing: analysing the sound system (forming and using hypotheses about pronunciation rules); and (c) noticing/feedback: selfevaluating (recording oneself to listen to one‘s pronunciation) (ingels, 2011, p. 15). podcasting the term “podcasting” refers to post an mp3 audio file on the web that anyone can create using any record voice device. also, many people around the world can download it into their audio devices to listen for entertaining or educational purposes. the podcast can be created under any offline and online conditions, with any record voice journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 85 device as the most used nowadays, mobile phones (volker & o’bryan, 2009). hasan and hoon (2013), in their review of recent studies of podcasting, mentioned the advantages of podcasting in english language learning. they stated that podcasting helps learners to develop pronunciation and confidence. students' attitudes toward english learning improves, reducing anxiety during speaking, and learning a new language. podcasting allows students to interact inside and outside the class. schaetzel and low (2009) mentioned that besides pronunciation classes, teachers have to encourage students to practice outside the class with an assignment that structure that interaction. moreover, phillips (2017) concluded in his study about the podcast in education that it has helped in developing not only pronunciation and fluency features but additional skills like researching, social, and other language skills such as writing and listening. it also helps to motivate students and the use of technological tools. philips mentioned in the abstract: the surveys explored the students’ levels of acceptance and enjoyment of activities in which they had to produce their podcasts, as well as the perceived learning benefits. the discussion section describes a range of positive learning outcomes and highlights the pedagogical implications of using podcasts in class (2017, p. 158). however, ducate and lomicka (2009) found out in their research that there was not a significant improvement in student's pronunciation due to the short-term treatment and the lack of pronunciation practice in class. nonetheless, the project created a positive reaction in students; they esteemed the feedback and the opportunity to make something different. the constant creation of podcast creates in the learners, a purpose for being clear and communicative. also, it gives confidence, helps to develop additional skills, and produces favorable circumstances to be aware of their learning. as mentioned, the proper combination of strategies and tools, into a well-designed class, contribute to the correct development of english tense-lax vowel pronunciation acquisition. also, it helps to reduce some first language interference problems like the ones encountered in spanish speakers. this research helps to fill the gap of studies in this field. it focused on assisting efl adult learners to be aware of their mistakes through the use of a repetitive self-awareness strategy with podcasting. moreover, this allows students to overcome their articulation concerns independently. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 86 methodology this investigation applied an action research method with an analysis of quantitative data. chein, cook, and harding stated that action research conducts different processes: diagnostic, participant, empirical, and experimental (as cited in tripp, 2005, p.1). moreover, di ́az-maggioli mentioned that “action research carried out in classrooms by teachers, has the potential to increase awareness about teaching and learning, and to enhance conditions in both areas” (2004, p. 60). ravid (2011) highlighted that ar has become more rigorous lately. furthermore, quantitative research refers to a statistical method that provides percentages, numbers, or averages as results (triola, 2007). for quantitative analysis, the researcher collected data through a pre and post-test. each test had two parts, a scripted and an extemporaneous one. the test results used a rubric. this rubric permitted to obtain marks for the tense and lax vowel words. these data collected from this innovation were analyzed in the spss statistic program to answer the two research questions. the third step in this process is to define the research questions. in this study, two research questions are: 1. to what extent can a selfawareness strategy using podcasting help beginners, efladult learners, pronounce tense vowels in english accurately? 2. to what extent can a selfawareness strategy using podcasting help beginners, efladult learners, pronounce lax vowels in english accurately? participants this study was implemented in a private language school in a coastal city (ecuador) with one group of students in one term, which lasted one month. the group included students with ages between 25 to 50 years old. the a1.2-level class had 17 participants. students came from different parts of the city and social-economic and educational level. eleven learners worked and had a professional goal; the other six were university students that needed to obtain a b2 level for graduation requirements or better opportunities for migration. these beginner adult students were enrolled in the 6th level of english (a1.2 cefr) from 18th levels (b2 cefr), during the evening shift. in this language school, students had classes from monday to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 87 thursday in the evening shift (18h0020h00). classroom procedures this study aimed to help learners be aware of and improve their pronunciation in tense-lax vowels, through the use of selfawareness strategies and continuous podcasting. so, they could produce most of the tense-lax vowel sounds accurately in the spoken english language. the term lasted four weeks and had 32 hours of class. most of the classes were blended. there were individual, pair, and group practices in class; and online practices at home. without affecting the language school program, this study dedicated twenty hours in the classroom and eight hours at students’ homes, a total of 28 hours for this research. as mentioned in the literature review, the researcher compiled strategies from peterson and eckstein (ingels, 2011) into three stages to create the self-awareness form, which guided students to: 1. self-evaluate their recordings by listening to their podcasts and selecting the mispronounced words. 2. compare and contrast the sound system, using the knowledge learned in class to form hypotheses about the rules and classifying words into tense and lax sounds. 3. practice with the original audio (native inputs), noticing the sounds and correcting themselves. 4. receive feedback from their teacher and ask for help if needed. during the class hours, the instructorresearcher trained, supported, and guided students throughout the application process of the innovation. learners recorded continuous podcasts and used the self awareness form that helped them to identify their mispronounced words and classify them into tense and lax vowels. this form guided students to practice the proper pronunciation, improving, and exercising the muscle of their mouths to produce better-quality podcast audios. as well, the instructor provided continuous feedback, additional material, and phonics exercises to support the correct articulation of the vowel sounds. the creation of podcasts had two types of recordings; the scripted and the extemporaneous audios. the scripted recordings referred to an audio recorded using a written text, taken from the institutional books, in which words with vowel sounds had underlines, where students had to read it paying attention to the pronunciation of the underlined words. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 88 the purpose of these scripted practices was to help learners focus on specific confusing words that provoke mistakes. also, they were aware of their immediate needs and evaluated themselves using the original audio. the extemporaneous recordings referred to an open and more communicative podcast, in which students created their one-minute show on a given topic. in these practices, they had the opportunity to demonstrate their pronunciation skills and applied what they had learned. in the end, the teacher evaluated the students’ production and gave individual feedback to each one. for recording, the podcast students used their mobile phones, a headset, and the free application called “spreaker studio,” which allowed learners to create off and online recording using music and sound effects. moreover, this app permitted students to create an account using institutional e-mails; search and listen to public podcasts; personalize the information with a logo, a phrase, among others. likewise, they shared the recorded practices through the google classroom online platform, which was very convenient since the language school uses this. the students recorded a total of five scripted podcasts, around two per week, using the self-awareness form. in the class, learners recorded the podcast; then, they listened to their audios and tried to identify their mispronounced words. later, they classified the words according to the sound in tenses or lax vowels with the knowledge they acquired during the class. at home, they checked their work using the original audio. finally, students corrected themselves, practicing several times before recording the final improved audio. the selfawareness form included a chart where students obtained a percentage of their progress and noticed their weaknesses in tenses and lax vowels. also, learners recorded two extemporaneous podcasts, one per week, using a formative assessment form, in which they brainstormed their ideas before recording their audios. the instructor evaluated the recordings using the form and the assessment rubric. after obtaining data of well-pronounced words with tense and lax vowels, the researcher provided students individual feedback. it is important to mention that all the forms had connections to the same pattern of the assessment rubric in order to raise whole awareness progress to students and the teacher. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 89 instruments and variables step four of the action research states to collect data. for that purpose, this study had two variables. the independent variable was the self-awareness strategy that involved three stages compiled from peterson and eckstein mentioned before (as cited in ingels, 2011). these stages were the basement to create the self-awareness form and the test tense-lax assessment rubric. the dependent variables were the tense and the lax vowel pronunciation. both were measured informally to receive feedback and formally to collect data for the innovation. in order to answer the first and the second question, there were two tests used at the beginning of the term (pre-test) and the end of it (post-test). both assessments were the same, and they had two parts, scripted and extemporaneous. these tests implemented the tense-lax assessment rubric. this rubric was connected with the second part of the self-awareness form in order to guide and help to reach the aim of this innovation. the tense-lax assessment rubric focuses on the pronunciation of the words with tense-lax vowel sounds. in the rubric, there were two descriptors tense vowels and lax vowels. each descriptor had five scales from 1 to 5, defining the percentage of wellpronounced words. in which, 5 refers to more than 90% of well-pronounced words and 1 less than 60%. the sum of the scripted and the extemporaneous test gave a result of over 10 for each descriptor (tense and lax). these results gave the percentage of wellpronounced words to answers the two research questions. this assessment rubric was designed based on the revised pronunciation rubric used for the study “role of pronunciation in speaking test ratings,” conducted by ma, henrichsen, cox, and tanner (2018). however, the researcher modified this rubric during the piloting time for this research. the instruments and the project were tested with two previous groups in two previous terms with the same a1.2 level, shift, and similar range of ages. the first rubric created had an issue; it dismissed the result of some students that were not in the percentage of the scale since it did not evaluate a range of percentage of wellpronounced vowel words, whereas it had a specific percentage in each scale, e.g., scale 2= 80%. also, it counted only the overall of well-pronounced vowel words, without specifying the problems with tense and lax vowel sounds. the audios were analyzed and compiled not only by the researchers of this study but also with the help of another researcher-instructor to validate the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 90 instruments and the effectiveness of this innovation, after collecting data in the piloting time. the results of both evaluations done by both researchers were pretty similar, the total number obtained from the well-pronounced words varied only in units, but the range of percentages was the same. to implement the self-awareness strategy previously mentioned, students selfevaluated their five scripted podcasts done during the term with the instructor’s support. learners used the progress chart included in the self-awareness form, connected to the tense-lax assessment rubric. the instructor-researcher evaluated the two extemporaneous podcasts, also during the term. first, the data obtained from the audios were gathered and organized in the formative assessment form. then, the researcher analyzed the results and gave continuously verbal feedback to students. data collection and analysis the fifth step in this action research is analyzing data explained in this section. the researcher in this study collected the data from the pre and post-test. each test gave two results a scripted and an extemporaneous. each result was over 5, according to the tense-lax assessment rubric. the sum of these results gave a total of over 10. this score used table 1 below in order to obtain a conclusion for this research. table 1: percentage of well-pronounced words based on the rubric scale scale range percentage of well-pronounced words with tense lax vowel sounds. 2-4 0-69% 5-6 70-79% 7-8 80-89% 9-10 90-100% journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 91 a total of four scores was over 10 — two for the tense vowels descriptor corresponding to the pre and post-test. and two for the lax vowels one. all this information was organized in an excel spreadsheet and then inserted into the spss (statistical package for the social sciences) software. this program analyzed the four scores, showing descriptive statistic results such as the mean, minimum, maximum scores, and the standard deviation. a paired t-test was to show the probability that this study did not happen by chance. finally, the effect size was using an online calculator to check if the instruments and the innovation affected the students’ tense-lax vowel pronunciation improvement. findings in this section, the results are complying with the six-step of the action research according to each research question. question 1: to what extent can a selfawareness strategy using podcasting help beginners, efl-adult learners, pronounce tense vowels in english accurately? the results obtained from the tenselax assessment rubric for the pre and posttest are in table 2. these results only focused on tense vowels. the difference in the mean shows a total of 4.058, giving a great increment between the pre and the post-test. the p-value also had a result of 0.000 for this study to rely on this total, which a p<0.005 expresses that it did not happen by chance. therefore, the improvement was significant due to innovation. also, there was a value of the standard deviation and the effect size shown. cohen’s d value =2.774 indicates a large effect size that demonstrates a great difference between the pre and post-test. the researchers compared the result according to the table of interpretation for different effect sizes (cohen, 1988). the minimum scores for the pre and post-test are from 2 to 4, and the maximum scores from 7 to 10, showing a grand difference. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 92 table 2: results from pre and post tense-vowels test tests n m sd minimum maximum cohen’s d p value< 0.05 tense-vowels pre-test 17 4.470 1.375 2 7 2. 774 0.000 tense-vowels post-test 17 8.529 1.546 4 10 note. n=sample. m=mean. sd=standard deviation. question 2: to what extent can a selfawareness strategy using podcasting help beginners, efl-adult learners, pronounce lax vowels in english accurately? the results obtained from the tenselax assessment rubric for the pre and posttest are in table 3. this time the results only focused on the lax vowels. the difference in the mean shows a total of 4.941, giving a great increment between the pre and the post-test. the p-value was also calculated with a result of 0.000 demonstrating that this study did not happen by chance. the improvement was significant due to innovation. moreover, the researchers also showed the value of the standard deviation and the effect size. cohen’s d value =4.896 indicates a large effect size that demonstrates a great difference between the pre and post-test. this result was according to the table of interpretation for different effect size (cohen, 1988). also, the minimum scores for the pre and post-test are from 2 to 4, and the maximum scores from 4 to 9, showing a significant difference. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 93 table 3: results from pre and post lax -vowels test tests n m sd minimum maximum cohen’s d p value< 0.05 lax-vowels pre-test 17 2.765 0.664 2 4 4.896 0.000 lax-vowels post-test 17 7.706 1.263 4 9 note. n=sample. m=mean. sd=standard deviation. discussions the benefits of applying action research were twofold. the teacherresearcher improve her research skills and deepen on the knowledge of this important feature of pronunciation. being involved in the process helps the teacher-researcher to develop the observation skills of students’ difficulties during this process and how, as time passes, they overcame them. the results demonstrated that the application of the steps of action research had a great effect on the focus of the study: improvement of student’s tense-lax vowel pronunciation. the self-awareness strategy conducted students through a self-reflection process of comparing, analysing, and selfcorrecting their progress, as was mentioned by steiner (2014). the continuous practice using the self-awareness form helped learners to discriminate sounds and had a clear model of the vowels, as was stated by cenoz and lecumberri (as cited in lane, 2010). as mentioned, kang (2016) and ingels's (2011) investigation validated that the self-awareness strategy and the use of podcasting enhance speaking skills and specific pronunciation features. even though they focused on different pronunciation aspects, this study also validated the improvement of another speaking feature, such as tense and lax vowel sounds. these results also differ from ducate and lomicka (2009), who did not report significant improvement in pronunciation but a positive reaction in students. during the process, the teacherresearch noticed that clear samples, lesson, and feedback helped learners soften some problems with common mistakes with lax vowels such as up/ʌp/, tip /tɪp/, but /bʌt/, hut /hʌt/, live /lɪv/, and study /stʌd i/; also with tense vowels as first /fɜrst/, keep /kip/, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 94 field /fild/, and lifestyle /laɪf, staɪl/. in this regard, action research was effective in identifying students’ difficulties and reduce them. the tense vowels were easier to catch for the participants, the teaching of some rules for tense vowels like the silent e in “lake”/leɪk/ or “cake”/keɪk/, helped them to identify most of the correct pronunciation of words. the post-test results in table 3 shows higher scores and a bigger mean of 8.529 compared to 7.706 from the lax vowels post-test. twelve from seventeen students obtained scores from 9 to 10, corresponding to 90% of well-pronounced tense vowels according to table 1. the participants in this research struggled more with lax vowels due to the fact that these sounds differ from spanish, as mentioned before by woolfolk (2016). the sounds may sound similar but the formation of them with the movement of the tongue and lips plus the projection of the air are peculiar for spanish speakers. muscles do not have a development, and training takes time. first, they needed to discriminate the sound through listening, in order to record it into their neurons. then, they needed to train the movement of their lips and tongue to mime the sound. the pretest for lax vowels showed a maximum score of 4 since students faced to new sounds not registered in their memories. although there was a significant improvement according to the post-test score with a median of 7.706 in contrast with the 2.765, only four students from 11 obtained scores from 9 to 10 with the 90% of well-pronounced lax vowels. podcasting can improve learners' develop pronunciation and confidence (hasan & hoon, 2013). in this action research, participant’s active role promoted by a self-awareness strategy matched the purpose stated by steiner (2014): generated self-knowledge through self-assessment, which made students change and improve their weaknesses in these specific vowels (tense and lax). thus, not only the use of podcasting but self-assessing students’ work with the use of the rubric and their constant practice resulted in a significant effect size: 2.74 for tense vowels and 4.896 for lax vowels. conclusions, limitations, and recommendations based on the results and the discussion, the implementation of this action research benefited both the teacher/researcher and the students (diazmagglioni, 2004). for the teacher/researcher: reflections done during the process help to improve the delivery of the lessons and made the researcher more journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 95 critical on students’ immediate needs to work on them. students were aware of their mistakes due to the sample models given, their selfevaluation process, the constant support and feedback from their teacher. moreover, the adaptation of the instruments from the self –awareness strategy and the help of continuous podcasting provided confidence in the adults, also gave opportunities to explore their creativity and enjoy while learning. the results showed an increment in their tense and lax vowel pronunciation. in the pre-test, none of the students obtained scores more than 7 for tense vowels and 4 for lax vowels. this states, according to table 1 and the mean in tables 2 and 3, that students pronounced less than 69% tense and lax vowels correctly. in contrast to the post-test, in which there were better results, having a bigger media with a range from 80 to 89% of well-pronounced tense and lax vowels. participants were able to pronounce better tense than lax vowels due to their first language register. most of the students pronounced correctly 90% of the tense vowel in contrast to lax ones, where only 4 participants from 17 pronounced 90% correctly; nevertheless, 11 students obtained results from 80-89% of good pronunciation in lax vowels, also giving a considerable outcome. lastly, this action research hosted two of the four reasons provided by sagor (2000): professionalize teaching and meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. the researcher is now sharing the experience to motivate other teachers and keep improving education. limitations this study faced some limitations, such as technology and time. besides, the institution had a high percentage of students that used mobile phones; some of them did not have headsets or smartphonecompatible with the “google classroom” platform or the “spreaker” application. in those cases, the researcher provided headsets in the classroom; and requested students to share mobile phones among them. nevertheless, this issue was time-consuming, since learners needed to wait for their turn. sometimes students did not have time to complete the practice during the class and they must finish at home. moreover, the use of a mobile phone, a podcasting application, and an online platform was a limitation for learners over 30 years old. they needed more time for training and adapting to the use of the app and the process of creating online accounts. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 96 also, most of the students should learn how to speak when using a microphone. they had to speak slowly and clearly into a proper distance to avoid undesired noise and to improve the quality of the recordings. also, sometimes, there was no internet connection available, although the institution provided, most of the time, a free, reliable wi-fi connection to students. in those situations, learners uploaded the recordings at home. it caused a delay with the feedback. in terms of time, the regular course program plus the project was sometimes overwhelming to students and caused difficulties finishing the program and having more practice for the project. however, participants and the teacher handled time to finish all the practices — the engagement in the project motivated most of the participants to make an effort. recommendations for further studies, the next researchers should increment the time of the implementation. adult learners need more time to acquire new sounds and to exercise some muscles of the mouth, which did not develop during childhood due to the nature of the first language. also, the acquisition of phonetic rules, exceptions, and concepts confused while producing sounds. the more exposure to the language during the practices, the more benefits they would obtain from this strategy. furthermore, to avoid unreliable results, the sample should be greater. there is always a percentage of students that have personal issues during the process, and for different reasons, they cannot be determined or disciplined. it hinders the generalization of the results. during the implementation, learners faced other issues in pronunciation, such as stress, pauses, and intonation. these interrupted communication and made to lose interest, especially when recording a podcast for an audience is involved. it is recommended for further studies to work at the same time some techniques to help learners soften this problem to reach better outcomes. something additional for future researches is how the scripted and the extemporaneous recordings affect the pronunciation of the vowel. it seemed during the evaluation process that most of the students performing better the pronunciation when they had to create their podcast, than when they just read one already created. however, some expressions, vocabulary, stress, and intonation were acquired while participants were exposed to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 97 continuous recordings, and were used later into their podcasts. finally, listening continuously to a podcast, short lectures, and conversations help students not only to identify sounds but also to improve their listening skills. during the regular course evaluations, students obtained better grades in final listening tests, showing that this kind of practice has holistic benefits. references brown, h. d. (2000). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). white plains, usa: longman. consejo de educación superior del ecuador (2016). reglamento de régimen académico [regulation of academic regime]. retrieved from http://www.ces.gob.ec/ cohen, j. (1988). statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. council of europe. (2018). common european framework of reference for languages (cefr). retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/commoneuropean-framework-referencelanguages/home//asset_publisher/ffmaiis48xwv/conte nt/recommendation-andresolution?inheritredirect=false deng, f., & zou, q. (2016). a study on whether the adults’ second language acquisition is easy or not—from the perspective of children’s native language acquisition. theory and practice in language studies, 6(4), 776-780. doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0604.15 díaz-maggioli, g. (2004). teacher-centered professional development. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. ducate, l., & lomicka, l. (2009). podcasting: an effective tool for honing language students’ pronunciation. language learning & technology, 13(3), 66–86. education first. (2018). english proficiency index. retrieved from https://www.ef.com.ec/epi/regions/lati n-america/ecuador/ gilakjani, a., ahmadi, s., & ahmadi, m. (2011). why is pronunciation so difficult to learn? english language teaching, 4(3), 74-81. doi:10.5539/elt.v4n3p74 hasan, m. m., & hoon, t. b. (2013). podcast applications in language learning: a review of recent studies. english language teaching, 6(2), 128-132. doi:10.5539/elt.v6n2p128 ingels, s. a. (2011). the effects of selfmonitoring strategy use on the pronunciation of learners of english (doctoral dissertation, university of illinois at urbana-champaign). retrieved from https://goo.gl/vdjz8a kang, t. (2016). the effectiveness of strategy instruction using podcasts in second language listening and speaking (doctoral dissertation, northern arizona university). available from proquest central. (1808501344). retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/ 1808501344?accountid=174323 lane, l. (2010). tips for teaching pronunciation: a practical approach. white plains, usa: pearson education. ma, j. r., henrichsen, l. e., cox, t. l., & tanner, m. w. (2018). pronunciation’s role in english speaking-proficiency ratings. journal of second language pronunciation, 4(1), 73-102. doi:10.1075/jslp.00004.ma https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0604.15 https://goo.gl/vdjz8a journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 98 nurani, s., & rosyada, a. (2015). improving english pronunciation of adult esl learners through reading aloud assessments. lingua cultura, 9(2), 107112. doi:10.21512/lc.v9i2.825 phillips, b. (2017). student-produced podcasts in language learning – exploring student perceptions of podcast activities. iafor journal of education, 5(3), 158-168. doi:10.22492/ije.5.3.08 ravid, r. (2011). practical statistics for educators. plymouth: rowman & littlefield publishing group, inc. richards, j. c. (2006). communicative language teaching today. new york, usa: cambridge university press. rouse, j. c. (2010). future english for results (2010 ed., vol. 2). white plains, ny: pearson education. sagor, r. (2000). guiding schools improvement with action research. alexandría: ascd schaetzel, k., & low, e. l. (2009, july). teaching pronunciation to adult english language learners. caela network. retrieved from http://www.cal.org/adultesl/pdfs/teach ing-pronunciation-to-adult-english-ll.pdf shi, h. (2017). learning strategies and classification in education. institute for learning styles journal, 1, 24-36. steiner, p. (august, 2014). the impact of the self-awareness process on learning and leading. the new england journal of higher education. retrieved from https://nebhe.org/journal/the-impactof-the-self-awareness-process-on-learningand-leading/ triola, m. f. (2007). elementary statistics (10th ed.). canada: pearson. tripp, d. (2005). action research: a methodological introduction. educacao e pesquisa, 31(3), 443-466. doi.org/10.1590/s151797022005000300009 tomlinson, b. (2013). applied linguistics and materials development (1st ed.). london, uk: bloomsbury academic. volker, v., & o’bryan, a. (2009). handbook of research on web 2.0 and second language learning. lowa, usa. doi: 10.4018/978-1-60566-190-2.ch018 woolfolk, a. (2016). educational psychology (13th ed.). ohio, u.s: pearson. yates, l., & zielinski, b. (2009). give it a go: teaching pronunciation to adults. north ryde, n.s.w.: adult migrant english program (amep) research centre, macquarie university. volume 5, no. 1, 2020 volume 5, no. 1, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/610 oriza agustin is working as a lecturer at iain metro. she gained her master’s degree in education at uin raden intan, lampung taking public administration major. her research interests are on literacy and writing, sociolinguistics studies, public administration, islamic community empowerment, and islamic broadcasting and communication. vera magria has been working as a lecturer at universitas muara bungo since 2008. she received her master’s degree at universitas andalas. her research interests are on morphology, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. leny setiyana has been working as a lecturer at iain metro since 2015. she achieved her master’s degree from universitas sebelas maret, surakarta. her research interests are on sociolinguistics studies and english teaching. code switching as seen in trading (a sociolinguistic studies field research) 1)oriza agustin, 2)vera magria, 3)leny setiyana 1,3)iain metro 2)universitas muara bungo 1orizaagustin@yahoo.com 2vee_machria@ymail.com 3lenysetiyana@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5147 abstract this research aims to describe code-switching, as seen in trading activity in kota solok. the objectives of this writing are to identify the form of codes which are commonly used by bilingual and diglossic inhabitants in trading activity in solok market, to classify the codeswitching which happens when the sellers and the buyers are talking to each other and to find out the factors which caused code-switching and diglossia. this research applied descriptive mailto:orizaagustin@yahoo.com mailto:vee_machria@ymail.com journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 58 qualitative research in which the data came from a conversation in trading activities in kota solok. the data were also from the informants' statements about the things, which were related to the coding problem itself. the researcher collected the observational method supported by note-taking and recording techniques. the result found that there were several forms of code-switching in trading activity in the kota solok market: the switching among language codes among dialect codes and various codes. the diglossic situation also existed in society. the diglossic situation could emerge when society had two languages, while each showed different functions (high and low) in a different community. it could be seen in the merantau tradition by minang people. keywords: code-switching; diglossia; sociolinguistic ============================================================================ introduction any study concerning the influence of society towards its linguistic development is interesting to investigate. as part of the study of languages, sociolinguistics also has an important influence on the linguistic aspect. sociolinguistics studies about language by considering its relationship with society. the country or some areas have one or two languages, but many countries have more than two languages. in contrast, there are society members who use only one language and do not recognize other languages. this monolingualism might happen in a small or secluded society, for example, in the remote areas, as they consider their mother tongue to be higher than the new one. besides monolingualism, nababan (1984) also explained about unstable bilingualism, which is the situation when a language changes or transits from one form into another in a bilingual community. the study of bilingualism is inseparable from the diglossia phenomenon. ferguson in sayahi (2014) stated that diglossia is a language variation that has different functions. this variation differs from the use of language based on certain speech communities. he stated that the possible interaction between diglossia and bilingualism has several types of inhabitants; first, the inhabitants which have bilingualism and diglossia. second, the inhabitants who have bilingualism but do not have diglossia. third, the inhabitants who have diglossia but do not have bilingualism. the last, the inhabitants who do not have both. other linguistic experts use the word diglossia as the term to replace the word bilingualism (ferguson, 1963; fishman, 1972). the latter even mixes both. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 59 bilingualism is the capability of communicating in at least two languages. the first language is inherited from the mother tongue, whereas the second language receives an adaptation from the place around. this condition causes the languages to be dependent on one another. a person may call a bilingual person if he communicates with another language that he gets from formal education. this kind of interaction is closer to the context of tradition, culture, and the way people live in a certain district. those contexts above may influence the way of thinking or stereotype of how bilingual people use language. this condition gets them into a kind of diglossia people while considering the first one is better (high variety) than the second language (low variety) in the context of culture and social reputation. as a result, a theoretically verbal repertoire is a communicating ability owned by the speaker, which is also limited by those contexts above. the event when the language shift takes place may cause the move of alienated language by alienating language related to their function, position, and role in a certain social context. this phenomenon creates a higher language than another one. this kind of stereotype is seen subjectively according to the user of that language. ferguson in sayahi (2014) had distinguished language into two; high language (high) and low language (low). he said that h (high) language is related to religion, education, and higher cultural aspect, whereas l (low) is for at home, factory, or market. the h language is to be learned, where l language is for daily communication. romaine (1988) stated that the separate location in which l and h provide a separate institutional support system. l is acquired at home as a mother tongue and continues to be used throughout life while h is learned later through socialization and never at home. thus, the diglossic situation has to be for observation to know the possibility of language shift and code-switching in the trading activity of kota solok inhabitants. concerning the sociolinguistic study, the condition above is code-switching. in the beginning, the speaker uses code a, then changes into code b. the changing of code occurs based on several aspects, which are social class or status and living style. the cultural aspect has an important role in determining the use of the language. the speaker changes his language temporarily or known as temporary codeswitching, and also permanently or journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 60 permanent code-switching. this condition happens because the speakers' and listeners' feelings changed in the act of communication. the varying of code may happen automatically while the speaker talks in several language components. the term code refers to speech varieties in languages. surely, much variety of codes spread in this nation, especially to minang language. the purpose of research was to find out and analyze aspect that appears in sociolinguistic, namely code-switching which happen among the bilingual inhabitants in kota solok such as identifying form of codes which are commonly used by bilingual and diglossic inhabitants in trading activity in solok market, classifying the code-switching which happens when the sellers and the buyers are talking to each other, and finding out the factors which caused codeswitching and diglossia. this research will provide information that is needed by other people in studying code-switching. the study focused on the society of kota solok. as bilingual people, kota solok inhabitants have a unique way of communicating because they have various kinds of code or usually called as ‘languages’ or ‘varieties’ of a language (wardhaugh, 1988). the writer assumes that this town has a unique situation related to languages besides its mother tongue (minang) and indonesian language as its national language. it is necessary to investigate since the form of code itself will define the correlation between social and linguistic terms. surely the research will inform the unique classification happen in west sumatra, who originally talks in minang language that will not appear in another place. surely the research gives the differences of using language in original talks in minang language than other regional. after doing the research, people regard another social status from the way they communicate. it depends on the choice of language that they use, whether it is a high status or a low one. sometimes they use a certain code for different causes. it can be a social background, the conversation theme, situational, goal of the meeting, pace when the conversation occurs, and others. those conversations occur in following the person to whom they are talking. for example, when they meet a teacher in a traditional market, they will use the indonesian language since it is a formal speaker, although the place is not journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 61 in the formal situation (school) as well. thus, it is necessary to consider when they are talking to formal people from their outlooks. the use of formal language is that indonesian as high code will be switched to low in minang language when the speaker outlooks from traditional such as baju kurung or kodek. it is common when people in a trading situation use different codes as high and low depending on their audiences. the bilingual between two languages may switch trough the motive and factors in the social and performance of the speaker. some aspects, such as context, or participants will elaborate on the social factor. it is an important factor in explaining the phenomena of sociolinguistic such as diglossia, codeswitching, and style. the context refers to the background where the interaction happened between buyer and seller, especially in trading activity in kota solok. the topic refers to a subject discussed between the trader and buyer. the topic determines the selection of language codes. literature review holmes (2000) stated that “sociolinguistic is the study of the relationship between language and society.” it studies why people speak differently in a different social context, and it identifies the social function of language and the ways used to convey their social meaning, as stated by holmes (1992). trudgill (1974) stated that in sociolinguistic deals with language within the scope of society and culture, and investigates the connection within the three. society here is seen, as dewi and ekalaya (2015) stated, as the space where people interact by utilizing languages; and when these people use more than two languages, the phenomenon is called bilingualism. in other words, mackey defined bilingualism as the alternate use of two or more languages by the same individual (as cited in hamers & blanc, 2004). the term bilingualism can also include multilingualism, which is the phenomenon in which people speak multiple languages (myers-scotton, 2006). many experts also defined bilingualism as the ability to use two languages or to have the control of two languages as natives would (bloomfield, 1935). moreover, bilingualism can also include the use of multiple languages alternately (milroy & gordon, 2003). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 62 when a bilingual speaks, he may use code switching. it is the use of two language varieties in the same conversation (myers-scotton, 2006). yuliana, luziana, and sarwendah (2015) stated that bilinguals often use code-switching and code-mixing in a conversation, but they are usually used in different contexts. hornberger and mckay (2010) stated that code-switching happens when a community use two or more languages since this circumstance will make them switch from one language to another. mesthrie, swann, deumert, and leap (2000) said that code-switching studies focus on the language use of individual speakers and this is associated with certain aspects of the context in which conversation takes place. holmes (2000) stated that social situations are the place where people code-switch. holmes added that if say, for example, a new person arrives, then the code-switch is easily explained because the reason is obvious. switches motivated by the identity and relationship between participants often express a move along the solidarity/ social distance dimension. in a sense, ‘codeswitching’ research seems to be at a crossroad. in this line, speech varieties have a mechanistic association with ‘codes.’ on the other hand, some research has shown the impossibility or inappropriateness of assigning specific meanings to some types of variety alternation. auer (2000) stated that this implicitly started to raise a question whether ‘meaningless code-switching’ can be called code-switching at all. methodology the researcher applied a qualitative method in conducting the research, using descriptive analysis. the data collection was obtained directly from some conversations in trading activities in kota solok. the researcher used nonparticipant observational methods by recording and note-taking. in using the non-participant observational method, the researchers listened to the respondent and talked actively to get the responses from a group of individual respondents who represent the domains observed. when the conversation ran well, the researchers recorded it without informing the respondents to maintain the originality of the conversation and wrote down the dialogues. afterward, all the recordings were transcribed into the phonetic script and classified. the researchers also made library research for supporting analysis. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 63 findings and discussions the conversations in kota solok’s traditional market was analyzed and classified based on the form of code, which was commonly used by bilingual and diglossic inhabitants in the area. the researchers distributed the form of code into language code, dialect code, and variety code. language code language code was the dominant finding of all data collected. kota solok consisted of citizens who originated from different places and backgrounds that result in language contacts. it also urged people to deal with various language codes in trading activity. it was because those languages were the ones that kota solok citizens had a relative proficiency. minang language code. the use of the minang language code was found dominantly in the research findings. such a condition was because kota solok is a town where almost all the speakers come from minang ethnicity. as a result, people spoke in minang language. however, as natives, they also mingled with outsiders or foreigners from the surrounding places. moreover, other ethnicities from different regions also lived in this place. although that condition constructed them into complex inhabitants, most of them used minang language to communicate with each other. in the trading activity, the use of this language was visible. it was when the buyer made a bargain for the material he wanted. buyer 1 : mo yang gadang tau yang ketek? (do you want the big or small one?) buyer 2 : yang ketek? (small one?) buyer 1 : bara ko? (how much?) seller : limo baleh sakabek (fifteen thousand) buyer 2 : klo iko ko? (how about that one?) seller : limo (five thousand) buyer 1 : dak kurang? (can you make it cheaper?) seller : indak do (no, i cannot.) buyer 2 : iko selah duo yo ni? (i want this two, aunty?) seller : itu limo ribu sakabek, tambah she dek diak lai…(that is five thousand) buyer 2 : duo lah ni…(two, please sist..) seller : itu balinyo tigo ribu dak ado kurangnya lai ciek duo? journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 64 buyer 2 ciek. (one) the way the seller designated the buyer by da, ni, diak, pak, buk, mak and some others were to respect the buyer who would buy his stuff. by doing this, hopefully, the buyer would buy many stuffs. another example is the following: 1 seller : aa ni...... nan tangah tigo sangah…(what sister….the middle one is three and a half) buyer : nan iko ko bara ko? (how much is that one?) 2 seller : cigok lah dulu ni..yo bagai bagai gadangno..tahan… sabulan gai dak baa doh?...(you can take a look it first…it can stay for a month) buyer : oo ditimbang loh dulu? (please weigh it first?) seller : iyo… satangah tu barekno… (yes….it is a half kilo) buyer : ooo bara tu (how much is that?) seller : limo ribu… (five thousand) buyer : dak kurang lai ni? (can you make it cheaper?) seller : indak… (no) buyer : caliak lu yo ni…( i will take a look for the other) 3 buyer : iko lah agiah saparampek (so this, i give you for a quarter) seller : sapek buk? nan ma…sapek nan gadang tu? nan itu nan gadang baha sampuluah sarampek buk… (sepat fish madam? which one? that big fish? the big one is ten thousand for a quarter.) buyer : sapuluah sarampek… (ten thousand for a quarter?) seller : iyo…(yes) buyer : lai kurang bergaram tu? (is the fish salty?) seller : nan ma? (which one?) buyer : tu yang gadang tu ha…(the big one) seller : bargaram salayang lai tapi nan tawa dak, nan tawa tu…sapeknan gadang tu bargaram tu salayang…(it is little bit salty, but the plain one is not, that is the plain one…the big one is a little bit salty) buyer : tabah yo… seller : lamak no tu, di samba lado no tu…sabuh nyeh? (it is very journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 65 tasty when it is made sambalado) buyer : iyo (yes) seller : mokasih yo? (thank you) buyer : iyo… (yes…) also, the designation was to begin their dialogue, and it was to please and to ask the buyers about what material they needed or to see the seller’s stuff. the examples were: caliaklah da, a bali? masuklah ni, apo cari ni? atu da? cari a diak? a cari mak? apo tu buk? mode a tu pak?. when the buyer made the beginning of the dialogue, the use of designation was not needed. the seller did not have to attract the buyer to see the stuff because it was the buyer who asked the seller first. though when they asked about it, the buyer used these language codes: caliak ciek…bara ko? bara diak? bara ciek ni? iko bara dak? bara haragonyo buk?. the dialogues about the bargaining activity below showed the dominant use of the minang language code. buyer : caliak ciek… (let see this one) seller : yang iko pak? (that one, sir?) buyer : a indak…yang ketek matonyo nan yang ujuangnyo ketek iko yang gadang kabawahnyo koa ah… seller : iko yang keteh tuah…ketek tuah! buyer : indak yang modelnyo biaso…a yang model biaso dak mantuak iko dak salahwak do ah…yang mantuak biaso, dak serupo iko mantuak nyo doah…mode-mode iko juo nyo, tapi dak…dak gadang e…seketek she matonyo kalua nyo seller : o dak ado itu tu doh!dak do doh… (oh we do not have it) buyer : dak ado do yoh? (you do not have it?) seller : ndak… (no) buyer : dak do doh yoh…wak itu loh lah biaso nyo… seller : iyo dak ado do pak haji… (no, we do not have it, sir) buyer : lah permisi lu ni…(excuse me) seller : io… pak aji… (yes, sir) indonesian language code. as the national language, indonesian people use the indonesian language also in the trading activity. holmes (2000) stated that people occasionally switch their code within a domain or social situation. the situation happened when the speakers were not native or came from different ethnicities. as a result, they tended to use the indonesian language rather than the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 66 minang language to make their conversation flow smoothly. buyer 1 : ho’oh…warna lain ada gak? (yes, how about another color?) seller : warna lainnya gak ada..(we do not have other colors) buyer 1 : ni berpa aya? (how much is this?) seller : ni harganya 55… (this is fiftyfive) buyer 1 : ni 55 (this is fifty-five) talks to buyer 2 buyer 2 : oh. (oh) seller : dompet cewek ato cowok? (wallet for woman or man?) buyer 2 : klo yang ni? (how about this one?) seller : yang quicksilver… (the quicksilver one?) buyer 2 : ni cowok yah? (this is for man?) seller : iya… (yes) buyer 1 : ni juga bagus… berapa? sama semua harganya..? (this is good too…how much? the same price for all?) seller : harganya beda-beda, kalo yang ni yang 85, ni 55 klo yang black id ni 65 (the price is different, this one is eightyfive, this one is fifty-five, the black one is sixty-five) buyer 1 : ni murah yang ini dong..huahaha..laennya ga ada ya? ga ada ya?.. (this is cheap hahaha how about the other?) buyer 3 : itu aja iik, bagus… (that one is good) buyer 2 : ni juga ttm? (she is your close friend?) (talk to her friend) talks to buyer 3 seller : sapa ya? (who is he?) buyer 2 : kenapa? (why?) seller : kenaalan dulu… (let’s get to know each other first) buyer 2 : oh mela.. (oh mela..) seller : revan buyer 1 : ih jelek ya namanya? (duh the name is ugly) seller : dari mana? (where does he come from?) buyer 1 : bukit tinggi… (bukit tinggi) seller : ni anak berkawat ya? (is he using braces?) buyer 3 : bukan ni kawat jemuran. hehehe… pake sini ..ambil dari belakang.. (no, that’s a clothesline. haha, he took it journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 67 from the back of the house and wore it). seller : cape dee..jadi mo beli yang mana? (so, which one do you want to buy?) buyer 2 : ga jadi de…(i am not buying) seller : ya dah pulang sana ! (then just go). buyer 3 : oya makasih ya.. (thank you) seller : iyaa…. (yes) in the conversation above, the use of the indonesian language in trading dialogue occurred in an informal situation. the informal dialogue was when there were many restricted codes or brief communicating variety. thus, the language of a certain district influenced this informal situation. sometimes, a word was comprised of a mixture of indonesian language and minang language, for example, tidak basido. the indonesian expression could be an addition to the particledo from the minang language. as a result, the people in kota solok tended to add particle-like –do and –ha when they speak the indonesian language, for example, ada ha, jangan lah ha, pergilah ha, buatlah ha. buyer : kalungnya ada yng gambar playboy ga? (is there any playboy picture in the necklace?) seller : kelinci? kaluang ado…ciek lai ado.. (rabbit? yes. that’s the one) buyer : cubo caliak lu ni. (let me see it, sist.) seller : panjang, pendek? (long, short?) buyer : ada nya yang kayak gini ya? (you only have this kind of necklace?) seller : yang rantainya…abu-abu mpe sini. besar-besar rantainya ada (i have the grey one with big chains) buyer : kalo yang kecil? (how about the small one?) seller : yang kecil..ada.. (yes, we have the small one. buyer : udahlah ga papa lah. ini aja. (that’s okay. i’ll take this one) the influence of the language from other regions or surrounding local languages toward the indonesian language was also found, such as bae, ajo, beh. these examples showed the influence of the jambi dialect. the influence of the jambi dialect normally happened in kota solok journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 68 since both towns are close to each other. then the expression aja, deh, dong, sih, loh, were also influenced by the jakartan dialect. jakarta is the capital city where almost all mass media, the electronic and non-electronic ones, might take part in introducing its dialect to all parts of indonesia, which includes the trading activity in kota solok. foreign language code. even though kota solok is not a tourism site, there were findings related to the use of foreign languages. the use of foreign languages by the natives was to refrain from getting into an argument with the seller. it meant that when a buyer was talking to another buyer, he or she did not want the seller to listen and understand what he or she was saying. so the use of this code was only performed by some buyers who befriended each other, and they understood the foreign language. the following dialogue depicts it: seller : iko ampek ribu…haragonyo samo..kadang urang suko ketek. kadang suko gadang.. (this one is four thousand…the price is the same..sometimes people like small or big..) buyer 1 : nte yang iko bar ate? (sist, how much is that?) seller : ma ni..? (which one?) buyer 1 : iko…? (that one) seller : ampek ribu se lahh… (four thousand…) buyer 1 : nte yang iko ciek..iko ciek.. (i want that one and that one) buyer 2 : itu luncang lo ta ha …lutuna.. (it is cute…) buyer 1 : it is so cute … buyer 2 : oo…so cute. there was an example of foreign language code, which was “it is so cute.” this language was used by the buyer who knew each other and had certain intentions in using it. the sentence usually used was an incomplete sentence form and switched from indonesian or minang language. dialect code the code used in the kota solok trading activity was standard minang dialect and non-standard minang dialect. the dialect in standard minang was found in this town since it was the place where people dominantly use the standard minang. since this place was the central town where many citizens from different journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 69 places carried out their activities here, the non-standard minang dialect was also developing. the writers had recorded 44 conversations in trading activity, but only 22 conversations showed the code in non standard minang dialect, and 13 conversations were in standard minang dialect. the rest of the conversations were in code-switched conversations and standard minang dialect. from the data above, in almost all conversations, the speakers used the code in the form of non-standard minang dialect. it is because the sellers and buyers, who were the respondents of this research, mostly originate from kota solok. they used standard dialects when they communicated with others. however, the dialects from other places such as jambi and jakarta also influenced their language into non-standard dialects. the tendency to immigrate makes it easier for them to adapt to the language from other regions. as a result, they also use other dialects in their daily conversation. standard minang dialect code. the researchers recorded some conversations in the form of the standard minang dialects, indicated by the use of some expressions such as ijan, iko, nio, yo..? indak. below is an excerpt to show the phenomenon: buyer 1 : ijan nan laweh digiah… (do not give me the big size…) seller : iko bara mintak pak aji? (how many do you want it, mr. aji?) buyer 1 : duo limo… (twenty-five) seller : duo limo? yang merah ko nio..? (twenty-five? do you want red color, sir?) buyer 2 : nio? (do you want it?) buyer 3 : indak do ma… (i do not want it, madam) buyer 2 : yo..? (yes?) buyer 1 : limo baleh lah (how about fifteen?) buyer 2 : yang baling-balang tu ancak ha…yang baling-balang di belakang tu ha. (the striped one behind is good) non-standard minang dialect code. numerous words or phrases used to show non-standard minang dialect also existed in trading activity, which did not originate from standard minang dialect, such as: sih, loh, kan, deh, lah, dong, tuh, no, geh, no, nyeh, kagek, dak. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 70 buyer 1 : mmh, coba liat yang putih…ni bagus… ni ada warna apa aja? (let me see the white one…it is good…what colors do you have?) seller : satu aja yang itu… (just one) buyer 2 : ni kaya warna kakak yang di bungoya bes? buyer 2 : dak ado warna yang lain ni? (is there any other color?) seller : itam putih adonyo.. (just black and white) buyer 1 : item putih yo? coklat ga ado yo? gimana yo? (black and white? how about brown?) buyer 2 : nah putih itu tu… coba liat dulu dong… ni manis ko ma dak? mela mela putih.. nah.. cantik dak? (the white one.. let me see it. isn’t it sweet? the white one is pretty, isn’t it? buyer 1 : bagus ini simple (good. this one is simple) seller : nah yang itu pake sekrup. (it used a screw) seller : warnonyo sewarno iko samo krem…iko pasanganyo..haa..(the color is same with cream… this is one set) buyer 1 : tahan ga sih? (it is good?) seller : tu bagus tuh. model baru tuh. talinya tali kulit. (that one is good. it’s a new model. the belt is leather.) the dialogue below would give a picture of the use of non-standard minang dialect, as seen in the dialect from bukit tinggi (another town in west sumatra besides kota solok). people in this place usually use a dialect signed by the particle no, go. seller : iko no rancak ma…(this one is good…) buyer : indak do…baju aa apo tu bara da? (no bro. how much is that?) seller : tujuah leh sangah ha… (seven ) buyer : la limo baleh la da …a duo tu? (can i have it for five uncle…that’s two?) seller : tujuah leh sangah lah dik…(seven) buyer : lah limo leh tu la (five please) seller : eey…tuka lei…ambiek e lah dalam ley buah he tangga ciek ko ah (the boss talks to the servant) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 71 seller : ambik lah dek uney limo baleah…limo baleah sempee there are also changes of the vocal a into ey, i into ey, for example, the particle lai and ni in standard minang. however, in non-standard one, they were changed into ley, uney. moreover, there was also a change in the vocal o and a of some words such as basobok and bakabek. in non-standard minang dialect, those words are basubok and bakobek. seller : bara mak bali…a tambah leh mak..nyo bara alai mak? bara lai? pas selimo ribu ley dih? yang lain a lai tuh see? (how many do you want to buy? how many? anything else, maam? how many? it’s five thousand. do you want other things?) buyer : yo… (yes) seller : itu ancak nah…ko merah ko ijau lumuik…banyak guno no…dk ambi ka lah duo mak? (that’s good that red and green. lots of use. do you want to take two?) buyer : dak do piti lai… (i have no money) variety code in the trading activity, a variety of code is also clearly seen. the code variety here means a variety of communication. as written above, the various communication has restricted codes, or brief communicating variety and elaborated code or complete communicating variety. based on the research, both varieties of codes exist in the minang language and indonesian language. even though many expressions were shortened to make it easier to pronounce them or are usually called restricted code, they are understood in some ways by the listeners and the speakers. restricted code is the code dominantly used by the people in kota solok. in communication, the elaborated codes are rare because it is harder to say than restricted codes that are shorter to pronounce. actually, a restricted code is recognized when an utterance is briefer than it is supposed to be. in the trading activity, this condition happens frequently. the following is an example: 1 buyer 1 : stangah ha..iko tuak uwan she tis bali ko nyo…tis dak nio tu do (half… this is journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 72 for my father. i do not want it) buyer 2 : iko iko lamak loh iko yo… (is this tasty?) buyer 1 : lamak dek wan yang gadang tu yo? iko bara balinyo satangah on? (father loves the big one? how much is this? half ounce) seller : nan ma? sibu mo tuih…maco kase… (which one? a thousand and five hundred. maco kase (salted fish) 2 seller : cigok lah dulu ni… yo bagai bagai gadangno…tahan ..sabulan gai dak baa doh… (please, you can take a look first, the size also. it stays for a month) buyer : oo ditimbang loh dulu? (please weigh it first) seller : iyo..satangah tu barekno… (yes… that is a half) buyer : ooo bara tu (how much is that?) seller : limo ribu (five thousand) buyer : dak kurang lai ni? (can you make it cheaper?) seller : indak (no) buyer : caliak lu yo ni… (let me see the other) the expressions in minang language code that the speaker and listener use are dominantly is the restricted code shown by the dialogues containing several briefer utterances. those are; aa, tu, da, a bali..?, caliak ni… yang ma dek uni..?, dak, nte ini bara ciek?, sibu, duo mobaleh duo mobaleh lah yo? yang maaa tu ni? stangah iko tuak uwan she tis bali ko nyo…,sibu mo tuih…lai baru ko yo? …dih…”, sabulan gai bak dh, caliak lu yo ni. the speaker of the minang language shortens the pronunciation of an utterance to ease the pronunciation. hence, this helped people speak faster, and consequently people outside this ethnic find difficulty in understanding what a minang speaker is saying. forms of code-switching code-switching exists dominantly in the form of language shift. hornberger and mckay (2010) explained that the phenomenon could happen when more languages exist in a community or social situation, and the speaker frequently switches from one language to another language. the code-switch was in the form journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 73 of language codes, which was from indonesian to minang language and vice versa. then, code-switching found was dialect code and variety code. respondents used the dialect in standard minang, but only when there were a lot of foreigners and visitors from many places. the switch in variety code happened from restricted code to elaborated code and vice versa. language shift. the switching of codes commonly found in this place was in the form of a language shift. there were languags shift from minang to indonesian language, indonesian to minang language, and minang to foreign language. code-switching in the form of dialect. the dialect in standard minang is dominant since many people use it, but when there are a lot of foreigners and visitors from many places, there would be code-switching from standard minang to non-standard minang dialect such as in the conversation below, a switch from standard minang dialect to bukit tinggi dialect. buyer 1 : pendek ko mak nak... (this is short, son) buyer 2 : bara main nyo ko da? (how much is this?) seller : duo limo pak aji (twenty five, sir) buyer 1 talks to buyer 2 : ketek dek inyo ko ma dak. (it is too small) seller : tu dak takaja mangantuangnyo do... iko nan agak gadang pinggangno (the button is not hooked. this one has bigger waist) buyer 1 : beko dak tamuek beko mambuang buang piti seee... (it doesn’t fit in wasting money) seller : ko ce we ancak ko mah... (it is good too) buyer 2 : nan gadang pinggang tu..lai muek..? (the big size waist. does it fit?) buyer 1 : lai muek... (it does) buyer 3 : lai... (it does) buyer 1 : lai pas..?pinggangno? (does the waist fit?) buyer 2 : lai muek pinggangno? (does the waist fit?) seller : iko mode mah... (it is a trend) buyer 2 : bara iko? (how much is this?) seller : duo lapan... (twenty-eight) buyer 1 : “bagaroboh toboh” ha... (that is impossible) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 74 buyer 2 : dak duo puluah se ko..? (twenty please?) buyer 1 : duo puluah lah...? (twenty?) seller : jadih... (okay) seller : iko no rancak ma.. (it is good) buyer : indak do...baju aa apo tu bara da? (no, thanks. how much is that clothes, bro?) seller : tujuah leh sangah ha.. (seventeen and a half) buyer : la limo baleh la da...a duo tu? (how about fifteen) seller : tujuah leh sangah lah dih... (seventeen and a half, please) buyer : lah limo lah tu lah... (fifteen, please) seller : eey...tuka lei...ambiek e lah dalm ley buah he tangga ciek ko ah (the boss talks to his staff) (okay, take the stuff inside) seller : ambik lah dek uney limo baleah... limo baleah sempeeea (take it for fifteen…fifteen) code-switching in the form of variety. code-switching also existed in the form of a variety of codes. myers-scotton (2006) stated that code-switching is the use of two language varieties in the same conversation. the switching happened from restricted code to elaborated code and vice versa. those two variety codes emerged in non-standard minang (jambi dialect, which is signed by the use of particle bee or bae, ending vocal o, example: berapa into berapo, gimana into gimano) into standard one, do from the dialogue below. 1. buyer 1 : nte ini bara ciek? (sist, how much is this one?) seller : sibu... (a thousand) buyer : seribu yo... bali ciek... yang putiah lah. (a thousand. the white one) seller : makasih... (thank you) 2 buyer 1 : te,..te ni berapo sikok? (aunty, how much is this?) seller : seribuu... (a thousand) buyer 1 : sibu...mmm gimano yo? (a thousand…let me think) buyer 2 : coba liat sampingnyo.. (let me see the side) buyer 1 : gimano yo yang putih apo yang itam yo? (the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 75 white one or the black one?) buyer 2 : itam bae lah... (the black one please) buyer 1 : ga bisa di kurang? (can you make it cheaper?) seller : ga.. (no) buyer 1 : iyo lah... yang ini bee sikok.. trus ini jugo.. ni sikok lagi... (okay.. this one and this one too… and this one…) buyer 2 : ni bagus jugo... (it is good too) buyer 1 : ga ah norak.. (no it is tacky) code-switching happened in the form of a variety of restricted code in jambi dialect: sibu, into elaborated code that was seribu. the restricted code as seen in particle bee switches into restricted code that is ini jugo. causal factors of code-switching. concerning the period of which code-switching occurred, almost all codeswitching actions in this research were temporary or situational since the sellers and buyers met only when the activity occurred. however, they switched their language due to certain reasons: a. the seller’s annoyance at the buyer b. the buyer’s annoyance at the seller c. the buyer’s hidden intention d. the buyer’s language adaptation to the seller’s e. the buyer’s expression of surprise f. the arrival of another buyer while a conversation occurs g. the seller’s pretense h. the seller’s joke diglossia bilingual people face the phenomena where a language pushes another for some reason. it means that there will be a language shift in which a language is switched to another “stronger” language according to its position, function, and role in a social context. this cause the variety of language is greater than another one based on the users. this term gives a subjective perspective about a person’s prestige, what happens when someone regards the prestige from the way somebody else communicates by using a certain language. unconsciously, minang people should speak in indonesian fluently since it is the national language. they have to communicate with people in different journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 76 regions and from different backgrounds. besides, they tend to use minang as their mother tongue. the use of two languages, indonesian and minang, is common in some domains such as offices, schools, political speech, entertainment, newspaper (indonesian), market, family, traditional ceremony and conversation with friends (minang). l is typically used in the domicile as a mother tongue and continues throughout life. the usage also extends to other familial and familiar interactions. high code is used in socialization, but by no means at home. kota solok inhabitants also know the importance of using the right variety of language in the right situation, whether to use h or l. the table summarizes the diglossic situation in kota solok. table 1. language variety use in kota solok the current study found differences in using language variety in certain domains. such a domain as a formal situation like mosque, political speech, official, school, government, and wedding ceremony used high language code. the diglossic situation appeared in the social life of this town. the culture also influenced the way these people regarded their language. minang people have a tradition of merantau (immigrating). the stereotype of merantau also influences language code when immigrants come back to their hometown. as figured, most of them are traders. they adapted the indonesian language through communication in many activities, including trading. conclusion in conclusion, there are three forms of code used by bilingual and diglossia inhabitants in kota solok. the forms are language code, dialect code, and variety code. the research result also shows several forms of code-switching in trading activity in kota solok market: the switching among language codes, among dialect codes, and various codes. there are also some codes in a foreign language domains high low mosque + trading activity + political speech + office + school + government + conversation with family colleagues + conversation with friends + traditional ceremony + wedding ceremony + funeral + journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 77 found among natives of this town. the causing factors of code-switching are the buyer’s annoyance of the seller, the buyer’s language adaptation to the seller’s and buyer’s expression of surprise, the arrival of another buyer while a conversation occurs, the seller’s annoyance of the buyer’s hidden intention. the diglossic situation happens in kota solok, especially in the trading activity. there is a stereotype of minang people in general that a man who migrates is an honored man. the way those people live, the way of thinking, and language become trendsetters. based on the recorded conversations and the phonetic script, the language code of minang language was dominant since the majority of the speakers were of minang ethnicity. the use of indonesian language is dominant if the speakers, in this context, the buyers, come from different ethnics or if they are not natives to ease the conversation. in addition, the use of the indonesian language in trading dialogue occurs in a formal situation. it indicates that the indonesian language is positioned as higher than the minang language. people who use indonesian considered an honored man. it showed a certain social state, prestige, and financial prosperity. this was shown from people's respectful responses toward those ‘honored men’. the gesture, language intonation, responses, services are different from the ones given to other people from different social status. this research hopefully provides information related to code-switching and sociolinguistic. it could be a reference to other researchers and people who are interested in studying about codeswitching, although its limitations still need to be considered. references auer, p. (2000). code-switching in conversation. (language and identity and interaction). london: routledge bloomfield, l. (1935). language. london: allen & unwin dewi, c., & ekalaya, y. (2015). an analysis of outer code-switching and code mixing in indonesia lawyers club. literary criticism journal, 2(1), 49-63. ferguson, e. a. (1963). social work an introduction. philadelphia and new york: j. b. lippincott company. fishman, j. a. (1972). the description of social bilingualism. california: stanford university press. holmes, j. (1992). an introduction to sociolinguitics.london: longman journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 1, 2020 78 holmes, j. (2000). an introduction to sociolinguitics (second edition). wellington, new zealand: longman hornberger, n. h., & mckay, s. l. (2010). sociolinguistics and language education. great britain: short run press. mesthrie, r., swann, j., deumert, a.,& leap, l. w.(2000). introducing sociolinguistics. edinburgh: university fress. milroy, l., & gordon, m. (2003). sociolinguistics: method and interpretation. new york: blackwell publishing. myers-scotton, c. (2006). multiple voices: an introduction to bilingualism. new york: blackwell publishers. nababan, p. w. j. (1984). sociolinguistik: suatu pengantar. jakarta: gramedia. romaine, s. (1988). bilingualism.usa: basil blackwell, inc. sayahi, l. (2014). diglossia and language contact: language variation and change in north africa. new york: cambridge university press trudgill, p. (1974). sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society (fourth). england: penguin books. wardhaugh, r. (1988). an introduction to sociolinguistic. new york: basil blackwell publishing. yuliana. n., luziana. r. a., & sarwendah, p. (2015). code-mixing and code-switching of indonesian celebrities: a comparative study. jurnal lingua cultura, 9(1), 47-54. volume 5, no. 2, 2020 volume 5, no. 2, 2020 available online at: journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/651 azz eddine diouani is an efl teacher. he has presented a good deal of papers at national as well as international conferences on issues related to english language teaching and learning. currently, he is a phd candidate at sidi mohamed ben abdellah university. his research interests include language attitudes, teaching methodology, second language acquisition, and leaner's reticence. communicative language teaching in the moroccan classroom: perceptions, practices, and difficulties azz eddine diouani sidi mohamed ben abdellah university, fez, morocco di.azzeddine@gmail.com doi: 10.18196/ftl.5251 abstract research on the teaching practices of efl teachers has revealed that teachers' beliefs are often at odds with their actual classroom practices. accordingly, the present investigation compared teachers' perceptions and classroom practices of the communicative language teaching principles (clt) in the provincial directorate of jerada. this exploration is an attempt to examine teachers' practices, thereby draw a line between what they think they do and what they do in the classroom. to this end, ten teachers were interviewed. out of this number, only two teachers were observed. the data gathered via semi-structured interviews have shown that the teacher respondents were well-informed about the principles of communicative language teaching (clt). however, the data collected by the classroom observations revealed that the teachers were not teaching english communicatively. factors such as learner's language proficiency, lack of knowledge as to how to implement the approach, unsuitable textbooks, and lack of motivation on the part of the learner, contributed enormously to the non-use of the clt. to overcome these obstacles, the findings of the current study suggest that efl teachers "should" motivate students, use simple fluency-oriented tasks, simplify, model, and scaffold the learning activities. they also recommend adapting the textbooks to students' needs, research their practice, and invest more in their professional development. the ministry of national education is required to provide high-quality training to help teachers cope with the demands of the communicative approach. keywords: communicative language teaching; curriculum; factors; perceptions; practices; reform journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 136 introduction in 1999, following the death of the former king hassan ii, the moroccan government initiated a series of reforms "aiming at," as hattani (2018) argued, "improving the quality of education" (p. 88). due to the relative political openness that characterized the political scene at that time, practicing teachers, political parties, trade unions, teacher trainers, and stakeholders were called on to express their opinions regarding the needs of the moroccan education system. this "national" dialogue resulted in the drafting of a good deal of official documents. the national charter for education and training (the ministry of national education, 1999), combined with the white book (the ministry of national education, 2002), are cases in point. therefore, it is in this light that one can understand the growing presence of english in the school curriculum. in this framework, english language teaching received considerable attention in those claims were made to integrate this language, starting from the fifth grade of primary school, which has not happened hitherto. however, moroccan students are introduced to english, starting from the third grade of primary or secondary school. in line with the philosophy of the national charter, the ministry of national education put forward a set of pedagogical guidelines (2007) to efl teachers in public and private schools alike. leafing through these official guidelines, one learns that efl learners are expected to gradually develop their communicative competence, which includes the grammatical skill, the social and cultural ability, the discourse competence, and the strategic competence. to further help moroccan efl learners achieve this goal, the pedagogical guidelines called on teachers to have the five standard areas (communications, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities) in mind, along with promoting learning autonomy. in this vein, hattani (2018) claimed that the ministry of national education invited teachers and teacher trainers, in particular, to work towards adopting the learnercentered approach, the communicative approach, the competency-based approach, and standards-based approach in teaching the school subjects, including english. putting learners at the heart of the teaching and learning processes entails that teachers act as facilitators, monitors, and guiders. in contrast, the charter (1999) thought that learners should take the lead to be more self-directed and responsible for their learning. commenting on the multiple journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 137 attempts at reform implemented, hattani (2018) argued that "despite all the efforts made to develop the efl implementation in the moroccan educational context, it is still lagging behind" (p.88). both el karfa (2019) and bedmar (2014) highlight that the moroccan education system has undergone an essential change in the way efl teachers teach english, noting, however, that "traditional" practices persist in the classroom due to a wide range of factors. the main issue here is that despite the many reforms introduced, one can see little change on the ground. while it is beyond the scope of this article to assess all of these successful reforms introduced, the focus of the present investigation is restricted to the english teaching per se. the study seeks to find tentative answers to the following research questions. (i) what are the teachers' perceptions of the communicative language teaching approach? (ii) to what extent do the efl teachers' actual classroom practices reflect the philosophy of clt? and finally, (iii) what are the factors that might hinder the implementation of the clt approach in the moroccan efl classroom? specifically, the present study aims at exploring the efl teachers' understandings and practices of the communicative language teaching in the classroom by analyzing a corpus of data gathered via means of semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. review of the related literature within the community of applied linguistics, english language teaching and learning has always been a dynamic field of research. two pertinent questions have still shaped the industry of english language teaching and learning. these are, of course: what is language? and how do people go about learning them? the "traditional approaches" stressed that languages are sets of building blocks and structures that ought to be discovered by the use of drills, repetitions, and memorization of lists of words, grammar rules, and the like. clt came as a response to the inadequacies of structuralism, structural methods, grammartranslation methods, and the audio-lingual method. the grammar-translation method and the audio-lingual method are manifestations of such a "traditional understanding" of the nature of language and how we go about learning them. however, since the seventies, especially after the very significant developments in other fields like linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, sociolinguistics, and education, researchers in second language learning started talking about journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 138 communicative language teaching (clt). it came later as a movement, with the effect of exercising a lot of influence on teachers, educationalists, researchers, and policymakers all over the world (littlewood, 1981). in this vein, littlewood (1981), and tootkaboni (2018) stressed that the boom in clt has made teachers rethink their teaching practices in the classroom and revisited their perceptions towards the nature of language itself. littlewood (1981) highlights that clt does not imply any sort of epistemological break with the structural view of language. however, "it combines the newer functional view of language with the traditional structural view to achieving a complete communicative perspective" (p. 2). confirming this understanding of the nature of language and how it is learned, richards and rodgers (cited in reo, 2002) postulate that clt starts with a theory of language as communication, and its goal is to develop, in the learners, what hymes (1972) has termed "communicative competence." the ultimate aim of clt is to develop the learners' ability to take part in the process of communication through language, rather than with the perfect mastery of individual structures in isolation to the context. in line with this view, sauvignon (cited in hattani, 2018) asserted that teachers' roles, within the framework of the clt approach, shift from being the only source of knowledge in the classroom to being monitors, guides, and facilitators of the learning process. hattani (2018) emphasized that organizing the learning activities around the tenets of clt demands one introduces role-plays, presentations, discussions, interviews, dialogues, and the like as derived from learners' interests. nevertheless, surveying previous literature, one learns that research is scarce into the extent to which the clt approach is being turned into reality in the moroccan efl classroom. in this regard, tootkaboni (2019), in an insightful comment on the theory and practice of cla at the school, wrote: although the communicative approach has been adopted by many textbooks and curriculum all over the word, research findings indicate that communicative language teaching (clt) tenets in the classroom are scare, with most teachers declaring dedication to the communicative approach but applying the more traditional structural approach in their real practice. (p. 265) in the same vein, richards (cited in tootkaboni, 2018) stated that language teachers who believe they follow clt do not even have a consistent definition of the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 139 concept in question. brown (cited in tootkaboni, 2018) argued that this inconsistency stems from the lack of an exact description of clt. as he puts it: "there is not an exact definition of clt, it raises considerable confusion about what it means to teach communicatively?" (p. 266). hattani (2018) reveals that the moroccan efl teachers in public schools have positive attitudes towards this approach in the sense that the use of the clt approach enhances oral competency among students. however, the question asked here is, is it enough to investigate the teachers' perceptions per se to arrive at such a big statement as to say that clt is an added value to the teaching of english in the moroccan context? what makes one even more skeptical about the findings of such a study is that the data were gathered via only semi-structured interviews. the paradox is that everybody claimed to use the clt approach, but little is known about what moroccan efl teachers do in their classrooms, regardless of their stated beliefs. in this sense, one assumes that these were severe methodological shortcomings in hattani's study, notably that previous research, in other contexts, reported a mismatch between what teachers said and did in their classrooms. for these legitimate reasons, one cannot epistemologically rely on the perceptions of teachers and students per se to assess the extent to which clt has been implemented in the moroccan efl classroom. after seeing these shortcomings of her study, hattani (2018) stated that "classroom observations are advocated to investigate how the cla approach is practiced in the efl instructional settings" (p. 97). based on data gathered via questionnaires from iran, tootkaboni (2018) suggested that "the majority of teachers had high levels of perception about clt tenets" (p. 265). later on, however, he wrote, "there is a clear mismatch between their beliefs and practical application of clt" (p. 265). these discrepancies between teachers' beliefs and classroom practices make it almost useless to introduce educational reforms regarding efl teaching methodologies if teachers' "traditional" methods prevail in their practice. an early investigation by nunan (cited in tootkaboni, 2019) was based on classroom observation. he found that "despite performing communicative based activities, the presence of many traditional exercises were predominant. teachers were not interested in the real tenets of communicative approach" (p. 269). one important theme that emerges from the findings of such studies is that they are mostly relevant to what kachru (1992) journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 140 termed as "the expanding circle." it refers to the countries where learners' exposure to english is limited to the classroom. confronting these findings, one asks: is it a myth to talk about the adoption of communicative language teaching in the expanding circle? it might be a strong claim, but it makes sense when one goes through the massive body of research that confirms the non-use of the cla approach in contexts where english is a foreign language. using questionnaires, classroom observation, formal and informal interviews, jabeen (2014) showed that "there are obvious discrepancies between how the teachers responded to questions and their classroom practice" (p.71). similar findings were confirmed by rahman et al. (2018) from malaysia. although only two teachers were observed and interviewed, the outcomes were significant in that the classroom practices contradicted the two teachers' stated beliefs. a good deal of empirical studies (singh & rahman, 2018; jabeen, 2014; abbaspour & vaezi, 2014; farrell & lim, 2005; kaymakamoglu, 2018; adnan & hazlina, 2012; mutlu & kashoglu, 2015; tootkaboni, 2018; rao, 2002) has confirmed that there is a mismatch between teachers' stated beliefs and their actual classroom behaviors. methodology a mixed-methods approach was adopted to gather more in-depth data. the researcher also used semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to catch both the teachers' perceptions and classroom practices of clt. then, the findings are more likely to suggest how much of "communicativeness" there is and see whether there is a mismatch between teachers' stated beliefs and their actual classroom practices. to achieve this purpose, ten efl teachers were recruited for the interview. five students were females, and five identified themselves as males. as far as their teaching experience is concerned, five participants revealed that they were "novice" efl teachers, with two months of teaching experience. four teachers stated that they had four years of teaching english, whereas one teacher said he had two years of teaching experience. the data obtained from the interviews and the classroom observations were both audio-recorded and transcribed. although the audio recordings were edited for interruptions, false starts, and repetitions, the researcher kept faithful to what was said. moreover, the notes taken during the classroom observations journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 141 conducted were used to back up the data elicited through teacher interviews. the questions asked in the interviews were mainly the product of the researcher's synthesis of the previous literature regarding the features of the clt approach. then, to determine the communicativeness of classroom discourse, there were classroom observations. they were conducted based on the communicative orientation scheme framework developed by fröhlich et al. (1985). to systematically examine the frequency of the communicative activities, seven aspects were observed, including the integration of the four skills, the role of the teacher, the role of the learner, the way grammar was taught, the use of the l1, meaningful contexts, and corrective feedback. in this context, examining teachers' and students' classroom behaviors is likely to help the researcher to systematically look at the classroom activities in such a way as to carefully determine whether or not such teachers' and learners' behaviors go hand in hand with the philosophy of clt movement. the current study took place in the province of jerada. why the researcher opted for this topic is that no researchers have explored it in the area. non-random sampling was used simply because not all the teachers agreed to be observed. findings and discussion this section offers and discusses the findings gathered by the semi-structured interviews and the classroom observations conducted. in this framework, the data elicited seem to suggest that the teachers interviewed are well-informed about the principles of clt. however, the data gathered by classroom observations strongly indicated that teachers were not teaching as cla recommends. the data elicited seem to suggest that the respondents interviewed have a good understanding of the elements of the clt approach regarding the first research question. as a whole, all the interviewees assumed that grammar is taught "inductively" in communicative english. teachers, within the framework of this approach, act as "guiders," "facilitators," and "helpers." as far as the respondents' views are concerned, basing one's teaching on the clt principles entails that one does not correct learners' errors/mistakes on the condition that these do not impede the process of communication. moreover, the findings confirmed that using fluency-based activities such as "dialogues," "classroom journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 142 discussions," "interviews," and "role-plays" were in harmony with the clt approach. generally, the interviewees indicated that clt had the potential to enhance students' oral fluency because, as khalid said, "it is a good idea to give a chance to students to give oral presentation and english, after all, is more about speaking." fatima, another interviewee, stated that the "communicative language approach focuses more on communication as exemplified by real-life situations." ayoub, likewise, emphasized that the communicative approach should be integrated while delivering the lesson. as he indicated, "speaking, reading, writing, and listening should be taught in a communicative way as students are engaged in doing more speaking." in the same way, abdelhak emphasized that this approach "gives more importance to speaking than to other skills." as far as the role of the teacher is concerned, there is substantial evidence indicating that teachers are required, within the framework of clt, to act as facilitators and guides. according to fatima, "i usually do less speaking. i urge my students to speak. it is their responsibility". she further explained that urging learners to speak had the potential "to help them develop their fluency." nevertheless, several interviewees emphasized that "we should help learners develop both fluency and accuracy in a meaningful context." following these lines of thought, khadija, though she noted that grammar ought to be taught in a meaningful context. she stated that: "it is kind of difficult to teach some grammar lessons in this way, especially when it comes to the basics like teaching the verb to be." for learners to be active in the efl classroom, teachers are supposed to get students to work with one another, not individually. the data gathered suggest that the teachers were aware of the importance of learner organization in the classroom. in this vein, asmae argued, "i resort to group work. it is time-saving. instead of calling on each student to volunteer their answers, they do that in groups". regarding students' mistakes, ibtissam pointed out that, "when i teach speaking, i don't correct grammar mistakes." whereas, all the teachers interviewed stated that they use plenty of communicative activities. for example, lyasaa implied, "i use group discussions and interviews." houda, too, claimed that: "i sometimes use role-plays and debates. my students love role-plays". similarly, ayoub explained that these communicative activities motivated students. he said that "students feel so journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 143 excited about playing roles." putting aside the respondents' attitudes towards clt, abdelhak summarized his understating as follows: clt teaching approach focuses on the communicative competence of the learners. that means we should not focus on grammar. for example, we don't focus on the idea that learners have to make a grammatically correct sentence. teachers within this approach need to work to develop learners' ability to communicate in the job market and various situations outside the classroom. abdelhak's statement above proves that he has an excellent understating of what clt is all about. his main idea is that the ultimate goal of clt is to help learners communicate effectively in any given context, thereby become fluent users of english. however, he seemed to ignore that being able to form grammatically correct sentences is, doubtless, a principle of clt (grammatical competence). the kind of corrective feedback that one must provide on learners' mistakes/errors is debatable. most of the interviewees shared the same point of view. previous research (el karfa, 2019; hattani, 2018) indicated that moroccan efl teachers were well-informed about the philosophy of clt. still, it is true that perceptions, cognitively speaking, do not always influence teachers' behaviors, under all conditions. in this regard, the findings revealed by el karfa (2018) confirmed that teachers' perceptions might be inconsistent with their teaching behaviors in the efl classroom. regarding research question two, the findings revealed that the two teachers were not teaching english communicatively to no small extent. the components of the table below are mainly the product of my synthesis of the previous research findings regarding the communicative features of the clt approach. however, the table is primarily based on the observation scheme developed by fröhlich et al. (1985) and was inspired, partly, by rahman et al. (2018). four lessons were observed: writing, reading, grammar, and listening. asmae taught writing and reading, whereas mohamed taught grammar and listening. each lesson lasted between 47 and 50 minutes. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 144 table 2. teachers’ practices of clt in the efl classroom yes (+), no (-), not covered (the teacher covered other skills) the integration of skills asmae asmae mohamed mohamed the integration of skills _ _ _ _ the skills /(sub) skills are taught in a meaningful context skills are linked to a theme + _ + + the role of the teacher the teacher is dominant the teacher is a facilitator/helper/monit or + _ + _ + _ + _ grammar teaching inductive deductive not covered not covered + _ not covered learner organization individual pairs groups + _ _ + _ _ + _ _ + _ _ the use of the l1 in giving instructions in explaining some vocabulary items in explaining mechanics + + _ + + _ _ _ _ _ _ _ corrective feedback teacher correction paircorrection _ + + + _ _ _ _ fluency-oriented activities discussions role-plays interviews dialogues _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 145 based on the classroom observations conducted, one can say, with a sort of assertiveness, that there was little of "communicativeness" in the lessons observed. the teachers observed were so dominant on classroom discourse that both of them spent almost half an hour talking. the researcher noted that their output was simplified. one of the defining features of a communicative efl classroom is that teachers work towards the integration of the four skills. this element appears to be missing from asmae's class. while one does not have to dictate which specific skills have to be integrated, teachers need to incorporate at least two skills for their lessons to be communicative. the lessons observed revealed that although the teacher adhered to the principles of communicative language teaching in theory, they demonstrated quite the opposite in practice. it was exemplified by the teacher talking time (ttt), the total absence of fluency-oriented learning activities, the disintegration of skills, the nature of the activities introduced, and the kind of "mechanical" responses of students' to teacher's "stimulus." the notes taken during classroom observations revealed that writing was taught in isolation to a great extent. for example, on october 21st, the researcher had the chance to observe asmae's teaching. that day's lesson targeted descriptive writing. in this regard, the teacher spent almost twentytwo minutes, in total, on the teaching of some vocabulary items (adjectives) before she could introduce the learners to writing, albeit it, writing, was a major objective of the lesson. when the researcher investigated the reasons why the teacher adopted such an approach to writing, she stated that "one must equip students with the adjectives they will need when in the process of writing a descriptive paragraph." the adjectives were taught using moroccan arabic, leaving aside the question of the time spent on vocabulary teaching. as far as the use of the mother tongue is concerned, the teacher would mostly instruct in moroccan arabic. the reason she resorted to arabic in teaching vocabulary is, as she told the researcher later on in unplanned discussion following the classroom observation, that "it is timesaving." the sort of activities used had little to share with the philosophy of clt in that their claimed "communicativeness" ranged from highly controlled to semi-controlled. at the level of interaction, the teacher was standing at the front of the board, talking, leaving little room for students to talk. in terms of questioning, a bulk of the questions required students to respond in one or twoword answers. the issue is that the questions journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 146 asked revealed how learners already possessed the information requested, leaving little room for "the negotiation of meaning," which is, as swain (2000) claimed, necessary for language learning to happen. since the teacher whose teaching i observed knew about the issue i was investigating, she, as the lesson drew to a close, asked me about the extent to which she had been successful in constructing a fluency-based lesson. the researcher's answer was "judging by the data at hand. i think there is some communicativeness in the classroom". she replied by asking, "what about when the students were responding to my questions? was not that communication?" the researcher responded by saying that the communicative approach emphasized that learners' responses should not be restricted to the use of "yes," "no," or other "pseudo questions and answers." rather, authentic communication involves more "risks" and is more sustained. the teacher's response to this lack of fluency-based activities was that: "it is quite difficult to teach writing communicatively, given students’ proficiency." she resumed, "i do sometimes use discussion-based activities with my students, but i do believe that one, at first, should focus on grammar and vocabulary before one introduces such fluency-based activities." moreover, all of the learning activities assigned to the students in the classroom were dictated by the textbook. as far as the teacher's corrective feedback is concerned, the teachers never corrected students' mispronunciations of the words given explicitly. on several occasions, during classroom observation, it was the students who provided explicit corrective feedback for learners' mistakes (peer correction). in contrast, the teacher corrected students' implicitly by pronouncing the mispronounced word (s) accurately but without indicating that the learner has made a mistake in pronunciation. the use of the mother tongue was not limited to the teacher, but rather students relied on it heavily to account for their "lexical gaps." for example, when the teacher was asking students about the meaning of words such as "popular," "reliable," "pessimistic," "easy-going," "optimistic," or "round-faced," learners replied by voicing out the meaning of these words in moroccan arabic. it was beyond students' proficiency to explain the terms given in english, mainly because they did not have enough linguistic tools. mohamed's classes, in sharp contrast to asmae's classes, revealed more "communicativeness." in this regard, no mother tongue was used, though students were using it with one another. grammar journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 147 was based on a topic, contextualized, and taught in a discovery-based approach. however, no fluency-based activities, based on the notes taken, were used. the flow of the lesson was like getting "the rules" and "the uses of the tense being taught from a context dictated by the textbook, and "checking" students' understanding with a "traditional exercise" and last the teacher would ask students "to give" him "examples" using the target language. despite students' numerous utterances, their output was extremely restricted to only giving examples. from the observation notes, students, in this class, showed adequate english proficiency in that the classroom was vivid with their active classroom participation. however, miss asmae showed some discomfort with the researcher's presence in the classroom, though she welcomed me with open arms at the beginning. yet, when she asked about the amount of "communicativeness" in her teaching, the researcher answered by saying: "i believe there is some." the teacher in question reddened in the face. perhaps she was expecting to hear, "all your teaching is wellgrounded in the communicative approach." when she learned about what was going on, she became "suspicious" of this research. two days after observing her teaching, the researcher received an email stating, "after thinking about it for some time, i am not comfortable being the sole research subject in your article. i don't mind being observed in class, generally speaking, but i just do not feel good about this one, especially the way your grid approaches the teacher's work. it is my conviction, and i hope that you understand". the researcher was surprised when receiving this message, though it was very telling. the graph below summarizes the results obtained for question three. the data gathered by semi-structured interviews revealed that the teachers had some excellent reasons why they did not implement clt, especially its strong version. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 148 figure 1: perceived difficulties in adopting the clt approach by and large, 7 teachers out of 10 (hence 53%) stated that the main obstacle standing in their way to the implementation of the cla is learners' language proficiency. as shown, 3 teachers believe that the textbook is, in fact, one of the main hindrances in deciding whether or not to use the method in question, with 2 teachers saying that cla is "time-consuming." to expand more on this point, khalid, an efl teacher with two months of teaching experience, explicitly stated that "students don't know enough words. they keep asking me in arabic, teacher, how do we say this in english? what is the equivalent of this word in english? because their proficiency is not that good, i keep helping them over and over". within the same framework, ayoub confirmed the link between the non-use of cla and students' proficiency by saying that: "if students form a grammatically correct sentence, it is already a great achievement." houda, a novice teacher, enthusiastically said that "the problem is that i have so many ideas and activities that i would like to use with them, but i can't do that simply because learners don't have the required abilities to do fluency oriented tasks." "this is why," she resumed, and, "they ask me how to say this and that in english." likewise, khadija stated that: "when i introduce learners to discussions, they find it difficult to make full, meaningful sentences." confirming the strong link between learners' language proficiency and the impracticality of the cla in the classroom, ibtissam, regretfully stated that "the overwhelming majority of the learners are not good enough." in the same vein, huang (2016) 53% 6% 6% 12% 17% 6% factors hindering the implementation of cla as perceived by teachers learners' language proficiency lack of teacher's knowledge lack of learners' motivation time constraints textbooks lack of teaching materials journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 149 reported that students' low english proficiency was one of the principal obstacles for the adoption of clt following an early investigation he carried out in a rural taiwanese efl classroom. in the same context, similar findings were also confirmed by ibrahim and takal (2019) from afghanistan. similarly, el karfa (2019) revealed that adopting clt in the moroccan context was impeded by a plethora of variables such as the foreign status of english in morocco, the formal context of the classroom, students' personality traits, and large size classes, to mention, but a few. the textbooks used were important variables contributing, more or less, to the non-use of cla. the interviewees who shared this view claimed that the books assigned to them by the provincial directorates had severe pitfalls. for example, lyassa, an efl teacher with four years of teaching experience, stated that "some textbooks have many grammar lessons, but the paradox is that some of these grammar points are not contextualized in the textbooks. the only solution left for you then is to bring your materials with contexts; otherwise, you teach grammar deductively." asmae, khalid, and abdelhak shared the same point of view. as abdelhak illustrated, what is at issue is that in the textbook, there is a focus on grammar. to give you evidence, in the "ticket textbook," for example, unit one has "simple past tense." the textbook in question focuses on both accuracy and fluency. back in the training center in 2015, our teacher trainers stressed that we ought to teach english according to the principles endorsed in "the official guidelines." the problem is i don't really understand know how i can implement the clt approach in my teaching. for this interviewee, while some textbooks were blamed for not stressing the teaching of grammar points inductively, he mentioned that his "lack of knowledge" as to how to implement the approach in question in his teaching was a thorny issue as well. in sharp contrast, houda assumed that "the textbooks are good. i do use them. when i find the textbook not appropriate, pedagogically speaking, i bring my materials. i insist on using simple activities". lyasaa, too, told me, at an early stage of this investigation, that the textbook he was using "has long but difficult texts for learners to understand." in line with these findings, hattani (2018) argued that the majority of her respondents revealed that the school curriculum was outdated and did not aim at journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 150 providing prerequisite contents that targeted skills development (p.94). a major obstacle hindering the implementation of the communicative approach is the mismatch between the requirements of the syllabus and the demands of the clt approach. still, it is quite evident that some interviewees endorsed "the strong version" of the method in question, which doesn't give any importance to the teaching of grammar. for these perceived difficulties discussed earlier, abdelhak explicitly stated: we must start with grammar and then move on to communication, not vice versa; otherwise, how can a learner engage in communicative tasks if they don't know what "to be" is. learners need "to be" to say "i am," "you are," and so on. they need to know where linguistic forms such as "am," "is," "was," came from before having them engage in authentic communication. as far as the textbook is concerned, fatima claimed the problem is that the teaching and learning activities that the textbook has are accuracy-oriented. a teacher has to come up with his activities to teach english communicatively. upon such an impression, teachers need to bring their teaching materials if they wish for their lessons to be communicative. if the nature of the textbook is based more on forms than on functions and notions, how can teachers teach communicatively given the lack of teaching materials? a majority of the interviewees mentioned that the main obstacle standing in their way to use the communicative approach is "learners' language proficiency" and the lack of "teaching materials." as far as textbook use is concerned, mohamed complained that the context dictated by the textbook had many difficulties. for example, in a lengthy statement, he stated: the textbook provides the teacher with a context. once you see the text from the learner's perspective, you get to the conclusion that the text is challenging the learners. instead of having students encounter one difficulty, you find that students encounter three or more difficulties in the same text. to give you an example, today, i have taught my students the present progressive tense. to my surprise, the text used in the lesson had the "affirmative," "negative," and "interrogative" all at once. these are three difficulties at which students feel so frustrated that they feel at sea when they find them journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 151 in one text, within one lesson. teachers find themselves obliged to come up with their materials. so, it is essential that we expose our students to one difficulty and then move on to the next. from the data analyzed previously, there was evidence that teachers wished their teaching to be communicative. nevertheless, factors such as learner's language proficiency, textbook issues, lack of motivation on the part of the learners', lack of teaching materials, and lack of knowledge as to how to translate the theory into learning and teaching activities were significant obstacles in practice. pedagogical implications for efl teaching the researcher feels confident that there are some misconceptions that efl teachers have about clt. the misconception is that as long as the classroom is not highly equipped with technology, english cannot be taught communicatively. the researcher would go as far as to say that the so-called "traditional" classes are compatible with the philosophy of the clt movement. 1. teachers should not worship the textbook. these textbooks are, after all, one of the methods of organizing knowledge. therefore, instead of following what they dictate, teachers can adapt them to students' needs. 2. due to students' language proficiency, teachers should use motivating fluency-based activities. it is not sufficient to praise students to motivate them. motivation, after all, is the result of using fun games and activities. 3. to further help learners acquire some fluency, it is recommended that teachers simplify, model, and scaffold the learning activities. 4. instead of blaming it all on the proficiency of language learners, efl teachers are invited to research their practice; that is, they should do action research to see what works best for both sides. 5. teachers are invited to invest more and more in their learning autonomy, thereby create new but useful ideas for effective teaching. one way to do this is through professional development. 6. the ministry of education, too, is required to invest more in providing efl teachers with better training to help them translate the theory into practice. moreover, due to the lack of equipment, it is recommended that schools be equipped with some journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 152 prerequisite technological devices (printing machines and data show projectors, to say the least). conclusion the present paper has explored the teachers' perceptions and practices of clt in the moroccan efl classroom. generally, the data gathered have revealed that the respondents have a good understanding of what the clt approach is all about. yet, the classroom practices of two of these teachers showed that the teachers' stated beliefs are far from reality. the factors contributing to this mismatch between theory and practice are multifaceted. generally speaking, these factors can be grouped into three major factors, such as the learner factor, the teacher factor, and the textbook factor. for the learner factor, it is evident that the language proficiency of the learners is a determining factor in the adoption of the clt approach. the more proficient the learners are, the more likely the teachers are to use communicative tasks in their teaching. in contrast to this, the less proficient the students are, the less likely the teachers are to use fluency-oriented tasks. this is why the data elicited seem to point to teachers' preference for the adoption of the "weak version" of this approach in that more importance should be given to the teaching of grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics before moving on to introduce learners to more fluency-based tasks. one burning question arises here is that, if learners' proficiency violates teachers' expectations, why do the teachers then abandon the use of clt principles in one's classroom? as pointed out earlier, teachers' lack of knowledge about how to implement the clt approach is a significant obstacle too. even when they were asked about the way they taught language skills and sub-skills, some of them did not know that their way of teaching, theoretically speaking, was informed by the communicative approach. they seemed to do it, but unaware of what that approach was called. one possible explanation lies in the inadequate training these teachers have received in the training centers. spending less on teacher's training programs will affect the learners' competency severely, without a doubt. limitations of the study and recommendations for further research the present study has many limitations. first, it included a limited number of participants (10 efl teachers). second, the researcher restricted the scope of the study to the investigation of teachers' perceptions and practices per se. indeed, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 153 investigating both perspectives (teachers and students) would have provided a more indepth picture of the issue explored. second, of the total number, only two teachers were observed. doubtless, it is one of the main limitations of this study. for these reasons, the results obtained may not be overgeneralized as further research is needed. future research should explore both teachers' and students' perceptions of clt. additionally, future research needs to involve more representative samples to examine the frequency of communicativeness in both private and public schools. that is to say, without conducting more extensive empirical research, including more representatives, the results obtained may not be over-generalized. references adnan, a. h. m & hazlina, a. (2012). communicative language teaching: misconstructions and misunderstandings in the malaysian context. english language journal, (5), 97, 93. bedmarm, l.v. (2014). educational reforms in morocco: evolution and current status. international education studies, (7), 95-105. el karfa, a. (2019). the communicative orientation of english language teaching classrooms in moroccan secondary schools. english language teaching, (12), 97-112. farerell & lim .(2005). conceptions of grammar teaching: a case study of teachers' beliefs and classroom practices. teaching english as a foreign language, (9), 1-13. fröhlich, m., spada, n., & allen, p. (1985). differences in the communicative orientation of l2 classrooms. in tesol quarterly, 19(1), 27-57. jabeen, s. s. (2014). implementation of communicative approach. english language teaching, (7), 68-74. hattani, h. a. (2018). communicative language teaching in the moroccan efl classroom. journal of english language teaching and linguistics, (32), 87-98. huang, s. (2016). communicative language teaching: practical difficulties in the rural efl classrooms in taiwan. the journal of education and practice, (24), 186-202. hymes, d. (1972). on communicative competence. in sociolinguistics: selected readings, edit, by j.b pride &j.holmes. harmondsworth, england: penguin books. ibrahim, n. m., & takal, m. g (2019). perceptions and challenges of clt in the efl classespossible research in afghan tertiary efl context. international journal of engineering and advanced technology, (8), 1159-1164. kachru, b. b. (1992). the other tongue: eenglish across cultures. urbana: university of illinois press. kaymakamoglu, s. e. (2018). teachers' beliefs, perceived practice, and actual classroom practice in relation to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 5, no. 2, 2020 154 traditional (teacher-centered) and constructivist (learner-centered) teaching (note1). journal of education and learning, (7), 29-36. littlewood, w. (1981). communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. mutlu, g., & kashoglu, o. (2015). examining the role of context in the implementation of clt in turkey. international association of research in foreign language education and applied linguistics., (41), 43-55. rao, z. (2002). chinese students' perceptions of communicative and noncommunicative activities in efl classroom. system, (30), 85-105. rahman, m. m., singh, m.k.m., & pandian, a. (2018). exploring esl teacher beliefs and classroom practices: a case study. international journal of instruction, 11(1), 295-310. razmjoo, s. a. (2006). is communicative language teaching practical in the expanding circle? a case study of teachers of shiraz high schools and institutes. journal of language and learning, (2) 144-171. swain, m. (2000). the output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. in j. p. lantolf (ed.), sociocultural theory and second language learning. oxford: oxford university press. the ministry of national education, the national charter for education and training (1999). retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/11qkj w7txwfnplztprnn8h6mkky0qalr7 /view. the ministry of national education, the white book. (2002). retrieved from http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1 tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%25 84%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d 8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a 7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8 %25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.r ar/file. the ministry of national education, english language guidelines for secondary schools: common core, first year, and second year baccalaureate. (2007). retrieved from https://ahwaltaalim.blogspot.com/p/re direct_21.html. tootkaboni, a. a. (2019). teachers' beliefs and practices towards communicative language teaching in the expanding circle. revista signos. estudios de linguistica. (5), 265-289. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11qkjw7txwfnplztprnn8h6mkky0qalr7/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/11qkjw7txwfnplztprnn8h6mkky0qalr7/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/11qkjw7txwfnplztprnn8h6mkky0qalr7/view http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file http://www.mediafire.com/file/xjqq4r1tw63wrwu/%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d9%2583%25d8%25aa%25d8%25a7%25d8%25a8_%25d8%25a7%25d9%2584%25d8%25a3%25d8%25a8%25d9%258a%25d8%25b6.rar/file https://ahwaltaalim.blogspot.com/p/redirect_21.html https://ahwaltaalim.blogspot.com/p/redirect_21.html journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 94 article history: submitted: 5 may 2021 reviewed: 7 may 2021 30 may 2021 edited: 26 june 2021 1 july 2021 accepted: 8 july 2021 the effect of summarizing narrative texts to improve reading comprehension maria rossana ramirez-avila *) , jahaira paola barreiro universidad casa grande, ecuador *) corresponding author email: mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec doi: https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11707 abstract this study demonstrates the effect of summaries of narrative texts to improve reading comprehension. this study consisted of sixty elementary school students who had evident reading comprehension deficiencies, especially in narrative texts. this study is a pre-experimental study with a mixed design. qualitative and quantitative instruments were applied to meet the purpose of this study. the instruments included pretest and post-test, rubric, learning log, survey, a checklist to measure the students’ development and progress, and their perspectives towards this innovation. results indicated an improvement in students’ reading comprehension. posttest means increased from 5.96 in the pretest to 9.10. the checklist also proved that students included the required elements in their summaries. students indicated in the learning logs that they would extend this strategy to other subjects, and they had to reread and identify the most crucial information to summarize. the study has implications for teachers and learners since it can bring positive considerations about the importance of using summaries to improve reading comprehension. keywords: summaries; narrative texts; reading comprehension; elementary school; efl =========================================================================== mailto:mramirez@casagrande.edu.ec https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11707 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11707&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 95 introduction memorization is the basis of learning in the traditional paradigm. today, education conceives meaningful learning as models for acquiring knowledge within constructivism principles where students can be involved in their learning process (olusegun, 2015). reading was considered necessary in the traditional model as a mechanical process used to locate specific information. teacher talk was dominant because teachers lectured, explained grammar points, set the materials, gave directions, and conducted drills (taufiqur, 2017). when learning another language, reading receives special attention (rios & valcarcel, 2005). reading in mother language or l1 has become an essential skill for every learner to acquire due to the fundamental cognitive and linguistic component skills. these skills affect the development of literacy skills in the second language or l2 (geva, 2006). the research highlighted that effective readers in l1 could transfer reading skills in l2 (tomlinson, 2013). however, there is a problem with reading in l1. the unesco institute for statistics (2017) showed that 387 million children of primary schools worldwide did not achieve minimum levels in reading in l1, identified as a “learning crisis”. in latin america, 36% of primary students had low levels of reading comprehension. data suggested that the new numbers were rooted in three common problems. first, children did not attend schools. second, there was a failure to retain every child in school and keep them on track. the third was the issue of education quality and what was happening within the classroom. ecuador has a low index (43%) of readers in the total population, and each ecuadorian reads half of a book per year (centro regional para el fomento del libro en américa latina y el caribe [cerlalc], 2016). some programs conducted by the ministry of education (ministerio de educación, 2016) were developed to make students read more in their l1. furthermore, reading in english is a resource for learners and teachers to be proficient. tomlinson (2013) highlighted that english as a second language (l2) is reinforced if students have successfully developed practical reading skills in their mother tongue (l1). to improve proficiency in english, ecuadorian authorities of education have been working for the last five years on updating the curriculum to promote better english practices. since 2012, the ministry of education determined standards for english teachers (ministerio de educación, 2012). two years later, a resolution from the ministry of education was issued, which journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 96 determined that english must be included in all the grades of primary school, with at least three periods of classes per grade (ministerio de educación, 2014). reading comprehension has become an essential aspect of reaching the learning standards for schools. the ministry of education requires an a2 level of proficiency for elementary schools according to the common european framework in cefr. regarding reading, these descriptors determined that the students can understand short, simple stories and comic strips (council of europe, 2018). this innovation was implemented in a private elementary school in manta. this school has an international english program based on english language arts, common core standards, and cefr descriptors. during the first quarter of the school year, students were exposed to reading and comprehending stories. they had to demonstrate understanding through oral and written questions, quizzes, and summaries. the paper-based tests taken during the first term showed that students were facing difficulties in reading comprehension skills. the results of their scores in their midterm reading tests were not what was expected. they kept getting the lowest grades in the reading comprehension section. for this reason, in this pre-experimental study, the researchers posed summaries to improve reading comprehension. literature review reading ministry of education (2004) noted, “reading is an interactive solving process of making meaning from written texts” (p. 61). reading is a component of every educational curriculum. furthermore, reading plays a crucial role in the language proficiency of any learner. it also constitutes a skill that must be taught and developed inside and outside classrooms. however, results of standardized tests indicate that students are not advancing in this skill. the initial literary process for children includes all the elements of language such as phonemes, morphemes, syntax, grammar, and semantics. moreover, reading acquisition must be taught and modelled. the sequence of this process starts at home and continues at school. children become readers if parents, relatives, babysitters, and teachers read aloud to them (tomlinson, 2013). reading helps students gain knowledge to improve their academic performance and empowers them to become successful in this knowledge society (bano, jabeen, & quitoshi, 2018). thus, this study was implemented to teach, monitor, and provide feedback journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 97 to students during their reading lessons; so, students take advantage of this skill in their future endeavours. reading in l2 l2 reading demands that students control this process using the target language in a more authentic context (agbatogun, 2014). if young learners cannot read or write in their mother tongue, they will not read or write in english (tomlinson, 2013). l2 reading among young learners suggests that the l1 performs a considerable role in learning to read in a second language and focuses on transferring skills from one language to another to develop different skills (tomlinson, 2013) successfully. in this study, a gap in reading in l1 was found to monitor students’ readings through summaries. reading in young learners teaching english as a foreign language to young learners is not the same as training adults or adolescents (hughes, 2010). young learners are still developing cognitively, linguistically, psychologically, and socially (tomlinson, 2013). for this reason, when teachers decide to teach to young learners related to any subject, it is necessary to scaffold their learning (bruner, 1985). in this study, students also monitor their progress by using a checklist after summarising the texts. teachers must assist children when they think about what they are doing, why, and how they do it. teachers become modellers to help students develop critical thinking skills. vygotsky (as cited in bransford, brown, & cocking, 2000) considered that if children are assisted early, they will be capable of doing anything by themselves in the future. teachers must be modellers of thinking and learning by generating meaningful learning environments and providing helpful tips and strategies. these suggestions were observed by the researcher in the development of this study. when children learn to read, they also learn the meaning of written words as they correspond to spoken words. in other words, they encounter written words that may lead them to understand spoken words (henning, 2016). in this way, as atwell said, children learn to read by reading (as cited in tomlinson, 2013). students interacted with the text by rereading it to write their summaries. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 98 reading comprehension reading comprehension is a process of interaction between the characteristics of the text, the reader, and the reading context. several cognitive processes such as attention, reading, perception, memorization, and phonemic awareness support the reader (pečjaka & pircb, 2018). comprehension is also considered a process in which readers make meaning by interacting with the text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the views of readers connected to the text (gamboa-gonzález, 2017). literacy learning initiates with foundational reading skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, word recognition or vocabulary, and fluency). it leads to reading and writing to construct meaning from texts. the foundational reading skills are utilized to comprehend texts using reading strategies (houghton mifflin harcourt, 2017). reading comprehension strategies can be classified under different dimensions or titles. they can be used during the whole reading process. some of the most important are posse (predict-organize-search-summarize-evaluate), pqrs (preview-question-read-summarize), summarize, and, questions (asikcan & pilten, 2018), among others. the purpose of reading is comprehension. the researcher measured understanding through the summaries. narrative texts narrative texts express what readers feel about an event. this event or chain of events is transmitted from the narrator’s perspective about the place, time, and people to provide information about a text (ozdemir, 2018). the program of international student assessment (pisa) determined narrative texts as the type of text where the content refers to properties of objects in time (organization for economic co-operation and development, 2015). narrative texts respond to questions about time, events, sequence of the events, and why the characters perform specific roles in the story. the elements of narrative texts are: ✓ the topic mentions the name of the story. ✓ characters are the people or animals that do the actions in a story. ✓ the setting is the place where and when the story happens. ✓ the sequence of events is the order in which the events or things happen. sequencing words like first, next, then, and last is used to connect the events in order. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 99 ✓ problem and solution tell the reader the essentials of the story and how it is solved. ✓ main ideas tell more about the topic of a story; and, details give more information about the main idea (houghton mifflin harcourt, 2017). summarizing summarizing is considered one of the reading strategies that permit students to understand the text more profoundly, and at the same time, it works as an indicator of understanding (pečjaka & pircb, 2018). summarizing helps students to explain the meaning of information and to store the information in long-term memory. summarizing enables students to differentiate their significant thoughts from others and express the knowledge in their own words (bıyıklı & doğan, 2015). critical aspects such as a sequence of events, main characters, and setting must be considered when you put together what is essential in narrative texts (freedman, 2012). summarizing also implies identifying main ideas, deleting irrelevant information, and reconstructing arguments from original texts (ozdemir, 2018). before asking students to write a summary, it is necessary to teach students how to do it by giving them strategies (sefer, ören, & konuk, 2016). these strategies include rereading the text carefully: underscoring critical words in each paragraph, identifying the story elements such as characters and setting, identifying main ideas and details, and the most important events. it also involves checking grammar and punctuation and using sequencing words, among others (ozdemir, 2018). when students write a summary of a narrative text, this text must be structured with an introduction, development, and conclusion paragraph. in the introduction, the characters, setting, and main ideas are incorporated. the most critical events, problems and solutions are included in the development. lastly, the outcome, consequence, response from the main character, and resolution of the story’s characters are inserted. in addition, students can include the theme, message, or lesson presented in the report (chen & su, 2012). these elements are found in the narrative texts that students have in their leading textbooks. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 100 perspectives students’ perspectives are the powerful determiners of learning that occurs in the classrooms. these perspectives are related to students’ thoughts, feelings, and reactions generated from a learning process (gentilucci, 2004). some inquiries were made to know the perspectives of young learners about studies related to this present investigation. these inquiries highlight some gaps to show that there are no studies done with young learners in primary schools about reading comprehension. however, some studies (pakzadian & rasekh, 2012; khoshsima & rezaeian, 2014; ozdemir, 2018) show that successful reading comprehension is also successful in summarizing. they have concluded that the teaching of outlining strategies improves reading comprehension. these studies were mostly done with high school and college students. in ecuador, there are no studies about reading comprehension and summaries at the primary level. methodology this study explored the link between summaries to improve reading comprehension and is a pre-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design. thyer (2012) stated that these types of studies are the simplest and test the effect of a treatment in a group of participants. thyer added that there are two types of design: post-treatment study and pretest-posttest design. this study used the second to determine the improvement of the independent variable (reading comprehension). it also integrated quantitative and qualitative instruments to triangulate data and raise reliability. quantitative instruments were the pre and post-test, a rubric, checklist, and a survey; the qualitative tool was the learning log. participants the participants in this study were 60 students from fifth grade at a bilingual private school in manta. there were 31 boys and 29 girls in this study. their learning styles and needs were varied. their english proficiency was a1 according to the cambridge young learners test taken at the beginning of the innovation. this test determined whether students could understand concise, simple texts a single phrase at a time, picking up familiar names, words, basic phrases, rereading as required, and knowledge with illustrated stories. the images helped them guess many of the content (council of europe, 2018). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 101 instruments to answer the first research question: to what extent will students improve their reading comprehension through writing summaries? a pretest was taken before the innovation. the test was a ten multiple-choice reading comprehension test based on a story from the textbook of students. it was given to detect if the students had the knowledge or the skill to summarize and identify the elements of narrative texts. in addition, a post-test with a narrative story was given to prove if students had improved their reading comprehension. the post-test was also a ten multiple-choice reading test from a story in the textbook. this post-test included a part where students had to summarize the same tale to measure that competence after being instructed on how to do it. these tests provided quantitative data to the study. the pretest and posttest were graded. the information was written in an excel document and then exported to software spss (statistical package for the social sciences) to obtain the descriptive statistic data like mean, mode, median, and standard deviation. once the descriptive statistics were collected, the effect size was calculated to answer the second research question: to what extent will students include narrative texts in a well-structured summary comprised of three paragraphs? a checklist was used to verify if the students applied some steps and elements. students used it to remember the details and the structure they included during the innovation or not in their summaries. results of this instrument are presented in frequencies. additionally, this study implemented a rubric to assess specific components or indicators in the summaries to support the study results. this rubric had five indicators to answer this second research question. it was also used to improve the quality of the students’ summaries. students received constant feedback based on the results of the rubric. finally, to answer the third research question: what are students’ perspectives towards this innovation? this study included learning logs. the learning logs were utilized at the end of some sessions. it provided students’ perspectives about the sessions during the research and how useful it would be to apply the innovation in the future. it was a tool to reveal how the students reacted to the process and content. with the learning log, students expressed their feelings during the innovation. the data collected from the learning logs were organized and tabulated in excel to journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 102 classify data according to patterns and main categories related to each question to support quantitative results. in addition, a survey was given at the end of the innovation with six questions to gather quantitative data. these questions analyzed students’ perspectives towards elements of narrative texts or stories, summary structure, and summary strategies. as the participants were children, the options had faced each question so students could understand before selecting the option. the survey had categories of totally disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and totally agree. cronbach’s alpha was run to know the reliability of the study. findings regarding the first question of this study: to what extent will students improve their reading comprehension through summaries? the results obtained from the pretest and post-tests showed a meaningful difference in comprehension and summarization. the results of the tests are shown in table 1. table 1. pre-test and post-test n minimum maximum mean std. deviation pre-test 60 2.00 10.00 5.96 .41 post-test 60 6.00 10.00 9.10 .10 table 1 demonstrates the minimum, maximum, means, and standard deviation obtained from the pretest and post-test. the mean from the pretest (5.96) showed a notable improvement in the post-test (9.10). additionally, the results point out a cohen’s d (mean of pretest, mean of post-test/ pooled standard deviation) = 1.67, which means a large effect size. bialo and sivinkachala (1996) mentioned that represents a significant consideration about using summaries effectively as a strategy instruction applied in the english school program to improve reading comprehension in students. to answer the second question: to what extent students will include the elements of narrative texts in a well-structured summary comprised of three paragraphs? a rubric was used to evaluate the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 103 final summary. in this rubric, students demonstrated how much they achieved in each criterion. the rubric was included at the end of the innovation to assess the summary from a story. in this case, 83% of students included the story elements in their summaries, 80% used sequencing words in their summaries, and 68.3% of students’ summaries contained the most critical events, as indicated in table 2. table 2. results of the rubric to assess summaries component excellent good below average none important events 58.3 21.7 10 0 sequencing words 80 11.7 8 0 story elements 83.3 16.7 0 0 main ideas 53.3 36.7 10 0 table 3 shows that almost all the components reached the maximum grade that was 2. students mainly included all the features in their summaries. students have precisely the story elements with a similar mean in all the components. table 3. comparison of mean and standard deviation of the rubric component mean standard deviation important events 1.7 0.4 sequencing words 1.8 0.3 story elements 1.9 0.2 main ideas 1.6 0.4 besides the rubric, a checklist was applied to show students’ self-assessment and worked as a reflection during the innovation. students had to mark in “yes” or “no” the elements that their summaries contained. table 4 compiles the results of the last checklist. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 104 table 4. checklist of the elements of summaries yes no topic 58 2 main characters 58 2 setting 58 2 sequencing words (first, next, then, last) 57 3 main ideas 55 5 problem 58 2 solution 59 1 theme or lesson of the story 39 21 the checklist results show that more than fifty students included almost all the checklist elements in their summaries as a self-assessment. these results represent that students know to elaborate summaries. most of them used sequencing words. students included in their summaries most of the elements of a story, such as main characters, setting, problem, solution, and events in sequence. a significant number of students included a moral, message, or lesson they understood from the story. regarding the third question: what are the student’s perspectives towards this innovation? a survey was applied to demonstrate which elements students included in the summaries and their perspectives towards the invention. the survey results evidenced that students strongly agreed that summaries helped them improve their reading comprehension of narrative texts. table 5. students’ perspectives towards summaries. questions strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree i can identify the elements of a story. 47 11 1 0 1 i reread the story to identify the relationship between the characters and events to write a summary. 39 18 2 1 0 i included the elements of a text in my summary. 54 5 1 0 0 my summary helped me to understand the story. 54 6 0 0 0 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 105 table 5 represents the students’ opinions related to the components of the survey. they strongly agreed with each element. these results reveal the students consider that summaries are an excellent strategy to comprehend the stories better. a learning log was included at the end of the innovation to support research question number 3. learning logs allowed students to express their perspectives after employing summaries to improve their comprehension. students remarked that summaries helped them to understand the stories better. they added that summaries could be used in other subjects such as language, science, and social studies. students mentioned that summaries could comprehend descriptive and informational texts where strategies as rereading, identifying the elements of a story, and most important events are applied when reading. discussions in this study, the results of using summaries to improve reading comprehension have been successful. students demonstrated a meaningful improvement when writing their summaries as the study conducted by hooshang and forouzan (2014). in the beginning, students required a lot of monitoring and feedback. students used a checklist to make sure they included the elements of the summary. the results indicated that students incorporated the aspects of the summaries. according to the first research question: to what extent students will improve their reading comprehension through summaries? summarizing helped students to understand the story as the study conducted by pečjaka and pircb (2018). additionally, students incorporated the story elements in their summaries, as mentioned in the study of freedman (2012). the story elements that students included the most in their summaries were: characters, problem, setting, and solution. for the second question: to what extent will students include the elements of narrative texts in a well-structured summary comprised of three paragraphs? few students could elaborate a well-structured summary with an introduction, development, and conclusion paragraph. as chen and su (2012) suggested in their study, the elements of a story were incorporated in the paragraphs. however, many students preferred to summarize using sequencing words (first, then, next, and last). these sequencing words facilitated the elaboration of summaries to improve the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 106 comprehension of narrative texts. it was also evident that most students included in their summaries some critical aspects such as main characters and settings that belong to narrative texts (freedman, 2012). finally, for the last research question: what are the students’ perspectives towards this innovation? the students expressed that the summaries facilitated their reading comprehension based on the survey results and the learning logs. students determined that if they were taught how to summarize the stories and strategies to make summaries, they could comprehend the stories better. many students expressed their logs by rereading, underscoring keywords, identifying the story elements such as characters, setting, actual events, problem, and solution. these strategies were mentioned by ozdemir (2018). conclusion and implication this study demonstrated that students who had efficient reading comprehension were also efficient in summarizing. they become conscious of the process implied to understand texts better. students were more confident in summarizing by using the sequencing words than elaborating a well-structured summary of three paragraphs. students showed to be mechanical in doing almost all their summaries with the sequencing words, even when they were told to choose either the summary with three paragraphs or the sequencing words. students expressed that summaries facilitated their comprehension and worked as a barometer of understanding. they could use the summary strategies in other subjects such as science, social studies, and math. they will transfer this strategy to other issues, as tomlinson (2013) sustained. according to these findings, summaries could be considered an effective strategy to teach students to improve their reading comprehension of other texts and fields. additionally, students used a dictionary to find unknown words on their own. students became autonomous to acquire new knowledge from tools such as a dictionary. furthermore, as this study worked with primary students, it can be implemented in elementary schools. summaries to improve reading comprehension of narrative texts require teachers’ preparation of extra materials that students usually do not have available. teachers must be prepared about how to teach students to get acquainted with the reading comprehension skill. teaching students how to summarize a story demands time and practice, and this strategy is one of the best ways to evidence the student’s understanding in oral or written form. lastly, teaching journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 107 summaries and the approach to improve comprehension should be included as part of an annual plan as a requisite for different subjects, especially from lower primary grades in english; summaries can be applied in other issues. references agbatogun, a. (2014). developing learners’ second language communicative competence through active learning: clickers or communicative approach? educational technology & society, 17(2), 257–269. retrieved from: https://www.ds.unipi.gr/et&s/journals/17_2/21.pdf asikcan, m., & pilten, g. (2018). investigation of reflecting reading comprehension strategies on teaching environment among pre-service classroom teachers. international electronic journal of elementary education, 10(4), 397-405. https://doi.org/10.26822/iejee.2018438129 bialo, e. r. & sivin-kachala, j. (1996). the effectiveness of technology in schools: a summary of recent research. slmq, 25(1), 1-14. bano, j., jabeen, z., & quitoshi, s. (2018). perceptions of teachers about the role of parents in developing reading habits of children to improve their academic performance in schools. journal of education and educational development, 5(1), 42-59 retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1180618.pdf bıyıklı, c., & doğan, n. (2015). the effect of learning strategies used for rehearsal on the academic success. education and science, 40(181), 311-327. https://doi.org/10.15390/eb.2015.2728 bransford, j., brown, a., & cocking, r. (2000). how people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. washington: national academy of sciences. bruner, j. (1985). child’s talk: learning to use language. child language teaching and therapy, 1(1), 111-114. https://doi.org/10.1177/026565908500100113 centro regional para el fomento del libro en américa latina y el caribe [cerlalc]. (2016). ecuador: proyecto de cultura impulsa el libro y fomenta las actividades de lectura. [ecuador: culture project promotes the book and motivates reading activities] retrieved from: https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-decultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-lasactividades-de-lectura/ chen, y., & su, s., (2012). a genre-based approach to teaching efl summary writing. elt journal, 66(2), 79-95. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccro61 https://www.ds.unipi.gr/et%26s/journals/17_2/21.pdf https://www.ds.unipi.gr/et%26s/journals/17_2/21.pdf https://doi.org/10.26822/iejee.2018438129 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1180618.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1180618.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1180618.pdf https://doi.org/10.15390/eb.2015.2728 https://doi.org/10.1177/026565908500100113 https://cerlalc.org/ecuador https://cerlalc.org/ecuador https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://cerlalc.org/ecuador-proyecto-de-cultura-impulsa-el-libro-y-fomenta-las-actividades-de-lectura/ https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccro61 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 108 council of europe. (2018). the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge university press. retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 freedman, l. (2012). reading to write: summarizing. retrieved from https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/summarize/ gamboa-gonzález, á. (2017). reading comprehension in an english as a foreign language setting: teaching strategies for sixth-graders based on the interactive model of reading. folios, 45, 159-175. retrieved may 26, 2019, from http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s012348702017000100012&lng=en&tlng=en gentilucci, j. (2004). improving school learning: the student perspective. the educational forum, 68, 133-143. retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=improving+school+learning%3a+the+student+&id=ej724877 geva, e. (2006). learning to read in a second language: research, implications, and recommendations for services. in: r. tremblay, m. boivin, r. peters (eds.), encyclopedia on early childhood development [online]. http://www.childencyclopedia.com/secondlanguage/according-experts/learning-read-secondlanguage-research-implications. henning, e. (2016). reading as learning in the primary school. south african journal of childhood education, 6(1), 1-6. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.504 hooshang, k. & forouzan r. (2014). the effect of summarizing strategy on reading comprehension of iranian intermediate efl learners. international journal of language and linguistics, 2, 134-139. retrieved from: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=501&d oi=10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 houghton mifflin harcourt. (2017). journeys. florida, united states: fountas irene hughes, a. (2010). using stories (and books) as scaffolding for our young language learners. advances in language and literary studies, 1(2), 178-199. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.1n.2p.178 khoshsima, h., & rezaeian., f. (2014). the effect of summarizing strategy on reading comprehension of iranian intermediate efl learners. international journal of language and linguistics, 2(3),134-139. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 ministerio de educación. (2012). ecuadorian in-service. english teachers standards: the english language learning standards. retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_in gles_opt.pdf https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/summarize/ https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/summarize/ http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0123-48702017000100012&lng=en&tlng=en http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0123-48702017000100012&lng=en&tlng=en http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0123-48702017000100012&lng=en&tlng=en http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0123-48702017000100012&lng=en&tlng=en https://eric.ed.gov/?q=improving+school+learning%3a+the+student+&id=ej724877 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.504 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.504 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=501&doi=10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=501&doi=10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=501&doi=10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=501&doi=10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.1n.2p.178 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140203.11 https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/09/estandares_2012_ingles_opt.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 109 ministerio de educación. (2014). acuerdo no. 0052-14. [agreement no.0052-14]. retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/03/acuerdo-05214.pdf ministerio de educación. (2016). programa para el foment de la lectura “yo leo” [program to motivate reading “i read”] retrieved from https://educacion.gob.ec/programa-para-el-fomento-dela-lectura-yo-leo/ ministry of education. (2004). literacy for learning. retrieved from: http://www.eworkshop.on.ca/edu/resources/guides/exppanel_456_literacy.pdf olusegun, s. (2015). constructivism learning theory: a paradigm for teaching and learning. iosr journal of research & method in education, 5(6), 66-70. retrieved from: http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version1/i05616670.pdf ozdemir, s. (2018). effect of summarization strategies teaching on strategy usage and narrative text summarization success. universal journal of educational research, 6(10), 2199-2209. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2018.061018 pakzadian, m., & rasekh, a., (2012). the effects of using summarization strategies on iranian efl learners’ reading comprehension. english linguistic research, 1(1), 118-125. https://doi.org/10.5539/elr.v1n1p118 pečjaka, s., & pircb, t. (2018). developing summarizing skills in 4th-grade students: intervention programme effects. international electronic journal of elementary education, 10(5), 571-581. retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf. doi 10.26822/iejee.2018541306 organization for economic co-operation and development. (2015). pisa 2015 assessment and analytical framework. paris: oecd publishing. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255425 rios, r. & valcarcel, a. (2005) reading: a meaningful way to promote learning english in high school. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras, 1(6), 60-72. retrieved from: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11022/11694 sefer, a., ören, z., & konuk, z. (2016). a student-focused study: strategy of text summary writing and assessment rubric. education and science, 41(186), 163-183. https://doi.org10.15390/eb.2016.4603 https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/03/acuerdo-052-14.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/03/acuerdo-052-14.pdf https://educacion.gob.ec/programa-para-el-fomento-de-la-lectura-yo-leo/ https://educacion.gob.ec/programa-para-el-fomento-de-la-lectura-yo-leo/ http://www.eworkshop.on.ca/edu/resources/guides/exppanel_456_literacy.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/vol-5%20issue-6/version-1/i05616670.pdf https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2018.061018 https://doi.org/10.5539/elr.v1n1p118 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1184949.pdf.%2520doi%252010.26822/iejee.2018541306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255425 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11022/11694 https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/11022/11694 https://doi.org10.15390/eb.2016.4603 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 110 taufiqur, i. (2017). classroom interaction in english language class for students of economics education. arab world english journal, 8(2), 192-207. retrieved from https://www.awej.org/images/allissues/volume8/volume8number2june/14.pdf thyer, b. (2012). quasi-experimental research designs. oxford: oxford university press. tomlinson, b. (2013). applied linguistics and materials development. london: bloomsbury. unesco institute for statistics. (2017). more than one-half of children and adolescents are not learning worldwide. retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/news https://www.awej.org/images/allissues/volume8/volume8number2june/14.pdf https://www.awej.org/images/allissues/volume8/volume8number2june/14.pdf https://en.unesco.org/news journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 126 article history: submitted: 27 april 2021 reviewed: 2 may 2021 4 may 2021 edited: 24 may 2021 accepted: 6 july 2021 a qualitative research on self-regulation practices of elt students in reading class harsya danang pradana *) , ouda eda tena sanata dharma university, indonesia *) corresponding author’s email: haretranslations@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11625 abstract this paper investigates the self-regulation practices in reading classes among students from a private university in yogyakarta. in an era where students and their thinking process are the centers of the teaching and learning process, each student’s metacognition skills need to adjust the teaching methods used inside and outside the classroom. to that end, students must be aware of their metacognitive skills and self-regulating behaviors. the research method used in this paper was the quantitative method. the researchers used the interview and focused group discussion (fgd) method on gaining information regarding students' awareness of their metacognitive skills and self-regulation habits. the participants were students from a predetermined private university in yogyakarta, where the reading classes are known to be studentcentered. the results showed that while the students could create strategies and reflect upon said strategies, they still lacked a critical component of self-regulation, namely the preparation phase. this discovery means that the students need to be aware of the importance of preparing to meet specific goals and self-motivation. keywords: metacognition; self-regulation; reading; english language education students =========================================================================== mailto:haretranslations@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11625 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11625&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 127 introduction background of the research the advent of the 4.0 industrial revolution has connected the people of the world. with the presence of a digital world, people have been more connected to each other than ever before. naturally, this has affected many aspects of our lives, including education. while it has not been the paradigm shift, it was prophesized in the 1980s. it has nonetheless changed – for better or worse – the face of education (mirzajani, mahmud, ayub, & wong, 2016). universities are beginning to implement e-learning facilities in their web pages to positive results, allowing them access to learning materials and tasks from the comfort of one’s home (cole et al., 2014). while some teachers are still struggling to implement ict in their classes, ict in classrooms is almost universally regarded as inevitable, even by the teachers (sánchez, marcos, gonzález, & guanlin, 2012). some lecturers have been exploring and implementing student-centered methods into their classroom environment (robinson, neergaard, tanggaard, & krueger, 2016). for higher education classes where the lecturers are not always available in classes, the students need to learn by themselves. however, students are more reluctant to ask others about learning the older they are (dunn, rakes, g. c., & rakes, t. a., 2014), which may lead to clueless university-level students using ineffective learning strategies or any strategy at all. however, as presley stated that students develop self-assessment skills, although the process takes time (as cited in mbato, 2013). knowing the students’ metacognitive skills and ability to self-regulate is essential to understand their learning capability. if the students know their limits and the strategies that work for them, they can learn better (mega, ronconi, & de beni, 2014). students who can self-regulate can develop adequate language skills in language learning using the appropriate strategies (mbato, 2013). when a self-regulated student reads a text, they involve themselves in “constructive responsive reading”, where they read with a articular purpose and actively construct meanings from the text (van kraayenoord, 2010). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 128 this research determines self-regulation among english language education students from a private university in yogyakarta. during the researchers’ time as a student in that university, lecturers at the private university implement student-centric learning methods in their teaching and learning method. sometimes, the lecturers have to be away from the class, which requires them to learn independently. the researcher did this research to know if these students' methods fit their learning habits and help them learn. importance of the study this study provides insight into students' self-regulation practices from a pre-determined private university in yogyakarta, where the students are considerably older and more mature. in other words, they are beyond their critical period hypothesis age. specifically, this research inquired the self-regulation practices of students from the english language education department, pre-service teachers training to become researchers. this research focused on the self-regulation skills the students use for reading activities to narrow the field. according to noursi and dhabi (2016), reading is one of the most basic yet essential skills for an english learner. past studies and gaps of the research past studies regarding pre-service teachers and self-regulation have been plentiful and varied. these range from ones researching the connection between self-regulated learners and their understanding of self-learning behaviors (buzza & allinotte, 2013) to a long-spanning study of self-regulation for ict learning tools (armakolas & mikroyannidis, 2019). while there have been considerable research connecting pre-service teachers and the concept of self-regulation, what makes this research different from the others is its in-depth approach to the three components of self-regulation, according to zimmerman (2010) namely preparation, monitoring, and self-reflection. research question: the research question for this research is: how is the practice of self-regulation in reading classes among the english language education students of a private university in yogyakarta? journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 129 research outline the research paper is outlined as a regular research article. the first section will be the introductory section, containing the background of the research and the research question. the second section of the paper is the literature review. the literary sources cited in this research are mentioned and grouped into different research components. it includes metacognition, selfregulation, reading, self-regulation in esl classes, and pre-service teachers and self-regulation. the literature review also contains previous, similar research projects that took place before this research article. the third section is the research method, where the reader can find details on how this research was conducted. the fourth section contains the findings and discussions, and the final section is the conclusion. literature review metacognition metacognition has been referred to as “thinking about the contents and the processes of one’s mind (winne & azevedo, 2019). it is a necessary skill for learners to possess, allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the subject. recently, there has been an increased interest in developing metacognition for learning (cleary, velardi, & schnaidman, 2017) and other aspects of life such as analytical thinking (thompson & johnson, 2014). in addition, metacognition can better understand current collaborative learning environments (garrison & akyol, 2015). winne and azevedo (2019) in the metacognition cambridge handbook mentioned a framework for understanding metacognition of the knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. according to winne and azevedo (2019), knowledge of cognition consists of declarative (factual information and concepts of a task), procedural (details on how to apply said information and concepts), and conditional knowledge (ongoing assessment of understanding, tasks, and goals). meanwhile, regulation of cognition includes planning, monitoring, and evaluating plans and strategies that suit one’s learning habits. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 130 self-regulation self-regulation is the active usage of strategies to attain academic goals, generally shown by a motivated approach to learning (woogul, myung-jin, & bong, 2014). in addition to being aware and able to perform metacognitive processes, students capable of self-regulation are also mindful of the two other parts of self-regulation, namely motivation and behavior. metacognitively, these students can devise plans, observe, and see how those plans have successfully been implemented on themselves. motivationally, the students see themselves as competent and willing to learn. behaviorally, these students can create an environment that promotes learning. zimmerman is widely considered the father of metacognition, further detailed the process of self-regulation into three phases: forethought, performance, and self-reflection (zimmerman, schunk, & dibenedetto, 2017). these phases occur during each step of the learning process. the forethought phase, where the learner sets a goal, plans strategies, and increases their motivation, appears before the learning process. the performance phase occurs during the learning process. the self-reflection is where the students see if the strategies are practical and adjust to the stated strategy. it takes place after the learning phase. students who are capable of performing all three steps of self-regulation are called “self-regulated students”. naturally, all students have different degrees of self-regulation, and some factors can influence self-regulation, from the regulation of emotion to self-control (mcclelland, geldhof, cameron, & wanless, 2015). when properly motivated, self-regulated students use specific strategies that employ selfefficacy (woogul et al., 2014). in layman’s terms, they use proper techniques. different students may employ various techniques to approach similar issues (wael, asnur, & ibrahim, 2018), and those who are self-regulated chose strategies that fit their learning style. application of selfregulated learning intervention to a learning environment show improved achievement scores and is considered a socially valid intervention (cleary et al., 2017). it shows the increasing students’ awareness regarding the concept of self-regulated learning. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 131 reading skills reading is a more complex linguistics skill because it requires a deep understanding of the material being read to extract meaning from the text (k. t. c. chen & s. c. l. chen, 2015). policymakers would like all teachers to use effective materials, which puts a good amount of pressure on the researchers. reading is, essentially, an exercise to comprehend and construct meaning in a piece of text (van kraayenoord, 2010). as such, psychological and educational research regarding reading mainly covers the strategic nature of reading. for example, the practice of reading comprehension. on paper, it is as simple as reading a text and understanding its meaning. however, many elements take place during reading comprehension, including motivation, vocabulary, cognitive strategy, and of course, metacognition and self-regulation (israel, 2014). metacognition in reading according to van kraayenoord (2010), the focus of instructing metacognitive and comprehension-related strategies should focus on teaching multiple strategies instead of just one method. hence, the students can mix and match strategies. in her research, she listed seven strategies. the first one has informed strategies for learning, which focuses on the declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of reading and the connected strategies to increase the students’ learning comprehension. the second one is reciprocal teaching, which teaches four ways to comprehend a text – predicting, questioning, summarizing, and clarifying. the third one is the direct explanation of strategies, where the teachers explain strategies to be used by the students and how the strategy can help them. the fourth one is transactional strategies instruction, which promotes the idea that students are flexible and should choose various strategies that work for them. the fifth one, concept oriented reading instruction, emphasizes motivation and combines it with strategies. the sixth one, collaborative strategic reading, uses multiple comprehension strategies alongside collaborative learning. the final one, peer assisted learning strategies, utilizes verbal materials and makes the students work together to address issues. some of these strategies can and should be used with each other. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 132 self-regulation in esl classes self-regulation in esl classes broadly covers two categories: the students’ overall ability to self-regulate their learning or the students’ display of self-regulation while learning a new skill. research regarding the first category would investigate if the students displayed self-regulatory characteristics (fadda, 2019) or the effectiveness of self-regulation in learning (vasu, mei fung, nimehchisalem, & rashid, 2020). on the other hand, research regarding the second category would see how the students self-regulate themselves when exposed to a new skill (fathi, ahmadnejad, & yousofi., 2019). the second category can sometimes reveal further information; research done by fathi et al. (2019) regarding the introduction of blogs into efl writing instruction showed that the students’ self-efficacy decreased despite their increased motivation to learn. pre-service teachers and self-regulation research regarding pre-service teachers has shown self-regulatory strategies and metacognition. buzza and allinote (2013) analyzed student teachers and their ability to establish self-regulatory learning. the result showed the importance of teaching student teachers the concept of self-regulated learning. meanwhile, a research by alenazi showed that pre-service teachers could employ metacognitive strategies to learn the context and skills required to complete a course (alenazi, 2017). the addition of new skills can add to the student teacher’s ability to self-regulate, giving them more avenues to improve their self-efficacy (armakolas & mikroyannidis, 2019). related research to put this study into context, the researchers have included three studies regarding selfregulation strategies in this research. the first study was conducted by broadbent and poon (2015) regarding the self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments. this study found that the students employ strategies to achieve academic success, including time management, metacognition, effort regulation, and critical thinking (broadbent & poon, 2015). their study was done on a university level through an online survey, unlike this current research. the researchers did not specify the faculties or departments of the students. another study regarding self-regulation strategies was done by journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 133 cosentino (2017), which inquired about self-regulation strategies on reading comprehension, motivation for learning, and self-efficacy with struggling readers. the study showed that the struggling leaders had strategies to help with reading (cosentino, 2017). cosentino’s study was done to inquire about self-regulation strategies for reading, but there are some differences between said and this research. cosentino’s study used a quantitative instrument survey, while this research used two qualitative methods: questionnaire and focus group discussion. in addition, cosentino’s respondents had difficulties with the reading activity, while the study participants may or may not have problems. the third study was done by liu et al. (2014), regarding the college students’ motivation and learning strategies profiles and academic achievement. the main difference between this study and this research is the methods used. their research uses the quantitative method, while this research uses the qualitative approach. methodology this research used a qualitative research method, specifically the descriptive qualitative design. descriptive qualitative design is a research design used to identify descriptive qualities in a specific ethnic group (creswell, 2012). since the researchers wanted to know a certain quality in the students, namely the self-regulatory strategies of the students for reading classes, the qualitative method will be used. this research took place in a private university in yogyakarta. one of the researchers was a student there and has been familiar with its accessibility, student body, and lecturers. the researcher knew that the participants had taken reading classes in the first and second semesters, meaning that they were likely to have developed some strategies for those classes. in addition, the researcher’s familiarity will make the data-gathering process for this research more accessible. the participants of this research will be students from the 2016 batch. they are chosen because, by the time this research took place, they would have taken the mandatory reading classes for the university, which makes them likely to have developed a strategy for it. the sampling method used in this research will be the purposive sampling method. this method is used if the researcher wants to draw participants with specific criteria (taherdoost, 2018). the only standard for the participants of this study is that the participants must have attended the reading classes of the university. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 134 to gather the necessary data for the research, the researchers employed several different data collection methods. the first method is the questionnaire method. although the questionnaire method is usually used in quantitative study projects, some qualitative studies also use questionnaires for long-range or wide-range participants (travers, morisano, & locke, 2015). the second method used by the researchers is the focus group discussion or fgd. the focus group discussion method is used when the researcher is looking to obtain data from a selected group of individuals instead of a statistic representative of the broader population (nyumba, wilson, derrick, & mukherjee, 2018). the researchers employed the focus group discussion method to find additional details regarding the participants’ reading strategies. to create the questions for the questionnaire and the fgd, the researchers looked into zimmerman’s three phases of self-regulation (zimmerman et al., 2017). the three phases are forethought, where the learner analyzes the task and sets their goals; performance, where the learners start the learning process and apply the strategies; and self-reflection, where the learners see where if their strategies have been successful and improves upon it (zimmerman et al., 2017). because the researchers plan on investigating the reading strategies of the participants, the questions were adjusted accordingly. the data collection method started with the researchers contacting potential participants through the whatsapp application. since qualitative researches do not have a set limit of participants (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2011), the researchers asked if any students in the shared group are willing to become participants. through this method, the researchers gathered five participants. the five participants were chosen because of their availability and one of the researchers’ familiarity with them: having been students in the private university for some time, the students have taken the mandatory reading classes of said university. initially, the researchers aimed to employ a face-to-face interview method to conduct open-ended interviews with each participant. however, the researchers switched to the questionnaire and focused group discussion method because of better data validity. after the researchers had gathered participants for the research, the researchers sent them questionnaires to answer. the questionnaire is designed similar to a set of open-ended interview questions, and the items of said questionnaires are designed to gather data relevant to the research questions (arsel, 2017). after the questionnaires were sent, the researchers also asked the students to conduct a focus group journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 135 discussion. to make it convenient to the participants, the researchers came to the students’ location, namely their private university, to run the focus group discussion. the researchers asked similar questions to see if the participants had something to add to the information. the focus group discussion session took place on saturday, november 23rd, 2019. to ensure the participants’ identities, they were each assigned a letter instead of a name. those letters are d, s, h, r, and n. for validity reasons, the recordings for each questionnaire were transcribed into a microsoft word document. for the coding method, the researchers used the open, axial, and selective coding methods. coding is a method to catalog and sort the interview results or other data gathering methods (cohen et al., 2011). the first step of coding is open coding, which will be done by labeling the texts to categorize them. then, axial coding will be performed. axial coding involves labeling groups of available codes that are similar in meaning. third, selective coding is to see which data is most relevant to answer the research questions. finally, the information was written down in a report that can be seen in the next section of this research paper. findings in the beginning, the researchers set out to find out the self-regulation habits and practices employed by english language education department students in reading classes at a private university in yogyakarta. it came from the desire to see the students succeed in the post4.0 industrial era when student-centered learning expects students to learn by themselves. if the students are capable of performing self-regulatory practices, they will adapt to a period of selfstudy. the study focuses on the students’ practices during reading classes and assignments given in said reading classes to narrow the scope of the research and make it more focused. when sufficiently self-regulated, students of a particular language can develop their linguistic skills and assign meanings to what they read. as such, the researchers used the research question: “how is the practice of self-regulation in reading classes among the english language education students at a private university in yogyakarta?”. the research used an online questionnaire and an offline focus group discussion session with five private university students. after distributing the online questionnaire and conducting a focus group discussion to gather relevant data, the acquired data journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 136 were analyzed through multiple phases of coding, namely open, axial, and selective coding, before the findings from those coding phases. according to zimmermann (2010), self-regulation is divided into three phases: preparation or forethought, monitoring or performance, and self-reflection. to learn about the level of self-regulation employed by english language education department students of a private university in yogyakarta, the researchers created a questionnaire. they hosted a focused group discussion to gather data from the participants. the researchers made their set of questions and focus group discussions, and they modeled the questionnaire and the focus group discussion on the three phases of self-regulation. after the data gathered and analyzed, the researchers found that all research participants employed an incomplete version of self-regulation. in brief, none of the participants utilized the preparation phase of self-regulation, meaning that they did not tailor their strategies to what they expect to learn. however, all the research participants engage their set of strategies when learning reading or performing reading exercises and mentioned their strategy, showing that they employed the monitoring phase of self-regulation. finally, all except one participant felt that their strategy could be improved. those who mentioned that they could improve their strategy even said they would improve their strategy on the spot, showing that they could perform self-reflection. details on which participants fulfill which criteria of self-regulation can be seen in table 1, and more detailed findings regarding which entry preparation the preparation phase involved setting goals or performing acts of self-motivation before the beginning of the activity. in the questionnaire and the focus group discussion, none of the research participants mentioned that they set their learning goals or increase their motivation to do reading activities or exercises. none of the participants fulfilled the criteria of the preparation phase of self-regulation. even though they employed strategies in learning reading and claim to improve said strategies, they did not analyze the task before the learning process, set learning goals, or increase their motivation. the participants did not have a good enough grasp of the preparation phase, meaning that they treated any activities as if they were not necessary. the amount of self-regulation employed by a learner can be affected by many factors, including emotion (mega et al., 2014). the incomplete self-regulation process displayed journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 137 by the participants could be caused by the participants’ lack of any particular feeling towards the activity, treating them as another activity without knowing the end goal. table 1. phases of self-regulation employed by english language education students of a private university in yogyakarta on reading classes and activities preparation monitoring self-reflection d no yes yes s no yes yes/no h no yes yes r no yes yes n no. yes yes monitoring the monitoring phase was done during the activity itself, and it usually involved strategies to deal with said activities to create the desired outcome. this step involved experimenting with said strategies on the spot, switching to different strategies to respond to changing events. in contrast with their lack of preparation, the participants employed several different strategies for performing activities in the reading class, showing that they had a good grasp of the monitoring phase of self-regulation. all participants used strategies during reading, and some of them even try to experiment with them. strategies employed by the participants gathered during the research include memorization (p1.2 every time i read something i write down…using small notes…then i memorize them), creating keynotes (p1.3 in my case, i write it down and use the stabilo…use a pen on important points and make keynotes. i read them all first, and i underline them. once i know the keynotes, like “oh, that’s how it is, that’s what connects with this…) and repetition (p2.1 if i read something and i find a word i do not understand, i will translate it and then read it again…like that) employing different strategies for different activities is a proof that the participants are motivated enough to learn (woogul et al., 2014), especially when they journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 138 monitor their learning to see if their strategy had worked. the research proved that the participants were motivated to learn, as they all devised their strategies. self-reflection the last part of the self-regulation circle is self-reflection. the students evaluate their strategies after being employed and create adjustments to improve their strategies for the future. unlike the changes performed in the monitoring phase, these changes were after the dust settled and the activity's outcome. out of the five participants of this study, all participants feel that their strategies have helped them perform reading activities in reading classes. during the focused group discussion session, one of the participants finished presenting her thesis proposal to a lecturer board. when asked if the strategies she had employed were helpful for her, she stated that it helped her a lot (p1.4 helpful, like that’s what i did on the presentation). despite this, only four of the participants thought that their strategies could be improved. the participant said otherwise, stating that she could not find any ideas on improving her strategies (p2.3 i can’t…). on the other hand, four participants felt that their strategy could still be improved. some mentioned ways to improve them, such as creating an audio recording of the memorized items (p5.4 make it into audio form…maybe), taking important points (p1.5 i would take the important points, so i don’t feel nervous…like that) and underlining her writing (p3.4 as for me…i think…i’ll add…like when i know the meaning and things, i’ll underline the important things). the four participants were capable of judging themselves and their strategies and reacting if said judgments found themselves or their strategies inadequate. self-reflection is an essential part of the learning process, and students who can employ self-reflection properly will be able to use their resources more effectively (chen, chavez, ong & gunderson, 2017). judging from the fact that all five participants were aware of their strategies and four out of five participants could improve their strategy, english language students at the private university could self-reflect on reading classes and exercises. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 139 table 2. self-regulation practices of english language education students from a private university in yogyakarta during reading sorted by phases theme/findings translated statement performance/monitoring p.1.1, p1.2, p1.3, p3.1, p4.1, p4.2, p5.1, p5.2, p2.1, p3.2, p4.2, p3.6 self-control p1.1 back then, i like to uh, like comic books…mostly comic books, right? then, i look for the vocabs. p1.2 every time i read something, i write down…using small notes…then i memorize them. p1.3 in my case, i write it down and use the stabilo…use a pen on important points and make keynotes. i read them all first, and i underline them. once i know the keynotes, like “oh that’s how it is, that’s what connects with this… p3.1 novels…internet…and uh…dictionaries? to, how to read them. p4.1 i usually use books p4.2 if i don’t understand something, i write it down p5.1 if i don’t understand, i use the dictionary… p5.2 i…repeat. repetition. p2.1 p2.2 if i read something and i find a word i do not understand, i will translate it then read it again…like that. p3.2 i usually uh…my strategy is…more into repetition p4.3 yes…(nods) p3.6 usually i write them down…sometimes i’ll…put them on walls…like that. when i’ve memorized it, i’ll take the note and switch it for another one. self-reflection p3.3, p2.2, p4.3, p5.3, p1.4 self-judgement p1.5, p3.4, p2.3, p4.4, p3.5, p5.4 self-reaction p3.3 yes, it helps a lot p2.2 very, very helpful p4.3 hm (affirmative) p5.3 yes p1.4 helpful, like that’s what i did on the presentation p1.5 i would take the important points, so i don’t get nervous…like that p3.4 as for me, i think…i’ll add…like when i know the meaning and things, i’ll underline the important things p2.3 i can’t… p4.4 well…if i have memorized it…i would write them down… p3.5 i’m the same p5.4 make it into audio form…maybe journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 140 discussion at first, the researchers set out to find the self-regulatory practices employed by students at a private university in yogyakarta during reading classes and activities to find out if they can adapt and survive in the post-4.0 industrial revolution classroom at the center of the learning process. to this end, the researchers employed two different methods, namely questionnaires and focus group discussion, to gather data and translate them into the research findings. the findings concluded that the english language education students at this private university in yogyakarta employed an incomplete variation of self-regulation when performing reading activities, monitoring their learning strategies, and reflecting upon said strategies, but not prepare them. while they used strategies in learning, some could not improve upon said strategies, and none of them employs any self-motivation increase or task analysis. according to cosentino’s (2017) study, this lack of self-regulation perfection can be caused by their lack of knowledge, exposure, and experience with proper self-regulation strategies. it falls to the educators to explain self-regulation to the students and encourage them to self-regulate their studies. in addition, the types of self-regulatory strategies employed by the students have different effects on academic performance. according to broadbent and poon’s (2015) research, the most positive effects are time management, metacognition, and critical thinking. while elaboration, rehearsal, and organization have the least amount of effect. this fact underlines self-regulation employed by the students and which method should be employed to improve academic performance. the students' employed strategies could improve upon them. they had some degree of understanding of metacognition. still, the strategies themselves (such as repetition and memorization) are included in rehearsal, one of the methods with the lowest effect. finally, research by liu et al. (2014) mentioned the importance of needs satisfaction in self-regulated learning behavior. it highlights the flexibility of strategic drafting to fulfill certain needs. it is the principle employed by the participants when drafting their strategy. they aim to perform well in their reading activities, and their strategies were created to fulfill that aim. however, only aiming to perform well is not enough to complete zimmermann’s trinity of self-regulation. however, despite being self-regulatory to a degree, the english language students at this private university still lack one important part in the process of self-regulation: the preparation part. while they are fully capable journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 141 of creating strategies, experimenting with them on the fly, reflecting on said strategies, and changing them for the better, they still lack self-motivation and do not perform any task analysis. having strategies is one thing, but having a proper strategy is another. all three parts of self-regulation must be presented and practiced properly, or the process will be incomplete. in the case of the participants, lack of preparation means that they do not have a proverbial starting line in their journey; they do not recognize any clear motivation for the strategy, and they treat the activity like any other activity. the importance of motivation can be seen because the participants are motivated enough to create strategies for the monitoring phase of self-regulation but not enough to have set goals before the activity, making them miss the preparation phase. thankfully for the participants, there are several ways to increase the participants’ motivation, one of them mentioning lack of progress. while this method may seem cruel at first, research by koo and fishbach (2014) stated that unaccomplished goals could be a source of motivation for students. by letting the students know that the goals set are still unaccomplished, they can feel more motivated, thereby fulfilling one of the conditions for the preparation phase (koo & fishbach, 2014). at the university level, this is usually done in the first meeting of the class, a practice that, coincidentally, is employed in the private university where this research takes place. in the first meeting of the class, lecturers would explain the class syllabus, showing the students what to expect from the class, what activities they will perform, and what skills they will have learned at the end of the class. the researchers believe that by leveraging this activity, a proper way to motivate students and have them analyze the task presented to them can help them practice the preparation phase and complete the three phases of self-regulation. finally, any teacher, educator, or lecturer needs to understand the importance of selfregulation, especially in the preparation phase. considering that the participants of this class themselves are pre-service teachers, their lack of understanding of the preparation phase can be a glaring flaw when deciding to enter the teaching world. any educator must motivate their students properly, or better yet, make the students motivate themselves. considerable research related to self-regulation showed that pre-service teachers could do it (fadda, 2019). if the teachers do not know how to motivate themselves, they may find it difficult to motivate others. the same principles apply to the two other branches of self-regulation. suppose the students do journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 142 not know how to properly strategize to solve their activities or do not know how to perform selfreflection and adapt their strategies. in that case, they will struggle to learn by themselves, defeating the entire purpose of student-centered learning. in this era where technology has taken over the classroom for better or worse, we must trust our students to learn by themselves. however, this does not mean our role as educators is over. teachers have shifted into a support position, where in addition to directing our students, and must support and encourage them to learn independently. gone are the days of teachers standing in front of a blackboard, explaining and repeating phrases with a face caked with chalk dust. technology has allowed teachers to educate and support students in more ways than ever, and with the constantly improving world of education, they must make sure that said technology is used in the right way, where the students can improve themselves. conclusion this research was intended to see the self-regulatory practices of english language education students of a private university in yogyakarta to see if they can self-regulate their studies in a student-centered classroom where they are the main actors of the activities. after the research has concluded, the researchers found that the self-regulatory capabilities of english language education students in this particular private university still lacked, particularly in the preparation department. the students were capable of creating a strategy and monitoring said strategy. still, their lack of goal-setting and self-motivation increase leads the researchers to believe that the self-regulation capabilities of these students could still be improved. since this research is limited to the reading class, future research should encompass the other three primary english language skills. in addition, the preparation phase of self-regulation must also be delved further to make sure that students are familiar with all three phases of self-regulation, not just two out of three steps. finally, as students age, they are more reluctant to seek help from others. hopefully, future research can help the students without making them feel more reluctant to seek help. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 143 references alenazi, a. (2017). how pre-service teachers learn: an investigation of motivation and selfregulation. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 16(10), 58– 71. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.16.10.5 armakolas, s., & mikroyannidis, a. (2019). self-regulation in pre-service teacher training conference. open research online, december 2019. arsel, z. (2017). asking questions with reflexive focus: atutorial on designing and conducting interviews. journal of consumer research, 44(4), 939–948. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx096 broadbent, j., & poon, w. l. (2015). self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments: a systematic review. internet and higher education, 27, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.04.007 buzza, d., & allinotte, t. (2013). pre-service teachers’ self-regulated learning and their developing concepts of srl. brock education journal, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.26522/brocked.v23i1.353 chen, k. t. c., & chen, s. c. l. (2015). the use of efl reading strategies among high school students in taiwan. the reading matrix: an international online journal, 15(2), 156–166. chen, p., chavez, o., ong, d. c., & gunderson, b. (2017). strategic resource use for learning: a self-administered intervention that guides self-reflection on effective resource use enhances academic performance. psychological science, 28(6), 774–785. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617696456 cleary, t. j., velardi, b., & schnaidman, b. (2017). effects of the self-regulation empowerment program (srep) on middle school students’ strategic skills, self-efficacy, and mathematics achievement. journal of school psychology, 64(april), 28–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2017.04.004 cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. cole, m. t., shelley, d. j., & swartz, l. b. (2014). online instruction, e-learning, and student satisfaction: a three year study. international review of research in open and distance learning, 15(6), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v15i6.1748 cosentino, c. l. (2017). the effects of self-regulation strategies on reading comprehension, motivation for learning, and self-efficacy with struggling readers. 68. http://repository.wcsu.edu/educationdis/68 creswell, j. (2012). educational research. fadda, h. al. (2019). the relationship between self-regulations and online learning in an esl blended learning context. english language teaching, 12(6), 87. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 144 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v12n6p87 fathi, j., ahmadnejad, m., & yousofi, n. (2019). effects of blog-mediated writing instruction on l2 writing motivation, self-efficacy, and self-regulation: a mixed methods study1. journal of research in applied linguistics, 10(2), 159–181. https://doi.org/10.22055/rals.2019.14722 garrison, d. r., & akyol, z. (2015). toward the development of a metacognition construct for communities of inquiry. internet and higher education, 24, 66–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2014.10.001 israel, s. e. (2014). handbook of research on reading comprehension. in handbook of research on reading comprehension. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315759609 koo, m., & fishbach, a. (2014). dynamics of self-regulation: how (un)accomplished goal actions affect motivation. motivation science, 1(s), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/23338113.1.s.73 mbato, c. l. (2013). facilitating efl learners’ self-regulation in reading : implementing a metacognitive approach in an indonesian higher education context. 1–252. mcclelland, m. m., geldhof, g. j., cameron, c. e., & wanless, s. b. (2015). development and self-regulation. mega, c., ronconi, l., & de beni, r. (2014). what makes a good student? how emotions, self-regulated learning, and motivation contribute to academic achievement. journal of educational psychology, 106(1), 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033546 mirzajani, h., mahmud, rosnaini, f., ayub, a., & wong, s. l. (2016). teachers’ acceptance of ict and its integration in the classroom. quality assurance in education, 24(1), 26–40. https://doi.org/10.1108/qae-06-2014-0025 o.nyumba, t., wilson, k., derrick, c. j., & mukherjee, n. (2018). the use of focus group discussion methodology: insights from two decades of application in conservation. methods in ecology and evolution, 9(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.12860 robinson, s., neergaard, h., tanggaard, l., & krueger, n. (2016). new horizons in entrepreneurship: from teacher-led to student-centered learning. education and training, 58(7–8), 661–683. https://doi.org/10.1108/et-03-2016-0048 sánchez, a.-b., marcos, j.-j. m., gonzález, m., & guanlin, h. (2012). in service teachers’ attitudes towards the use of ict in the classroom. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 46, 1358–1364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.302 taherdoost, h. (2018). sampling methods in research methodology; how to choose a sampling technique for research. ssrn electronic journal, september. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3205035 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 145 thompson, v. a., & johnson, s. c. (2014). conflict, metacognition, and analytic thinking. thinking and reasoning, 20(2), 215–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2013.869763 travers, c. j., morisano, d., & locke, e. a. (2015). self-reflection, growth goals, and academic outcomes: a qualitative study. british journal of educational psychology, 85(2), 224–241. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12059 van kraayenoord, c. e. (2010). the role of metacognition in reading instruction. scandinavian journal of educational research, 36(3), 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031383920360304 vasu, k. a., mei fung, y., nimehchisalem, v., & md rashid, s. (2020). self-regulated learning development in undergraduate esl writing classrooms: teacher feedback versus self-assessment. relc journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688220957782 wael, a., asnur, m. n. a., & ibrahim, i. (2018). exploring students’ learning strategies in speaking performance. international journal of language education, 2(1), 65. https://doi.org/10.26858/ijole.v2i1.5238 winne, p. h., & azevedo, r. (2019). metacognition. in metacognition: the cambridge handbook (pp. 63–87). woogul, l., myung-jin, l., & bong, m. (2014). testing interest and self-efficacy as predictors of academic self-regulation and achievement. contemporary educational psychology. zimmerman, b. j., schunk, d. h., & dibenedetto, m. k. (2017). the role of self-efficacy and related beliefs in self-regulation of learning and performance. in handbook of competence and motivation, second edition: theory and application (pp. 313–333). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 146 article history: submitted: 28 may 2021 reviewed: 24 june 2021 edited: 4 july 2021 accepted: 8 july 2021 implementing stylistics in ielts writing preparation focusing on noun phrases erina andriani, stella noviani, barli bram *) sanata dharma university, indonesia *) corresponding author email: barli@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11824 abstract in the ielts writing preparation class, the teacher can facilitate the students by integrating the stylistic approach in building writing students’ style. not only achieving the primary goals in english proficiency by focusing on the writing style, but students can also comfortably share their ideas in their style. the paper examined the stylistics integrated material in ielts writing through noun phrase construction. this study employed a qualitative method and a descriptive design. the data were collected using structured observation sheets as the instrument and were analyzed stylistically. writing materials and the writing results of 12 students at an english course were collected. results showed that stylistics was used in phrase complexity and ambiguity as a part of writing strategies. it was supported by the three dominant types of noun phrases produced by the students in their writing: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and premodifier + head, as the evidence of the implementation of integrated material in ielts writing. for the noun phrase uses, the students could vary the noun phrases in their complexity, function, and type in their tests, though the variations in each of those aspects were still low. implications of the results are stylistics could be implemented in language learning-teaching activities in general. it could encourage students to develop their writing style for self-expression and more explicit writing products. keywords: ielts writing preparation; lesson material; noun phrase; stylistics https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11824&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 147 introduction learning english as a foreign language takes effort. since the english language became the most widely spoken language worldwide, many people have placed english at the top. learners should be aware of mastering four language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking to become competent in english (brown, 2000). however, from those four skills, writing is considered challenging because it involves many aspects, such as word choice, sentence structure, and discourse markers (budjalemba & listyani, 2020; kiriakos & tienari, 2018; maharani & santosa, 2021; noori, 2020; tardy, 2017; vincent, 2020). in response to the statements above, language proficiency tests become an effective tool in assessing people’s language ability. the result of the language proficiency test in the international english language testing system (ielts) or test of english as a foreign language (toefl) is determined as one’s process in having competency in english (farahani & pahlevansadegh, 2019). the ielts exam is a test for the need of applying for higher education or professional registration, general training for those migrating to australia, canada, and the uk, or applying for secondary education, training programs and work experience in an englishspeaking environment (ielts, n.d.). the students’ writing performance in ielts is not always about the criteria related to academic writing skills. the difficulties that students face to perform the best in writing are also associated with the lack of competence in guiding the process to produce the language by the teacher (pouladian, bagheri, & sadighi, 2017). effective learning systems should be associated with proper transference rules in the style of writing. the academic writing style itself should be impersonal and conventional, and the foundation that is worth being taught is clarity and conciseness. the practice of curriculum in writing provides four guiding principles: “analyzing the work of excellent stylists; introducing principles like sentence focus, sentence variety, and balance; designing exercises that prompt students to imitate the stylistic moves; encouraging students to experiment with style in their writing” (bacon, 2013, p.188). the complexity of the writing is referred to as syntactic complexity. students often face difficulty in writing attempts, and sometimes the process of writing attempts can develop adverse outcomes as the undesired result appears. students need to be directed to produce an excellent grammatical structure that covers syntactic structure such as subordination, coordination, and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 148 noun phrases. the students perform various sentence patterns (ortega, 2003; wang, 2012 as cited in lau, 2017). to prevent the students from being confused in writing, the teacher needs to demonstrate stylistic skills by encouraging them to master the sentence structure and style they are comfortable with (bacon, 2013). the previous study has provided some elaboration on constructing noun phrases and finding the functions of noun phrases in tesol academics, which help them accelerate their writing performance to their chosen field journals (lau, 2017). meanwhile, this study focuses on how teachers use stylistic-integrated lessons for noun phrases in ielts and explore the students’ constructing noun phrases in academic writing. to fill the gap, the researchers intended to explore the following research questions: how did the teacher integrate stylistics in lesson materials for teaching noun phrases?; how did the students construct the noun phrases in their passages?; and how were the noun phrase uses in students’ test results? literature review stylistics is the study of style. each individual with different cognition creates different styles in presenting ideas. tariq (2018) argues that style is how people use language, whether in a book or real-life applications. therefore, even though stylistics is closely related to literature (bashiruddin, 2018), its use also applies to language uses outside literature. thus, stylistics, as the study of style, studies language for idea expressions and their significances for the work (verdonk, 2002). it also bridges both literary and linguistic approaches (abdulmughni, 2019; bashiruddin, 2018) since it takes aesthetics in the meaning delivery in a passage (tariq, 2018). a noun phrase (np) is one of the phrase types. a phrase consists of fixed components as the head and a changeable component to modify the head (melikyan, melikyan, & posidelova, 2018). the head of a phrase comes from the lexical word class, such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives (baker & croft, 2017), and is modified by non-lexical words to form phrases. in np, the head is from the noun class, and it may have modifier(s) to describe the noun (martin, holtz, abels, adger, & culbertson, 2020; wright, & hope, 1996). the construction of an np is presented in figure 1. in sentences, an np also has various functions. those functions include subject, the party who does the action, subject complement, which follows linking verbs, object, which follows action verbs, object complement, which describes objects, objects of prepositions, which journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 149 follows prepositions, appositive, the additional description for nouns, and adverbial adjunct, which tells time, place, or manner settings (pratama & isti’anah, 2017). figure 1. construction of noun phrase (wright & hope, 1996) schools have started to integrate a stylistic approach in learning activities. aside from linguistic construction, stylistics also explains various ways to convey an idea and its messages. that way, stylistics can improve the creativity of language use in writing (hall, 2014). stylistics is commonly used for efl students as an effective method in teaching text construction (abdulmughni, 2019; hall, 2014). in this study, the researchers wanted to see how the students styled the keywords of their short descriptive texts. there are several ways to identify a writer’s style used in work, either from the choice of dictions, punctuations, lexical-semantic features, syntactic components, such as phrase and sentence constructions (abdulmughni, 2019; gómezadorno, posadas-duran, ríos-toledo, sidorov, & sierra, 2018). this study analyzed the syntactic component phrase, especially the np. this study also analyzed how the teachers integrated stylistics in teaching np to shape the information from diagram components. studies have already implemented stylistic analysis on various types of passage in different focuses (agu, 2015; ejupi, iseni, siljanovska, & hossain, 2014; maulida, 2020). some studies used stylistics specifically on np in cosmetic names (radzi, & musa, 2017), novels (pratama & isti’anah, 2017), and newspapers (biber, 2004). ielts students, who are already familiar with english, face another challenge with how they style their thoughts in their writing. as stylistics is an effective method to help students improve their language use in more fluid contextual and situational uses, the researchers saw it fit to conduct a stylistic study on students’ np uses. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 150 methodology this study used a descriptive design and qualitative method, which explored stylistics focusing on noun phrases. based on sukardi (2003), descriptive research depicts and interprets the object as the way it is. in this study, descriptive analysis was purposefully conducted to describe the object’s facts and characteristics systematically. the data collection of this qualitative descriptive research is based on marshall and rossman (2006) that involves document analysis and material culture. the document analysis is used to analyze the structure of the students’ noun phrases. in addition, the data were gathered from the lesson materials using purposive sampling and twelve students’ writing tests using cluster sampling (lambert, 2012). the teaching materials included np constructions and writing strategy directions. this study focused on integrating stylistics in teaching ielts writing classes consisting of 12 students at an english course in jakarta. the students aimed to achieve at least 6.5 for their ielts score. after the students were given the materials, they had a writing test from which the np uses were analyzed. in that test, the students made a short passage describing a diagram. the test criteria included: a) writing a minimum of 150 words, b) using the keywords in the diagram, c) avoid repeating the sentence starter more than three times, d) avoid creating ambiguities, e) not using dictionaries, f) not copying from other sources, and g) finishing the test in 20 minutes. the reviewed theories on stylistic integration in a classroom and np construction were used to construct instruments and analyze the data. the researchers used abdulmughni’s (2019) and hall’s (2014) theories for the lesson plan. wright and hope’s (1996) and pratama and isti’anah’s (2017) theories were used for the students’ np in their passages. the instruments were structured observation sheets to annotate the occurrences of the observed data (lambert, 2012). in this study, stylistic analysis was used to explore language variations based on contextual and situational language uses (onwukwe, 2012; varghese, 2012). the data were coded and tabulated before presented in percentages and discussed descriptively. findings stylistic-integrated learning materials before teaching, the teachers made the materials for the students. the materials used stylistics: both linguistic and literary approaches. the materials provided the explanations in journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 151 english and bahasa indonesia, five examples for each subtopic for the students to observe and discuss, and exercises for them to practice. in the linguistic approach, the materials included construction and the function of np. below are the material descriptions: np construction. the np construction consisted of determiners and modifiers. the explanation about determiners included the definitive (the except for names and most languages/countries), nondefinitive (a/an), demonstrative (this/that), quantifier (some), number (three), possessive pronoun (my), and pre-determiner (such) subtopics. the explanation about modifiers included the premodifiers and post-modifiers. the discussed pre-modifiers were nouns (fire alarm), possessive nouns (jean’s house), and adjectives (hot cocoa). the post-modifiers included prepositional phrase (tree in my backyard), clause (cats that were eating), gerund (men standing over there), and past participle verb (dolls made by that kid) subtopics. np function the discussion about function included: the subject (those birds are cute), subject complement (brandon is an athlete), object (that girl washes her hands), object complement (i consider him my rival), the object of a preposition (by the lake), adjunct adverbial (last night i watched a video), and appositive (sussie, the maid, is making tea) functions. for the literary approach, the teachers gave materials about variation and ambiguity. they were less elaborated than the linguistic approach but were used in every writing material (clauses, sentence types, etc.). below are the material descriptions: variations the discussion about variations emphasized one of the ielts writing strategies given in this course. the students were guided to avoid using the exact words (especially noun, adjective, adverb, and verb) more than three times. the subtopics were simplicity (my book), complexity (the shirt hanging in the wardrobe over there), lexical variation (the picture/painting/drawing there), and modifier emphasis (the wet newspaper/the newspaper that is wet). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 152 ambiguity avoiding ambiguity emphasized another ielts writing strategy. the students were guided to create the np, which would not cause ambiguity within a sentence. this topic included two subtopics: modifier ambiguity (the light box) and np placement (call me an escort). students’ noun phrase constructions by identifying the types of noun phrases that the students’ constructed in ielts writing, the researchers found six distinctive noun phrases from the twelve writings. the noun phrases that the students built were based on the noun phrases, such as determiners, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers. from the analysis, the types of noun phrases are shown in table 1. table 1. noun phrase types on students’ test results no. structure number percentage 1. determiner + head 182 49.59% 2. determiner + pre-modifier + head 114 31.06% 3. pre-modifier + head 32 8.71% 4. determiner + head + post-modifier 13 3.54% 5. determiner + pre-modifier + head + post-modifier 22 6.00% 6. pre-modifier + head + post-modifier 4 1.10% total 367 100% table 1 shows some different structures of noun phrases in students’ ielts writing. the total number of the researchers collected from the analysis was 367 noun phrases in the students’ writing. each of the structures has a different level of percentage in the writings. the table also shows three structures that significantly dominate the writings: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and pre-modifier + head. the noun phrase use in students’ test results the students used np in several ways to construct their diagram description. the researchers combined the np constructions, functions, and lengths to see how students styled the keywords in the diagram. those keywords were: diagram, cycle, fish, life stage, and location. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 153 as for the functions, there are seven np functions used in this research. they are the subject, subject complement, object, object complement, object of preposition, appositive, and adverbial adjunct. table 2 shows each function in the students’ tests. overall, the object of preposition is the most used np function (48.6%), followed by the subject (25.6%). the object is the third most used function (16.8%), followed by the subject complement (8.1%) and appositive (0.6%). an adverbial adjunct is the least used function (0.3%), while object complement is never used. table 2. noun phrase functions on students’ test results no. function diagram cycle fish stage location other total percentage 1. s 12 10 56 9 3 1 91 26.6% 2. sc 1 11 11 6 29 8.1% 3. o 10 24 20 3 3 60 16.8% 4. oc 5. op 12 43 28 79 11 173 48.6% 6. a 2 2 0.6% 7. aa 1 1 0.3% total 12 33 134 68 93 16 356 100% note: subject (s), object (o), subject complement (sc), object complement (oc), object of preposition (op), appositive (a), adverbial adjunct (aa) in students’ test results, their np lengths varied into short, moderate, and long categories. short ones were 2-3 words (dh, ph, or dph with one-word pre-modifier), moderate ones were 4-6 words (dph or dphp with a couple of pre-modifiers and a simple post-modifier), and long ones were more than 6 (dphp with complex modifiers). the results regarding the length are presented in table 3. the researchers found that students mainly use short np (84.8%), followed by moderate length np (12.4%) and complex (long) np the least (2.8%). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 154 table 3. noun phrase length on students’ test results no. length diagram cycle fish stage location other percentage 1. short 12 15 118 54 88 15 84.8% 2. moderate 14 15 11 3 1 12.4% 3. long 1 4 1 3 2 2.8% total 13 33 134 68 93 16 100% the students were free to construct the np in their texts. however, there were two main requirements, word variations and minimum word count, that the students should consider. students might achieve both requirements by varying the words, phrases, clauses, or even sentences while avoiding ambiguity in their passage construction. discussion stylistic-integrated learning materials results from the materials showed that the teachers already implemented stylistics in their classes. though the main discussion was still about the linguistic aspect of nps, the materials also explicitly consider stylistics in creating np to aid students’ styles, make variations, and avoid ambiguity. the lesson materials intended to improve students’ academic writing could also improve their academic literacy (mukhroji, 2020). the linguistic aspect included np construction and function. the lesson materials had elaborated the use of determiners, including how they should not proceed with names and specific determiners for singular countable nouns, which is in line with paisse and maillart (2017). the materials also explained the np placement in the sentence, thus determining the role the np plays, according to pratama and isti’anah (2017). the teacher had explained the usage and rules for both np construction and function in the materials for students with to-thepoint introductions, fine examples, and lots of exercises, which could help students’ writing (almukdad, 2019). the stylistics integration could be seen from the np variation and ambiguity topics. in expressing the detail of the head, the learning materials showed that combinations of determiners and modifiers could distinguish the np style (gómez-adorno et al., 2018; abdulmughni, 2019). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 155 the materials also emphasized avoiding ambiguity, in line with hong, ratchford, and sagi (2018) and nakatani (2018), especially selecting the modifiers and placing the noun phrase. however, the materials lacked direct suggestions on how to style their np as guidance to help students understand (abdulmughni, 2019). for example, it did not explain that the length of np could also be affected by the target readers they intended (biber, 2004). more extended, more complex nps were commonly used in academic literature with high literacy readers, during the short, simpler np for broader target readers. (biber, 2004). though the amount of explanation and depth on the stylistics approach could be more elaborated, the materials had entirely integrated the use of stylistics in language learning. students’ noun phrase constructions the structure determiner + head shows the highest percentage, which is 49.59%, with the number of occurrences is 182. the percentage of determiner + pre-modifier + head is 31.06%, with the number of occurrences is 114. the third-highest percentage is pre-modifier + head. the percentage is 8.71%, with the number of occurrences being 32. those are the three structures of noun phrases that occurred the most compared to other structures. the analysis of each distribution will be discussed in the following section. determiner + head this type of noun phrase is the most frequent type that happened in the students’ writing. it has a percentage of 49.59%, with the number of occurrences being 182. this type of noun phrase has at least one determiner as to the head of the noun phrase. [1] the + estuary d art h the word ‘the’ here is indicated as the definite article. the definite article ‘the’ in example [1] is a determiner to the noun phrase head ‘estuary. based on downing and locke, a definite article identifies the referent within the text and outside the text (2006: 419). determiner + pre-modifier + head this type of noun phrase is the second highest that the researchers found based on the number of percentages and occurrences in the writings. it has 114 occurrences with a 31.06% percentage. a determiner in this type of noun phrase works as articles, possessives, quantifiers, and cardinal numbers (pratama & isti’anah, 2017). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 156 [2] the + immature + salmon d art adj h this noun phrase in example [2] shows that the word ‘the’ is a determiner of the noun phrase head ‘salmon’. the term ‘immature’ is a pre-modifier that functions to modify the head of the noun phrase. pre-modifier + head the third type that the researchers found in the writings is a pre-modifier followed by the head of the noun phrase. the number of occurrences with this type is 32, with an 8.71% percentage. the pre-modifier here is described as adjectives, nouns, present participle, and past participle (pratama & isti’anah, 2017). [3] infant + salmon adj h this type of noun phrase contains only one pre-modifier and the head. the word ‘infant’ in example [3] is to modify the head of the noun phrase ‘salmon’. this type of noun phrase happens when the pre-modifier is adjective as the head of the noun phrase. determiner + head + post-modifier another type of noun phrase found by the researchers in students’ writing contains a determiner that follows the head and post-modifier. the number of occurrences with this type is 13, and the following percentage is 3.54%. the use of determiner in this type is represented by definite article, indefinite article, possessive pronoun, quantifier, cardinal number, and demonstrative. this kind of structure is first modified by the noun phrase head and followed by a post-modifier such as prepositional phrase, noun phrase, and adverb phrase (pratama & isti’anah, 2017). [4] the + development + of eggs art d h pp for example [4], this type of noun phrase shows that the word ‘the’ as the definite article becomes the determiner that follows the head of the noun phrase ‘development’. the word after the head becomes the post-modifier used to modify the head of the prepositional phrase starting with ‘of’. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 157 determiner + pre-modifier + head + post-modifier this type of noun phrase’s structure is the most complex one. this type of noun phrase contains determiner, pre-modifier, head, and post-modifier to modify the noun phrase. the researchers found that the number occurrence of this type is 22, with 22% from the data analysis. [5] the + many + stages + of development d art adj h pp this kind of noun phrase contains the definite article ‘the’ as the determiner of the noun phrase. the word ‘many’ in example [5] is to modify the head of the noun phrase, which is ‘stages’. the following post-modifier is described with a prepositional phrase ‘of development’ that indicates prepositions followed by nouns. pre-modifier + head + post-modifier this last type of noun phrase found in the writings is the minor type of noun phrase used by the students. it has the smallest number of occurrences, only 4, with a 1.10% percentage, and the pre-modifier in this type is described by an adjective, noun, and present participle. in contrast, the post-modifier here is presented by the prepositional phrase, finite clause, and nonfinite clause (pratama, & isti’anah, 2017). [6] final + rearing + process + in certain areas adj pres part h pp this type of noun phrase has two pre-modifiers, as in example [6], such as an adjective ‘final’ and present participle ‘rearing’, which functioned as modifying the head of the noun phrase ‘process’. then the post-modifier here is presented by the prepositional phrase ‘in certain areas’. the noun phrase use in students’ test results the np used in the texts that the students made described some keywords that existed in the diagram. those nps used various structures, from the simplest form (with only two words) to the more complex ones (up to twelve words). the np constructions, lengths, and placements were used to analyze the additional information the students gave, the np functions, and how they styled each keyword from the salmon diagram to their short passages. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 158 diagram [7] the presented diagram this np is usually used to start the essays because the students were about to describe a diagram. this np was simple, short-form (2-3 words) like in example [7] with dph, ph, and dhp patterns. students intended this np to be direct and to the point, in line with nakatani (2018). it used lexical variations for the modifiers and the head. all nps functioned as subjects, contradicted with pratama and isti’anah (2017) that subject function was on moderate use. cycle [8] the life cycle of a species of seawater fish called salmon. this np at first had a moderate complexity form (more than five words), even one np with complex structure (example [8]). the longer np in students’ test results existed more as students merged the information in the np (biber, 2004). the used patterns were dphp, dph, and dhp, and most of them had post-modifiers, which contradicted pratama and isti’anah (2017), as their study showed low use of np with post-modifiers. the students varied the dictions for pre-modifier (life/natural), head (cycle/process), and post-modifier (of a salmon). it acted as the object of a preposition, similar to pratama and isti’anah (2017) about the function. the fish [9] the eggs of a salmon. the discussion about the fish was around the name of the fish (salmon) and its forms (egg or adult). this np mostly had a simple form (2-3 words) with dh and dph patterns, but some were longer (4-5 words) with dhp (example [12]) or dph patterns. students used common words for the readers to avoid confusion (nakatani, 2018). they varied the dictions on determiner, premodifier (adult/infant/full-grown/mother/young/immature), and head (fish/fishes/salmon/eggs). it acted as subject the most, contradicted with pratama and isti’anah (2017). life stage/process [10] the incubation period [11] their maturity point [12] the spawning area the life stage/process included the salmon’s life stages: spawning, incubation, emergence, rearing, migration, and growth/maturation. most of them were described with short journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 159 np with dh and dph patterns (biber, 2004). the first style was those stage keywords acted as the head as in example [10]. for the other style, stages (incubation/maturity) were used as the premodifier of a head (session/process/point) but still explained a life stage (example [11]). others also became pre-modifiers, but the np became a location (example [12]). in a sentence, these nps acted as an object of a preposition the most, similar to pratama and isti’anah (2017). location [13] … to the river estuaries… [14] … the area between ocean and river… the locations included the locations where a salmon could live: river/freshwater, ocean, and estuary. most of them were described with simple nps (nakatani, 2018) with dh and dph patterns (example [13]). some life stages were changed into locations, as in example [12], and some nps explain the estuary as in example [14]. the students varied the diction with river or fresh water and ocean and sea. mostly acted as objects of preposition and two as appositives (pratama, & isti’anah, 2017). others [15] … the mouth of the river that meets the ocean… [16] … the eye and the head… [17] this time… the students made some additions that they concluded themselves after seeing the diagram. the complexity of the np dictions varied, which might cause ambiguity (nakatani, 2018), though the length was primarily short (biber, 2004). in example [15], it had a noun clause as the post-determiner. in example [16], it was a compound subject (two nouns with the level position in the sentence): both the eye and the head acted as the subject in that sentence. in example [17], it was the only adverbial adjunct found in students’ works, in line with pratama and isti’anah (2017), that adverbial adjuncts were rarely used. the students made varying np in their works. the results showed that the students used shorter nps the most, in line with biber (2004) to avoid ambiguity (nakatani, 2018). the results also showed that the object of preposition function was used the most, in line with pratama and isti’anah (2017). however, the moderate use of object function in this study contradicted the study from pratama and isti’anah (2017). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 160 conclusion and implication this paper studied the stylistics integration in an ielts writing preparation class focusing on the noun phrase. this research used a stylistic analysis of the lesson materials and students’ writing results. the stylistics integrated the materials that the teacher provided in helping the students to construct the noun phrase. the researchers found six types of noun phrases from the students’ writings: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and premodifier + head as the most dominating types in students’ writing. although the three dominating styles are considered the simplest ones, the teacher successfully guided them to explore seven types of noun phrases in their writings. in implementing the noun phrase to meet students’ style, the students varied the complexity, construction, and function of their noun phrases for each keyword. however, the variations were still dominated by a simple form with specific functions and types. this study was still limited in the source of data since the researchers gathered the samples on the writings of the ielts post-test only. future researchers can adopt more extensive examples in different classes and more than one linguistic or literary component to investigate. the implications of this study are stylistics can be implemented to improve scores in ielts writing, and students may be encouraged to develop their writing style to express themselves and convey messages more clearly. references abdulmughni, s. a. s. (2019). stylistics, literary criticism, linguistics, and discourse analysis. international journal of english linguistics, 9(2), 412-428. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n2p412 agu, i. e. (2015). a linguistic-stylistic analysis of newspaper reportage. international journal of research in humanities and social studies, 2(8), 20-27. al-mukdad, s. (2019). investigating english academic writing problems encountered by arab international university students. theory and practice in language studies, 9(3), 300-306. bacon, n. (2013). style in academic writing. in duncan, m. & vanguri, s. m. (eds.). the centrality of style, 173-190. https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2013.0476.2.12 https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n2p412 https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2013.0476.2.12 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 161 baker, m. & croft, w. (2017). lexical categories: legacy, lacuna, and opportunity for functionalists and formalists. annual review of linguistics, 3, 179-197. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011516-034134 bashiruddin, m. n. (2018). style and stylistics: an overview. aayushi international interdisciplinary research journal (aiirj), 5(3), 119-122. biber, d. (2004). compressed noun-phrase structures in newspaper discourse: the competing demands of popularization vs. economy. in aitchison, j. & lewis, d. (eds). new media language, 169-181. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203696965 brown, h. d. (2000). principle of language learning and teaching. longman. budjalemba, a., & listyani, l. (2020). factors contributing to students’ difficulties in academic writing class: students’ perceptions. uc journal: elt, linguistics and literature journal, 1(2), 135-149. https://doi.org/10.24071/uc.v1i2.2966 ejupi, v., iseni, a., siljanovska, l., & hossain, m. a. (2014). stylistic analysis of a portrait of the artist as a young man from lexical and grammatical category. european scientific journal, 10(14), 499-525. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2014.v10n14p%25p farahani, m. v., & pahlevansadegh, v. (2019). teaching metadiscourse features and ielts writing performance of iranian efl learners. journal of applied research in higher education, 11(3), 538-558. https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-10-2018-0222 gómez-adorno, h., posadas-duran, j., ríos-toledo, g., sidorov, g., & sierra, g. (2018). stylometry-based approach for detecting writing style changes in literary texts. computación y sistemas, 22(1), 47-53. https://doi.org/10.13053/cys-22-1-2882 hall, g. (2014). pedagogical stylistics. in bruke. m. (ed.). the routledge handbook of stylistics, 240252. routledge. hong, c. s., ratchford, m., & sagi, j. s. (2018). you need to recognise ambiguity to avoid it. the economic journal, 128, 2480–2506. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12541 kiriakos, c. m., & tienari, j. (2018). academic writing as love. management learning, 49(3), 263277. lambert, m. (2012). a beginner’s guide to doing your education research project. sage. lau, t. (2017). noun phrase construction in academic research articles. international journal online of humanities, 3(6), 76–96. https://doi.org/10.24113/ijohmn.v3i6.44 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011516-034134 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203696965 https://doi.org/10.24071/uc.v1i2.2966 https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2014.v10n14p%25p https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-10-2018-0222 https://doi.org/10.13053/cys-22-1-2882 https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12541 https://doi.org/10.24113/ijohmn.v3i6.44 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 162 maharani, a., & santosa, m. (2021). the implementation of process approach combined with screencast-o-matic and bookcreator to improve students’ argumentative writing. llt journal: a journal on language and language teaching, 24(1), 12-22. doi:https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.v24i1.2516 marshall, c., & rossman, g. b. (2006). designing qualitative research. sage. martin, a., holtz, a., abels, k., adger, d., & culbertson, j. (2020). experimental evidence for the influence of structure and meaning on linear order in the noun phrase. glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 97. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1085 maulida, l. (2020). reformasi gagal total, kawan!: a stylistics study of political satire in eka kurniawan’s corat coret di toilet. aphorisme: journal of arabic language, literature, and education, 1(1), 54-64. https://doi.org/10.37680/aphorisme.v1i1.321 melikyan, v. y., melikyan, a. v., & posidelova, v. v. (2018). classification of english fixed phrase schemes according to phraseological hierarchy. voprosy kognitivnoy lingvistiki, 2, 145-151. https://doi.org/10.20916/1812-3228-2018-2-145-151 mukhroji, m. (2020). exploring the academic writing needs to improve the academic literacy of the indonesian efl undergraduate and master’s students. international journal of innovation, creativity, and change, 10(10), 252-269. noori, a. (2020). an investigation of afghan undergraduate english major students’ academic writing difficulties. journal of foreign language teaching and learning, 5(2), 99-114. https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.5249 onwukwe, e. (2012). an introduction to general and literary stylistics. alphabet nigeria publisher. ortega, l. (2003). syntactic complexity measures and their relationship to l2 proficiency: a research synthesis of college-level l2 writing. applied linguistics, 24(4), 492-518. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/24.4.492 pouladian, n., bagheri, m. s., & sadighi, f. (2017). an analysis of errors in writing skill of adult iranian efl learners. international journal of english linguistics, 7(3), 85-96. pratama, d. i. & isti’anah, a. (2017). noun phrases of jace wayland’s utterances in mortal instruments: city of bones. journal of language and literature, 17(2), 125-132. https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.2017.170203 radzi, n. s. m. & musa, m. (2017). beauty, ideals, myths, and sexisms: a feminist stylistic analysis of female representations in cosmetic names. journal of language studies, 17(1), 2138. https://doi.org/doi: 10.17576/gema-2017-1701-02 https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1085 https://doi.org/10.37680/aphorisme.v1i1.321 https://doi.org/10.20916/1812-3228-2018-2-145-151 https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.5249 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/24.4.492 https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.2017.170203 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 163 sukardi, d.k. (2003). organisasi bimbingan dan konseling di sekolah. ghata indonesia. tardy, c. m. (2017). the challenge of genre in the academic writing classroom: implications for l2 writing teacher education. in teaching writing for academic purposes to multilingual students (pp. 83-97). routledge. tariq, m. (2018). style, stylistics and stylistic analysis: a re-evaluation of the modern-day rhetorics of literary discourse. international journal of english research, 4(2), 46-50. ielts. (n.d.). ielts. https://www.ielts.org/ varghese, l. m. (2012). stylistic analysis of emily brontё’s wuthering heights. iosr journal of humanities and social science, 2(5), 46-50. https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-0254650 verdonk, p. (2002). stylistics. oxford university press. vincent, b. (2020). the expression of obligation in student academic writing. journal of english for academic purposes, 44, 1-13 [100840]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100840 wright, l. & hope, j. (1996). stylistics: a practical coursebook. routledge. https://www.ielts.org/ https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-0254650 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100840 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 185 article history: submitted: 20 april 2021 reviewed: 19 june 2021 edited: 9 july 2021 accepted: 12 july 2021 characteristics of effective english teacher for millenials andi wirantaka *) , putri anggia wahyudianawati universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia *) corresponding author email: awirantaka@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11549 abstract the millennial era is an era of digital technology in which people are close to technology and have instant access to information. this study investigated students' perception of the characteristics of an effective english language teacher in the millennial era. this study used a qualitative approach and used a descriptive qualitative design and took place at a private university in yogyakarta. the participants were four students of the english language education department (eled) batch 2016. in collecting the data, the researcher interviewed the participant. the findings showed that in socio-affective skills, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should enhance students' motivation to learn, create a good classroom atmosphere, have good relationships with the students and other teachers, and understand students' character. in pedagogical knowledge, an effective english language teacher should give feedback, have a valuable ability to explain the lesson, ensure students' understanding of the lesson. they also should have a lesson plan, utilize and apply technology, allow students to write a reflection, and control class activities. in knowledge subject matter, an effective english language teacher should be knowledgeable and master english well. lastly, an effective english language teacher should have personality traits such as intelligent, caring, friendly, disciplined, creative, kind, patient, humorous, responsible, open-minded, and professional. the findings implied that to teach students in the millennial era effectively, teachers should possess and maintain the characteristics of an effective english language teacher. keywords: millennial era, effective teachers, characteristics =========================================================================== mailto:awirantaka@gmail.com https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11549&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 186 introduction the millennial era is an era of digital technology in which people in this era are close to technology and have instant access. based on olszewski (2016), the millennial generation are those people who were born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s. they are also known as generation y (mercadante, 2008). from those explanations, currently, millennial generations are either in high school, college, graduate school, or in the workforce, and they are around 14 35 years old. the millennial generation has some personal characteristics which are unique and different from their previous generations. broadbridge, maxwell, and ogden (2007) mentioned some critical features of the millennial generation to differentiate them from the earlier generations. generation y is independent, well-educated, confident, upbeat, open-minded, friendly, technically literate, adverse to slowness, and highly informed. on the other hand, kelan and lenhert (2009) stated that some characteristics are based on the individual level. they said that people from generation y become entrepreneurial thinkers, self-reliant, ethnically diverse, polite, curious and energetic, respectful to parents and grandparents, financially empowered, and conservative investors. however, they also have a negative characteristic, called 'living with strong social stressors' (kelan & lenhert, 2009). besides, monaco and martin (2007) stated that the millennial generation lacks critical thinking skills and unrealistic expectations. in a language teaching context, the millennial era affects how teaching and learning are conducted. olszewski (2016) stated that the old ways of teaching are no longer suitable to teach students today. consequently, the language teachers who teach the millennial generation should find appropriate teaching media suitable for millennial students' characteristics and learning preferences, such as utilizing computers and the internet in the teaching and learning process. therefore, in language teaching activities, the teachers must implement media literacy or information communication technology (ict) to utilize technologies well in language teaching activities. besides, teachers also should use the internet as one of the language teaching media. the different generation of students brings consequences for the teacher to adjust and suit the practice of teaching, which leads to new different perspectives of characteristics of an effective english language teacher. in the era where the internet was not widely used, especially journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 187 in education, technology may not become an effective english teacher characteristic. however, as technology development, especially the internet, flourishingly bloomed in teaching and learning practice, being tech-savvy becomes a new aspect of teacher's requirement to be effective. some studies found that using technology is among characteristic of an effective english language teacher besides subject matter and pedagogical knowledge (pierson & mcneil, 2000). moreover, the typical characteristic of millennial students who prefer the activity in the classroom to collaborate, connect, and create social change (pinder-grover & groscurth, 2009) also may lead to the shift of what so-called effective english teacher. the era's changing has brought its generation to have different nature and characteristics, requiring the new paradigm of an ideal teaching and learning practice. at the same time, it also requires new demands of an effective english language teacher, which meets its requirements. therefore, this study focuses on investigating four core categories of the characteristics of an effective english language teacher for students in the millennial era. those four core categories are socio-affective skills, pedagogical knowledge, subject-matter knowledge, and personality characteristics. the categories are based on categorizing effective english language teachers by dincer, goksu, takkac, and yazici (2013). this research is hoped to positively contribute to student-teachers, english teachers, and educational institutions regarding effective english language teachers in the millennial era. the researcher hopes that the findings of this study can help english teachers improve and develop their teaching performance and their teaching quality to achieve their teaching purposes. besides, this research can be helpful for the teachers as a reflection on their teaching. literature review millennial generation the millennial generation refers to the people born in the early 1980s to the early 2000s (olzewski, 2016). besides, they are called millennials because they grow up in the digital era and are familiar with technology (kaifi, nafei, khanfar, & kaifi, 2012). furthermore, prensky (2001) called millennials as digital natives. also, twenge (2010) said that the millennial generation had been variously labeled as 'generation y', 'net generation', 'nexters' and 'generation me.' journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 188 moreover, howe and strauss (2000), as cited in considine, horton, and moorman (2009), pointed out that the millennial generation refers to the children who have grown up since the beginning of the assortment related the digital technologies such as cell phones, texting messaging, video games, and instant messaging. besides, taylor (2012) stated that the millennial generation is only familiar with the computer and information easily accessed and has different expectations concerning the technology, communication, and access to information. therefore, the millennial generation is a generation that has a closeness to technology. besides, they are familiar with technologies, and their daily activities are almost done by using technologies because, in this generation, technology is easy to access. characteristics of millennial generation every millennial generation has its characteristics. howe and strauss (2000), cited in debard (2004), identified that seven core characteristics of the millennial generation are unique, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. besides, broadbridge, maxwell, and ogden (2007) mentioned some critical characteristics of the millennial generation. those include being independent, well-educated, confident, upbeat, openminded, friendly, technically literate, adverse to slowness, and highly informed. kelan and lenhert (2009) mentioned that based on some characteristics of the individual level, people from generation y become more entrepreneurial thinkers, self-reliant, ethnically diverse, polite, curious, and energetic, respectful to parents and grandparents financially empowered, and conservative investors. however, the millennial generation also has a negative character. according to kelan and lenhart (2009), generation y has intense social stressors because of social life changes. an effective english language teacher according to stronge, an effective teacher is a teacher who consistently produces the students with high achievement or a teacher who regularly gains positive evaluations from supervisors and administrators (as cited in arikan, taser, & sarac-suzer, 2008). moreover, goddard, hoy, and hoy (2000) defined effective english language teachers as those who can influence their teaching due to students' learning. to be an effective english language teacher, the teacher should have some aspects on the characteristics of effective english language teachers. there are some characteristics of an journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 189 effective english language teacher. dincer et al. (2013) maintained that an effective english language teacher's four main characteristics are an effective english language teacher: socioaffective skill and pedagogical knowledge, subject-matter knowledge, and personality characteristics. socio-affective skill. socio-affective skill is the ability of teachers to interact with their students to gain effectiveness in the educational process (dincer et al., 2013). the socio-affective skill includes a wide range of items such as how the teacher behaves to the students, the teacher's ability to decrease students' anxiety, and increase students' motivation (sishavan, 2010). besides, to be an effective english language teacher, the teacher should understand the students' feelings and be aware of students' differences in the students' background (korkmaz & yavuz, 2011). the other main characteristic of an effective english language teacher is pedagogical knowledge. pedagogical knowledge. pedagogical knowledge is teachers' ability to teach the students or their knowledge of managing the class. according to dincer et al. (2013), pedagogical knowledge defines teachers' knowledge of applying the teaching procedures and strategies in the classroom. furthermore, haryadi (2018) explained that pedagogical knowledge comes up as teachers' ability to manage their comprehension of english to maintain the effectiveness of teaching through their various teaching techniques, apply the materials written in the lesson plan, and use sound teaching principles. the pedagogical knowledge includes some items such as preparing the lesson well, using lesson plans, assessing what students have learned reasonably, and incorporating group activities in the classroom or applying some various teaching strategies (rotgans & schimdt, 2011). the way teachers offer the information to the students should be clear, comprehensible, and motivating (betson et al., 2001, as cited in arikan et al., 2008). for example, when the teacher offers the information, they should explain it as detailed as possible. the teacher should make sure that the information which they have demonstrated is easy to understand by the students. besides, the teacher can also increase students' motivation by giving a reward. thus, to be an effective english language teacher, the teacher should be right on subjectmatter knowledge. subject-matter knowledge. subject-matter knowledge is teachers' comprehension of the subject or the target language. as dincer et al. (2013) mentioned, the teachers should master their specific topic in subject-matter knowledge. regarding the statement noted, an effective journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 190 english language teacher should master english well. subject-matter knowledge can be identified through teachers' pronunciation. also, an effective english language teacher should have correct pronunciation (arikan et al., 2008). likewise, teachers should be able to write in english well (sishavan, 2010). besides, an effective english language teacher must be adequate in cultural knowledge (arikan, 2010). hence, an effective english language teacher should also have good personality characteristics to teach the students effectively. personality character. personality character is one of the four main characteristics of an effective english language teacher. an effective english language teacher is supposed to have some crucial characteristics to teach and be successful as the teacher effectively. the features mentioned include being enthusiastic in the teaching process, humorous, kind, and fair (korkmaz & yavuz, 2011). in addition, arikan (2010) mentioned that an effective english language teacher should be open-minded to bring the outside world into the classroom, value, and respect students' judgments. teaching millennial generation teaching the millennial generation requires teachers to apply technology. puji and umamah (2018) stated: "the millennial era has a significant impact on the demands of human resource competing quality with high adaptation to the development of information technology (it)" (p. 48). one of the significant impacts of this era is education. besides, the teachers in this era should utilize technology and apply it in the teaching and learning process in the classroom. as a reason, today, students are required to able to use technology. puji and umamah (2018) stated that as one of the 21th-century skills, the students in this millennial era are needed to apply technology to support the learning process. from the statement mentioned, it was in line with nicholas (2008). he stated that millennial students' characteristics are known as a millennial generation where mostly, the students use the computer literature as learning tools (nicholas, 2008). in addition, olzewski (2016) said that the old ways of teaching are not suitable to serve today's college students. moreover, considine, horton, and moorman (2009) stated that the computer and the internet have generally been part of their daily and school activities for today's students. besides, ict gives the millennial generation have access to get in-depth information than their previous generation (considine et al., 2009). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 191 furthermore, puji and umamah (2018) asserted technology information positively impacts learners' learning achievements. moreover, thakre and thakre (2015) said that learning media for today's students is technology use, such as using smartphones and other multimedia devices. besides, millennial students also prefer the activity in the classroom, which can collaborate, connect, and create social change (pinder-grover & groscurth, 2009). pindergrover and groscrutch (2009) found four principles for teaching the millennial generation: facilitating cooperation among students, preparing students for diversity and cross-cultural interaction, cultivating knowledge creation, and promoting engagement inside and outside the classroom. also, kraus and sears (2008) identified that millennial students' perception aims to teach the students in the classroom activity some teaching techniques. this study showed that millennial students preferred discussion, projects, papers, and lab work as their teaching technique preferences. therefore, the teachers in the millennial era can apply some of the students' teaching technique preferences mentioned above because those are suitable with today's students' expectations. effective language teacher for millennial generation teachers in the millennial era have new roles such as guiding, providing mediation, modeling, and coaching active learners (sharp, 2006 as cited in keengwe & georgina, 2013). however, pierson and mcneil (2000) stated that an effective language teacher for the millennial generation is a teacher who can develop content, pedagogy, and technology strategies at the same time. another crucial aspect of being an effective language teacher for the millennial generation is a teacher who can be responsible, meaningful, and efficient in integrating technology into the curriculum (bt rahamat, shah, din, & aziz, 2011). on the other hand, teachers should have the appropriate teaching strategy. flores (2015) pointed out that language teachers in the millennial era should be aware and have proper teaching procedures to increase their motivation and persuade them to acquire a second language. one of the strategies is applying technology in the teaching and learning process (flores, 2015). in addition, a language teacher should help millennial students comprehend how linguistic and cultural norms operate (chun, smith, & kern, 2016). besides, a teacher also needs to understand the millennial students to educate them effectively (phillips & trainor, 2014). journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 192 methodology in conducting the study, the researcher used a qualitative research approach. besides, the study used a descriptive qualitative design to gather the data. a descriptive qualitative design was suitable for the current research as it enables the researcher to explore experiences, opinions, and perceptions (creswell, 2002). hence, the recent study is considered suitable to employ descriptive qualitative design to delve deeply into students' perceptions of characteristics of the practical english teacher in the millennial era. the current study was conducted at a private university in yogyakarta. there were four students of the english language education department (eled) as the study participants. participants in the research were selected to answer research questions and understand the phenomenon under study through employing criteria (creswell, 2002). thus, in selecting the participants, the researcher used the requirements for eled students from batch 2016 to ensure that they have sufficient english experience. moreover, the participants should already pass the internship program to provide adequate teaching practice experience. hence, from the teaching practice experience they have, the students became more aware of students' expectations through the characteristics of an effective english language teacher in the millennial era. the researcher used a pseudonym, namely ratu, rati, rina, and rini, to keep the personal information of the participants. to collect the data, the researcher used an interview, more specifically, by using open-ended items. it was suitable for the current study since it allows researchers and participants to investigate more profound real-life experiences and specific matter points of view (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011). the researcher went through some stages in analyzing the data, such as transcribing the data, member checking, and coding. the current research did member checking to get the credibility of the data to maintain the trustworthiness of the data. credibility is the truth of the data or the participant's views and the interpretation and representation of them by the researcher (creswell, 2012). the researcher obtains credibility by describing and verifying the research findings with the participants. the data transcription was consulted to the participants to ensure that the content was suitable to what participants stated in the interview. the result showed that all participants agreed with the transcription of the interview. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 193 findings the researcher reported the findings based on the data analysis. there were four main characteristics of effective english teachers found in this study. the results are based on categorizing effective english language teachers by dincer et al. (2013). it involves socio-affective skills, pedagogical knowledge, subject-matter knowledge, and personality characteristics. socio-affective skill enhancing students' motivation the first finding related to socio-affective skills was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should enhance students' motivation to learn. it improved students' motivation to positively impact the students in the teaching and learning process, affecting their learning performance. it could also help the students to achieve their learning achievement. therefore, the statement was in line with shishavan (2010), who stated that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who can increase the students' motivation. besides, according to payne and berry (2011), one of the ways to increase millennial students' motivation in learning is that a teacher should utilize the internet and multimedia in all aspects of education. hence, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should use technology in teaching and learning activities to increase students' motivation to learn. creating a good classroom atmosphere the second finding related to socio-affective skills was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should create a good classroom atmosphere. it is a comfortable class that could make the students feel pleased to learn during teaching and learning activities in the classroom. it was relevant to dincer et al. (2013), who said that an effective english language teacher should create a stress-free classroom atmosphere to make learning activities more relaxing. also, harper and jong (2009) pointed out that an effective english language teacher should ensure a welcoming classroom environment for the students. therefore, the teachers in the millennial era need to ensure that their classroom atmosphere is suitable for millennial students to make them enjoy and feel comfortable joining the class. the millennial generation is ministry implications where the people in the social community need to accept and trait them well as their friends to make them feel comfortable (marcadante, 2008). hence, it will make them enjoy the class. also, it aims to make the teaching and learning process run well. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 194 having good relations with the students and other teachers the third finding related to socio-affective skills was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should have good relations with students and other teachers. there were two reasons why an effective english language teacher should have good relationships with the students and other teachers. firstly, when a teacher had a good relationship with students, it could effectively run the teaching and learning process. also, it could help the students receive the lesson efficiently to develop their proficiency, which could positively impact students' learning achievement. secondly, when a teacher had a good relationship with the other teachers, it could help them improve their teaching performance to gain good teaching quality. the above finding was in line with dincer et al. (2013), who believed that a good relationship with students and fellow teachers is crucial for an effective english language teacher. similarly, korkmaz and yavuz (2011) also thought that to be an effective teacher. they should have a harmonious relationship with people. to conclude, having good relations with the students is one of the crucial aspects of being an effective english language teacher in the millennial era because the millennial generation is an open-minded and friendly people. also, it can have positive impacts on students' learning performance and teacher's teaching quality. understanding the students' character the fourth finding related to socio-affective skills was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should understand students' nature. understanding the students meant the teacher should know the students' characteristics in their ability and learning problems. besides, if the teachers understood their students' character, it could make them feel comfortable with the teachers to communicate during the teaching and learning process in the classroom activity. the finding was in line with dincer, goksu, takkac, and yazici (2013), who stated that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who knows how to approach students related to their problems during the teaching and learning process. hence, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should understand how to approach the students by knowing their characters. the millennial generation is independent, well-educated, confident, upbeat, openminded, sociable, technically literate, adverse to slowness, and highly informed (broadbridge, maxwell, & ogden 2007). also, the teacher should know their learning ability, learning problems, and feeling during class activities. it is to gain a successful teaching and learning journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 195 process. besides, it can also make the students feel comfortable during teaching and learning activities in the classroom. pedagogical knowledge giving feedback the first finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should provide feedback. effective teachers were supposed to give feedback to the students related to their learning progress. giving feedback on the students' learning performance is essential for students because it can increase their motivation. besides, through feedback, the students can improve and develop their ability to gain good learning results. however, in giving feedback, the teachers should tell the students in the right way using polite language. korkmaz and yavuz (2011) believed that effective teachers' crucial competencies evaluate the students' learning achievement in giving feedback. similarly, dincer et al. (2013) also mentioned that an effective teacher should guide the students with informational feedback about the learning progress. hence, an effective teacher in the millennial era is believed to evaluate and give feedback to the students related to their learning performance in the classroom. however, the teacher should provide feedback politely. the millennial generation is a sheltered generation where the people should be careful when communicating with them. having an excellent ability to explain the lesson the second finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should have a remarkable ability to explain. a teacher should deliver the lesson comprehensively and straightforwardly and give a related example. besides, a teacher should also present in an excellent sequence to ease the students to understand and receive it well. likewise, the finding was relevant to some previous studies. betson et al. (2001), as cited in arikan et al. (2008), believed that effective teachers should offer the lesson to the students clearly and understandably. similarly, korkmaz and yavuz (2011) asserted that effective english language teachers could comprehensively transfer their knowledge to students. besides, an effective english language teacher should have particular abilities to explain the lesson (dincer et al., 2013). for example, teachers should have an appropriate teaching strategy. flores (2015) pointed out that language teachers in the millennial era should be aware and have proper teaching procedures to increase their motivation and persuade them to acquire a second language. one of the strategies is journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 196 applying technology in the teaching and learning process (flores, 2015). therefore, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should have an appropriate strategy in explaining the lesson to help the students understand, such as using and applying technology in teaching and learning activities. also, regarding the proper procedure to explain, the teacher should deliver the material clearly and in detail using a simple way for the students to ease the students. ensuring the students' understanding of the lesson the third finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should provide the students' understanding of the lesson. it was important for an effective teacher to ensure the students' knowledge by clarifying what students did not understand and made them dare to ask the teacher. besides, it could be helpful if a teacher explained the lesson and instruction more than once until the students understood the lesson. harper and jong (2009) stated that an effective english language teacher should know how to make explicit instruction through some strategies. hence, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era is a teacher who makes sure that the students understand the lesson and instruction given more than a one-time explanation. in contrast, the teacher is supposed to implement the student-centered approach (sca) in the classroom, where the teachers are facilitators for the students in the teaching and learning process. however, the participants argued that the teacher in the millennial era should explain the lesson and instruction more than once. therefore, the teacher also needs to ensure the students' understanding of the lesson and instruction given. besides, a teacher should know how to approach the students in making them feel free to ask the teacher about the lesson being taught in the classroom. having the lesson plan the fourth finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective teacher should have a lesson plan. it is because the lesson plan has some advantages. firstly, the lesson plan made teaching and learning activities more organized. secondly, the students could know what actions could be done in the class and prepare them for the lesson. haryadi (2018) pointed out that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who uses and applies the materials written in the lesson plan. besides, according to arikan (2010), the teachers must use the lesson plan in the teaching and learning process to create conducive learning. however, having a lesson plan is one of the characteristics of an effective english language journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 197 teacher, which also appears in the previous generations. besides, the activities written in the lesson plan should be various and suitable to millennial students' demands. therefore, from the statements mentioned, the lesson plan is necessary for teaching and learning activities. through the lesson plan, a teacher can create the teaching and learning process run effectively. utilizing and applying technology the fifth finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should use and apply technology. there were some media which the teachers should apply in the teaching and learning process. these media were divided into two core categories, namely visual media and audio-visual media. visual media used the powerpoint presentation, prezi, canva, and story bird. moreover, in audio-visual media, the teacher could utilize youtube videos. also, a teacher could use games as teaching media in the classroom. hence, if a teacher applied those teaching media, it could make the students more interested in following the class, increase their motivation to learn, enjoy the course, make learning activities more fun, and ease the students to understand the lesson. thakre and thakre (2015) said that learning media for students is mostly about technology using smartphones and other multimedia devices. similarly, dincer et al. (2013) stated that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who integrates technology in the teaching and learning process. furthermore, an effective teacher should incorporate games into the teaching and learning process (arikan et al., 2008). besides, payne and berry (2011) pointed out that teachers are encouraged to utilize the internet and multimedia in all facets of education to increase millennial students' motivation in learning. technology is essential to teach the students of the millennial generation. then, the teacher should utilize and apply it in teaching and learning activities using videos, games, and other multimedia devices. when the teachers apply technology in their teaching activities, it can give several advantages in the teaching and learning process. for example, the students become more interested in joining the class, increase their motivation to learn, make them enjoyable in learning activities, and ease them from understanding the lesson. allowing students to write a reflection the sixth finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective teacher should allow the students to write a reflection. it enables students to share their opinions and suggestion to the teachers' teaching performance. arikan (2010) believed that teachers should value and respect students' judgments. also, korkmaz and yavuz journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 198 (2011) pointed out that effective teachers should know how to develop their teaching ability as a teacher. therefore, it is essential to allow the students to write a reflection because it positively impacts teachers' teaching performance. however, in the millennial era, teachers can utilize technology as a platform for the students to write a reflection. besides, the teachers should respect students' opinions and evaluate their teaching performance to improve their teaching quality in the classroom. controlling class activities the seventh finding related to pedagogical knowledge was that an effective teacher should control class activities. the teacher should control class activities during the teaching and learning process in the classroom by moving around the class to make sure that the students understand the learning topic and give feedback on their group work. sharp (2006) said that in the millennial era, the new roles of teachers include guiding, providing mediations, modeling, and coaching active learners (in keengwe & georgina, 2013). to sum up, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should control students' activity during the teaching and learning process. knowledge subject-matter being knowledgeable the first finding related to subject matter knowledge was that effective teachers should be knowledgeable. it is crucial to make the teachers be able to answer every student's question in the classroom. also, when the students have knowledgeable teachers, it can increase their motivation to be intelligent people. arikan et al. (2008) stated that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who has good knowledge. besides, dincer et al. (2013) believed that the more teachers are knowledgeable and the more effectively they can teach, the more successful they will gain. therefore, good knowledge can make them teach the students effectively and help the students be knowledgeable people. mastering english the second finding related to subject matter knowledge was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should master english. the teachers should understand the english subject, including vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, because it will ease them to transfer the knowledge to the students. it is the reason why an english language teacher should have correct pronunciation and grammar. the teacher becomes the students' role model to imitate the teacher on pronouncing and writing the word correctly. that way, when the teachers have correct pronunciation and grammar, it helps them improve their journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 199 english proficiency. as mentioned by dincer et al. (2013), effective teachers should master a specific subject. in addition, arikan et al. (2008) said that effective english language teachers should correct pronunciation. besides, they should be able to write in english well (shishavan, 2010). therefore, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era is a teacher who masters english subjects through vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, which can positively impact students' english proficiency. personality character being an intelligent teacher the first finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era teacher must be innovative in three aspects: knowledge of the subject, time management, and classroom activity management. for this reason, an intelligent teacher can enhance students' motivation to be innovative as well. arikan et al. (2008) stated that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who has good knowledge of english. besides, an effective english language teacher should also increase the students' motivation (shishavan, 2010). to conclude, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be innovative because it can positively impact their teaching performance and students' motivation in learning. being a caring teacher the second finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be devoted. effective teachers should know how to approach the students by getting to know the students' names and ask about their learning problems to create a good relationship between teacher and students. also, when the teacher cares for the students, it can increase their motivation to follow teaching and learning activities. dincer et al. (2013) believed that to be an effective english teacher. a teacher must care for the students. similarly, arikan et al. (2008) thought that an effective teacher is a caring person. caring for students is an essential characteristic of an effective english language teacher in the millennial era because it can give positive advantages to students related to their learning motivation. being a friendly teacher the third finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be warm and friendly. this type of teacher can make the students feel comfortable with the teacher and dare to ask anything. besides, it also makes them dare to tell the teachers about their teaching performance in the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 200 classroom. arikan et al. (2008) said that they should be friendly to students to be an effective teacher. in addition, shishavan and sadeghi (2009) stated that a teacher should know how they behave towards the students. therefore, from the statements mentioned, an effective teacher should be friendly because the students will feel comfortable with them. also, it can influence the students toward teaching and learning activities in the classroom better. being a disciplined teacher the fourth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be disciplined. a teacher should have discipline in all aspects by coming on time to the class. besides, a teacher should make the students be discipline, such as giving the criteria to students on how to dress appropriately and determining the assignment due date. furthermore, a discipline teacher will help the students to be disciplined people. similarly, walker (2008) claimed that one of the characteristics of an effective english language teacher is the one who starts the class on time. moreover, according to harper and jong (2009), an effective english language teacher is a teacher who should be able to give explicit instruction to students. hence, a teacher should be discipline to make teaching and learning activity run well. also, when a teacher is disciplined, it can make the students be disciplined people as well. therefore, being discipline is vital for teachers and students. being a creative teacher the fifth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be creative. the teacher should be creative in explaining the lesson using the appropriate teaching and learning strategies to make learning activities more fun. arikan et al. l (2008) noted that an effective english language teacher is a teacher who becomes the creative person to teach the students. besides, effective teachers should innovate their teaching strategies (arikan et al., 2008). hence, to be an effective english language teacher in the millennial era, the teacher should be creative in applying teaching and learning strategies in the classroom, which is appropriate to the students and class situation. thus, it is to make the students feel enjoyable in attending class activities. being a kind teacher the sixth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be kind. for a reason, it aims to make the students dare to ask about the lesson in the classroom. besides, it also will make the students feel comfortable to join the class. dincer et al. (2013) discovered that an effective english language journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 201 teacher is a kind person. besides, an effective teacher should not be authoritative to the students (arikan et al., 2008). therefore, an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be kind because it will make the students feel comfortable to follow teaching and learning activities. also, it can make the students dare to ask the lesson during the teaching and learning process. being a patient teacher the seventh finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be patient. the teacher should be patient in some aspects to control emotions while teaching and deliver the lesson patiently. dincer et al. (2013) explained that an effective english language teacher should be a patient person to teach the students. from those statements, practical english language teachers are supposed to explain the lesson to the students in the classroom. being a humorous teacher the eighth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be amusing. a teacher must have a sense of humor in teaching. there are some reasons why an effective english language teacher must have a sense of humor. firstly, a sense of humor can increase students' motivation to learn. secondly, a sense of humor can enhance students' learning interest and become more enthusiastic to follow teaching and learning activities. besides, when a teacher has a sense of humor in teaching, it makes them feel comfortable and fun during classroom activities. kormak and yavuz (2011) thought that an effective english language teacher should have a sense of humor. similarly, arikan et al. (2008) pointed out that they should be humorous to be effective teachers. hence, an effective teacher should be a clever person because it can positively impact the teaching and learning process and the students' academic achievement. being a responsible teacher the ninth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be accountable. they should make the students understand the lesson taught in the classroom. similarly, korkmaz and yavuz (2011) asserted that an effective teacher should know how to act as a teacher. besides, the teacher also should deliver information to the students in a clear and comprehensible way (betson et al. 2001, as cited in arikan et al., 2008). from the statements, practical english language teachers are responsible for making the students understand the lesson taught in the classroom. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 202 being an open-minded teacher the tenth finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be open-minded. a teacher should be open-minded and discuss with students related to the lesson, classroom, and school activities. similarly, arikan (2010) and dincer et al. (2013) believed that open-mindedness is one of the crucial characteristics of an effective teacher. therefore, the teachers in the millennial era need to be open-minded to discuss with the students outside the classroom. being a professional teacher the eleventh finding related to personality character was that an effective english language teacher in the millennial era should be experienced and skilled. also, they should separate their profession from their problems. then, when the teachers have their problems, they must still do their job well to deliver the lesson to the students. korkmaz and yavuz (2011) mentioned that effective english language teachers should know how to act. besides, a teacher should know how they behave towards them (shishavan & sadeghi, 2009). therefore, effective teachers should be professional when teaching students and separate between the profession and their problems. conclusion and implication the findings showed that effective english language teachers in the millennial era are supposed to utilize and apply technology in teaching and learning activities. for this reason, using and applying technology in teaching and learning activities can enhance students' motivation in learning. besides, technology can also increase students' interest to join the class. moreover, practical english language teachers in the millennial era should have various teaching strategies suitable for millennial students' demands. effective teachers in the millennial generation should also be creative in applying teaching and learning strategies in the classroom, which is appropriate to the students and class situation. it is to make the students feel enjoyable in attending class activities. besides, the teachers should be open-minded and discuss with students related to the lesson, classroom, and school activities outside the classroom. the findings imply that the teachers in the millennial era should maintain and improve several characteristics of effective english language teachers that appear in previous generations. those characteristics including; giving feedback, having good ability in explaining the lesson, ensuring students' understanding, having lesson plan, utilizing and applying technology, allowing journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 203 students to write a reflection, controlling class activities, being knowledgeable, mastering english, being smart, being caring, being friendly, being discipline, being kind, being patient, being humorous, being responsible, and being professional. references arikan, a. (2010). effective english language teacher from the perspectives of prospective and in-service teachers in turkey. electronic journal of social sciences, 9 (31), 209-223. retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/70171 arikan, a., taser, d., & sarac-suzer, h. s. (2008). the effective english language teacher from the perspectives of turkish preparatory school students. education and science, 33 (150), 4252. retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed506217 broadbridge, a. m., maxwell, g. a., & ogden, s. m. (2007). experiences, perceptions, and expectations of retail employment for generation y. career development international, 12(6),523-544. https://doi.org/10.1108/13620430710822001 bt rahamat, r., shah, p. m., bt din, & bt abd aziz, j. (2011). students' readiness and perceptions towards using mobile technologies for learning the english language literature component. the english teacher, 69-84. retrieved from http://www.assumptionjournal.au.edu/index.php/newenglishteacher/issue/view/229 chun, d., smith, b., & kern, r. (2016). technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. the modern language journal, 100, 64-80. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12302 cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2011). research methods in education. 7th ed. london: routledge considine, d., horton, j., & moorman, g. (2009). teaching and reaching the millennial generation through media literacy. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 52 (6),471-481. https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.52.6.2 creswell, j. w. (2002). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative (p. 676). upper saddle river, nj: prentice-hall. creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative research. 4th edition. boston: pearson, ch.1, p. 2-28. debard, r. (2004). millennials coming to college. new directions for student services,106, 33-45. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.123 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/70171 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed506217 https://doi.org/10.1108/13620430710822001 http://www.assumptionjournal.au.edu/index.php/newenglishteacher/issue/view/229 https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12302 https://doi.org/10.1598/jaal.52.6.2 https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.123 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 204 dincer, a., goksu, a., takkac, a., & yazici, m. (2013). common characteristics of an effective english language teacher. the international journal of educational researchers (ijers), 4-3, 1-8. retrieved from https://ijer.penpublishing.net/makale/70 flores, j. f. f. (2015). using gamification to enhance second language learning. digital education, (27), 32-54. https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2015.27.32-54 goddard, r. d., hoy, w. k., & hoy, a. w. (2000). collective teacher efficacy: its meaning, measure, and impact on student’s achievement. american educational research journal, 37(2), 479-507. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312037002479 harper, c. a., & jong, e. j. d. (2009). english language teacher expertise: the elephant in the room. language and education, 23 (2), 137-151. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780802152788 haryadi, d. (2018). university teachers; beliefs about the characteristics of effective english as a foreign language (efl) teachers, [thesis, universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta] bantul. http://repository.umy.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/20183/1.%20judul.pdf?seq uence=1 ismail, m., & lu, h. s. (2014). cultural values and career goals of the millennial generation: an integrated conceptual framework. the journal of international management studies,9 (1), 38-49. retrieved from http://www.jimsjournal.org/4%20maimunah%20ismail.pdf kaifi, b.a., nafei, w. a., khanfar, n. m., & kaifi, m. m. (2012). a multi-generational workforce: managing and understanding millennials. international journal of business &management, 7 (24), 88-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v7n24p88 kelan, e., & lehnert, m. (2009). the millennial generation: generation y and the opportunities for a globalized, networked, educational system. beyond current horizons, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1.1.596.8701 korkmaz, s. c., & yavuz, a. (2011). elt student-teacher perspectives of an effective english language teacher. journal of theory and practice in education, 7 (2), 207-229. retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/63245 kraus, s. & sears, s. (2008). teaching for the millennial generation: student and teacher perceptions of community building and individual pedagogical techniques. the journal of effective teaching (jet), 8 (2), 32-39. retrieved from https://uncw.edu/jet/articles/vol8_2/kraus.pdf mercadante, f. (2008). the millennial generation, postmodernism & the changing face of catholic youth ministry. center for ministry development, 1-13. retrieved from https://garyoyya.angelfire.com/changingfaceofym.pdf https://ijer.penpublishing.net/makale/70 https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2015.27.32-54 https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312037002479 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780802152788 http://repository.umy.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/20183/1.%20judul.pdf?sequence=1 http://repository.umy.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/20183/1.%20judul.pdf?sequence=1 http://www.jimsjournal.org/4%20maimunah%20ismail.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v7n24p88 https://doi.org/10.1.1.596.8701 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/63245 https://uncw.edu/jet/articles/vol8_2/kraus.pdf https://garyoyya.angelfire.com/changingfaceofym.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 205 monaco, m., & martin, m. (2007). the millennial student: a new generation of learners. athletic training education journal, 42-46. https://doi.org/10.4085/1947-380x-2.2.42 nicholas, a. (2008). preferred learning methods of the millennial generation. digital commond @ salve regina. retrieved from https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/fac_staff_pub/18/ olszewski, p. (2016). teaching millennials how to study under 𝑡ℎ𝑒 21𝑠𝑡 century sky. pyrex journal of educational research and reviews, 2 (1), 001-009. retrieved from http://www.pyrexjournals.org/pjerr payne, e. k., & berry, d. c. (2011). connecting with your students in the year 2011: text messaging in the classroom. athletic training education journal, 6 (3), 175-178. https://doi.org/10.4085/1947-380x-6.3.175 phillips, c. r., & trainor, j. e. (2014). millennial students and the flipped classroom. asbbs, 21 (1), 519-530. retrieved from http://asbbs.org/files/asbbs2014/pdf/p/phillips_trainor(p519-530).pdf pierson, m. e., & mcneil, s. (2000). preservice technology integration through collaborative action communities. contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, 1 (1), 189199. retrieved from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/10808/ pinder-grover, t., & groscurth, c. r. (2009). principles for teaching the millennial generation: innovative practices of u-m faculty. center for research and learning and teaching, 26. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237593593_principles_for_teachi ng_the_millennial_generation_innovative_practices_of_um_ faculty prensky, m. (2001). digital natives digital immigrants. on the horizon, 9 (5), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 puji, r.p.n., & umamah, n. (2018). edmodo multimedia: supporting technology for media learning at higher education. international journal of english literature and social sciences, 3 (1), 48-56. https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.3.1.9 rotgans, j. i., & schmidt, h.g. (2011). the role of teachers in facilitating situational interest in an active-learning classroom. teaching and teacher education, 27, 37-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.06.025 shishavan, b.h., & sadeghi, k. (2009). characteristics of an effective english language teacher as perceived by iranian teachers and learners of english. english language teaching, 2(4), 130-143. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p130 https://doi.org/10.4085/1947-380x-2.2.42 https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/fac_staff_pub/18/ http://www.pyrexjournals.org/pjerr https://doi.org/10.4085/1947-380x-6.3.175 http://asbbs.org/files/asbbs2014/pdf/p/phillips_trainor(p519-530).pdf https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/10808/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237593593_principles_for_teaching_the_millennial_generation_innovative_practices_of_um_faculty https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237593593_principles_for_teaching_the_millennial_generation_innovative_practices_of_um_faculty https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237593593_principles_for_teaching_the_millennial_generation_innovative_practices_of_um_faculty https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.3.1.9 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.06.025 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n4p130 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 206 shishavan, h.b. (2010). the relationship between iranian english language teachers' and learners' gender and their perceptions of an effective english language teacher. english language teaching, 3 (3), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n3p3 taylor, a. (2012). a study of the information search behavior of the millennial generation. information research, 17 (1). retrieved from http://informationr.net/ir/171/paper508.html thakre, s. s, & thakre, s. b. (2015). perception of medical students for the utility of mobile technology use in medical education. international journal of medicine and public health, 5 (4). 305-311. https://doi.org/10.4103/2230-8598.165959 twenge, j. m. (2010). a review of the empirical evidence on generational differences work attitudes. journal of business and psychology, 25, 201-210. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869010-9165-6 walker, r. (2008). twelve characteristics of an effective teacher: a longitudinal, qualitative, quasi-research study of in-service and pre-service teachers’ opinions. educational horizons, 87(1), 61-68. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42923744 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n3p3 http://informationr.net/ir/17-1/paper508.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-1/paper508.html https://doi.org/10.4103/2230-8598.165959 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9165-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9165-6 http://www.jstor.org/stable/42923744 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 24 article history: submitted: 24 november 2021 reviewed: 14 december 2021 17 december 2021 edited: 28 december 2021 31 december 2021 accepted: 31 december 2021 developing e-module of islamic reading text materials astri winandari berlin*), rahayu apriliaswati, yanti sri rezeki universitas tanjungpura, indonesia *)corresponding author email: astriwinandari@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13210 abstract providing english learning material with an islamic basis for madrasah aliyah students is important as the students are islamic learners. this research aims to develop an e-module of islamic reading text materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak. the researchers adapted the analyze, design, and develop phases of the addie concept to develop this research product. the analysis phase was conducted by interviewing the english teacher to determine the suitable e-module to be designed. the design phase was done by designing the contents of the e-module based on the analysis results. the e-module consists of recount and narrative texts materials with islamic-based stories and integrates the values of aqidah (strong belief), tawakkul (reliance upon allah), tolerance, hard work, and husnuzon (positive thinking). in the development phase, the researchers developed the e-module then checked it with a self-designed standard evaluation checklist. the result showed that the emodule already fulfilled the criteria of appropriateness. the e-module could be supplementary reading materials to make the students’ autonomous learning easier. it was written in easy-tounderstand language and provided self-instructional material with independent self-evaluation. specifically, it is expected to improve their understanding of recount and narrative text materials and strengthen their islamic character values. keywords: development research; e-module; islamic reading text materials =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:astriwinandari@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13210 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13210&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 25 introduction islamic high schools in indonesia (madrasah aliyah) are expected to be the knowledge source for students based on both the national curriculum and islamic education (febriani, 2015). the education process in madrasah aliyah should inculcate islamic religion and knowledge understanding within its teaching and learning activities. moreover, with the focus of curriculum 2013, where character education should be strengthened, thus educational institutions play an important role in educating the youth. in this case, madrasah aliyah should be the knowledge source that gives students education and character building to integrate islamic values and knowledge. hence, learning material is an essential part. in english language learning, reading is among the focus skills that also have an important role in contributing to children’s success both academically and in life. thus, educators should be concerned and put careful attention to serving valuable and suitable reading material. however, based on the preliminary study of man 1 pontianak, no specific islamic reading text materials were available for the learning process of english subjects. as the center of madrasah education, the islamic education directorate of ministry of religious affairs has not released specific books or english learning material for english class in madrasah aliyah purpose. ikhsanudin (2020) stated the book’s availability is amongst other problems within education in indonesia. the english teacher admitted that it is hard to find english learning materials with an islamic basis for the english subject. to this issue, febriani (2015) argued that the development of supplementary reading materials with islamic values is necessary when the main book used by english teachers at islamic high school does not cover islamic messages. furthermore, the researchers developed reading materials in an electronic module, considering that students need learning materials that can be accessed easily, feasible, and interesting enough to motivate them to learn. thus, this research aims to develop an e-module of islamic reading text materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak. the e-module development was based on the reading text materials in curriculum 2013 in the second semester, consisting of the recount and narrative texts. a previous related study was from nafiah (2020) that developed a module of procedure text reading material with islamic values integration for the ninth-grade students of madrasah tsanawiyah. the study concluded that developing the english reading text materials module https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 26 inculcated with islamic values is appropriate and functional for english subjects in madrasah tsanawiyah. another related study from sari (2019) developed an exercise book of english reading materials with islamic stories for an extracurricular program in madrasah aliyah. the result indicated that students were actively engaged and had a greater interest in reading the exercise book of english text materials with islamic stories rather than using the general text since it was suitable with their needs and interest as islamic learners. although material development is a widely discussed topic within the english language teaching context, limited research has focused on developing an electronic module of islamic reading text material for the english subject of madrasah aliyah students. through this research, the researchers filled the gap by developing an e-module of islamic reading material for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak. literature review materials development tomlinson (2014) implied that material development is an effort for writers or teachers to create, evaluate, and adapt language teaching materials. departemen pendidikan nasional (2008) – national education deepartment mentioned that the aims of developing instructional material are for providing suitable teaching material that fulfills the demand of curriculum with consideration to the students need (in which teaching materials suit the characters or setting of the students), helping students on getting alternative teaching materials aside from textbook that is difficult to be found, and ease the teacher work. as in this study, the researchers developed materials integrating islamic values into english materials. it is important to put careful attention to the literature review regarding the integration of religious values into the language materials. according to foye (2014), integrating religious values in english language teaching is applicable and will cause no problem if the language materials are taught well. moreover, religion and education are interrelated, and the teaching materials included with religious content have implications for nation-building (cheng & beigi, 2012). hence, developing and providing the english learning material with an islamic basis for english class in madrasah aliyah is critical. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 27 islamic reading text materials islamic-based reading text is a set of reading texts that gives the readers islam-related stories that can be utilized as practical ways to introduce islamic values in students’ day-to-day lives (susilawati, tahrun, & inderawati, 2016). this research used islamic historical events and short islamic stories about prophethood for the reading materials. it also has quranic verses, hadith, and islamic terms. in indonesia’s educational field, the government, through curriculum 2013, commanded schools to preserve eighteen educational character values in all subjects to the students. these eighteen characters are religious, honest, tolerance, disciplined, hard-working, creative, independent, democratic, curious, patriotism, nationalism, achievement appreciation, friendly/communicative, pacifism, reading interest, social caring, environmental caring, and responsible. for the materials developed in this research, the researchers focused on teaching the religiosity values of aqidah (strong belief), tawakkul (reliance upon allah), and husnuzon (positive thinking), also tolerance and hard work values in the islamic reading materials. the reading text materials in the curriculum 2013 of the second semester of tenth grade are recount and narrative texts. recount text is the text about the past event. in this study, the recount text is about the historical recount, with islamic historical stories that happened in the past. in her study, harmiyanti (2019) concluded that islamic recount text material helped students from islamic school increase their reading skills. not only that, but the students also had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of islamic history and values. meanwhile, according to iranmanesh (2012), narrative texts tell stories while delivering messages. the communicative purpose of narrative text is to entertain the readers, and the generic structure consists of orientation, complication, resolution, and re-orientation, which is an optional part (herlina, 2012). a previous related study from faridi and bahri (2016) explored an islamic narrative story reading model for an english class in an islamic junior high school. the study indicated that english classes in islamic schools must have the islamic narrative reading material model to help students build good character. henceforth, islamic stories in recount and narrative texts materials for islamic-affiliated schools are considered suitable since the students can enhance their reading comprehension and have the opportunity to strengthen their good character. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 28 e-module the key for effective learning materials development in materials development is to make them effective, efficient, and engaging (qamariah, 2015). an electronic module can become a good option as the e-module can serve the material effectively and engagingly. according to departemen pendidikan nasional (2017), an e-module presents self-systematic study material divided into certain learning units and presented electronically. each learning activity is linked by navigation links for students to become more interactive with the program. it is also supported with video, animation, and audio presentations to enrich the students learning experience. the characteristics of e-modules according to the depdiknas (2017) are self-instructional (students can learn on their own), self-contained (all learning material from one competency unit being studied is contained in one complete module), stand-alone (not depending on other media), adaptive to the development of science and technology, and user friendly. further, depdiknas explained that an e-module is delivered using a computer-based electronic media that utilizes various electronic media functionalities. also, the e-module should be carefully designed by taking into account learning principles and using consistent fonts, spacing, and layout. ahmad (2017) stated that by developing an e-module based on the students need, educators can give the students appropriate material for their independent learning and may benefit in some aspects, such as providing flexibility for adapting and connecting developed materials to students’ and institutional needs, enhancing the expertise of the writer, and raising the institution’s reputation. the study from pombo, smith, abelha, caixinha, and costa (2012) that evaluates the implementation of e-module revealed that implementing an e-module can help develop ict skills, encourage self-reflection, and make task activities more engaging. in line with that, budiarti, nuswowati, and cahyono (2016) stated that e-module helps students to foster creativity and habit of productive thinking and build learning situations that are favorable, active, and innovative. together, these studies outline that e-module positively impacts the students’ learning process. method this research developed an e-module of islamic reading text materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak in the academic year 2021/2022. it was https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 29 classified as research and development because through the research, the researchers developed a learning product. wahidah, ibrahim, & muslim (2019) stated that the purpose of research and development in the educational field is to develop effective products for school use. this research adapted analyze, design, and develop phases of the addie concept proposed by branch (2009) to develop the product. in the analysis phase, an interview with the participant of this research, an english teacher of man 1 pontianak, was conducted. the aim was to find out the kind of e-module of islamic recount and narrative text materials that should be developed based on the teacher’s perspective as an experienced english teacher who has been teaching the tenth grade of madrasah aliyah students. the interview was a structured interview with prepared questions. interviewing is expected to expand the understanding of the studied topic because the interview is interactive, also interviewers can ask for clear-complete information (alshenqeeti, 2014). the thematic analysis method was used to analyze the data from the interview. alhojailan (2012) stated that thematic analysis is used for evaluating classifications and presenting data-related themes. there were three steps in conducting the thematic analysis. the first was to comprehend the data by listening again to the interview recording and rereading its transcript. step two was to note the core data from the interview. then, the last step was to discover the data conclusion. in the design phase, the contents of the e-module were designed by the researchers. the contents included the types of reading text materials, the contents of the e-module, the learning model, the islamic values, stories, and activities for the text materials. in line with branch (2009), the design phase’s typical deliverable is a design brief. the islamic reading text materials consisted of recount text and narrative text materials. the materials development was based on the contextual teaching and learning model with its seven components: constructivism, modeling, inquiry, questioning, community learning, reflection, and authentic assessment. the stories for both text materials were based on islamic historical and short stories that integrated the values of aqidah (strong belief), tolerance, tawakkul (reliance upon allah), hard work, and husnuzon (positive thinking). in develop phase, the researcher developed the e-module by arranging the designed contents using ms. word 2013 software. then, the developed product was checked based on the standard evaluation checklist and finalized. the standard evaluation checklist was made by the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 30 researcher adapting the teaching materials formative evaluation format in the teaching materials development guide by departement pendidikan nasional 2008. there were fourteen criteria in the standard evaluation checklist that covered the evaluation of content appropriateness, language appropriateness, presentation appropriateness, and graphics. findings this research adopted the phases of analyze, design, and develop of the addie concept proposed by branch (2009). analysis phase the analysis phase was done through a structured interview with the english teacher to identify what kind of e-module of islamic recount and narrative text is suitable for students from the teacher’s perspective. through the interview, the researchers found that no specific english learning material with an islamic basis was available in man 1 pontianak previously. therefore, the product of this research acted as an initial product. the conclusion regarding the kind of e-module suitable for the students from the analysis phase was that the e-module should be made simple with easy-to-understand language. the tenthgrade students tended to have a low reading mastery level, specifically recount and narrative text. they lacked vocabulary, especially past tense vocabulary; subsequently, the e-module should be made with common and familiar vocabularies. then, the teacher suggested that the researcher make the reading text materials short and with not hard exercises. she said: “my suggestion is to make the e-module simple with not long texts and written in easy-to-understand language and don’t make the tasks and exercises parts difficult. make the exercises easy to medium level”. moreover, to draw the students’ attention, the teacher suggested putting supporting pictures for the text. she said: “students tend to pay more attention to the reading texts that are short and have supporting pictures, so give the text supporting pictures or illustration”. thus, the researchers put supporting pictures for the texts. design phase the design phase was conducted by designing the contents of the e-module. it consisted of preparing the reading text materials, the contents of the e-module, the learning model, the islamic values, stories, and activities for the text materials. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 31 reading text materials. the design of reading text materials of the e-module was based on the tenth grade english subject syllabus of curriculum 2013 that the english teacher uses. the types of reading text materials of the second semester in the syllabus are recount and narrative texts. the standard competencies of recount text in the syllabus are students able to: 1) identify the social function, text structure, and language features of recount text, 2) conclude the meaning of the text, and 3) arrange the recount text. while the standard competencies of narrative text in the syllabus are students able to 1) identify the social function, text structure, and language features of narrative text, 2) conclude the meaning of the text. the core and standard competence are written in each module’s chapter. the contents of the e-module. the researchers made the text materials and stories from several sources. the book sources were from the students’ book of english subject from the ministry of education, students’ book of akidah akhlak also sejarah kebudayaan islam from the ministry of religious affairs. the researcher compiled and rewrote the explanation and stories from those books to be adjusted to the students’ level by simplifying the language to understand the text and materials easily. it was also to avoid plagiarism. furthermore, as the recount and narrative texts topic is about islamic stories and character values, the researcher also completed the content of the e-module with quranic verses. for the quranic verses, the researchers used the web of https://quran.com/ as the source. the researchers gave credit to those books and web used by putting them on the reference page of the e-module. to support the text in the e-module and to draw the students’ interest, supporting illustrations and pictures that visualize the stories were added in the text. the sources of those contents addresses were put under each of them. moreover, to enrich the students learning experience and for the students’ listening practice, some youtube video links related to the reading text materials and the stories were also inserted in the e-module, and their hyperlinks are put on the pages that discuss them. learning model. contextual teaching and learning (ctl) was chosen for the learning model. ctl is considered the most suitable learning model for materials development in this research since ctl’s objective is to motivate students to comprehend the meaning of learning materials based on their prior knowledge. according to johnson (as cited in kadir, 2011), ctl is an educational process aiming at guiding students for meaning derivation from the academic materials the students are studying by linking the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://quran.com/ journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 32 topic towards their everyday life circumstances. ctl model consists of seven components, namely constructivism, modeling, inquiry, questioning, community learning, reflection, and authentic assessment. in the constructivism part, brainstorming questions are given to construct knowledge as in this initial stage of ctl students should construct their knowledge based on prior knowledge. in the modeling part, the materials models are given so that the students can adapt them. in the inquiry part, the text to be observed is given to analyze and understand the materials. in the questioning part, the questions are given to assess the students’ thinking. the questions are adjusted to the students’ level. in the community learning part, it is the part for students to share their ideas or experiences and work together. in the reflection part, the students reflect on what has been learned and respond to it based on prior knowledge and experience. lastly, in the authentic assessment part, it is the part to ensure the students’ capability and learning development. islamic values, stories, and activities. as the islamic values would be integrated within the reading text materials of the e-module, thus another learning objective which is to connect the values from the stories to the student’s daily life was added to each chapter’s learning objective. the values taught in the recount text focus on aqidah (strong belief), tolerance, and tawakkul (reliance upon allah). they are husnuzon (positive thinking) and hard work in the narrative text. those values are chosen since they are the focus values strengthening in akidah akhlak subject of tenth-grade and among the eighteen character education values of curriculum 2013. furthermore, the islamic stories for the recount text materials are stories about islamic historical events. they were the histories of hijrah to medina, the hudaibiyah treaty, isra’ miraj, kaaba, and the medina charter. the stories were chosen since the values of aqidah, tolerance, and tawakkul as the values that want to be integrated into the recount text chapter lie within the stories. in another hand, the islamic stories for narrative text materials are about zamzam water, prophet nuh, the moon split, and the battle of badr. the stories are chosen since the values of husnuzon and hard work as the values that want to be integrated into narrative text lies within the stories. the researcher also inserted several additional parts, such as intermezzo and character https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 33 development parts, discussing islamic values. besides, there are activities parts for the students to reflect on their prior knowledge and daily life situation, and glossary parts of words related to islamic terms. develop phase in the development phase, the e-module was developed by arranging the collected contents into an e-module using ms. word 2013. hyperlinks were also integrated with the emodule for online learning sources from youtube and hyperlinks of exercises to submit and check the students’ work through google form. the researcher adapted the guide from panduan praktis penyusunan e-modul tahun 2017 by departemen pendidikan nasional for developing the outline of the e-module. after developing the e-module, the researcher evaluated it with a standard evaluation checklist. fourteen criteria covered the evaluation of content appropriateness, language appropriateness, presentation appropriateness, and graphics. the result showed that this study’s product, the e-module of islamic reading materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak, already fulfilled all appropriateness criteria. table 1. standard evaluation checklist results no . aspect indicator yes no 1. content appropriateness e-module materials are suitable with the standard competence and basic competence √ 2. material contents are fit to the student’s competency level √ 3. the islamic stories are useful for the students √ 4. the contents are following moral values √ 5. language appropriateness the language used is according to the grammatical rules of english √ 6. the e-modul is clear and readable √ 7. effective use of language √ 8. presentation appropriateness learning objectives are clear √ 9. presentation of the material is in order √ 10. supporting pictures are available √ https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 34 no . aspect indicator yes no 11. graphics the font used is not excessive √ 12. the layout is clear √ 13. pictures and presentations are interesting and can support the reading materials √ 14. the display design is interesting √ the researcher also showed the result to the english teacher to ask for her judgment. it turned out that the english teacher of man 1 pontianak was pleased with the resulting product. she expressed her contentment that the e-module materials were clear, easy to read, and had good islamic stories. the overall design and content were also simple and interesting enough. hence, it was finalized in which the file was saved as a portable document format (pdf) file. resulted product the product of this research is an e-module of islamic reading text materials. the emodule is packaged in a shareable pdf file that can be accessed easily and feasible with computer-based electronic devices. the product is located in google drive and can be accessed through the link: https://bit.ly/32f9ck8 the e-module is written by adjusting to the students’ level. the language and vocabulary used are simplified to understand the text and materials easily. the e-module is equipped with self-instructional material, user guidelines, hyperlinks that can navigate students to internet learning sources and exercise links, and self-evaluation parts to evaluate their learning independently. the e-module also has interesting media such as supporting pictures and presentations for richer independent learning experiences. the e-module consists of materials for the recount and narrative texts. the recount text materials use islamic historical stories of hijrah to medina, hudaibiyah treaty, isra’ miraj, kaaba, and medina charter and integrate the values of aqidah (strong belief), tolerance, and tawakkul (reliance upon allah). the narrative text materials use islamic short stories of zam-zam water, prophet nuh, the moon split, and the battle of badr and integrate the values of hard work and husnuzon (positive thinking). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://bit.ly/32f9ck8 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 35 the total number of pages of the e-module is 29 pages, with the layout being simple in blue and green lines. the e-module is written with times new roman 12 as the main font for most of the text, the titles with arial rounded 14, and subtitles with cambria math 14. the emodule can be used as supplementary materials for independent learning. through the emodule, students can learn the recount text and narrative text materials and have the opportunity to learn islamic stories and strengthen their character based on islamic values. discussions providing the english learning material with an islamic basis for english subjects in madrasah aliyah is an important effort as the students in madrasah aliyah are islamic learners. the pre-research study found that no english learning material with an islamic basis was available for the english class in madrasah aliyah negeri 1 pontianak. this is unfortunate since the school is an islamic school that should strengthen religious education. febriani (2015) argued the development of supplementary reading materials with islamic values is necessary when the main book used by the english teacher at islamic high school does not cover islamic messages. in the same vein, madkur and albantani (2017) state that it is important for foreign language teachers in indonesia as the country where there are many islamic schools exist to integrate islamic values. it is important because the educators teach islamic values through their classes in islamic schools. then, the researcher aimed to develop an e-module of islamic reading text materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak. the researchers adopted the analyze, design, and develop phases of the addie concept proposed by branch (2009) to develop the resulting product. in the analysis phase, the interview concluded that students need reading text materials that are easy to understand and simple as they have low mastery levels and lack of vocabulary. also, students are interested in reading short texts and have supporting pictures. the teacher also suggested making the exercises not hard. the design phase was done by designing the contents of the e-module. the materials were arranged with easy-to-understand language, not-so-long stories and texts of each chapter and supported with illustrations and pictures to engage the students. foye (2014) concluded that elt teachers generally recognize religion’s importance in many people’s lives and as a vital character to a nation that it is applicable to be the topic for elt, the topic of the e-module contents is https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 36 islamic based reading text. the stories contained in both texts are islamic-based stories with values of aqidah (strong belief), tolerance, tawakkul (reliance upon allah), hard work, and husnuzon (positive thinking). sari (2019) indicated that reading materials with islamic stories could help students improve their reading ability and islamic values understanding in madrasah aliyah. accordingly, the researchers also believe that this e-module will help the students improve their reading text materials understanding and strengthen their islamic character values. the e-module was developed, checked, and finalized in the development phase. the emodule was arranged clearly and decently, and the check result of appropriateness showed that it already fulfilled all the appropriateness criteria. the e-module can be accessed easily with computer-based electronic devices as it is a pdf file located on google drive. the e-module is equipped with self-instructional material, user guidelines, hyperlinks that can navigate students to internet learning sources and exercise links, and self-evaluation parts to evaluate their learning independently. the e-module also has interesting media such as supporting pictures and presentations for richer independent learning experiences. the e-module as the product of this research answered the aims of material development from departemen pendidikan nasional (2008). according to depdiknas, the aims of material development are for providing suitable teaching material that fulfills the demand of curriculum with consideration to the students need (in which teaching materials suit the characters or setting of the students), helping students on getting alternative teaching materials aside from textbook that difficult to be found, and ease the teacher work. the e-module has fulfilled the demand of the curriculum and adjusted towards the students’ needs and status as muslim learners. moreover, it can help the teacher provide learning materials with islamic bases for the students of man 1 pontianak that were previously unavailable. the e-module also has the characteristics of the electronic module mentioned by departemen pendidikan nasional (2017). in the resulting e-module, all learning material from the studied competency units is contained in one complete module. it is not dependant on other media, and is adaptive to the development of science and technology, also user-friendly. through the e-module, students can learn on their own without the presence of the teacher. it can be stated that the strength of this research product is that the e-module is arranged based on the student level with simple and easy-to-understand language. the e-module can be https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 37 used as supplementary materials to make students’ independent learning easier. ahmad (2017) mentioned that in achieving learning outcomes, it is necessary to have an appropriate set of materials that students can easily understand during the learning process, both in and out of the classroom. the students can also have the opportunity to learn english reading materials and strengthen their islamic character values through the e-module. it is located on google drive with a sharing link, making the e-module feasible and accessible. conclusion this research aims to develop an e-module of islamic reading text materials for the second semester of tenth-grade students of man 1 pontianak. this research was conducted by adapting analyze, design, and develop phases of the addie concept proposed by branch (2009). the emodule consists of reading materials of the recount and narrative texts with islamic stories and integrates the values of aqidah (strong belief), tolerance, tawakkul (reliance upon allah), hard work, and husnuzon (positive thinking). the e-module can make the students’ autonomous learning easier as it was written in easy-to-understand language and provided self-instructional material with independent self-evaluation. it can be used as supplementary reading materials to support independent learning, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. specifically, it is expected to improve their understanding of recount and narrative text materials and strengthen their islamic character values. however, the e-module also has some limitations. the e-module is still an initial product for man 1 pontianak students. in another hand, the e-module was not validated by the experts but was limited by the researcher, and it is not yet tried out to the students. it is hoped that other researchers can continue this research by implementing the resulting product and doing the evaluation phase. references ahmad, a. (2017). developing cooperative learning-based e-module to teach basic english grammar of the first semester of english study program students at fkip–uir. j-shmic: journal of english for academic, 4(2), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.25299/jshmic.2017.vol4(2).536 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.25299/jshmic.2017.vol4(2).536 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 38 alhojailan, m. i. (2012). thematic analysis: a critical review of its process and evaluation. west east journal of social sciences, 1(1), 39-47. retrieved from https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/ta_thematic_analysis_dr_mohamme d_alhojailan.pdf alshenqeeti, h. (2014). interviewing as a data collection method: a critical review. english linguistics research, 3(1), 39-45. https://doi.org/10.5430/elr.v3n1p39 branch, r. m. (2009). instructional design: the addie approach (vol. 722). springer science & business media. budiarti, s., nuswowati, m., & cahyono, e. (2016). guided inquiry berbantuan e-modul untuk meningkatkan keterampilan berpikir kritis. journal of innovative science education, 5(2), 144–151. retrieved from https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/jise/article/view/14264/7795 cheng, k. k. y., & beigi, a. b. (2012). education and religion in iran: the inclusiveness of efl (english as a foreign language) textbooks. international journal of educational development, 32(2), 310-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.05.006 departemen pendidikan nasional. (2008). panduan pengembangan bahan ajar sekolah menengah atas. jakarta: direktorat jenderal manajemen pendidikan dasar dan menengah departemen pendidikan nasional. (2017). panduan praktis penyusunan e-modul tahun 2017. jakarta: direktorat jenderal pendidikan dasar dan menengah faridi, a., & bahri, s. (2016). developing english islamic narrative story reading model in islamic junior high school. arab world english journal (awej), 7(2), 224-243. https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol7no2.15 febriani, h. (2015). developing supplementary reading materials for islamic learners of man 03 malang based on genre-based approach. journal of linguistics and language teaching, 2(1). retrieved from https://ejournal.iainbengkulu.ac.id/index.php/linguists/article/view/123/118 foye, k. (2014). religion in the elt classroom: teachers’ perspectives. language teacher, 38(2), 5-12. https://doi.org/10.37546/jalttlt38.2-1 harmiyanti, r. (2019). developing a model of islamic recount text material for the tenth graders of sma ip (islam plus) al-banjari blora in the academic year of 2019/2020 [bachelor thesis]. retrieved from http://eprints.walisongo.ac.id/11195/1/nim1403046052.pdf https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/ta_thematic_analysis_dr_mohamme%20d_alhojailan.pdf https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/ta_thematic_analysis_dr_mohamme%20d_alhojailan.pdf https://doi.org/10.5430/elr.v3n1p39 https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/jise/article/view/14264/7795 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.05.006 https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol7no2.15 https://ejournal.iainbengkulu.ac.id/index.php/linguists/article/view/123/118 https://doi.org/10.37546/jalttlt38.2-1 http://eprints.walisongo.ac.id/11195/1/nim1403046052.pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 39 herlina. (2012). developing reading narrative text materials for eighth graders of junior high school implemented with character building. english education journal, 2(2), 147154. retrieved from https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej/article/view/675/658 ikhsanudin, i. (2020). providing electronic coursebook for school learners nationwide: indonesian experience. in anshori, d. s., purnawarman, p., gunawan, w., & wirza, y. (eds), language, education, and policy for the changing society: contemporary theory and research (124-140). upi press. iranmanesh, z. (2012). narrative prose and its different types. journal of languages and culture, 4(8), 125 – 131. retrieved from https://academicjournals.org/journal/jlc/article-fulltext-pdf/237e31a10065 kadir, a. (2011). teaching reading using contextual teaching and learning (ctl) [bachelor thesis]. retrieved from https://repository.uinjkt.ac.id/dspace/handle/123456789/469 madkur, a., & albantani, a. m. (2017, october). instilling islamic values in foreign language teaching: an indonesian context. proceedings of the international conference on education in muslim society (icems 2017), 115, 97-103. https://dx.doi.org/10.2991/icems-17.2018.20 nafiah, u. (2020). developing english modules with integrated islamic values and jambi local wisdom. studies in english language and education, 7(1), 96-112. retrieved from http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/siele/article/view/15138 pombo, l., smith, m., abelha, m., caixinha, h., & costa, n. (2012). evaluating an online emodule for portuguese primary teachers: trainees’ perceptions. technology, pedagogy and education, 21(1), 21-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939x.2011.589156 qamariah, z. (2015). developing islamic english instructional materials based on school-based curriculum. journal on english as a foreign language, 5(2), 99-111. https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v5i2.370 sari, a. s. (2019). developing reading supplementary materials using islamic stories for an extracurricular program of islamic senior high school level. language-edu, 8(2). retrieved from http://riset.unisma.ac.id/index.php/lang/article/viewfile/2805/pdf susilawati, s., tahrun, t., & inderawati, r. (2016). developing islamic-based reading materials for the tenth graders of ma nurul huda kasmaran of babat toman. proceedings of the 2nd sriwijaya university learning and education 50 international conference, 2(1), 1155-1176. retrieved from http://conference.unsri.ac.id/index.php/sule/article/view/90/pdf tomlinson, b. (2014). developing materials for language teaching (2nd ed.). bloomsbury academic https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej/article/view/675/658 https://academicjournals.org/journal/jlc/article-full-text-pdf/237e31a10065 https://academicjournals.org/journal/jlc/article-full-text-pdf/237e31a10065 https://repository.uinjkt.ac.id/dspace/handle/123456789/469 https://dx.doi.org/10.2991/icems-17.2018.20 http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/siele/article/view/15138 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939x.2011.589156 https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v5i2.370 http://riset.unisma.ac.id/index.php/lang/article/viewfile/2805/pdf http://conference.unsri.ac.id/index.php/sule/article/view/90/pdf journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 40 wahidah, n., i., ibrahim, n., & muslim, s. (2019). e-module: design a learning material with rowntree and hannafin model for higher education. international journal of scientific & technology research, 8(12), 3373-3376. retrieved from http://www.ijstr.org/paperreferences.php?ref=ijstr-1219-26531 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 http://www.ijstr.org/paper-references.php?ref=ijstr-1219-26531 http://www.ijstr.org/paper-references.php?ref=ijstr-1219-26531 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 117 article history: submitted: 16 september 2021 reviewed: 28 december 2021 edited: 3 january 2022 15 january 2022 accepted: 15 january 2022 english education master students’ perceptions on peer feedback in academic writing kristian florensio wijaya cita hati internasional school, indonesia kristianw611@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.1819g/ftl.v7i1.12751 abstract this present qualitative study aimed to explore english education master students’ perceptions on peer feedback in academic writing. one major reason for conducting this study was to enlight elt parties on maximizing peer feedback activities in academic writing classes. mixed method was utilized to attain clearer portrayals out of the specific phenomenon based on the statistics and apparent explanations shared by the research participants. 10 online likert-scale questionnaire items along with 5 open-ended written narrative inquiry questions were administered to 15 english education master students, sanata dharma university, batch 2019. the research results strongly suggested efl educators continually cultivate peer feedback practices in academic writing activities to better promote more enjoyable, meaningful, and holistic learning environments in which learners’ target language and future life competencies thrive more fruitfully. to a lesser extent, these specific research results can potentially give more enlightenment for globalized elt parties concerning to the appropriate utilization of academic writing peer feedback activities in accord with graduate university efl learners’ perspectives. keywords: peer feedback; academic writing; english education master students; efl =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:kristianw611@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.1819g/ftl.v7i1.12751 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.12751&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 118 introduction around the globe, graduate learners are commissioned to fully possess a higher degree of academic literacy skills comprising of reading and writing. these two skills mentioned earlier are closely interconnected since reading can extensively provide greater writing assistance for graduate students to synthesize, summarize, paraphrase, and depict all the relevant ideas to be put in the writing. hirvela and du (2013) mention that graduate students will be more capable of constructing their ideas clearly and efficiently in their writing products by reading a large quantity of reading texts. however, the nourishment of higher-order thinking skills in academic writing learning enterprises is gradually shifted into a more process-oriented approach where all graduate students must recheck, evaluate, and reverse the writing outcomes. anchored on this conception, andrade and evans (2012) theorize that the major benefit of doing in-depth writing evaluation is to allow writers to create more qualified writing products at the end of the writing session. moreover, one of the profound writing evaluation stages that graduate students should utilize is revision. through conscientious writing revision cycle, graduate students will be more capable of depicting clearer ideas, arguments, and contentions to worldwide readers. it can also be stated that they will be more able to produce more effective writing products in which readers have successfully obtained the major essential points from their pieces of writing. this benefit is resonated well with the writing revision theory proposed by kita et al., (2010) stating that by repeatedly revising their original writings, writers will have broader chances to generate more effective written messages inspiring for the readers to be read. concerning the aforementioned argumentations, feedback is also discerned as one of the pivotal focal points that should be capitalized on by efl teachers and graduate university efl students in their academic writing learning enterprises to increasingly elevate their writing engagement, autonomous writing characters, and positive writing perceptions. this sense of perspective is well-supported by the theory of academic writing feedback postulated by carless and boud (2018) strongly supporting globalized efl teachers to address more interactive and pleasurable academic writing learning circumstances by harnessing constructive feedback potentially promoting a higher level of writing learning engagement and independent writing behaviors for learners. one of the effective academic writing feedbacks is peer feedback. bacon https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 119 and bounty (2020) believed that with the support of peer feedback, efl learners will be more capable of developing their target language and social skills into the utmost levels. these main benefits are mutually associated with academic writing peer feedback theory adduced by ajjawi and boud (2017). it declares that by constantly making use of peer feedback, graduate university efl learners can progressively hone their higher-order thinking skills in providing relevant suggestions for their learning companions simultaneously resulted in the striking elevation of academic writing learning autonomy. after having been succeeded in embedding this academic writing practice sustainably, graduate university efl learners have also gained a higher degree of awareness concerning others’ writing compositions, styles, and uniqueness leading them to be more competent academicians highly appreciative of all the unique ideas put forth by other learning members. inspired by these above-explained argumentations, winstone and boud (2020) discover that the majority of graduate university efl learners who were trained to impart more constructive peer feedback through academic writing learning ventures could address a higher level of reverence to other learning counterparts’ academic writing products. furthermore, graduate university efl learners earnestly forging their peer feedback skills in academic writing activities can also attain more fruitful academic writing learning merits in terms of the significant improvement of their academic writing skills, the rejuvenation of the prior as well as actual knowledge, and the tangible experiences of exhaustive academic writing learning venture. these 3 other major benefits are tightly interwoven with the finding of latifi et al., (2021). it was found out that most university efl learners having been armed with peer feedback practices were more liable to dramatically increase their academic writing competencies, become more open-minded academicians, and experience more pleasurable academic writing learning dynamics. the others indispensable values obtained by graduate university efl learners after becoming more accustomed to utilizing this academic writing practice is their reasoning and argument competencies are also increased more prolifically since they ought to construct clearer suggestions comprehensible for their learning companions. bijami et al., (2013) highly prompt efl teachers all around the globe to infuse consistent peer feedback practices in academic writing learning processes to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 120 better reinforce their learners’ higher-order thinking skills in terms of logical reasoning and argumentation skills. on the other hand, the peer feedback practices in academic writing are not without drawbacks since graduate university efl learners still dwelling in developing academic writing competencies can merely impart superficial writing feedback to other capable learning counterparts consisting of vocabulary, grammar, dictions, and punctuations. by experiencing the phenomenon as mentioned earlier, it will be easier for all learners to fall back into demotivating academic writing learning atmosphere in which they will not be motivated anymore to proceed into their ongoing academic writing processes. this unpleasant academic writing learning experience is in conjunction with the theory of academic writing peer feedback shortage devised by allen and mills (2016). they state that it is of paramount importance for worldwide efl teachers to become decent roles models for their learners in addressing more constructive academic writing peer feedback in order to continually corroborate their learners’ academic writing learning motivation. in another peer feedback implementation investigation, wu (2019) unveiled that university efl learners encountered serious impediments in generating constructive academic writing peer feedback toward other learning members. it is because they only mastered the superficial knowledge of language structure, cohesion and linguistics features. five relevant studies have been conducted according to the proposed research theme above. fithriani (2019) unfolded that the utilization of peer feedback could progressively increase university efl learners’ academic writing skills, qualities, and higher-order thinking skills. in another identical investigation, fithriani (2019) strongly advised indonesian university efl teachers to familiarize their learners with constructive peer feedback in harmony with their academic writing proficiency to promote more meaningful academic writing learning dynamics. junianti et al., (2020) unveiled that more varied in-depth writing learning strategies should be merged within diverse wide-ranging writing classroom vicinities in terms of planning, logical reasoning, revision, and peer feedback cycles in order to breed more competent academic writers. mahdiya (2021) highly suggested that indonesian efl teachers continuously incorporate constructive peer feedback practices in academic writing learning activities to foster their learners’ academic writing motivation, proactiveness, and positive views to the utmost https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 121 levels. in the last study, rezeki (2017) discovered that in the support of constructive academic writing feedback, university efl learners were not solely foster their academic writing but also interpersonal skills since they were trained to be more intensively appreciative towards others' academic writing products. none of the previous studies have been conducted to further investigate graduate university efl learners’ perceptions of peer feedback in academic writing to the best of the researcher’s knowledge. by conducting this present small-scale qualitative study, it is expected that the obtained results will shed more enlightenment concerning the appropriate implementations of constructive. peer feedback should be internalized by all indonesian elt parties in the future academic writing venture. one research problem was formulated as follows: (1) to what extent did english education master students value the utilization of peer feedback in academic writing? literature review peer feedback as mentioned earlier, the further incorporation of peer feedback can ascertain the more prolific development of efl learners’ academic writing skills, interpersonal skills, positive writing attitudes, and mutual collaborative sharing with others. price et al., (2011) asserted that the ineluctability of peer feedback in academic writing learning ventures is tangible since efl learners can potentially establish more robust collaborative networkings and intimate mutual sharings rewarding for the holistic development of their academic writing learning processes. berggren (2019) articulated that although it takes plenty of time for these benefits to emerge, the sustainable internalization of peer feedback in academic writing learning enterprises can also considerably elevate efl learners’ higher-order thinking skills and learning responsibility since they are strongly required to take charge of other learning companions’ progress by imparting more constructive, contextual, and meaningful feedback. this argument is apparently attested by the finding of mutch et al. (2018), revealing that most university efl learners having been armed with peer feedback was more capable of maintaining their academic writing learning responsibility, logical reasoning, and critical argumentation skills more efficiently. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 122 in reverse, there are also many challenges in capitalizing on peer feedback in academic writing learning ventures. first, university efl learners are highly demanded to construct more robust knowledge toward the academic writing themes put forward by other learning companions. nicol et al., (2014) accentuated the critical importance of correlating their prior and existing knowledge of the subject-specific matters postulated by other learning community members for all university efl learners to generate more qualified academic writing products. second, the placement of more meaning-making academic writing peer feedback is also strongly determined by the maturity, the extant academic writing level, and self-confidence instilled by learners. it can also be phrased that when learners do not fully possess all those 3 attributes, the utilization of academic writing peer feedback will bring about detrimental effects for all learners' community members which are demotivating and frustrating academic writing learning experiences. this contention is mutually linked with the theory of academic writing peer feedback put forward by evans (2015) pinpointing that the major backwash of internalizing premature academic writing peer feedback is all learners will not be able to navigate their academic writing learning dynamics in a better direction due to the ambiguous, unclear, and irrelevant suggestions suggested by their learning counterparts. other diminishing factors preventing efl teachers from implanting constructive peer feedback for their learners in academic writing learning enterprises are the reliability of teachers’ feedback and painstaking learning situations endured by all learning community members. it is not secretive that most of our learners are still relying intensively on teachers’ feedback in supervising their academic writing processes since they hold a strong contention that suggestions proposed by their teachers are more credible than the feedback put forward by learning companions. yu and hu (2017) unearthed that most chinese university efl learners were still abiding by their teachers’ feedback in academic writing since they did not put a higher degree of certainty toward the proposed suggestions addressed by their learning partners. while the painstaking processes of maximizing the utilization of peer feedback in academic writing learning dynamics refer to the integration of higher-order thinking skills and highly supportive learning behaviors fully disseminated within all learners by analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating the whole academic writing ideas profoundly. zhu and carless (2018) articulate that it is becoming progressively essential for all learning community members to unite their similar energy, enthusiasm, and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 123 commitment in capitalizing on peer feedback approach through academic writing learning processes amid academic writing learning complexities unless the upcoming learning breakdowns will be their unintended consequences. the integration of peer feedback in academic writing a vast range of globalized efl teachers and learners still undervalue the utilization of peer feedback in academic writing. carless and boud (2018) uncovered that it was explicitly true for worldwide efl teachers and learners to feel reluctant to utilize peer feedback activities in academic writing enterprises. thus, zhu and carless (2018) strongly remarked that without constructing more obvious objectivities in mind while incorporating peer feedback in academic writing activities, it will be improbable to expect all learners to become more judicious decisionmakers, effective problem-solvers, and strategic thinkers in the future events. considering all the described phenomena, it is worth suggesting for efl teachers to introduce their learners to peer feedback activities in order to help them begin seeing that the long-lengthy writing evaluations put forth by their peers can also lead them to academic writing learning success. zhou et al., (2021) acknowledged that it is exceptionally pivotal for efl teachers to introduce some meaningful academic writing peer feedback strategies for their learners to not merely transfigure them into more competent academic writers but also broad-minded academicians highly respectful for variegated academic writing products. cao et al. (2019) mentioned that there are two effective strategies efl teachers can harness to maximize the continuous utilization of academic writing peer feedback. firstly, teachers can commission their learners to critically identify their specific academic writing genres, contexts, and topics suitable for worldwide readers. by capitalizing on this first approach in a moment-by-moment manner, it can be ascertained that efl learners will jointly produce more qualified, appropriate, and understandable academic writing products for their readers. concerning this first strategy, yu and lee (2016) confirmed that through genre-based academic writing approach, university efl learners will benefit more from the overall writing qualities improvements, writing peer feedback, and the appropriateness of targeted readers since they have successfully identified the overarching writing genres, contexts, and structure precisely matched with their writing objectivities. secondly, efl teachers can play their new roles as supportive academic writing https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 124 learning facilitators vehemently imparting constructive peer feedback, valuable writing guidance, and adequate writing supervision for their learners encountering difficult academic writing learning hurdles. by familiarizing learners with this strategy, they will have wider chances to foster their academic writing competencies and peer feedback strategies since they have clearly obtained the bigger picture of how these effective strategies should run according to the aforementioned teachers’ actions. this conception agreed with the study of chen and su (2012) uncovering that through the continual supportive academic writing supervisions as well as the integration between constructive teachers’ and peer feedback, learners will potentially attain more satisfying academic writing learning outcomes and harness their peer feedback approaches more meaningfully toward learning partners. method this present small-scale qualitative study was conducted by using the mixed method to obtain more accurate data. levitt et al., (2018) state that the primary benefit of the mixed method is to allow the researchers to collect more precise data. to fulfill this research objectivity, the researcher planned to design ten online likert-scale questionnaire items to investigate more exhaustively english education master students’ perceptions on peer feedback in academic writing processes. the researcher’s former lecturer validated this set of 10 online likert-scale questionnaire in order to be eligible for the data gathering processes. the validation process enabled the researcher to administer relevant items to the targeted research participants. the type of validation the researcher underwent was human’s validation since the lecturer checked all the items. however, the major drawback of this questionnaire was that no formal types of validation were applied, potentially inducing the generalizability of the obtained data. these items were heavily concerned with english education master students’ perceptions on peer feedback in academic writing enterprises. 4 point likert-scale was utilized ranging from strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree to reduce the research bias. after obtaining the data derived from this first research instrument, the research also used 5 open-ended written narrative inquiry questions to attain more obvious descriptions regarding the life events disseminated by the targeted interviewees. this set of narrative inquiry questions predominantly covered about the good values, drawbacks, and challenges experienced by https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 125 english education master students while utilizing peer feedback during the academic writing enterprises. these items enabled the researcher to discern the beneficial values, challenges, and implementations of peer feedback in academic writing enterprises, which in turn, could generate richer data. clandinin and caine (2013) claim that in light of open-ended written narrative inquiry questions, the research participants will potentially impart more trustworthy data since they will feel secure to disseminate the truth manifested into the stories. the participants in this current qualitative study were 15 english education master students batch 2019, sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. the main reason why the researcher selected them as the research participants were that they had been commissioned to produce at least two qualified academic writing products to be published at either international or national journal articles as one of the prerequisites to graduate. further, during this long-lengthy academic writing learning process, the lecturers also encouraged them to conduct peer feedback with their trusted learning partners both inside and outside of classroom contexts in order to hone their higher-order thinking skills, academic writing skills, and autonomous learning behaviors. the data gathering processes would be conducted online due to the distant locations experienced by the researcher and research participants. the 10 likert-scale questionnaire items were administered through google form to be filled by the targeted research participants voluntarily. while 5 open-ended narrative inquiry questions were distributed to 2 interviewees derived from similar population samplings. during the online data gathering processes, only one research participant did not fill out the likert-scale questionnaire without clarifying any particular reasons. follow-up interview questions would be asked to the 3 interviewees to ascertain the robustness of the obtained data. due to all interviewees restricted ethical considerations assented, the researcher would conceal their real identities to be superseded with some initial names such as interviewees 1 and 2. for the data analysis processes, the researcher had already expounded all the obtained data in tables and narrative argumentations to impart clearer messages for a worldwide audience. the tables represented 10 online likert-scale questionnaire items and they were accompanied by some relevant prior findings, theories, and interviewees’ excerpts. the researcher analyzed the data by counting the mean score to thoroughly discover the total number of participants who either agree or disagree with the statements forming in this online questionnaire. to reach this https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 126 research objectivity, the researcher planned to utilize open coding in analyzing each finding of the data. by using this research method, all the wider research findings could be pursued in some specific research themes resulting in more obvious explanations enabling all readers to feel easier in following all the ideas, arguments, and contentions presented in this study. cho and lee (2014) averred that with the support of open-coding, the researchers were more capable of yielding more constructive, robust, and trustworthy data for worldwide readers due to the rejuvenation of perspectives toward the existent situations. findings and discussions this part aimed to critically expound all the obtained findings from the research participants regarding their specific perceptions on peer feedback in academic writing learning enterprises. those findings can be subdivided into 2 major themes, namely (1) the influential positive impacts promoted by peer feedback and (2) factors affecting the utmost utilization of peer feedback. the obtained data taken from the questionnaire: figure 1. the influential positive impacts promoted by peer feedback (90% participants agree) 4 3 0 0 0 10 11 14 14 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 highly-desirous spirit to do peer feedback becoming more confident evaluators the significant academic writing qualities and skills improvement efficiently conducting revision stages the striking elevation of higher-order thinking skills disagree agree https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 127 notes: -the horizontal number represents the total number of research participants -the vertical number represents the total number of agreement from the figure 1, it can be sensibly parsed here that the most participants agreed to constantly make use of peer feedback as one of their effective academic writing learning approaches since they become more competent writers and critical learners. pitt et al. (2019) avowed peer feedback could be successfully utilized when efl learners have possessed a strong mentality and robust intellectuals. moving forward to the second finding, 11 out of 14 participants asserted that they have become more confident evaluators while addressing various constructive peer feedback for their targeted learning partners’ academic writing products due to the insistent support addressed by their teachers. simply stated, learners will be more eager to address a vast array of relevant peer feedback while discerning the positive responses from their learning counterparts. this may be specifically true for allen and katayama (2016), discovering that the most university efl learners possessing a higher level of language learning proficiency will confidently address appropriate feedback for other learning companions. furthermore, learners had also successfully fostered their collaborative skills through the peer feedback since all learners work hand-in-hand other learning counterparts’ existent understanding of the subject-specific matter. through the utilization of peer feedback, efl learners can reciprocally elevate their academic writing qualities and competencies to the utmost levels. wakabayashi (2013) believed that in the light of peer feedback, efl learners would be more capable of fostering their targeted writing products and competencies more effectively since they acquired in-depth writing conventions and structure from their learning partners. the peer feedback approach could also allow efl learners to meaningfully and efficiently revise their existing academic writing products based on the suitable peers’ suggestions. berggren (2019) theorized that proficient efl learners would be more capable of revising their writings meaningfully in line with the constructive peer feedback given by other learning companions. lastly, the ultimate findings showcased that peer feedback could also elevate efl learners’ higher-order thinking skills besides the targeted academic writing competencies. this https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 128 is because all learners are required to address relevant and constructive feedback to their peers. this conception is closely associated with the prior finding unearthed by farrah (2012) unfolding that most university efl learners having been armed with more meaning-making peer feedback activities tended to be more proactive, critical, innovative, and confident academics throughout academic writing processes reciprocally resulted in the terrific escalation of their higher-order thinking skills. figure 2. factors affecting the utmost utilization of peer feedback (61% participants agreed) figure 2 focused on explicating a vast range of pivotal factors impacting the maximum internalization of peer feedback in academic writing learning dynamics. the first important factor that needs to be possessed by efl learners is the strong beliefs toward the addressed peer feedback. 13 out of 14 research participants highly supported this premise. the more proficient the learners, the better peer feedback will be successfully imparted. patchan and schunn (2015) proved that most proficient university efl learners could successfully address more meaningful peer feedback to their peers. in this case, it is undeniably stated that the gratifying academic writing achievements are strongly determined by the overall peer feedback qualities addressed by the reviewers. positive responses toward the imparted peer feedback are another crucial matter urgently needed. 12 out of 14 research participants agreed with this third statement. however, this meaningful peer feedback occurrence can be ascertained when language teachers have 1 2 10 0 8 13 12 4 14 6 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 feeling assured with the peer suggestions seeking for clearer clarifications becoming more comfortable in utilizing peer feedback the supportive facilitative roles acted by teachers the reliability of peer feedback outcomes disagree agree https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 129 played their roles as supporting academic writing learning facilitators orsmond et al., (2013) highly encouraged efl teachers to renew their roles as supportive academic writing facilitators in order to maximize the implementation of peer feedback. furthermore, 10 out of 14 participants strongly disagreed with the single utilization of peer feedback in academic writing learning ventures. they suggested that the integration between teacher and peer feedback needs to be infused strongly by efl teachers introducing their learners to academic writing learning activities to constantly promote more conducive, stress-free, favorable, and meaningful knowledge discovery. moore and teather (2013) openly inviting worldwide efl teachers to combine peer and their feedback to promote more positive academic writing learning climates. furthermore, these participants also agreed that language teachers need to exhibit the appropriate approaches to magnify the peer feedback in academic writing to promote better learning outcomes for all learners. roscoe et al., (2015) strongly suggested efl teachers sustainably display various effective methods in utilizing academic writing peer feedback to transform all learners into more effective peer feedback users. ultimately, it can be clearly noticed that 6 out of 14 research participants agreed that peer feedback should be trustworthy, accurate, and reliable resulted in significant academic learning motivation. hence, language teachers are prompted to encourage more contextual academic writing learning processes where all learners are strongly motivated. rahimi (2013) highly encouraged globalized efl teachers to continuously train their learners on how to address more constructive and appropriate peer feedback to other learning counterparts to holistically elevate all learners’ academic writing competencies to the utmost potential. data obtained from the interviewees: peer feedback enabled graduate university efl learners to be more critical academic writers in keeping with what had already been expounded previously, it is also interesting that peer feedback allowed graduate university efl learners to be more critical academic writers. this first finding is emanated from 2 interviewees filling out 5 open-ended written narrative inquiry questions. they strongly believe that peer feedback had enabled them to become more socialized, critical, and respectful academicians while evaluating other’s works. kuyyogsuy https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 130 (2019) strongly prompted efl teachers to nurture peer feedback practices in academic writing learning ventures in order to better scaffold learners to develop their cognitive, affective, and social skills to the utmost potential. johnson et al., (2017) also revealed that with the continual activation of peer feedback, graduate university efl learners would be more capable of elevating their critical thinking, logical reasoning, and communicative skills more prolifically. 2 interviewees’ excerpts also echoed the above-explained conceptions. [interviewee 1: peer feedback allows you to see your own work from another perspective critically, making you notice mistakes you don’t normally notice.] [interviewee 2: peer feedback also trains students to be more careful, able to convey criticism well and appreciate the work of others.] further, the utilization of peer feedback can terrifically foster graduate university efl learners’ specific mindset and behaviors while receiving some inputs. 2 interviewees admitted that they did not feel offended anymore while receiving various constructive peer feedback from their learning partners. reversely, they will become more open-minded in responding to those meaningful suggestions that resulted in the striking elevation of academic writing learning motivation. latifi et al., (2021) uncovered that the majority of university efl learners having been well-armed with the efficient and appropriate peer feedback practices were more capable of openly embracing all the specific suggestions put forth by learning peers. shang (2019) highly advised globalized efl teachers to nourish university efl learners’ academic writing volition by incorporating peer feedback activities in which they were able to openly, mutually, and collaboratively interchange various beneficial perspectives with others. 2 interviewees also raised identical argumentations in these following lines. [interviewee 1: peer feedback are made from the perspective of a fellow student and not the teacher, which means that they raise different issues compared to actual feedback.] [interviewee 2: i think peer feedback lets me know how far i and my peers are in writing. in addition, we can also share opinions and information through feedback.] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 131 the qualities of peer feedback mostly depend on evaluators’ reviewing competencies one of the complex matters that language teachers ought to keep in mind before internalizing peer feedback practices in academic writing is the qualities, capabilities, and strategies graduate university efl learners have to harness well before addressing various openended suggestions to their learning companions. it can also be stated that learners’ skills heavily determine strength and efficiency of peer feedback in addressing more contextual as well as rewarding feedback to other learning community members. 2 interviewees avowed that although peer feedback had helped them extensively to smoothen their academic writing learning enterprises, they occasionally feel doubtful whether the suggestive inputs given by their peers are credible or not. wu (2019) highly advocated efl teachers to play their new roles as supportive academic writing learning facilitators in the midst of peer feedback activities integration to help learners to refine feedback addressed by their peers. wahyudin (2018) also displayed that most university efl learners who have transformed into successful academic writers are those whose learning motivation is continuously nurtured by supportive teachers’ guidance and trustworthy feedback. all these lines of perspectives also hover in the mindset of the 2 interviewees. [interviewee 1: sometimes, quality of peer feedback varies depending on the quality of the peers whether they have been trained in using this strategy previously or not.] [interviewee 2: i think my learning partners need to look at grammar, spelling, punctuation, then also to critique research methods, research questions, and effective writing formats. we should be trained to see these things clearly.] to this end, another potential hurdle that can degrade the utmost utilization of peer feedback in academic writing is their existent target language learning competencies. graduate university efl learners will become more highly desirous of addressing various beneficial feedback toward their peers while they have been sufficiently-proficient in the target language. therefore, language teachers have to promote more supportive, pleasurable and relaxing academic writing learning environments where all learners possessing distinctive language learning proficiency are willing to participate in peer feedback activities. pham et al., (2020) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 132 displayed that most university efl learners who are being exposed to a more enjoyable, encouraging, and positive academic writing learning atmosphere are more liable to become more responsible evaluators for their peers. wang (2014) strongly suggested efl teachers mix up proficient and developing university efl learners in particular peer feedback groups to escalate their confidence while carrying out peer feedback activities. these conceptions as mentioned earlier are also in the view of 2 interviewees in these following lines. [interviewee 1: i like peer feedback, i'm not embarrassed at all, or sad when my friends said there are a lot of mistakes in my writing because it makes me more careful later.] [interviewee 2: for me personally, the effective peer feedback can be experienced by all of us when ideally all learners are advanced, but it is better to expect that teachers can combine us with various learners’ learning competencies to work more mutually wit each other.] conclusion and implication as a closing remark, the obtained research results above strongly suggested worldwide efl teachers appropriately, efficiently, and meaningfully integrate the utilization of peer feedback with academic writing learning enterprises undergone by graduate university efl learners. loosely based on this context, it is of critical importance for language teachers to cultivate this contextual student-centered learning approach in their diverse wide-ranging academic writing learning circumstances since all learners will be more capable of elevating varied academic writing and future life skills simultaneously. one essential thing that needs to be pondered on is language teachers have to ensure that the utilization of peer feedback is suitably matched with the current learners’ learning proficiency, needs, interest, conditions, and readiness unless this student-centered approach will not promote influential impacts toward their academic writing skills development. some particular research shortages are to be acknowledged. firstly, since the researcher only relied on 2 research instruments in the data collection processes, it is worth suggesting that future researchers supplement one more research instrument, namely classroom https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 133 observation to clearly discern the bigger pictures of the specific recurring phenomenon occurring in certain vicinities. secondly, a great number of research participants enrolling in different universities will also bring about more significant research results for future researchers. thus, they are strongly recommended to ponder more conscientiously over this suggestive advice before conducting an identical investigation. irrespective of these aforementioned shortcomings, these existing research results had collectively shed more enlightenment for elt experts, educators, practitioners, and policy-makers all around the globe to summon up peer feedback practices through academic writing learning enterprises in order to holistically breed more competent future target language academicians casting a higher degree of reverence to other learning community members. references ajjawi, r., & boud, d. (2017). researching feedback dialogue: an interactional analysis approach. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 42(2), 252–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1102863 allen, d., & katayama, a. (2016). relative second language proficiency and the giving and receiving of written peer feedback. system, 56, 96–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.12.002 allen, d., & mills, a. (2016). the impact of second language proficiency in dyadic peer feedback. language teaching research, 20(4), 498–513. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814561902 andrade, m. s., & evans, n. w. (2012). principles and practices for response in second language writing: developing self-regulated learners. routledge. berggren, j. (2019). writing, reviewing, and revising: peer feedback in lower secondary efl classrooms (doctoral dissertation, department of english, stockholm university). bijami, m., kashef, s. h., & nejad, m. s. (2013). peer feedback in learning english writing: advantages and disadvantages. journal of studies in education, 3(4), 91. https://doi.org/10.5296/jse.v3i4.4314 bacon, e. d., & bounty, t. (2020). utilizing peer feedback by synthesizing a peer-assisted learning center with an english course to develop english grammar and academic writing skills. rangsit journal of educational studies, 7(1), 34-45. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 134 cao, z., yu, s., & huang, j. (2019). a qualitative inquiry into undergraduates’ learning from giving and receiving peer feedback in l2 writing: insights from a case study. studies in educational evaluation, 63, 102-112. carless, d., & boud, d. (2018). the development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 43(8), 1315–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354 chen, y. s., & su, s. w. (2012). a genre-based approach to teaching efl summary writing. elt journal, 66(2), 184–192. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccr061 cho, j. y., & lee, e. h. (2014). reducing confusion about grounded theory and qualitative content analysis: similarities and differences. qualitative report, 19(32), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2014.1028 clandinin, d. j., & caine, v. (2013). narrative inquiry. reviewing qualitative research in the social sciences, 166–179. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203813324-13 evans, c. (2015). students’ perspectives on the role of peer feedback in supporting learning. journal of cognitive education and psychology, 14(1), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.1891/1945-8959.14.1.110 farrah, m. (2012). 4 the impact of peer feedback on improving the writing skills among hebron university students. an najah univ. j. res. (humanities). vol. 26(1), 2012. 26(1). fithriani, r. (2019). zpd and the benefits of written feedback in l2 writing: focusing on students’ perceptions. the reading matrix : an international online journal, 19(1), 63–73. hirvela, a., & du, q. (2013). “ why am i paraphrasing?”: undergraduate esl writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. journal of english for academic purposes, 12(2), 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2012.11.005 junianti, r., pratolo, b. w., & tri wulandari, a. (2020). the strategies of learning writing used by efl learners at a higher education institution. ethical lingua: journal of language teaching and literature, 7(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.30605/25409190.131 johnson, a. c., wilson, j., & roscoe, r. d. (2017). college student perceptions of writing errors, text quality, and author characteristics. assessing writing, 34, 72-87. kita, k., kobayashi, n., ejiri, h., & yamashiro, s. (2010). introducing narrative based medicine to medical students: story writing exercise from two viewpoints. igaku kyoiku/medical education (japan), 41(4), 303-308. kuyyogsuy, s. (2019). promoting peer feedback in developing students’ english writing https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 135 ability in l2 writing class. international education studies, 12(9), 76. https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v12n9p76 latifi, s., noroozi, o., hatami, j., & biemans, h. j. a. (2021). how does online peer feedback improve argumentative essay writing and learning? innovations in education and teaching international, 58(2), 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2019.1687005 levitt, h. m., bamberg, m., creswell, j. w., frost, d. m., josselson, r., & suárez-orozco, c. (2018). journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative metaanalytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: the apa publications and communications board task force report. american psychologist, 73(1), 26. mahdiya, m. a. (2021). improving the students ’ writing skill in descriptive text through picture word inductive model . jurnal dialektika. 8(2), 147–155. moore, c., & teather, s. (2013). engaging students in peer review: feedback as learning. issues in educational research, 23(2 spl), 196–211. mutch, a., young, c., davey, t., & fitzgerald, l. (2018). a journey towards sustainable feedback. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 43(2), 248–259. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1332154 nicol, d., thomson, a., & breslin, c. (2014). rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 39(1), 102–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.795518 orsmond, p., maw, s. j., park, j. r., gomez, s., & crook, a. c. (2013). moving feedback forward: theory to practice. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 38(2), 240–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2011.625472 patchan, m. m., & schunn, c. d. (2015). understanding the benefits of providing peer feedback: how students respond to peers’ texts of varying quality. instructional science, 43(5), 591–614. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-015-9353-x pham, t. n., lin, m., trinh, v. q., & bui, l. t. p. (2020). electronic peer feedback, efl academic writing and reflective thinking: evidence from a confucian context. sage open, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020914554 pitt, e., bearman, m., & esterhazy, r. (2019). the conundrum of low achievement and feedback for learning. assessment & evaluation in higher education. price, m., handley, k., & millar, j. (2011). feedback: focusing attention on engagement. studies in higher education, 36(8), 879–896. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2010.483513 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 136 rahimi, m. (2013). is training student reviewers worth its while? a study of how training influences the quality of students’ feedback and writing. language teaching research, 17(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168812459151 rezeki, y. s. (2017). collaborative written feedback experience: a case study of indonesian efl students in an essay writing class. international journal of educational best practices, 1(2), 24. https://doi.org/10.31258/ijebp.v1n2.p24-37 roscoe, r. d., snow, e. l., allen, l. k., & mcnamara, d. s. (2015). automated detection of essay revising patterns: applications for intelligent feedback in a writing tutor. grantee submission, 10(1), 59-79. shang, h. f. (2019). exploring online peer feedback and automated corrective feedback on efl writing performance. interactive learning environments, 0(0), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1629601 wahyudin, a. y. (2018). the impact of online peer feedback on efl students writing at tertiary level. bahtera : jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra, 17(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21009/bahtera.171.1 wakabayashi, r. (2013). the effects of the peer feedback process on reviewers’ own writing. english language teaching, 6(9), 177–192. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n9p177 wang, w. (2014). students’ perceptions of rubric-referenced peer feedback on efl writing: a longitudinal inquiry. assessing writing, 19, 80–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2013.11.008 winstone, n. e., & boud, d. (2020). the need to disentangle assessment and feedback in higher education. studies in higher education, 0(0), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1779687 wu, z. (2019). lower english proficiency means poorer feedback performance? a mixedmethods study. assessing writing, 41(may), 14–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2019.05.001 yu, s., & hu, g. (2017). can higher-proficiency l2 learners benefit from working with lowerproficiency partners in peer feedback? teaching in higher education, 22(2), 178–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1221806 yu, s., & lee, i. (2016). peer feedback in second language writing (2005-2014). in language teaching (vol. 49, issue 4). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444816000161 zhou, j., dawson, p., tai, j. h. m., & bearman, m. (2021). how conceptualising respect can https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 137 inform feedback pedagogies. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 46(1), 68–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2020.1733490 zhu, q., & carless, d. (2018). dialogue within peer feedback processes: clarification and negotiation of meaning. higher education research and development, 37(4), 883–897. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1446417 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 97 article history: submitted: 8 december 2021 reviewed: 6 january 2022 edited: 18 january 2022 26 january 2022 accepted: 26 january 2022 easy english teaching in lee online course wenny pratiwi *) , yeny prastiwi universitas muhammadiyah surakarta, indonesia *) corresponding author’s email: wennypratiwi962@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13317 abstract the corona virus disease (covid-19) pandemic at the end of 2019 made people study or work from home to prevent the spreading of the corona virus. it made whatsapp (instant messaging app) gain the most significant number of users during the pandemic. learning english easy (lee), one of the online courses in indonesia, uses whatsapp as the primary tool in their teaching-learning process. it gained thousands of student participants with varied cultural backgrounds during its first year. a high enthusiasm of the participants towards lee online course made the researchers want to describe its implementation of the teachinglearning process and inform the students' perception about the lee online course as an alternative solution during the pandemic. the data were collected from interviews, questionnaires, observation, and documentation. the total participants in this research were 397 students and two stakeholders of lee. the data analysis technique was done using descriptive interpretive of tpack framework by mishra and koehler (2006). based on the data analysis, the great combination of three elements: technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge, which were implemented by lee online course, could manage thousand of participants at one time, and it gave a great outcome based on the students' perception. keywords: grammar; online course; pandemic; whatsapp =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:wennypratiwi962@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13317 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13317&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 98 introduction the corona virus disease (covid-19) pandemic changed people’s lives worldwide from the end of 2019 up to the present. many governments issued the regulation to study or work from home to prevent the spreading of the corona virus, so did indonesia. the situation forced everyone to count on technology. whatsapp is the social media or instant messaging application that has experienced the most significant gains due to covid-19. burhan (2020) explained that amount of whatsapp users during the pandemic in march 2020 increased by 40%. it is caused by many schools and offices doing the activities through online platforms, especially whatsapp. barhoumi (2015) stated that whatsapp is an instant messaging that provides several facilities such as allowing the users to exchange images, videos, voice notes, and text. they can create a group to discuss the material freely. one online course that uses whatsapp as the primary tool in their teaching-learning process is learning english easy (lee). based on the founder of lee, rhizki amelia, lee is a course that gives an additional course for senior high school and college students for free. this paper's meaning of ‘course’ is an additional hour for study outside the school hours. until april 2021, 12 batches had been held on different topics, and thousands of participants from various cities around indonesia had joined the lee online course. there have been studies that relate to the object of the study. the study of susilo (2008) about whatsapp use in the teaching and learning process showed that it could be used as an online tutor complements. the potentials come from its pedagogical, social, and technological affordances. the platform allowed the users to put up announcements, share ideas, resources, and open discussions from the pedagogical side. it helped the students to participate in giving feedback on the teaching-learning process. the features provided by whatsapp also supported the students’ pedagogical reconsidering (conole & alevizou, 2010). the effectiveness of whatsapp as an online platform was also proved by barhoumi (2015). the online learning activities were done in a blended learning course. whatsapp group, one of whatsapp features, made the students active in discussing the questions based on the content taught. the interaction inside the whatsapp group was beneficial and effective based on the survey and interview. it could increase the students' motivation to participate in the lecture's topic. whatsapp use was examined as part, of course, gradable assignments and weekly pre and https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 99 post-lecture discussions (dahdal, 2020). whatsapp in online learning claimed to be the most effective in and after covid-19. it is stated that there is an increase in students' motivation based on the result of a questionnaire (susilawati & supriyatno, 2020) based on the previous study, many types of research supported that technology was beneficial in the teaching-learning process. moreover, all teaching-learning activities count on the technology in the pandemy of covid-19. in the study of dong, cao, and li (2020), young children's parents were not ready for online learning because of its shortcoming. the lack of technological knowledge in online learning tools becomes the reason for the increased number of whatsapp users for educational purposes because of its friendly use. the current study is interested in exploring its implementation. many of the researchers in the previous studies did not explore the material or skill being taught. therefore, it made its use in teaching-learning activities less evident in its implementation. in addition, the concept of the three elements, technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, lacked the teacher's attention. thus the researchers want to make it clear by describing the implementation of the teaching-learning process in an online course of learning english easy as an alternative solution during the pandemic. the researchers limited the topic to teaching grammar. to this end, the research questions of this study are as follows: 1. how is the implementation of the teaching-learning process in the lee online course? 2. what is students’ perception of the lee online course's teaching-learning process? this paper contributes to teaching grammar through technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in online course learning english easy. this paper provides the management of online courses and the difficulties of their implementation. then, based on the result of students' perception can improve the teachers' knowledge and quality as an english teacher about using the online platform. also, they can prevent or find another alternative solution to the difficulties provided in this paper. literature review whatsapp whatsapp is a free instant messaging application that counts on the internet connection (robles, guerrero, & montero, 2019). this application is available for android https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 100 ios and other smartphones. it allows the users to share multimedia messages such as texts, photos, videos, documents, voice notes, and even phone calls or video calls. because it uses the phone's internet connection, when the users send or receive any messages, they do not need to pay for every message or call. this free service is also valid when using it in other countries. whatsapp was created by jan koum and brian acton in 2009. both of them are from yahoo (jackson, 2012). figure 1. whatsapp appearance the researchers had collected several features and the benefit of its use based on gon and rawekar (2017). the features are: (1) multimedia: it allows users to have a conversation through videos, text, images, and audio or voice notes to their friends in groups and contacts. (2) whatsapp voice messaging allows users to communicate with contacts and groups instantly. it can be used to deliver critical and time-sensitive information. (3) group chat: it helps the people in a social network with up to 200 group contacts. so, the students or the teachers can make a group to discuss the material in online learning. (4) unlimited messages: the user can share any messages on whatsapp without any limited number. (5) offline messages: the messages delivered by others offline were received when they were connected to the internet. the users can read the messages without missing conversation flows. (6) pinned message and changed users name: the users can put the important contacts or messages to appear in the upper chat to ease the users in interacting. (7) whatsapp web: it allows the users to connect their whatsapp account to a website that can be accessed through a computer as long as they are connected. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 101 the features provided by whatsapp supported the teacher and the students in online learning. it helped the expansion of teaching-learning activities online. grammar grammar has become one of the critical components of a language. it has an essential role in a language like culture and vocabulary (outaleb, 2014). thus, there are many definitions of grammar proposed by the expert. the study of grammar based on dontchevanavratilova (2013) is the organization of rules and principles which underline the form and the meaning of the smallest unit of language. grammatical competence has a category named part-of-speech. according to lehmann (2013), part-of-speech is a grammatical category of a word, such as noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. part of speech is as follows: a noun is a word-class referred to a person, animal, place, thing, abstract, or idea. the articles such as "a" and "an" are often used before mentioning nouns. nouns are divided into singular or plural, concrete or concept. it can show possession by adding 's after the noun word. it has many different functions in a sentence. it has a role as a subject, object, and many more. then, a pronoun is a word class with a function to replace a noun. it is usually used for specific nouns. it is named antecedent. for example, "he is the boy." "he" in the sentence is the pronoun. furthermore, pronouns are defined by several types: personal pronouns, which refer to specific people or things; then to refer to the ownership is possessive pronouns; reflexive pronouns have a function to highlight another noun or pronoun; relative pronouns present a subordinate clause, and demonstrative pronouns refer to or point to nouns. an adverb is a word-class that modifies or explains a verb, an adjective, or adverb. usually, it has a role in answering when, where, how, why, and it is often ended by -ly. a preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to modify another word in the sentence. thus, a preposition always becomes part of a prepositional phrase that functions as an adjective or an adverb. the conjunction has a function to help words, phrases, or clauses link. it shows the relationship between every element in the sentence. conjunctions are divided into two, namely coordinating conjunctions that connect grammatically equal elements, such as: but, and, nor, https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 102 or, so, for, yet, and subordinating conjunctions, which link clauses that are not equal, such as although, because, since, and while. teaching grammar according to harmer (2007), there are two common approaches in grammar teaching: deductive and inductive approaches. the deductive approach starts explaining the language based on its rules or formula, followed by practicing exercises (allahyar & ramezanpour, 2011). students will be asked to phrase or sentence about what they have learned. this approach counts on root memorization. the exercise focuses mainly on writing and reading, while the other aspect, such as self-expression, may be ignored. defelice (2005) stated that the deductive approach embedded language learning based on memorizing rules or formulas. the opposite of the deductive approach is the inductive approach. in this approach, the students who study grammar do not start the learning by knowing the formula first, but the students are given several examples of sentences. so, the students have no previous knowledge about the rules. then, students are asked to find the formula or the pattern of its sentence (gleason & ratner, 2009). the inductive approach asks the students to learn and practice the language but emphasizes the grammar rules. it leads the students to learn language based on its natural context. the weakness of this approach is its time taking. the students take a long time to formulate a sentence, or there is a misunderstanding when applying a formula to an example. the students find it difficult to formulate the rule based on the sentence example (allahyar & ramezanpour, 2011; thornbury, 1999). even though it takes a little bit longer to understand the formula, it has been found that they will get better at remembering it, and it is memorable by knowing greater meaning because they understand from the root (thornbury, 1999). in this study, the lee instructor used a deductive approach in teaching grammar through whatsapp. lee online course lee is the abbreviation of learning english easy. this is an online course which is an additional hour for study outside the school hours. the teaching-learning process is held https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 103 through whatsapp using features such as group chat, voice notes, pictures, and many more. the total number of participants of this course was more than 25.000 students from around indonesia. there were 12 batches until april 2021 and continued with different materials in every batch. lee started the material from basic english. it was a monthly program, one month, held around two days until four days in its batch. then, the students could rejoin the next batch with a different material. the lee online course was initiated by a lecturer in universitas muhammadiyah surakarta, rhizki amelia, because of the pandemic. tpack tpack is an extension of characterization of teacher knowledge by shulman (1986) comprises the elements of pedagogical content knowledge or pck to explicitly by mishra and koehler consider the role of technical knowledge which can contribute to effective teaching. tpack framework based on mishra and koehler (2006) is following: content knowledge (ck). it refers to the material learning, such as the subject of knowledge or the target of teaching-learning, for which the teachers are responsible. pedagogical knowledge (pk). it refers to the teacher's knowledge about varieties techniques, methods, strategies, instructional practices to deliver the material. it helps the students to reach the target learning. technology knowledge (tk). it refers to the teacher's knowledge about the tools or the learning system used, whether a new technology or traditional, that can support the teachinglearning process and put together into the curriculum. bikowski (2018) stated that technology impacts language education in the area of skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and its competencies such as grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic. four elements in the tpack framework by mishra and koehler (2006) show the bond of three components of knowledge interrelate, produce and compel each other as follows: (1) technological content knowledge (tck) refers to the teacher’s knowledge of blending the two components of tck to make the mutual relationship between content or material and technology. (2) pedagogical content knowledge (pck) refers to a teacher's knowledge in organizing, presenting, and implementing the problem, topic, or issue to the students' ability. it is in line with the notion of shulman (1986). (3) technological pedagogical knowledge ( tck ) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 104 refers to a teacher's knowledge in choosing and operating the technology related to specific pedagogy. (4) technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) refers to the teacher’s knowledge about the multiple relations of 3 components among technology, pedagogy, and content that ease teachers to advance the proper strategies in delivering the material to reach the target learning. figure 2. tpack diagram the correlation between the theoretical framework above with this research can be seen that whatsapp as a subject of technology used by lee online course in this research. pedagogical knowledge refers to learning activities by using whatsapp. it observed the instructor's performance in the teaching-learning process and described the students’ perspective of the lee online course during the covid-19 pandemic. english, precisely grammar material, is the content knowledge of this research that the researchers dig into its implementation. method the researchers used a descriptive, interpretive method to present the data. in this method, the researchers were the main point of the research in narrating and visualizing the research result. the data were collected from interviews, questionnaires, observation, and documentation to answer the research questions 1. how is the implementation of the teachinglearning process in the lee online course? 2. what is students’ perception of the lee online course's teaching-learning process? the founder collected the interview data all at once, the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 105 instructor of lee, and the personal it member. the interview data answered about the tpack implementation in teaching-learning lee online course. it consists of how the technology was used, how the materials were delivered, and how it was constructed. the data from observation and documentation also supported the tpack implementation in lee online course. on august 25th and 26th, 2020, the observation was done in two days at 07.00 pm. in addition, the researchers joined 11 whatsapp groups to synchronize the interview result and the reality. the document was in screenshot form about the interaction in the group, the voice note while explaining the material, and the picture of adverb material was used to complete the data and answer the first research question. those documents are divided into three aspects based on the tpack framework. the documentation was also used to crosscheck the students' perception by copying the messages delivered into whatsapp group and transferring them in ms. word. then, the researchers collected the students' perceptions about the teaching-learning process in lee online course to answer the second research question. the students' perception was taken by questionnaire about their opinions, written directly in the whatsapp group. the questionnaire consisted of several questions. they were about the learning english easy online course identity and their perception of the lee teaching-learning process in essay form. the total number of members in lee batch 4 was 2.401. however, the participants who answered the question about their perception were 397 students. it is caused by the limited time given by the stakeholder to collect the answer in 30 minutes before the group setting permission changed to only admin who could send a message in lee whatsapp group. from the 397 participants, 262 students gave a specific opinion, and 135 students gave a perception in teaching-learning lee batch 4 in general or in a whole process. it is 66% compared to 34% in 397 participants. the researchers used descriptive interpretive of tpack framework by mishra and koehler (2006) as the data analysis technique. the tpack framework consists of three elements. they are technology, pedagogical and content knowledge. in analyzing the data, the researchers divided the data into three aspects. every aspect or element of tpack has its code. the data distribution was done to know the percentage and the specific aspect that gives the most significant contribution of lee online course in implementing the tpack framework. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 106 findings there are four types of data collection. they are the data collected from interviews, questionnaires, observation, and documentation. later, the researchers separated those data into three aspects, referring to the tpack framework by mishra and koehler. those data answered the research questions 1. how is the implementation of the teaching-learning process in the lee online course? 2. what is students’ perception of the lee online course's teaching-learning process? the researchers observed the lee learning process on the 25th and 26th of august 2020. at that time, the learning topic in lee batch 4 is adverb and adverb of frequency. the total number of participants in that event is 2.401 students. it is divided into 11 whatsapp groups, consisting of a maximum of 255 members in each group. the researchers asked their opinion about the teaching-learning process in lee batch 4 through whatsapp group. technological knowledge the interview data were collected by the founder, an instructor of lee at a time, and by one it staff. based on the interview, the founder informed that this program came from the pandemic situation, that everything was online, then the students got more time to stay at home and had screen time longer. she also said that the background of this program was a voluntary event. together with her friend, aji, as an it staff, they made lee online course for all indonesian students for free. even though it is free, there are several requirements to join this class. they used technology to hold this program. first, the people who want to join lee in every batch must upload the flyer as status in their social media and share it to a minimum of two whatsapp groups. after that, they need to screen capture the flyer, status in their social media, and the evidence of sharing the flyer into their two whatsapp groups. the screen captures are delivered to the it staff of lee, aji, using a format about the members’ identity such as name, address, and class. if the members have fulfilled the requirement, the it staff will invite them to join the lee group. that is what makes lee reach the students from around indonesia. the features of whatsapp used by the lee online course are whatsapp group, whatsapp status, picture, voice note (directly or in audio form), text messaging, and setting https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 107 permission group chat. whatsapp group is used to collect the member of lee; it has a function as a class in offline school. whatsapp status is used to inform the lee program to the broader area, and it is used to register to be the members of the lee online course for free. picture, voice note, and text helped transfer the instructor's material to the students. the last is the setting permission group chat used to control the class. from 262 data about students’ perception in specific opinion about teaching-learning process in lee, the researchers summarized into the diagram 1. diagram 1 result of students’ perception based on diagram 1, 35 students, or 13.4% of the total number, delivered their opinion about lee online course technology. they said that they enjoy the system of the teachinglearning process in lee. one of the participants in lee batch 4 said that "since i joined lee batch 4, i easily study english. the explanation is very easy to understand and the situation is not too serious, and i can enjoy the study". the teaching-learning process has 2 hours duration. it is started on august 25th from 07.00 pm – 09.00 pm. the technology was fully used in the lee online course, mainly the whatsapp features. it combined audio and picture in the process. there were six pictures and thirteen voice notes in batch 4. in addition, there were two material pictures, one trial test picture, and seven voice notes on the first day. then the second day, there were two material pictures, one trial test picture, and six-voice notes, which had 1 – 4 minutes duration. technology (tk) 13.4% english grammar (ck) 23.3% teaching learning process (pk) 63.3% https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 108 pedagogical knowledge based on the observation, documentation, and interview. the instructor explained that the adverb material started in two ways. on the first day, the adverb material was explained by showing its structure as presented in figure 3. the picture contained several sentences and its structure in showing the adverb form in a sentence. then the second day was started by presenting the sentence and then the structure. the instructor used mixing languages english, bahasa, java, and slang language to explain the material. she also gave motivation to her students in the opening and closing of her material. the participant from jakarta wrote in whatsapp group, “the explanation from miss amel is understandable and in detail. she also provided examples and voice notes that can make us enjoy studying. miss amel is one of the english teachers who are careful and wonderful in explaining the material. the english teacher usually looks like a killer, but miss amel is different.” content knowledge the material in lee batch 4 is an adverb. there were only four pictures and two trial tests for two days. the material can be seen in figure 3. figure 3. material content presented by lee student from makasar, sulawesi selatan wrote her opinion "my experience studying english in lee two nights makes me thankful. i can join this group, and i can improve my https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 109 knowledge about english even though in a short time but it is beneficial to get implemented in our daily life, the material is so satisfying, brief, compact and clear”. each material was presented only in two pictures. the material showed less than ten sentences in each picture. the first picture was the sentence with the structure; the second picture was used in adverb material. the third picture presented trial test six until eight questions in multiple-choice form. the voice note was the explanation of the picture. the appearance teaching-learning process in lee online course using voice notes and pictures in whatsapp group can be seen in the figure 4. figure 4. teaching-learning process in whatsapp group there were several students' perceptions about the instructor's explanation. a student from purworejo, jawa tengah, said: "the explanation can be understood and it is not boring. i can more understand the use of adverb". a student from sukoharjo said, "the topic is so beneficial, and i got the motivation to not be lazy in studying english because studying english is fun and so easy to understand." the researchers have separated the specific students' perceptions into three categories based on the tpack framework by mishra and koehler (2006) to know the percentage or the proportion of tpack implementation in lee online corse. the total number of students who emphasized in one point can be seen in table 1. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 110 tpack element the point total students technological knowledge the trial test presented in the picture 3 the extraordinary use of voice notes and pictures 11 the learning system through whatsapp 21 pedagogical knowledge clear explanation by the instructor 103 the teaching method is not boring 20 giving motivation in learning english 23 the teaching method is interesting 17 the great instructor's pronunciation 3 content knowledge the material design easy to understand 61 table 1. the result of students’ perception discussions technological knowledge based on diagram 1, 35 students, or 13.4% of the total number, delivered their opinion about lee online course technology. the word enjoying in that statement refers to the learning system in lee, which uses whatsapp as the primary tool. the learning system in lee was held for two days only. the students enjoyed the class because of its duration, and they could study at a relaxed time at home. the class was started by introducing the topic, and there was a setting in whatsapp group that cannot allow the members to send messages into groups, in which admin who could do it. it made the class under control and conducive because members could send any messages. at the same time, the teaching-learning process was blocked. archambault and barnett (2010) stated that technology knowledge in education means integrating technology into their instruction and the teacher's experience. moreover, the mobile phone is highly used by students (ababneh, 2017). the feature of message permission in whatsapp's whatsapp group helped the teachers optimize the time using the technology. the teacher's knowledge about how to use it is needed to make it helpful https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 111 in the teaching-learning process. in line with it, its presence starting to take place in education (cetinkaya, 2017) the setting’ feature could engage the teaching-learning process and the features of voice notes and pictures in whatsapp. based on eric (2012), the voice note feature or whatsapp voice messaging allows users to communicate with contacts and groups instantly. people can use it to deliver important and time-sensitive information. as such, all voice messages are downloaded automatically. it can be used in two ways. it is directly recorded by pressing the mic button as long as the user speaks or using a recorder application from a handphone to record the material and send it to a group. the duration of voice note can reach for two hours directly recorded. in the lee teaching-learning process, the instructor used pictures and voice notes to explain the material. the voice note and picture features provided by whatsapp helped the instructor to handle 11 groups at one time. the instructor just needed one picture and one voice note, and it was delivered into 11 whatsapp groups. by looking at the material presented in pictures and at the same time the students played the voice note, it made the students feel like studying in offline class. the pictures were used to explain the material and for a trial test. three students gave a positive opinion about the trial test presented in a picture, and they were asked to self-correction their work by listening to the instructor's voice note. there were 23.3% of students or 61 students pointed out the great material given by the instructor. the instructor gave simple visuals or pictures that succeeded in making the students think simply and easily. thus, they said that the material was so brief and precise. the language used in this picture was also in multilanguage. there were popular words in bahasa, in english, and some languages. pedagogical knowledge the most extensive data from the students' perspective came from how the instructor explained the material. 63.3 % or 166 students showed that they were satisfied with the instructor's performance in explaining the material. based on the observation, documentation, and interview, the instructor in lee batch 4 used a deductive approach. the instructor explained adverbs and started explaining the language based on its rules or formula. in picture https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 112 two, the instructor gives an example and the rules of where adverb should be and how it is in 6 ways—then followed by practicing exercises or trial tests in the end. on the second day, the instructor used the deductive approach employed in the previous meeting. the students who studied grammar did not start the learning by knowing the formula first, but the students were given several examples of sentences. because the material still correlates, the instructor gave a complete sentence, and the students were asked to find the formula or the pattern of its sentence. the materials were related, so it did not cost any time because they had previous knowledge background from the first night in lee batch 4. in this part, the instructor tried to lead the students to generalize the formula of adverb of frequency by emphasizing "every," "ly" at the end of "days," weeks," and "years." the students’ perception showed the excellent performance of the instructor in explaining the topic. there were six pictures and ten voice notes in batch 4. there were two material pictures, one trial test picture, and five-voice notes on the first day. then the second day, there were two material pictures, one trial test picture, and five-voice notes, which had 1 – 4 minutes duration. in explaining the material, the instructor used mixing languages: english, bahasa, java, and slang language. the dominant language in explaining the material was the indonesian language. several slang words might make the students confused about its meaning, such as “uwu” "sorry dorry strawberry." the slang language in this context is used as an additional expression by the instructor. the language used by the instructor was also attractive and full of energy combining bahasa and english while explaining the material. that made the students enjoy and enthusiast because they feel the interactive teaching-learning process. the instructor’s consideration of mixing language was based on the students' different knowledge backgrounds. she added more about the different knowledge backgrounds based on her experience in studying english. the motivation of combining whatsapp use increased the students’ confidence (alqahtani, bhaskar, elumalai, & abumelha, 2018). the instructor also reminds the students to feel okay when making mistakes in english. the motivation which always comes from her is "from zero to be hero, from nothing to be something." many students got more motivation to study english. based on parker et al. (2021), in the study of motivation perspective in an online https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 113 learning environment, the student's motivation in learning is crucial because it influences their perceptions and performance. thus, the instructor gave motivation to the students in the opening and closing of the teaching-learning process. content knowledge the students also understood the materials delivered by the instructor in the whatsapp group. it is shown on their trial result test at the end of the teaching-learning process. the it staff, aji, firstly told about the rules in the teaching-learning process, and then the instructor, amel, came in using various ways such as text, including the emoticon, pictures, voice notes, and stickers. the point plus of using those features is that they can be played, viewed, and learned freely, as the students want, and with no limited time. it is automatically in the members' gallery, which can cause storage limitation but needs less signal or data usage in downloading them than the other application. last, the combination of tpack helped the students understand the material, and the most significant contribution of its success comes from the instructor's pedagogical knowledge. this result was supported by the research of tpack in faculty development training on teaching, which showed improvements in their teaching effectiveness (brinkley-etzkorn, 2018). conclusion and implication lee online course batch 4 represented the three elements of the tpack framework by mishra and koehler in their teaching-learning process. the data were taken from observation, documentation, interview, and lee online course batch 4 on august 2020. here, lee used whatsapp as the primary tool in their online course. the technical knowledge is well-known by the principles. it helped in the arrangement of the material and how the instructor explained the material. the content knowledge combined with the technical and pedagogical knowledge made the students enjoy the class and gave a good outcome based on their trial test results and opinion. combining the three elements of tpack in the lee online course could manage thousands of participants at one time. it gave satisfying responses, which were significant for education in this pandemic situation, which we can count on everything online. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 114 references ababneh, s. (2017). using mobile phones in learning english: the case of jordan. journal of education and human development, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.15640/jehd.v6n4a14 allahyar, n., & ramezanpour, s. (2011). no extreme any more, strike a balance. asian social science, 7(5), 240–243. alqahtani, s. m., bhaskar, c. v., elumalai, k. v., & abumelha, m. (2018). whatsapp: an online platform for university-level english language education. arab world english journal, 9(4), 108–121. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no4.7 archambault, l. m., & barnett, j. h. (2010). revisiting technological pedagogical content knowledge: exploring the tpack framework. computers and education, 55(4), 1656– 1662. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.07.009. barhoumi, c. (2015). the effectiveness of whatsapp mobile learning activities guided by activity theory on students' knowledge management. contemporary educational technology, 6(3), 221–238. https://doi.org/10.30935/cedtech/6151. bikowski, d. (2018). technology for teaching grammar. the tesol encyclopedia of english language teaching, july, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0441 brinkley-etzkorn, k. e. (2018). learning to teach online: measuring the influence of faculty development training on teaching effectiveness through a tpack lens. internet and higher education, 38(november 2016), 28–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2018.04.004 burhan, a. f. (2020). penggunaan whatsapp dan instagram melonjak 40% selama pandemi corona. https://katadata.co.id/febrinaiskana/digital/5e9a41f84eb85/penggunaanwhatsapp-dan-instagram-melonjak-40-selama-pandemi-corona cetinkaya, l. (2017). the impact of whatsapp use on success in the education process. international review of research in open and distance learning, 18(7), 59–74. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i7.3279 conole, g., & alevizou, p. (2010). a literature review of the use of web 2.0 tools in higher education. a report commissioned by the higher education academy. dahdal, s. (2020). using the whatsapp social media application for active learning. journal of educational technology systems, 49(2), 239–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239520928307. defelice, b. (2005). well-dressed english. english teaching professional, vol. 1, 49–51. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.15640/jehd.v6n4a14 https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no4.7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.07.009 https://doi.org/10.30935/cedtech/6151 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0441 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2018.04.004 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i7.3279 https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239520928307 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 115 dong, c., cao, s., & li, h. (2020). young children’s online learning during covid-19 pandemic: chinese parents’ beliefs and attitudes. children and youth services review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105440 dontcheva-navratilova, o. (2013). grammar and discourse. in applied linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0464 gleason, j. b., & ratner, n. b. (2009). the development of language. 7th edition. allyn and bacon. gon, s., & rawekar, a. (2017). effectivity of e-learning through whatsapp as a teachinglearning tool. mvp journal of medical sciences, 4(1), 19–25. https://doi.org/10.18311/mvpjms.v4i1.8454 harmer, j. (2007). how to teach english. pearson education limited. jackson, e. (2012, december 3). why selling whatsapp to facebook would be the biggest mistake of jan koum's and brian acton's lives. forbes. retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-tofacebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actonslives/?sh=7dd4885cbc1c lehmann, c. (2013). the nature of parts of speech. second triple international conference, 53-92. https://doi.org/10.1524/sturf.2013.0008 mishra, p., & koehler, m. j. (2006). technological pedagogical content knowledge: a framework for teacher knowledge. teachers college record, 108 (6), 1017–1054 outaleb, a. (2014). the deductive/inductive approaches to teaching grammar: moroccan esl university students’ attitude. mohammed v de rabat university parker, p. c., perry, r. p., hamm, j. m., chipperfield, j. g., pekrun, r., dryden, r. p., daniels, l. m., & tze, v. m. c. (2021). a motivation perspective on achievement appraisals, emotions, and performance in an online learning environment. international journal of educational research, 108, 101772. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2021.101772 robles, h., guerrero, j., llinás, h., & montero, p. (2019). online teacher-students interactions using whatsapp in a law course. journal of information technology education: research, 18, 231–252. https://doi.org/10.28945/4321 shulman, l. e. (1986). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational research, 15 (2), 4–14. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105440 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0464 https://doi.org/10.18311/mvpjms.v4i1.8454 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-to-facebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actons-lives/?sh=7dd4885cbc1c https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-to-facebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actons-lives/?sh=7dd4885cbc1c https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-to-facebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actons-lives/?sh=7dd4885cbc1c https://doi.org/10.1524/sturf.2013.0008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2021.101772 https://doi.org/10.28945/4321 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 116 susilawati, s., & supriyatno, t. (2020). online learning through whatsapp group in improving learning motivation in the era and post pandemic covid -19. jurnal pendidikan, 5, 852–859. http://dx.doi.org/10.17977/jptpp.v5i6.13670 susilo, a. (2008). exploring facebook and whatsapp as supporting social network applications for english learning in higher education. pde professional development in education conference teaching and learning in the 21st century, 10–24. thornbury, s. (1999). how to teach grammar. longman. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 http://dx.doi.org/10.17977/jptpp.v5i6.13670 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 164 article history: submitted: 5 may 2021 reviewed: 7 may 2021 30 may 2021 edited: 26 june 2021 1 july 2021 accepted: 8 july 2021 english education master students’ perceptions on their agency as future efl teachers kristian florensio wijaya sanata dharma university, indonesia kristianw611@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11994 abstract this study investigated english education master students’ perceptions of their agency as future efl teachers. the underlying concern for conducting this study is a shortage of future efl teachers’ professional development literature exploring the significance of promoting agency in varied second language classroom contexts. the narrative inquiry approach was employed to obtain more overarching depictions about the apparent stories told by the research participants to fulfil this central research objectivity. ten open-ended written narrative inquiries were harnessed to shed more enlightenment for future efl teachers’ professional development with the support of robust agency establishment. this set of narrative inquiry questions heed more profound attention to dig out graduate efl students’ perceptions of their agency as prospective second language educators. the obtained findings overtly revealed that future efl teachers could elevate their agency and promote holistic second language learning enterprises while their school institutions imparted continuous mutual supports. eventually, the findings will shed more enlightenment for elt experts, practitioners, and policymakers to design more unrestricted educational regulations. they supportively substantiate future efl teachers' agency growth, particularly in indonesia's efl learning contexts, emphasizing the textbased learning achievements. keywords: agency; future efl teachers, english education master students; narrative inquiry =========================================================================== mailto:kristianw611@gmail.com https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11994&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 165 introduction educators should be well-equipped with intensive professional development training to improve the overarching educational quality. vanassche et al. (2019) avered that continual professional development training would allow teachers to bring about significant positive impacts to their specific academic fields in concert with the dynamic global changes in the existent society. concerning this matter, efl teachers in this modern age are also jointly commissioned to constantly elevate their professional development by not merely taking part in particular educational institutions but also willing to reform the face of education itself by bravely internalizing innovative, contextual, and creative second language learning interplays in their diverse wide-ranging classroom circumstances. this perspective agrees with the theory of qualified efl teachers propounded by loughran (2014). he argued that high-quality efl scholars could deem the figures promoting interactive and unusual language learning enterprises for their learners possessing distinctive life backgrounds. further, one of the significant affective components needed by efl teachers to embody that aforementioned educational reformation is agency. agency can be defined as a stronginherited people’s willingness to initiative internalize specific intended actions to impart some changes to their targeted surroundings progressively. this definition above is closely interlinked with the theory of teacher agency adduced by eteläpelto (2017), articulating agency as people’s power, perseverance, and strong desire to carry out some consecutive influential actions affecting their existent vicinities. rogers and wetzel (2013) stated that agency denotes human beings’ capabilities to create gradual changes in their particular living environments. in a similar vein, priestley et al. (2012) postulated that agency could also be deemed as people’s commitment to incorporate a set of appropriate actions contextualized with their vicinities to ascertain that the social community members widely accept these changes. in a globalized english language teaching venture, the notion of an agency should be conscientiously interpreted and actualized by efl teachers to successfully promote some significant educational transformation. this emerging matter occurred since efl teachers are also restricted with the academic policies, objectivities, and beliefs ingrained by their school institutions. thus, they must act accordingly in line with those written regulations while nurturing their suitable agentic actions concurrently. these beliefs are resonated well with the theory of efl teachers’ journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 166 agency adduced by nguyen and bui (2016), avowing that to rejuvenate the existing educational practices gradually, efl teachers are advocated to activate their agentic manners about the regulations, perspectives, and goals upheld by school institutions. calvert (2016) accentuated the critical need for efl teachers to release some purposeful agentic actions in harmony with the educational policies forming in their particular school institutions to fully fulfil the comprehensive academic demands targeted by the wider society. agency can be conjectured as one of the mainstays that functioned as an educational trajectory to bring about more holistic second language learning enterprises for all learning community members. hence, efl teachers are also strongly suggested to profoundly reflect on their thoughts, beliefs and paradigms before embodying specific actions. this action needs to be done by them to successfully apply the apparent positive actions sincerely asserted by their learning community members and benefit the further advancement of teaching-learning practices. this above-mentioned pivotal action is corroborated by the theory of efl teachers’ agency devised by toom et al. (2015). it asserts a more explicit need for efl teachers to obtain collective approvals from their educational institutions before implementing a vast range of agentic actions to ascertain that the communal objectivities walk in an identical corridor indisputably. therefore, an agency should be parsed as a collective and reciprocal perspective instead of personal thought due to the dynamic nature of agency simultaneously involving teachers, educational institutions, and society. they enact such a harmonious action considerably rewarding for the further progression of their academic development. the aboveexplained theory is in tandem with the idea of efl teachers’ agency invented by biesta et al. (2015). it emphasizes the crucial need to all learning community members; teachers, learners, parents, and school superiors to actualize some tangible, specific agentic actions in concord with the educational beliefs, policies, and practices collectively approved by these academic board members to instil more synergized collective actions supportive for advancing their educational institutions. five relevant studies have been conducted in this archipelago to investigate efl teachers’ professional development concerning english language teaching-learning transformation. however, none of these studies has specifically completed a more in-depth exploration of efl teachers’ agency. murtiningsih (2019) revealed that unearthing that journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 167 effective efl teachers were figures who could motivate and fully understand the laborious learning situations faced by learners. in another study, pertiwi et al. (2020) discovered that innovative efl teachers applied more interactive and captivating learning media for multivariate learners. lestari (2017) noticed some demotivating factors promoting efl teachers to depart from their teaching vocation earlier, such as lack of salary, minimum support given by educational institutions, learners’ noncompliant behaviour, and excessive administrative works. hence, this researcher suggested educational institutions addressing more intensive support for their teachers to continue enlightening future generations' lives. hatmanto and purwanti (2020) unveiled that it was crucially essential for efl teachers to adjust their traditional teaching methods into the modern one to engage millennium generations to keep motivated in acquiring the target language. lastly, fithriani (2018) encouraged the government to cease enacting massive discrimination between native and non-native efl teachers in the recruitment processes to promote more equity beneficial to advance elt practices in this nation. as noted before, there is a devoid of specific studies conducting more profound exploration toward the significance of agency for future efl teachers. thus, this present study is needed to be plied to investigate the particular perceptions infused by graduate university efl learners regarding the importance of agency for their career pathways as future efl educators. one research problem was formulated in this study to comply with this primary research objectivity: (1) what are the particular perceptions instilled by english education master students toward the importance of agency for their career development as future efl teachers? this study implemented qualitative research to unravel the problem formulated. indonesian efl educators, practitioners, and policymakers can discern efl teachers’ agency in distinctive elt enterprises. hopefully, it will result in more appropriate and contextual teacher professional development training heeding its attention to forge this professionalism aspect to promote significant advancement for educational enterprises. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 168 literature review professional agency educators, learners, school board members, and society must have a synergized collaborative interplay. it aims to nurture the professional agency inherited within efl teachers prolifically. as mentioned previously, the robust construction of agency cannot be detached from socio-cultural practices. a higher degree of efl teachers’ agency can be fully engendered when all learning community members mutually endorse their professionalism, dedication, and effortful actions. these conceptions are calibrated with the theory of efl teachers’ agency propounded by pappa et al. (2019), stating that a higher agency level can be yielded when efl teachers are cogently supported by all educational members boards in their institutions. by nature, efl teachers’ professional agency can take place in a wide array of educational practices like accommodation, adaptable actions, and effortful actions to meet the demands proposed by educational institutions. these assumptions are inextricably associated with the significant components of efl teachers’ professional agentic behaviour repudiated by green and pappa (2021). they argued that efl teachers who were adaptable, resilient, and flexible would successfully nourish their professional agency in the light of school policies along with personal objectivities. in a similar vein, hamid and nguyen (2016) also prompted the globalized educational institutions to continuously provide more intensive moral and mental supports for efl teachers upholding distinctive cognitive and pedagogical backgrounds without forcing them to strictly forge their agency in the presence of constrained educational policies. the efficient actualization of professional agency can also be generated. when efl teachers dissented the proposed new school policies, they worked collaboratively with other working counterparts to promote some innovative educational changes and expend a considerable number of appropriate actions suitable with the demands provoked by their school institutions. vähäsantanen (2015) affirmed that it is inescapable for efl teachers to foster their professional agency through some positive and controversial actions. they include disapproving the new educational reforms, maintaining mutual collaborative interplays with other colleagues, and dedicate their maximum efforts for the future betterment of their school institutions. hence, the professional agency has an intertwining nature of collective agency in worldwide elt occurrences. as a result, efl teachers advocate creating more mutual, journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 169 intimate, and positive collaborative efforts with all learning community members to bring about more significant progression in their school vicinities. gurney and liyanage (2016) also mentioned that the long-life learning spirit needs to reside within efl teachers attempting to cultivate a higher degree of agency to become more resilient, adaptable, and professional educators in future educational events. haneda and sherman (2016) strongly suggested efl teachers establish, nurture, and amplify the mutual rapports within their broader school community circumstances to maximize their utmost agency levels in corresponding with unpredictable educational landscape transformation and breakthrough. efl teachers’ agency as illustrated in the prior subsection, the agency is closely correlated with people’s more vital willingness to impart fundamental changes to support deliberate, effortful actions appropriate to their surroundings. apart from this definition, this term needs to be refined when dealing with elt enterprises. efl teachers should overcome all of the conflictual relationships among their personal beliefs, institutional demands, and collective objectivities to nurture their agency resulted in apparent educational advancement successfully. this notion mentioned above is in tandem with the prior findings of the efl teachers’ agency current study unearthed by morales jaramillo (2021). he advocated for all educational stakeholders, experts, and policymakers to maintain a higher level of positive and mutual relationships with highly diverse efl teachers to transform them into proactive agents of change toward their learners’ future lives. kayi-aydar (2015) also advised globalized efl teachers to place, adjust, and juxtapose their agency with educational settings. it aims to create a more positive working atmosphere, enhancing their highest motivation to dedicate their best teaching performances to multiverse learners. according to the particular teaching-learning situations, highly-agentic efl teachers can internalize innovative, creative, and unusual pedagogical actions. then, the teachers commission them to exert those risk-taking actions. all of the above-explicated conceptions are mutually intertwined with basic tenets of efl teachers’ agency propounded by biesta et al. (2015). efl teachers could degrade their internal and external conflicts regarding the institutional and personal demand, promoting more meaningful teaching-learning dynamics than other teachers who are restricted with individual and collective perspectives in their journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 170 mindset. toom et al. (2015) theorized that highly agentic efl teachers could exert many flexible changes in their teaching-learning repertoire with their current learners’ learning situations, needs, preferences, and styles. these intertwining natures of the above-explained findings are also worth tailored to kitade's (2015) study. highly agentic efl teachers are aware of distinctive socio-cultural and unique life backgrounds brought by their learners in one particular classroom ecology. this situation reciprocally affected them to instil varied contextual pedagogical practices. these thoroughly fit with learners’ learning conditions, needs, and preferences. furthermore, the educational institutions’ policy constraints can act as a double-edged sword for further developing efl teachers’ agency. the accepted academic regulations can supportively endorse teachers to build the intended teaching-learning materials suitable for learners’ learning needs or impose teachers to rigidly follow all educational demands without casting more intensive caring for learners’ learning situations. these arguments are in conjunction with the common obstructions that potentially hinder efl teachers’ agency growth theory as adduced by gao (2017). he articulated that regional educational institutions’ policies can potentially restrict the prolific efl teachers’ agency. they might disallow educators merely following all of the written rules without applying any potential pedagogical approaches appropriate to their targeted classroom contexts. kalaja (2015) also pinpointed that more mutual, positive, and synergized collaborations should occur among educators, parents, learners, and school board members. it aims to ceaselessly elevate efl teachers’ agency without being constrained by extensively formal educational regulations. efl teachers’ agency should be well-nurtured, amplified, and adjusted according to the legalized educational policies and collective demands approved by the overarching learning community members. educationalists may dedicate their best pedagogical approaches to benefit learners’ learning advancement and outcomes. also, they may engage in real-life contexts at the same time. in other words, efl teachers can channel their energy, commitment, and persistent actions to promote more supportive teaching-learning circumstances wherein all learners are capable of incorporate all the obtained competencies sustainably in out-of-class contexts. these impactful learning benefits concurred with the good values imparted by the robust establishment of efl teachers’ agency findings as unfolded by journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 171 garcia-carrion et al. (2017). they exclaimed that efl teachers’ perspectives toward their school institutions would reciprocally leverage their further actions, willingness, and commitment to impart the intended teaching-learning actions addressed for their targeted classroom learning vicinities. all educational board members must establish more synergized and collaborative networking with all educationalists. it is to fully impart various second language learning benefactors for multiverse learners without being hindered excessively with the structural educational ecologies raised by the educational institutions. the major-specific research findings of these studies above can also be conflated with the results of prior efl teachers’ agency studies plied by le et al. (2021). most vietnamese efl teachers successfully fulfilled all educational institutions’ demands, policies, and objectivities with their appropriate agentic actions due to the highly supportive collaborative interplays, mutual rapport, and sustainable collective sharing of their school working environments. these concepts also share an identical commonality with efl teachers’ agency study plied by le et al. (2021). educational policymakers and school stakeholders openly involved efl teachers in designing appropriate educational policies best suited their classroom learning climates to empower their agentic actions, efforts, and spirit while dealing with uphill teaching-learning obstacles. methodology this current study was conducted in the light of a qualitative method to obtain more profound depictions concerning the particular observed phenomena. this nature of the present study had an intertwining rapport with the theory of qualitative research postulated by deveci and onder (2013), averring that the central purpose of qualitative research is to enable researchers to dig more sensible truth out of the specific phenomena or events they are discerning. ten (10) open-ended written interview questions were harnessed to attain more reliable data according to english education master students’ perceptions of their agency as future efl teachers. they focused on further activation and the extension of efl teachers’ agency, particularly when crammed by some unpredictable educational oppression probably arising from parents, school stakeholders, school principals, and school foundation members. this primary research objectivity is in conjunction with the theory of open-ended written interview inquiries propounded by talmy and richards (2011). one of the striking beneficial journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 172 impacts of utilizing open-ended interview questions is the researchers will potentially attain natural and reliable data. for the research participants, the researcher invited two english education master students from batch 2019 and 2020, sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. as a general portrayal, these two distinctive millennial generations had experienced relatively long-range english language teaching experiences in various multi-ranging classroom circumstances. the first research participant earned her bachelor degree in english language education in 2012. after completing her bachelor study, she commenced her teaching vocation at one particular agricultural educational institution in yogyakarta. for the professional teaching experiences, the first participant had worked not merely in the abovementioned educational institution but also in diverse school communities to enrich her pedagogical experiences as a future efl educator. in contrast, the second participant was studying at english education master study program in a similar university. in the meantime, she is in the second semester of her study. she had already experienced real-time practice teaching experiences in one particular high school when she was still an undergraduate. the second participant was a hard worker when preparing the best-suited materials for multivariate learners. however, she had never undergone more intensive teaching experiences in one particular school institution as one of the teaching staff. by committing to this critical research objectivity, the results of this present study will potentially impart a single piece of contributions toward the further development on elevating future efl teachers’ agency in indonesian elt contexts. the researcher would compartmentalize each finding into specific main themes to ascertain each argumentation expounded. to a lesser extent, these in-depth depictions were also corroborated by relevant theories and prior studies of efl teacher’s agency to better promote more sensible and comprehensive descriptions out of the collected data derived from the research participants. for the coding of each finding, the researcher subsumed the obtained responses from the research participants based on the most frequent explications disseminated by them. by conducting this in-depth qualitative coding technique, the depictions of each central theme will be presented in an identical umbrella functioned to enable worldwide readers to precisely understand the particular ongoing matters taking place within the participants’ personal along with professional lives as future efl educators. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 173 findings this section clarifies the obtained significant findings regarding english education master students’ perceptions of their agency as future efl teachers. those findings manifested in four specific themes, namely, (1) the robust construction of efl teachers’ agency, (2) positive perceptions of nurturing agentic characters, (3) the paramount needs to teach more transformative teaching-learning enterprises, and (4) the critical stance to be long-life learners to preserve the firm establishment of the agency. concerning these themes mentioned above, the following lines will be accompanied by sensible arguments, relevant theories, and prior related findings supported by the data disseminated by two research participants. for further information, these subdivided categories dealing intimately with a narrative inquiry approach since the research participants’ real-life stories or experiences are elucidated in the light of relevant theories and prior research results generated by the worldwide elt experts about the importance of nourishing prospective efl educators’ agency. the robust construction of efl teachers’ agency i have supportive colleagues, and they always share their experiences in class. therefore, i can learn from them as well. [participant 1] teaching is like a half part of my soul. what i mean by teaching is that when we can share and learn at the same time. it can be with any students’ level, grade, or even not a student, but people in a way broader context. [participant 2] based on the findings attained from two participants, both english education master students instilled such a higher degree of agency at the commencement of second language teaching-learning enterprises. the first participant frankly acknowledged that the inducement of robust agency establishment was caused by the supportive working surroundings forming in her prior school institution. the support manifested in continuous encouragement, intensive professional development training, a higher degree of reverence addressed by learners, and journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 174 conducive working surroundings collectively constructed by colleagues. the first participants could manage their stress levels, burdens, and heavy working loads better through these positive trajectories. hence, meaningful teaching-learning enterprises could construct their knowledge proactively. concerning the second participant, she also confessed that teaching vocation had been lifeblood in her life since she could disseminate a vast array of rewarding life values, knowledge, and mutual sharing to her learners. this agentic characteristic enabled the second participant to design more innovative, creative, and enjoyable second language learning activities for all learners deriving from exceptional levels. more importantly, the second participant had successfully activated learners’ independent learning characters appreciating the beauty of teaching-learning processes amid pain-staking, energy-draining, and timeconsuming knowledge discovery. such conditions would bring about varied influential positive benefits for learners’ academic achievements and broader social contexts. positive perceptions of nurturing agentic characters yes. i always believe that my teaching vocation will bring beneficial effects for students and help them grow as well. [participant 1] when i can make my students understand what i have said, shared, and taught. then they use it daily. it becomes everlasting lesson for them and me. [participant 2] both participants had progressively constructed positive perceptions of their agency since they consistently showed a more remarkable persistence, eventual efforts, and more substantial commitment to nourish their agency in more straightforward teaching-learning objectives. this positive attitude can elevate their agency more considerably. those predetermined teaching-learning goals worked as a propelling force to display their most excellent teaching performances, maximizing each learner’s potential to construct a wide array of knowledge efficiently and meaningfully. the first participant overtly repudiated that her specific positive beliefs on her teaching vocation could lead learners to master the intended journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 175 subject-specific fields and strong mentality and laudable characters primarily beneficial for them. the second participant also infused identical lenses of perspective like the first participant since her profound concern was calibrated with the applicable learning outcomes that learners can harness in their daily-basis. thus, the continuous repetitions and practices would hopefully transfigure into more proficient future academicians. the paramount needs to inculcate more transformative teaching-learning enterprises i always believe that students will learn if a teacher gives comfortable environment for students. therefore, i always try to provide pleasant learning environment for students by making games or providing videos. [participant 1] definitely yes. my target is not about to finish all the lesson subject as the curriculum mentioned. however, i face the god’s creature, who is a human. instead of teaching them a solid rule of english, i bring the value of language in a broader needs for them, which make them do questioning a lot and think more. [participant 2] concerning the above-displayed findings, both participants concurred that to be more agentic efl teachers. it is of paramount importance for them to promote more meaningmaking second language teaching-learning enterprises. all learners will not merely engage more proactively in unearthing knowledge but also thoroughly enjoy the overarching learning activities internalized by their teachers. these agentic characters could occur in a second language learning climate. when teachers realized the crucial importance of loosely detaching from their enacted lesson plans to adjust to other teaching strategies or activities appropriately, they potentially provided more supportive learning assistance for their learners. through this agentic action, the teaching-learning values will be more prosperous for all learning community members regarding knowledge dissemination, positive character building, and admirable working attitudes showcased by all learners, particularly while impeding formidable learning challenges. according to the first participant, all efl teachers must infuse more pleasurable teaching-learning circumstances for their learners to learn better and conceive the journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 176 meaningfulness of the ongoing teaching-learning dynamics they are engaging. the second participant also ingrained such a strong belief. learning does not occur in an isolated and rigid manner through some memorization and drilling techniques but also collaborative along with higher-order thinking skills should be instilled to ascertain that each learner gradually transformed into more effective problem-solvers, informed decision-makers, and cooperative knowledge constructors within their learning community members. impinged upon this understanding, the second participant did not transfer the knowledge passively for her learners. yet, she sustainably engaged all of them to think more critically, be more proactive in formulating in-depth inquiries, and be more attentive listeners through some intensive discussions resulted in a significant transformation of the overall learners’ learning attitude, behaviour, and competencies development. the critical stance to be long-life learners to preserve the strong establishment of agency yes, because learning environment always changes, and i have to adapt my teaching method. more crucially, i always reflect my teaching performance. what went wrong and what needs to be improved. [participant 1] yes. the skill to think more and to bring students to learn language in wider point of view. these two perspectives make me learn a lot during my teaching class, not only prepare the authentic materials but how to invite them to be more meaningful in learning everything. [participant 2] one of the salient characteristics of highly agentic efl teachers is the potent willingness to be long-life learners while engaging in their long-lengthy teaching-learning enterprises. two participants represented those long-life characters. they taught such a solid longing to adapt their teaching methods to classroom learning vicinities. they also reflected more exhaustively concerning all teaching approaches, activities, contentions, and values in their teaching-learning dynamic venture. these delineations are intimately correlated with the in-depth personal reflection generated by the first participant avowing that she sustainably upgraded her teaching methods and performances in line with the diverse wide-ranging journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 177 classroom surroundings she continually faced. the first participant embodied these complex teaching-learning matters since the changeable efl classroom settings commissioned her to do so unless the learning breakdowns will be unacceptable for the complacent behaviours showcased by the teachers. the second participant also shared an identical perspective as the first participant since she continuously learned a substantiate number of precious knowledge, life values, and classroom lessons from her learners during the daily-based teaching-learning activities. efl teachers will transform into more knowledgeable, innovative, broad-minded academicians and agentic positive educationalists. discussions supportive working environments potentially strengthen future efl teachers’ agency in partnership with what had already been elucidated in the prior subsection, a higher degree of agency is more or less substantiated by supportive working environments forming in their school institutions. both participants overtly repudiated that their positive agentic characteristics were tangibly actualized when continual moral supports were addressed by colleagues, school principal, school foundation, learners, and parents. as a result of this positive springboard, supportive working circumstances offer these two participants more promising avenues to obey all school regulations dutifully. at the same time, at a similar moment, sustainably invigorate their agentic actions by promoting more exhilarating, meaningful, and holistic second language learning enterprises wherein all learners can strive and thrive altogether without letting anyone be left behind. these lines of argument support the prior findings of efl teachers’ agency conducted by kayi-aydar (2015). they encouraged school institutions to mentally, morally, and psychologically impart more supportive endorsement for efl teachers. they somehow encounter taxing teaching-learning obstructions in their particular classroom learning contexts to cultivate their positive agentic behaviour in imparting their utmost dedication. liyanage et al. (2015) also prompted all efl practitioners and policymakers to enact more contextual and applicable educational mandates elevating teachers’ agentic behaviour to prepare their learners to pass the national examinations and their future continual life engagement. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 178 through the inculcation of supportive working surroundings, efl teachers can also exhibit a higher degree of sturdiness, resilience, and perseverance while encountering a vast range of exacting teaching-learning hurdles. it can also be articulated that agentic efl teachers are the figures capable of stipulating the precise decisions to overcome the thorny obstacles hindering their ongoing teaching-learning dynamics. this positive attitude is induced since they are not walking alone during tracing in the deep valley of teaching-learning journeys. there will always be great assistance from their colleagues, school board members, and learners whenever they are crammed with these kinds of unsavoury working events. further, two participants also sanctioned identical matters. their colleagues and school foundation were always ready to mutually assist them when they encounter severe difficulties in their teaching voyage regarding classroom management, learning materials selection, pressure coming from parents, and unruly behaviour exhibited by some learners. these in-depth portrayals are pertinent to the prior findings of the efl teachers’ agency study plied by green and pappa (2021). efl teachers exposed to the intensive daily opportunities to continuously nurture their agency concerning the school power, parents’ expectations, collective school networking, and professional space will be better in coping with various teaching-learning hindrances compared to other teachers lacking chances to express their willingness, thoughts, and ideas toward their school institutions. sahragard and rasti (2017) unfolded that iranian efl teachers commissioned to conduct critical self-reflection practices simultaneously accompanied by school institutions’ support after doing their daily teaching activities. as a result, they would better manage their stress, anxiety, and negative behaviours when confronting them abruptly teaching-learning impediments. xiaolei (2018) also unveiled three major indispensable components to bolster the continuity of efl teachers’ robust agency growth: the actualization of emotionally supportive working environments and the profound self-reflections mirroring efl teachers’ daily perspectives on their teaching practices and the current teaching-learning conditions incurred in their school institutions. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 179 the stronger desire to impart more striking positive influences is closely intertwined with positive agentic behavior consented to the above-explicated conceptions of agency, it is worth emphasizing in this line that the potent endeavour to address more significant positive impacts is mutually interrelated with positive agentic behaviour. the agency's baseline is deemed human beings’ desire to carry out some intended appropriate actions useful for their existing surroundings. in an efl teaching-learning arena, this notion has been burgeoning prolifically since teachers are demanded to address more enjoyable, meaningful, and transformative teaching-learning dynamics for all learners possessing distinctive uniqueness, characters, and learning proficiency. in like manner, highly-agentic efl teachers can also be equated with pioneers intending to devise a wide array of suitable pedagogical approaches, learning activities, and rejuvenated educational beliefs to further advance structural and practical educational ecologies. the two participants identified varied pleasurable, meaning-making, innovative, and creative second language learning activities successful in cultivating learners’ proactive learning engagement, higher-order thinking skills, and commendable positive learning behaviour. when all school learning community members have fully experienced more holistic, independent, and collective learning enterprises, the education will be automatically transformed from the examoriented become more humanized paradigm accentuating the overall qualities of human beings. these lines of perspectives echoed the similar to chinese efl teachers’ agency by yang and clarke (2018). when educational institutions' eventual primary scholastic objectivity rejuvenated the whole academic systemic functions, traditions, beliefs, and socio-cultural values previously upheld by those schools, efl educators would benefit most from these dramatic changes. their positive agentic behaviour is corroborated by the renewable policies supporting their innovative, creative, and autonomous educational interplays. kordabadi et al. (2021) also suggested various educational institutions to conducting more intensive agency training within the professional lives of efl teachers. they will allow some positive trajectories to begin to discern that their current teaching vocation will bring about a vast array of rewarding values impacting future generations’ future lives. the urgent need to embody eventual efl teachers’ agentic behaviour is consistent with the prior findings of the efl teachers’ agency conducted by sahragard and rasti (2017). they advocated significant educational institutions to facilitate journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 180 efl teachers with more substantial professional agency training supportively. it aims to preserve their long-lasting teaching motivation and help them distinctively differentiate the external and internal factors prompting or hindering their agency growth from supporting their professionalism as educators fully. conclusion and implication this present qualitative study accentuated the significance of establishing, nourishing, and fostering efl teachers’ agency in multiverse elt contexts. two participants confessed that a higher agency-level enabled them to promote more transformative second language learning enterprises to uphold distinctive learning backgrounds. thus, they will be more life-long academicians. again, these positive inducements were heavily influenced by supportive working environments in their former school institutions. both global and indonesian efl experts, practitioners, and policymakers will be more capable of designing more context-based and dynamic elt enterprises that benefit university efl learners who will be high-quality future efl teachers. these suggestions correspond with one of the inducements of positive agentic behaviours, namely the potent endeavour to carry out all potential effortful actions, dedication, persistent attempts, and inner volition to address the transformative changes in the targeted, appropriate surroundings. there exist some certain limitations in this study. since this present qualitative study only relied on one particular research instrument, open-ended written interview inquiries, future researchers planned to replicate this investigation are advocated to utilize more varied research instruments to yield more reliable data. second, this present qualitative study should also be conducted in a larger sample to provide more generalizable research results significant for efl teachers’ professional development. aside from its limitations, this small-scale study had yielded a single piece of contributions concerning the significance of nurturing future efl teachers’ agency in the light of english education master students undergone relatively longrange elt enterprises in their careers. journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 181 references biesta, g., priestley, m., & robinson, s. (2015). the role of beliefs in teacher agency. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 21(6), 624–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044325 calvert, l. (2016). the power of teacher agency learning forward. journal of staff development, 37(2), 51–56. https://learningforward.org/journal/april-2016-issue/thepower-of-teacher-agency/ deveci, i., & onder, i. (2013). the students’ views related to the given homeworks in the science and technology courses: a qualitative study. online submission, 3(1), 1–9. eteläpelto, a. (2017). emerging conceptualisations on professional agency and learning. in agency at work (pp. 183-201). springer, cham. fithriani, r. (2018). discrimination behind nest and nnest dichotomy in elt professionalism. kne social sciences, 3(4), 741. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v3i4.1982 gao, x. (2017). language teacher autonomy and social censure. autonomy in language learning and teaching: new research agendas, 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52998-5_3 garcia-carrion, r., gomez, a., molina, s., & ionescu, v. (2017). teacher education in schools as learning communities: transforming high-poverty schools through dialogic learning. australian journal of teacher education, 42(4), 44–56. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2017v42n4.4 green, c., & pappa, s. (2021). efl teacher education in finland: manifestations of professional agency in teacher educators’ work. scandinavian journal of educational research, 65(4), 552–568. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2020.1739128 gurney, l., & liyanage, i. (2016). eal teacher agency: implications for participation in professional development. international journal of pedagogies and learning, 11(1), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/22040552.2016.1187650 hamid, m. o., & nguyen, h. t. m. (2016). globalization, english language policy, and teacher agency: focus on asia. international education journal, 15(1), 26–43. retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej1099019 haneda, m., & sherman, b. (2016). a job-crafting perspective on teacher agentive action. tesol quarterly, 50(3), 745–754. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.318 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 182 hatmanto, e. d., & purwanti, e. (2020). strategies in teaching and engaging the millennial generation. internasional journal of language education and applied linguistics, 10(01), 81– 88. https://doi.org/10.15282/ijleal.v10.3945 kalaja, p. (2015). a review of five studies on learner beliefs about second language learning and teaching: exploring the possibilities of narratives. afinla yearbook, 73, 21–38. kayi-aydar, h. (2015). teacher agency, positioning, and english language learners: voices of pre-service classroom teachers. teaching and teacher education, 45, 94–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.09.009 kitade, k. (2015). second language teacher development through call practice: the emergence of teachers’ agency. calico journal, 32(3), 396–425. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v32i3.26637 kordabadi, f. s., aidinlu, n. a., & davatgari asl, h. (2021). an exploratory study of iranian efl teachers’ agency: conceptions and practices. internasional journal of foreign language teaching and research, 9(35). http://jfl.iaun.ac.ir/article_679362.html le, m. d., nguyen, h. t. m., & burns, a. (2021). english primary teacher agency in implementing teaching methods in response to language policy reform: a vietnamese case study. current issues in language planning, 22(1–2), 199–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2020.1741209 lestari, i. w. (2017). demotivating factors among indonesian efl teachers. journal of foreign language teaching and learning, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.2115 liyanage, i., bartlett, b., walker, t., & guo, x. (2015). assessment policies, curricular directives, and teacher agency: quandaries of efl teachers in inner mongolia. innovation in language learning and teaching, 9(3), 251–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2014.915846 loughran, j. (2014). professionally developing as a teacher educator. journal of teacher education, 65(4), 271–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114533386 morales jaramillo, m. a. (2021). agency and its connection to a sociocultural perspective on teachers’ professional development: the lived experiences of five efl teachers (doctoral dissertation). kansas state university murtiningsih, s. (2019). (mis)matched perceptions of efl teachers and students regarding effective teachers. 353(icosihess), 101–107. https://doi.org/10.2991/icosihess-19.2019.16 nguyen, h. t. m., & bui, t. (2016). teachers’ agency and the enactment of educational https://doi.org/10.15282/ijleal.v10.3945 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 183 reform in vietnam. current issues in language planning, 17(1), 88–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2016.1125664 pappa, s., moate, j., ruohotie-lyhty, m., & eteläpelto, a. (2019). teacher agency within the finnish clil context: tensions and resources. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 22(5), 593–613. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2017.1286292 pertiwi, r. s., salabiyati, i., damara, d., & pratolo, b. w. (2020). the teacher’s perspectives about challenges of teaching english for young learners: a case study at english course for young learners. 397(icliqe 2019), 65–74. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200129.009 priestley, m., edwards, r., priestley, a., & miller, k. (2012). teacher agency in curriculum making: agents of change and spaces for manoeuvre. curriculum inquiry, 42(2), 191–214. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-873x.2012.00588.x rogers, r., & wetzel, m. m. (2013). studying agency in literacy teacher education: a layered approach to positive discourse analysis. critical inquiry in language studies, 10(1), 62–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2013.753845 sahragard, r., & rasti, a. (2017). making sense of efl teacher agency : insights from an iran case study. journal of english language teaching and learning, 9(19), 145–169. talmy, s., & richards, k. (2011). theorizing qualitative research interviews in applied linguistics. applied linguistics, 32(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amq045 toom, a., husu, j., & patrikainen, s. (2015). student teachers’ patterns of reflection in the context of teaching practice. european journal of teacher education, 38(3), 320–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2014.943731 toom, a., pyhältö, k., & rust, f. o. (2015). teachers professional agency in contradictory times. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 21(6), 615–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044334 vähäsantanen, k. (2015). professional agency in the stream of change: understanding educational change and teachers’ professional identities. teaching and teacher education, 47(april), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.11.006 vanassche, e., kidd, w., & murray, j. (2019). articulating, reclaiming and celebrating the professionalism of teacher educators in england. european journal of teacher education, 42(4), 478–491. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1628211 xiaolei, r. (2018). engagement and negotiation: exploring a tertiary female efl teacher’s professional agency in her career development in p.r. china. international journal of linguistics, literature, and culture, 4(3), 46–63. https://doi.org/10.21744/ijllc.v4i3.678 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 6, no. 2, july 2021 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/786 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 184 yang, h., & clarke, m. (2018). spaces of agency within contextual constraints: a case study of teacher’s response to efl reform in a chinese university. asia pacific journal of education, 38(2), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2018.1460252 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 1 article history: submitted: 11 july 2021 reviewed: 18 december 2021 edited: 21 december 2021 28 december 2021 accepted: 28 december 2021 exploring teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards english language large classes at herat university, afghanistan ahmad fawad kakar, kawita sarwari *) herat university, afghanistan *) corresponding author’s email: kawita.sarwari65@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.12281 abstract this study is qualitative research that seeks to investigate the large class teaching challenges and the instructors' coping strategies through the perspectives of five english language instructors of the english department of herat university. furthermore, the perspectives of ten juniors and seniors of the english department of herat university on large efl classes are also explored. the data collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews were analyzed thematically. in other words, the data were divided into major and sub-themes, considering the study’s theoretical framework-kumaravadevelu’s post-method pedagogyand the research questions. the findings indicated that challenges, such as multi-level students, under-resourced context, a large number of students, giving feedback, assessing students, classroom management, and students' engagement, are the challenges behind large classes in afghanistan. further, reducing the number of students, providing teachers with capacity-building programs and teaching resources are also discussed. keywords: classroom management; feedback; large classes; student engagement =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:kawita.sarwari65@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.12281 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.12281&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 2 introduction english language teachers in afghanistan, a developing country with a traditional-based (lecture-based, no/less technology integration) education system, consider teaching the english language effectively in large, multi-level, and under-resourced classes a serious challenge. a large number of students (50-100) in one class, coming from different backgrounds and levels, lack of facilities such as comfortable and well-equipped classrooms, and high level of teaching materials are the challenges of large classes in afghanistan. according to shamin (1993), all the challenges mentioned above make teaching and learning a language difficult. since english language teachers are expected to pay more attention to individuals' oral communication besides other skills such as writing, meeting this expectation in large, multi-level classes is difficult. in addition, class management is another serious problem of large classes in afghan universities; students who sit in the back can easily be neglected and receive less attention (yu & lee, 2016). generally, less effective learning, lecture-based teaching, lack of student participation, use of mother tongue, lack of group work, physically uncomfortable learning space, assessment, and receiving and giving feedback are all challenges in large classes (sarwar, 2001). although some studies have focused on teaching in large, multi-level classes in different contexts, particularly under developing and developing countries, more research is needed, especially in the context of afghanistan, where, unfortunately, because of several decades of war and conflicts, there are less or no publications addressing the large class size-related issues from both teachers and students' perspectives. moreover, both afghan efl teachers and students complain about weak management in large english classes, students' engagement, monitoring and controlling the class, providing students with feedback, providing level-appropriate teaching materials, and many more. therefore, there is a need to deeply study the effect of large class sizes on the quality of teaching in large classes. for this reason, this study greatly contributes to the body of literature related to large english language class sizes in general and in the context of afghanistan. furthermore, investigating the students’ attitudes of the english department of herat university related to the challenges of learning in large multi-level classes informs teachers of what students think about learning in large classes, which significantly contributes to the field. the current study also may support future research activities related to the english language teaching and learning process in the afghan context. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 3 in this study, three questions tended to be answered: (1) what are the main challenges of large, multi-level english language classes at herat university from the perspectives of five afghan university english language instructors? (2) what strategies do the english language instructors implement in their large multi-level classes at herat university to overcome the challenges? (3) what are the efl students’ attitudes of herat university towards large multi-level classes? literature review this section mainly focuses on the study’s theoretical framework, challenges of large class teaching, and the instructors’ coping strategies. research theoretical framework kumaravadivelu’s (2001) post-method pedagogy—parameters of particularities, practicality, and possibility— is the theoretical framework for the current study. in other words, considering the context of the study's uniqueness in terms of the socio-political and economic situation, this framework was found appropriate to guide this study. although kumaravadivelu’s (2001) post-method pedagogy is limited to the teaching methodologies implemented in the language classes, it covers many other issues related to the context of teaching, such as the sociopolitical and economic situation of the country where teaching and learning take place. kumaravadivelu (2001) stated that he used the term pedagogy to discuss the issues related to the classroom techniques, teaching materials, and curricular objectives and cover history-political and socio-cultural issues that influence l2 education. the parameter of particularity focuses on the pedagogy's relevancy to the teachers, learners, and the socio-cultural condition of the context where teaching and learning occur. the parameter of practicality refers to the teachers' perspectives and reflections on their teaching, resulting in creating practical strategies and teaching materials. meanwhile, the parameter of possible states that the teachers' pedagogy should be in accordance with the context's sociopolitical condition. with that said, considering the afghan context-specific needs and wants and a unique socio-political situation where teaching and learning have always been under its direct influence, kumaravadivelu's (2001) threedimensional parameters are the most appropriate framework to guide the current study. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 4 definition of a large class although there is not a specific number stated by the tesol organization to form a large class, there are recommendations from the conference on college composition and communication (cccc) that the number of students in a language class, specifically a writing class, should be ideally 15, and this number should not cross 20 students (horning, 2007). a class is considered small if it is less than twenty students (folmer-annevelink, doolaard, mascareño, & bosker, 2010). however, this number is not that applicable to every context, in which dealing with large classes is at the center of teachers' discussions. therefore, a teacher who has taught a class with 100 students may definitely consider a class with 50 students a small class. similarly, a teacher who has taught classes, for example, made up of 20 students, may consider a class consisting of 50 students a large class (todd, 2006). considering a class as a large or small class depends on the teacher's teaching experience in different classes consisting of different numbers and the students' learning experiences studying in classes with different numbers. according to renaud, tannenbaum, and stantial (2007), the number of students in a class does not make a great difference as long as the teacher is fine with that number. considering the existing literature in connection to large class size and the concept of what makes a class large or small, one can say that there is no specific number to tell teachers what a small or a large class is in different contexts. the notion and the concept of a large class depend on the teacher’s and student's perception of a large class. challenges of teaching and learning in large classes issues related to large class teaching, such as class management, students' engagement, giving feedback to students and assessing students' homework assignments, and level-appropriate teaching materials, are discussed in this section. managing a large class, keeping students focused, and preventing distractions bring about a lot of workload and responsibilities to the instructor. according to marzulina et al. (2021), a teacher should have certain skills to provide students with a positive and productive learning atmosphere. they added that effective english teaching does not occur in a poorly managed classroom. further, the class size impacts the quality of teaching and may lead to the classroom management's success and/or failure. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 5 in a non-native english-speaking context where the instruction language should be english, having all students in a large class speaking english is challenging (treko, 2013). another critical issue that creates obstacles towards having a well-organized and well-managed classroom is the lack of space. in a class with 100 students, implementing group work activities and having all students sit in groups and monitor the groups is also challenging. saying that, for example, it is even difficult for the teacher to walk and reach students sitting in the back rows (brady, 2012). further, in a class with a large number of students, learners think they are ignored by the teacher, or the teacher does not notice them distracting the class and misbehaving; therefore, they are more intended to act disruptively compared to their peers in small classes (finn, pannozzo, & achilles, 2003). large classes also do not provide students enough opportunities to engage in class activities equally. moreover, interactions between students are very limited, so that students do not have enough interactions with peers and their teachers. considering the teacher's amount of time and the long list of the activities and the content she has to cover, there is less time to have students engaged in the class (ozerk’s, 2001). similarly, blatchford, russell, bassett, and brown, martin (2007) believe that interactions between teachers and students decrease significantly when the number of students increases. moreover, students can easily feel that the teacher has ignored them in large classes. in other words, in small classes, the teacher can quickly learn the students' names and reach them by their names, which undoubtedly positively affects students' participation. unfortunately, in large classes, having all students engaged equally and helping them to realize that teacher knows them and pays attention to their needs and wants is not easy. saying that students feel like they have been ignored by the teacher (yazedjian & kolkhorst, 2007). in a similar vein, harunasari and halim (2019) stated that motivating and engaging students in large classes is a big challenge. the larger the class size is the more significant challenges the teachers struggle with. the class size also limits the opportunities to provide students with immediate and adequate feedback (bamba, 2012). besides, bamba (2012) added that there needs to be sufficient interaction between the teacher and students to find students’ challenges and provide effective https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 6 feedback. similarly, hedtrich and graulich (2018) stated that providing individual, formative feedback to each student is challenging in large classes. in addition, balancing the materials and bringing the teaching resources to meet the needs of all students equally and effectively is one of the issues in large classes. considering a large population in each class, approximately 100-120 students, reaching each individual's interests and needs seems impossible (hess, 2001). another important aspect of large class teaching is having students with different learning styles. considering the learning styles variations and thinking of accommodating all those different learning styles to offer quality teaching is super challenging (treko, 2013). accordingly, manrara (2007) affirmed that lack of resources is another issue teachers struggle with in large classes. bringing teaching materials considering the student levels, needs, interests, and wants in a large class is not only a difficult task but also so much pressure on the teacher. practical strategies to coping the challenges of large classes existing scholars have explored some effective strategies to cope with the challenges of large classes. some strategies can help minimize the difficulties of managing a large class, students' engagement, giving and assessing feedback, and bringing teaching materials to address the student needs of different levels. the more a teacher is educated in his/her teaching field, the better he/she can manage a large class. in other words, a teacher's friendly behavior with students and implementing effective practical teaching approaches considering the context's particularities help minimize the difficulties and issues behind classroom management (finnan& shawn, 2010). bringing variation to teaching, such as examining and implementing different teaching strategies and activities, providing students with clear and understandable instructions, and making sure that students do the assigned tasks, is considered a helpful way to decrease classroom management-related issues (tannenbaum & stantial, 2007). besides, reminding students of the importance of interactive-based activities to learning language, asking students to determine their groups probable before starting the semester to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 7 avoid wasting time, and doing peer work activities help increase student engagement in large classes (herington & weaven, 2008). since large classes are mainly lecture-based, having discussions during the lecture helps keep students engaged and develops their motivation and understanding of the class's contents (carpenter, 2006). bringing level-appropriate teaching materials also helps to motivate students in large classes. furthermore, it helps reduce the boredom of the advanced and low-level students (roberts, 2007). o’leary (2013) believes that finding out students' needs through observation is helpful in large classes. in other words, a teacher may allocate a few sessions during the first few days of the semester observing students' performances and participation to assess his/her students' knowledge of the field, their level and learning styles, and their needs and interests. method the study's design, context, participants, data collection, data analysis, and ethical considerations are discussed in this section. study design the current study attempts to explore the challenges of teaching large efl classes at the english department of herat university from the perspectives of instructors and students. further, this study investigated the instructors' practical strategies to overcome the counteracting challenges. as discussed by gay, mills, and airasian. (2012), "qualitative research is the collection, analysis, and interpretation of comprehensive narrative and visual (i.e., non-numerical) data to gain insights into a particular phenomenon of interest" (p. 7). moreover, they mentioned that the individual's perspectives and ideas are essential for qualitative researchers. therefore, going deep into individuals' experiences helps a qualitative researcher find answers to his/her research questions and reach a quality result. since the current study aims to go deep into instructors' teaching experience in large classes at the english department and students' perspectives on learning in large classes, a qualitative research design is suitable for answering the research https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 8 questions. participants the current study participants were the five english language instructors of herat university who had experience teaching in large classes. furthermore, ten current students of the english department of herat university were also participants of the current study. table 1. demographic information of interviewees (instructors) interviewee gender teaching experience educational degree ahmad male six years ma tesol nargis female nine years ma tesol mahmood male six years ma tesol wasal female nine years ma tesol fatemah female seven years ma tesol table 2. demographic information of interviewees (students) interviewee gender educational degree arash male senior asma female junior fatemah female junior ahmad male senior mohammad male junior maryam female junior parwanah female senior neiman male junior shakib male senior nasimah female senior https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 9 data sources two data sources were face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with five instructors and ten efl students in this study. the semi-structured interview protocol was chosen because of the freedom this type of question gives the researcher and the interviewees freedom to share their experiences and perspectives regarding the topic under investigation. therefore, there were some follow-up questions for each main question as well. galletta (2013) stated that semi-structured interviews give the researcher a great opportunity to have follow-up questions. further, the data were collected following the study’s theoretical framework – kumaravadevilu post-method pedagogy. in other words, the history-political and socio-cultural of the afghan teaching context were considered during the data collection. data analysis considering the research questions and the theoretical framework, the data were analyzed thematically. the data were divided into two main categories: the data collected from the instructors' interviews and the data collected from the students' interviews. after dividing and separating the data collected from the interviews, the instructors' data were analyzed first. this data category was then divided into sub-categories, considering the research questions, the study's theoretical framework, and the study's literature review. following the study's theoretical framework – kumaravadevilu post-method pedagogy, the teaching pedagogies and the impact of the socio-economical context of teaching were considered while generating the themes. the data were presented in a narrative format, where the researchers wanted to go more in-depth to the issues of large class teaching and the instructors’ coping strategies. according to bazeley (2013), coding and thematic analysis of the data in qualitative research studies help the researchers reach the major aspects of their collected data. similarly, the same procedure was undertaken to analyze the students' interview data. with that in mind, the data collected from the ten interviewed students were divided into seven main themes. the students' perspectives on each theme were analyzed, interpreted, and discussed. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 10 ethical considerations each participant was provided with a pseudonym by the participant himself/herself. moreover, all the recordings were saved in a password-protected folder on the researchers’ laptops. findings some major themes that emerged from the interviews considering the research questions and the theoretical framework are discussed in this section: large class teaching from the interviewed instructors’ perspectives table 3. instructors’ interviews data major themes major themes number of participants who experienced this percentage 1. reaching students’ needs and interests in large classes four participants 80% 2. detecting plagiarism and giving students feedback three participants 60% 3. implementing effective teaching approaches in large classes five participants 100% 4. workload and the teacher in a large class four participants 80% 5. providing the effective and appropriate level of teaching materials five participants 100% reaching students’ needs and wants. one of the most critical aspects of teaching is understanding students' needs and providing teaching accordingly. the interviewed participants emphasized that students needed to know about their weaknesses and strengths to identify them and work accordingly. the findings also revealed that a teacher of a large class could not assess students’ homework assignments and provide them with detailed and effective feedback. it was challenging for the teachers not only to provide students with feedback on their homework assignments that were but also to provide students with in-class comments was challenging. for https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 11 example, in a class with 100 students, listening to each of them, addressing their weaknesses and strengths, and helping them to improve is impossible. some students thought that the teacher ignored them; however, it was not valid. the fact is that the teacher could not address them all equally. the teacher participants of the study believed that peer feedback was a significantly helpful strategy in large classes. in other words, the teacher participants stated that they allocated at least ten minutes asking students to exchange their homework assignments and provide one another with feedback. detecting plagiarism. according to mahmood, one of the interviewed participants, who has been teaching several different courses for the last six years, he considered observing academic integrity challenging in large classes in an afghan context. he also mentioned that in a class of 120 students, when the teacher assigned them [students] to do a paper, they could easily copy from sources outside the class and from their peers. the instructors did not have access to the databases to find previous year’s student papers or machines to detect plagiarism. mahmood said that he was super sensitive about plagiarism, and it made him badly disappointed to catch students committing plagiarism. at the same time, he felt it was his responsibility to prevent plagiarism. other participants stated that they tried to add the students' major assignments in their databases to prevent plagiarism. they believed that the only way to prevent plagiarism is having access to plagiarism detecting software. implementing effective teaching approaches in large classes. the findings indicated that studying and learning about effective approaches to teaching was easy, but when it came to practicing these approaches to teaching effectively, the real struggle started. the teacher knew that it is more effective to teach a language through student-centered approaches. however, the fact is that when it came to implementing these techniques, the context's particular needs limited the teacher's freedom to implement what she considered effective. on the other hand, other interviewed participants thought that lecture-based language teaching in large classes saved time and helped the teachers have more control over their class. workload and appropriate level of teaching materials in a large class. teaching large classes is not the only concern of the teachers in the afghan context, but the major concern is teaching many large classes, which puts many pressures on the teachers. in an afghan context, a https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 12 teacher teaches a minimum of 16 sessions per week. in other words, teaching at least four different courses in 4 large classes is what a teacher usually does at herat university. managing to offer quality teaching and reaching everything appropriately sometimes seem impossible. two major things worried the teacher participants: providing teaching materials to satisfy the student needs of different levels and keeping students engaged and avoiding boredom in the class. the major problem, according to the participants, was having multi-level students. there were beginner, intermediate, and advanced level students in a class, making the task of teaching super difficult. on the other hand, having access to resources and contextualized teaching materials to teach large classes with multi-level students was one of the challenges teachers struggle with. fatemah stated that students of lower levels could not benefit from the class when she introduced advanced-level materials. she mentioned that she had students unfamiliar with english alphabets, let alone digest advanced-level teaching materials. when she brought low-level teaching materials, the advanced level students got bored and preferred not to stay in the class. the teacher participants also stated that the instructors should design their own contextualized and level-appropriate materials considering their students' needs and wants. interviewed students’ reported experiences with learning in large english classes the major findings of the interviews with students are discussed in this section. table 4. students’ interviews data major themes major themes number of participants who experienced this percentage 1. large classes are not productive. eight participants 80% 2. students are passive in large classes. nine participants 90% 3. students are ignored in large classes. six participants 60% 4. the teaching materials and students of different levels in large classes eight participants 80% 5. lack of feedback and comments in large classes ten participants 100% https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 13 large classes are not productive. according to the students, large classes tended to be more lecture-based than small classes. the classes were primarily lecture-based, where students were passive and sitting and listening to the teacher. therefore, they did not practice what they studied in theory to produce content. lack of time, teacher's availability, and feedback could be among the challenges limiting the productivity of large classes. at this university, each class lasted about 50 minutes. in this short period, the teacher could not even ensure the presence of all the students, let alone engage them with activities and exercises where they could produce new things using the theories they have studied, according to the participants. one of the interviewed participants also mentioned that when she was assigned to do a particular paper, she did not find the teacher to talk to him/her about how to do that particular assignment. for example, the written instructions were not always enough. she added, "i go to the office to ask my teacher questions about the assignment, but he is not there; i go many times, but the teacher is in the class.” in this case, although students were provided with instruction, they did not always find them clear enough. therefore, they needed to have face-to-face meetings with the teachers to ensure they were going the right way. moreover, in large classes, students did not receive feedback from their teachers. lack of feedback lowered the student's and the classes' productivity. saying that arash mentioned that in one of his classes, he was supposed to do a final paper of ten pages. he submitted the first draft, but the teacher did not give him feedback. then, without specifying what changes they had to make to their papers, the teacher told the class to submit a second draft. students, realizing that the teacher did not check the papers, did not work on their second draft. therefore, they submitted the draft the same one they had submitted at first. students are passive in large classes. the findings indicated that the teachers preferred lecture-based teaching in large classes because it saved time and prevented noises and distractions. all the interviewed students mentioned that they found studying in large classes boring because they passively received the knowledge. they did not find themselves engaged in the process of learning. mohammad mentioned that he did not remember when he was engaged in the learning process. he stated that most of his classmates sitting in the back were not involved in the learning https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 14 process. in other words, not all the students were included in the class discussions and were not engaged throughout the learning process. he added, "students who sit in the back of the class do not listen to the teacher; they are busy with their mobiles, and they do not pay attention to the teacher, and the teacher does not come to the back of the class." moreover, students need to be encouraged by the teacher, they need to share their works with others, and they want others to see what they did. unfortunately, when they saw that nobody, including the teacher, knew what and how they had performed and they were not praised for the quality work they offered, they started becoming demotivated, according to the participants. students were also not used to studying in a co-education setting. upon completing high school, students first experienced studying in a co-education context, creating issues in terms of engagement, particularly for girls, who were coming out of a traditional-based dominated society. it is where interactions between men and women outside the home are super limited. it is especially apparent in large classes, where it takes years for students to get to know one another and feel comfortable studying under the same celling with the opposite gender. students are ignored in large classes. parwanah mentioned that “the teachers only teach; they do not know about our problems and difficulties. they teach, but they do not know that the lesson is difficult for most students, and it is easy for a few." in this case, an emotional relationship between students and teachers is important to encourage students to work hard and value learning. it is not only about knowing students by their names but understanding their situation is also essential. ahmad, one of the interviewed students, mentioned that he struggled with many issues, such as family problems. he thought that these struggles had a very negative impact on his learning process. it sometimes got that serious that ahmad could not focus on his studies. he mentioned that teachers got angry at him for not doing what the courses required, but they never asked him why he could not improve and concentrate on his lessons. according to the interviewed students, teachers in large classes tried to complete their syllabuses and examinations. students were ignored, and they were sacrificed. teaching materials and students of different levels in large classes. one of the main concerns of students, who were interviewed, was the difficulty level of the teaching materials. for https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 15 example, parwanah considered her level of english proficiency low; she mentioned, "my level of english language proficiency is very low compared to most of my classmates. i struggle a lot to do the assignments and follow the teachers' lectures" (translated from persian to english). she thought that coming and studying the english language and literature was very difficult for students who had never been exposed to english in their lives. she struggled with a wide range of issues in her classes. she added that the teaching materials were much higher than her level of language proficiency. on the other side, there were students whose language proficiency was higher, and they thought that they did not benefit from the classes as much as they expected. for example, maryam, who considered herself advanced, thought teachers introduced low-level teaching materials. she mentioned, "the teachers have to bring low-level teaching materials because most of the students are considered low level, while those advanced students do not really benefit from the low-level teaching materials, and the class is not that interesting." lack of feedback and comments in large classes. ahmad mentioned that they were given homework assignments, but they never received their teachers' feedback and comments. for example, he talked about one of the courses’ major assignments. the teacher told them that he would provide them with feedback before submitting their final draft to be graded. however, students submitted the final draft without making any revisions to that. the reason was that the teacher did not get to provide them with feedback on their first draft. furthermore, receiving feedback on their [students] written homework assignments was not the only area where the teacher could not comment accordingly. nasimah mentioned that the teacher assigned them an in-class group presentation, but a few students were given the opportunity to come in front of the class and present their projects. the semester ended, and the rest of the students did not present their projects. on the other hand, those few groups who gave presentations did not receive any comments from the teacher. the reason was that there was not enough time for the teacher to specify his/her students' weaknesses and strengths. the teacher tried to give a chance to a larger number of students to take part and present their final projects, yet she failed to finish them all during the semester. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 16 according to the interviewed students, with some courses, it was okay if the teachers did not get to give them feedback. however, they needed to know about their performances in other courses such as writing classes. arash stated that they did many papers in their academic writing course, but they never received any comments from their writing teacher. therefore, they had no ideas about how they had performed. they [students] even did not know whether they had improved with all the hard work and efforts they had put in or not. in conclusion, students need to know about their progress, and the person who can help them is the teacher. students did not receive comments and feedback on their academic performances in large classes, especially during the semester. both teachers and the interviewed students stated that large class teaching limited interactions between teacher and students and received feedback and comments from the teachers. discussion and conclusion one of the most challenging areas in large classes was reaching each student to meet their needs and wants. in a class made up of 100 students, a teacher could not know his/her students well, particularly, what they needed, what they wanted, and what ways and methods of learning work well for them. on the other hand, students in large classes did not participate in-class activities. there were different factors why students were not willing to take an active part in large classes: a large number of students created the fear of embarrassment in case of making mistakes among students. in a similar vein, harunasari and halim (2019) asserted that motivating and engaging students in large classes is a big challenge. the larger the class size is, the more significant challenges the teachers struggle with. the findings also indicated that teaching was not about covering a few textbook pages and transferring them to students. teaching has to be in accordance with the students' needs, wants, interests, and learning styles. according to nasimah, one of the interviewed teachers, it was almost impossible for the teacher to meet the aspects mentioned earlier of teaching in large classes. a teacher hardly got to know some basic things about his or her students. in addition, mohammad mentioned that it was essential for him to know his students by their names. he thought it helped him build a better relationship with his students and helped them realize that https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 17 the teacher cared about them. in this regard, kearney (2013) emphasized the importance of understanding students and understanding how they learned. she believes that it can be achieved when the teacher explores her students and provide them with what they want. therefore, allocating the first few class sessions to observe students' academic performances and see how they progress throughout the learning process plays a vital role in teaching the class effectively. according to the participants, feedback and comments were the most critical issue behind large class teaching and learning. hence, large class teaching limited teachers to provide their students with feedback on their oral and written homework assignments. similarly, hedtrich and graulich (2018) stated that providing individual, formative feedback to each student is challenging in large classes. ahmad also mentioned that he tried to provide his students with general feedback on their oral in-class production but not on their written homework assignments. concerning this, the existing literature and the research conducted on large class teaching indicated that peer feedback is one of the most helpful ways of helping students to get an idea of their homework assignments and performances. meanwhile, the class size limits the opportunities to provide students with immediate and adequate feedback (bamba, 2012). moreover, bamba (2012) added that there need to be sufficient interactions between the teacher and students to find students' difficulties to address those issues and provide effective feedback. besides, yang, badger, and yu’s (2006) study showed that peer feedback helps students realize their strengths and weaknesses and develops a sense of responsibility and autonomy among students. in other words, students feel responsible before one another, and they realize the importance of sharing their knowledge and understanding through working cooperatively. further research directions this exploratory study looked at different aspects of large class teaching and learning. more research studies can be conducted, considering one specific element: large-class feedback. further, the current study is qualitative and does not let the data be generalized. further studies can be carried out through a different research design, such as quantitative and or mixed methods, where more participants can be involved. moreover, following a quantitative research design lets the data be generalized over a larger context. in addition, a comparison and contrast https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 18 study can also be conducted on large class teaching. the researchers can choose two different contexts (universities) and explore the large class teaching challenges. implications of the study for teachers and administrators in higher education the current study's findings showed many challenges behind teaching and learning english in large classes in an afghan context. large class teaching limited the effectiveness of teaching and learning. moreover, the teachers of large classes struggled with different challenges from management to assessment and reaching students' needs and want. furthermore, the results of this study revealed that the number of students increased at herat university, while the resources and the number of facilities remained the same. therefore, immediate attention of the administration in higher education is needed to take the challenges of teaching large classes seriously. they are responsible for increasing the facilities and decreasing the number of students in each class in general. in particular, english language classes need to get smaller to help teachers offer quality teaching and ensure the effectiveness of teaching and learning. administrators in higher education should also support teachers and provide them with workshops and seminars to develop their teaching skills. capacity-building programs help teachers to become more equipped with new teaching strategies. on the other hand, there are very limited research studies on large class teaching and learning in afghan contexts. therefore, more research is needed to investigate different aspects of large class teaching and explore coping strategies. at the same time, teachers are responsible for updating their knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning. language changes over time, needs and wants are changing as well. therefore, as the needs and wants change, teaching methods change. teachers are supposed to share their experiences of large classes with their colleagues. specifically, new teachers who are not experienced in teaching large classes need to develop their understanding of large class teaching before starting the actual teaching. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 19 references bamba, m. (2012). seeking effective approaches to teaching large efl classes in the ivory coast (master’s thesis). indiana university of pennsylvania, indiana, pennsylvania. bazeley, p. (2013). qualitative data analysis: practical strategies. sage. blatchford, p., russell, a., bassett, p., brown, p., & martin, c. (2007). the effects of class size on the teaching of pupils aged 7-11 years. school effectiveness and school improvement, 18(2), 147-172. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243450601058675 brady, b. (2012). managing assessment in large efl classes. the cambridge guide to second language assessment, 291-298. carpenter, j. m. (2006). effective teaching methods for large classes. journal of family & consumer sciences education, 24(2), 13-23. finnan, r., & shaw, d. (2010). teaching large classes i-classroom management. retrieved from http://people.math.sfu.ca/~vjungic/classroom_management.pdf finn, j. d., pannozzo, g. m., & achilles, c. m. (2003). the “why’s” of class size: student behavior in small classes. review of educational research, 73(3), 321-368. https://doi.org/10.3102%2f00346543073003321 folmer-annevelink, e., doolaard, s., mascareño, m., & bosker, r. j. (2010). class size effects on the number and types of student-teacher interactions in primary classrooms. the journal of classroom interaction, 30-38. galletta, a. (2013). mastering the semi-structured interview and beyond: from research design to analysis and publication. nyu press. gay, l., mills, g., & airasian, p. (2012). overview of qualitative research. educational research: competencies for analysis and applications. pearson education inc (10th ed). harunasari, s. y., & halim, n. (2019). digital backchannel: promoting students' engagement in efl large class. international journal of emerging technology in learning, 14(7), 163-178. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/208519/ hedtrich, s., & graulich, n. (2018). using software tools to provide students in large classes with individualized formative feedback. journal of chemical education, 95(12), 2263–2267. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00173 herington, c., & weaven, s. (2008). action research and reflection on students approaches to learning in large first year university classes. the australian educational researcher, 35(3), 111-134. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03246292 hess, n. (2001). teaching large multi-level classes. cambridge university press. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.1080/09243450601058675 http://people.math.sfu.ca/~vjungic/classroom_management.pdf https://doi.org/10.3102%2f00346543073003321 https://www.learntechlib.org/p/208519/ https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00173 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03246292 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 20 horning, a. (2007). the definitive article on class size. journal of the council of wring program administrators, 31(1/2), 11-34. kearney, e. m. (2013). on becoming a teacher. springer science & business media. kumaravadivelu, b. (2001). toward a post method pedagogy. tesol quarterly, 35(4), 537–560. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588427 manrara, m. a. (2007). explaining the effects of class size on faculty and students (doctoral dissertation). florida international university. marzulina, l., erlina, d., holandyah, m., harto, k., desvitasari, d., & angreini, d. (2021). english teachers’ strategies in managing large classes: a case study. | irje| indonesian research journal in education|, 5(2), 417-43. https://doi.org/10.22437/irje.v5i2.15705 o'leary, m. (2013). classroom observation: a guide to the effective observation of teaching and learning. routledge. ozerk, k. (2001). teacher-student verbal interaction and questioning, class size and bilingual students' academic performance. scandinavian journal of educational research, 45(4), 353-366. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313830120096761 renaud, s., tannenbaum, e., & stantial, p. (2007). student-centered teaching in large classes with limited resources. english teaching forum, 45 (3), 1217. roberts, m. (2007). teaching in the multi-level classroom. new york: pearson education. sarwar, z. (2001). adapting individualization techniques for large classes. in d. hall & a. hewings (eds.), innovation in english language teaching: a reader, 127-136. shamin, f. (1993). teacher-learner behaviour and classroom processes in large esl classes in pakistan (doctoral dissertation). the university of leeds. todd, r. w. (2006). why investigate large classes. reflections, 9(special), 1-12. treko, n. (2013). the big challenge: teaching large multi-level classes. academic journal of interdisciplinary studies, 2(4), 243. http://dx.doi.org/10.5901/ajis.2012.v2n4p243 yang, m., badger, r., & yu, z. (2006). a comparative study of peer and teacher feedback in a chinese efl writing class. journal of second language writing, 15(3), 179-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2006.09.004 yazedjian, a., & kolkhorst, b. b. (2007). implementing small-group activities in large lecture classes. college teaching, 55(4), 164-169. https://doi.org/10.3200/ctch.55.4.164-169 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.2307/3588427 https://doi.org/10.22437/irje.v5i2.15705 https://doi.org/10.1080/00313830120096761 http://dx.doi.org/10.5901/ajis.2012.v2n4p243 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2006.09.004 https://doi.org/10.3200/ctch.55.4.164-169 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 21 yu, s., & lee, i. (2016). peer feedback in second language writing (2005-2014). language teaching, 49(4), 461-493. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444816000161 https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444816000161 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 22 appendix a interview protocol for the instructors of the english department of herat university the following open-ended questions are developed for data collection for a qualitative inquiry entitled “teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards english large classes at herat university”. there are some follow-up questions if need be. the point to be mentioned is that the interview lasts for 40 to 50 minutes. 1. would you please briefly introduce yourself? a. how long have you been teaching? b. what kind of courses have you taught? 2. how many students are there in your classes? a. do you think your classes are large or small? why? 3. what kind of teaching methodologies do you implement in your classes? a. particularly those classes that you think are large? 4. do you think teaching in large classes is difficult or easy? 5. what are some of the challenges you have struggled with in your large classes? 6. what are some of your coping strategies? a. do you think you can overcome the challenges you encounter in your large classes? 7. what is and/or are some good things about teaching large classes? 8. do you think teaching in large classes is effective? a. do your students benefit from you? b. do all of your students benefit from the teaching materials you provide them? if there is anything you want to add to your words, please share them? appendix b interview protocol for students of the english department of herat university the following open-ended questions are developed for data collection for a qualitative inquiry entitled “teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards english large classes at herat university”. there are some follow-up questions if need be. the point to be mentioned is that the interview lasts for 40 to 50 minutes. 1. would you please introduce yourself? a. how long have you been studying english? b. where did you start learning english before coming to the university? if any? c. what made you decide to major in english language and literature? 2. how many students are there in your class? 3. what do you like the most about your class? 4. do you consider your class large or small? 5. what kind of teaching methodologies do your teachers implement in your classes? 6. do your teachers know you by your name? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 23 7. do you get to talk to your teacher outside the class? 8. do you receive feedback on your assignments from your teachers? 9. do you get encouraging words from your teachers? do you get to share your personal problems that affect your learning process with your teacher? https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 41 article history: submitted: 23 november 2021 reviewed: 18 december 2021 edited: 20 december 2021 article accepted: 28 december 2021 a cultural-historical activity theory (chat) analysis on educational psychology class: the challenges in delivering a fully online classroom environment erina andriani*), aletheia ajeng priskananda, markus budiraharjo master’s program in english education, sanata dharma university, indonesia *)corresponding author email: andrianierina@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13196 abstract in assisting students’ transformation, classes provide activities with face validity. this paper aims to provide readers with a cultural-historical activity theory (chat) analysis of an educational psychology class at a private university in yogyakarta. activity theory is a theoretical framework for studying and interpreting human interaction through instruments and objects. it provides a holistic and contextual discovery approach that can be used to help qualitative and interpretive research. activity theory is especially important in circumstances with a large historical and cultural context and where participants, their goals and tools are in a state of rapid and continuous change. few studies explored the use of the chat framework to reveal the challenges in providing a fully online class in higher education. therefore, this study intended to explore the practical importance of chat for delivering a class in a fully online learning environment. the results revealed the chat framework units of analysis (uoa). in addition, the students shared some challenges they faced concerning those units of analysis. the implication of this study is to utilize the chat framework as a tool to evaluate the learning process. keywords: activity theory; chat; educational psychology; online learning; teaching strategies =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 mailto:andrianierina@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13196 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v7i1.13196&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2022-01-18 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 42 introduction every learning-teaching process has activities in some forms to mediate students’ transformation. chat is the tool that distinguishes and considers physical and abstract tools. focusing on internalization can shed light on how tools, information, and practices are appropriated and routinized. by examining the physical tools used, we can understand why certain tools are chosen over others (allen, karanasios, & slavova, 2011). according to chat, contradictions are significant aspects of an activity system because chat values them as bridges for individuals as well as the entire activity system to develop and transform through a community of practice (saka, southerland, & brooks, 2009). therefore, it can be used to analyze the activity system in educational psychology classes. educational psychology is a branch of psychology that studies children in an educational setting and is concerned with teaching and learning methods, cognitive development, and aptitude assessment. in this class, the students are the center of the learning process. as the target class, the educational psychology class is one of the subjects for first-semester students. the materials involve learning theories, metacognition, self-regulated learning, multiple intelligences, emotion regulation, motivation, self-efficacy and attribution, constructivism, individual differences, and critical thinking skills. the main weekly learning activities are making a presentation video for each presenting group, discussing the topic of the presentation video, and reviewing journals regarding the topics prior to the discussion session, while the final project is a publishable paper. because of the covid-19 outbreak, the educational psychology class has become fully online. the learning-teaching means are mediated with synchronous and asynchronous media. some argued that online classes are less effective than offline ones (baralt, gurzynski-weiss, & kim, 2016; tang, 2019). however, it can be flexible if teachers integrate interactive tasks (gacs, goetler, & spasova, 2020). indeed, as the obligatory class meetings have been significantly reduced, the learning relies on a task-based method. as project-based learning can be advantageous for online classes (gacs, goetler, & spasova, 2020), this class uses mobile-assisted task-based language teaching (ma-tblt). task-based learning focuses on students’ learning experience in performing tasks (estarki & bazyar, 2016; namaziandost, bohloulzadeh, & pazhakh, 2017). the current development of task-based learning integrates technology to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 43 mediate the learning process (thomas & reinders, 2010; arvanitis, krystalli, & panagiotidis, 2016; ziegler, 2016). though it has advantages in online learning, ma-tblt also possesses challenges in both teachers’ and students’ perspectives (chong & reinders, 2020). it is the first semester to run fully online since the covid-19 pandemic, and many things have gone unplanned. in addition, no one knows how long the online learning environment will be. though the institutions have brief experience from the previous semester to evaluate and improve the new school year, the lack of experience and training in the educators’ and learners’ parts have caused issues throughout the learning process (baralt, gurzynski-weiss, & kim, 2017; chong & reinders, 2020; francisco & barcelona, 2020; tang, 2019). some previous studies highlighted the use of online classes as a feasible alternative (chong & reinders, 2020; francisco & barcelona, 2020; tang, 2019). some also mentioned the drawbacks of online classes, the issues and challenges from teachers’ and students’ perspectives (baralt, gurzynski-weiss, & kim, 2017; francisco & barcelona, 2020; tang, 2019). however, few studies analyzed the challenges in online classrooms using the chat framework, especially in the indonesian context. therefore, researchers aimed to analyze the tensions, conflicts, and issues in an educational psychology class from a cultural-historical activity theory (chat) perspective. as research, chat takes human consciousness into account in an activity. in that relationship, all aspects concerning the activities and learners affect students’ preferences and learning. as those assumptions make each unique and may affect learning progress, the authors employed chat studying individual assumptions. the classroom activities were heavily based on online learning with a task-based approach. the authors also integrated ma-tblt in the analysis. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 44 research questions: 1. how were the units of analysis in an educational psychology class like? 2. what were the challenges that the students faced in an educational psychology class? literature review activity theory has seven components that support them to run well. those components are subject, object, outcome, tool, rule, community, and division of labor. subject a subject refers to the parties included in the activities and performs the actions to achieve certain objectives. furthermore, community members have to carry out their roles effectively for the subjects to achieve expected outcomes. to effectively moderate online discussions, online tutors and moderators need to adopt social, pedagogical, and intellectual roles (vlachopoulos & cowan, 2010) and give individual support to the students (quinton & allen, 2014). the shift in students’ and lecturers’ roles is crucial. it refers to ideas about the social and material aspects of learning processes developed by alexei nikolaevich leontiev (1981) and lev vygotsky (1978). engeström (2015) expanded leontiev’s (1978) ideas to a triad– connecting subject, tools and object and broadened the system to include community, the people who may share the same motive, rules presiding over the community, and division of labor that mediate collective actions that participants carry out. object the object refers to the activities being acted on to reach a certain goal. davydov (2008) stated that “practical, object-oriented productive activity—labor—is the basis of all human cognition” (p. 85), thus linking labor with education. the most crucial dimension that separates one type of activity from another is the object of the activity. in the context of education, it can be argued that the goal of the learning activity is to produce citizens who have knowledge and skills to be part of society. the theory assumes that activities are motivated by transforming an object into an outcome. an object can be a material or an idea. referring to leontiev (1978), an object, students’ academic performances, is turned into an outcome. he emphasized the importance of the object of an activity, which is related to the goals and motives of the https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 45 participants. in addition, he showed distinct differences between object-oriented activity and goal-directed actions (yamagata-lynch, 2010). outcome the outcome is the goal that the activity subjects are expected to achieve. the activities are directed to achieve the outcome (issroff & scanlon, 2002; roth & lee, 2007; roth & tobin, 2002). all means of the activity system play roles in the said alteration through mediation (gedera, 2015; nussbaumer, 2012; postholm, 2015). tools the tools are the media used to ease and assist the processes in conducting the activity. tools are used “for revealing the social and material resources that are salient in activity” (roth & lee, 2007, p. 197). we intended to use these theoretical tools to highlight what teachers hoped to gain from the activities and whether the supports affected students’ development of academic skills and produced reliable test results that could be used to compare and rank students, teachers and their schools. vygotsky’s ideas about learning concentrate on the notion that cultural tools and signs mediate learning activities and that learning is a matter of assisted performance. engeström’s (2015) expanded activity theory offers other analytic tools appropriate for modeling activity systems. community in the community, the activity subjects work together to achieve the objectives. the community allows cooperation with different sets of labor divisions depending on the needs to reach the objectives (nussbaumer, 2012). rule the rules are made to direct and manage the activities. without the rules, there might be clashes of interests that prevent or hinder the achievement of the outcomes (issroff & scanlon, 2002). the rules are made to prevent those obstacles and maintain order. they can be made by a certain authorized party or group collectively to strike a compromise (jonassen & rohrermurphy, 1999; postholm, 2015). division of labor the division of labor includes vertical (position) and horizontal (task distribution) divisions (engestrom, 2000). division of labor is also about how students manage their learning. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 46 one’s learning can be seen from self-regulation, including planning, monitoring, control, and reflection (pintrich, 2000). some previous studies were conducted by utilizing chat to evaluate the delivery of learning activities. engeström, & pyörälä (2020) shared the utilization of the chat framework to evaluate the formative interventions in healthcare. in this case, they could figure out their challenges and the physicians needed to develop collaborative and transformative expertise. in the education context, gedera (2015) utilized activity theory to evaluate blended learning for university classes. the study exhibited activity theory to identify the tensions and contradictions during blended learning. postholm (2015) shared the possible methodologies that could be used to implement activity theory for school-based development. as the students are the ones to conduct the activities, they may face some issues in the online learning environment. the students might feel alone in their learning process, as online learning lacks a sense of community (stewart, 2008; turner & hussman, 2008). concerning the object of the activities, the students might face a huge workload as teachers often substitute the meetings with more assignments (chong & reinders, 2020). it can lead to a problem for the students as the tasks from all classes might pile up, causing them to submit tasks after deadlines (francisco & barcelona, 2020). the students might also encounter problems with their tools, as not all can have the same facility for their learning (cojocariu & boghian, 2014). method this research intended to study the educational psychology classroom activities using the chat framework. this study is qualitative research using an observational design. the researchers conducted observation and semi-structured interviews to gather the data. the observation studied the existing data (streefkerk, 2019). it was conducted on the lms (www.belajar.usd.ac.id) and the whatsapp group. the main focus of the observation on those two platforms was to gather information regarding the subject, object, outcomes, community, rules, tools, and divisions of labor. the semi-structured interviews collected information from individuals, particularly the class members. in this study, the interview participants were two students of the educational psychology class, selected using convenient sampling (ary, jacobs, sorensen, & razavieh, 2010). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 47 the first interview participant (ip01) was a full-time teacher when he joined this class. therefore, the participant had his preferences, contradictions, and contestations in several aspects of educational psychology’s classroom management. he was an experienced teacher and aged around 40 years old. on the other hand, the second interview participant (ip02) was also a master’s student of english education, and he was just a regular student, though he used to teach at a private school. he was a younger student and around 25 years old. the participants had their preferences, and there are contradictions and contestations in some aspects of management and learning in educational psychology classes. both the observation and the semi-structured interviews were performed to gather information about the units of analysis (uoa) of chat. the semi-structured interviews were also especially used to discover the challenges in the activities. there were six items in the semistructured interview guideline to figure the students’ challenges, based on the theories by gedera (2015), nussbaumer (2012), and postholm (2015). in analyzing the observation data, the units of the analysis found in the lms and group chat were noted down and coded. after being tabulated, they were grouped based on the uoa categories. the semi-structured interviews were conducted in 30 minutes to an hour. the interview results were then transcribed with nonverbatim transcription. then, the challenges that the students faced from the interview were also tabulated and coded. the results were then coded and categorized into themes. findings and discussion the description of units of analysis (uoa) the uoa consists of the subject, object, outcome, tool, rule, community, and division of labor. from the observation on the lms, whatsapp group (wag), and sharing moments by considering chat, ma-tblt, and self-regulation theories, the data to describe the uoa were gathered. below are the descriptions of each unit: subject. the subjects of these activities are the master of english education students and lecturers. subjects refer to students who used asynchronous discussion forums. as subjects, they understand that they are tied to this standard and work toward achieving the objectives (engeström, hakkarainen, & hedegaard, 1984). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 48 object. the object is the use of asynchronous discussion forums for promoting critical thinking. the objects of these activities are the making of video presentations, scripts, and ppts (engeström, hakkarainen, & hedegaard, 1984), revealing the basic inner relationship of the object system. outcome. upon completing the activities throughout the semester, the students expected some outcomes. the activities done by the subjects alter the objects to the outcome (issroff & scanlon, 2002; roth & lee, 2007; roth & tobin, 2002). in this educational psychology class, the expected learning outcomes followed three areas of ignatian pedagogy. here are the outcomes taken from the course outline: (1) competence: (a) understand theories in educational psychology, (b) understand various issues in self-regulation and metacognition in english language learning, (d) produce publishable research papers on educational psychology in a reputable journal, and (d) present research papers on educational psychology at a conference; (2) conscience: (a) gain more awareness of the important issues and debates in educational psychology, (b) improve the responsibility and autonomy in writing educational psychology research papers; (3) compassion: (a) grow critical interests in the work of various scholars in educational psychology research, (b) have a greater passion for educational psychology research, and (c) work collaboratively to complete the assigned projects. tool. tools refer to asynchronous discussion forums and language used to express student teachers’ thoughts. in these activities, the tools are stuff the teachers and students use. tools are divided into two parts, primary and secondary. lms, laptop, cellphone, zoom, youtube, video, wag come under the primary section, while critical thinking, ideas, and selfregulated learning belong to the secondary section. tools can be physical (such as a computer, a pen), mental (a plan), psychological, symbolic or abstract (a language, an experience) or virtual (functions of a website). tools have mediated the objective of activity and assisted in transforming an objective into an outcome. this element depicts the principle of mediation in an activity. however, there were still many obstacles in using tools discovered in this study, such as bad internet connection and lag or inaccessibility in using an lsm. tools as the property of an individual or group of individuals did not emerge historically and collectively. according to pohio (2016), an investigation of the communication tools facilitates the home-school community. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 49 community. being engaged in a collective activity, the subjects had a community around them. in this community, knowledge construction is promoted (nussbaumer, 2012). the community in the educational psychology class consisted of 17 students and two lecturers. the students were from various backgrounds; a vocational high school teacher, english courses instructors, fresh graduate students, passenger survey exit staff, university administration staff, and a kbi student (another study program). the lecturers taught in both undergraduate and master’s programs. rule. in participating in this class, there were rules that the students should follow. in the activity theory, the rules regulate, mediate, and guide the interactions among the activity system components (issroff & scanlon, 2002; jonassen & rohrer-murphy, 1999; postholm, 2015). in this class, several rules were first made by the lecturers, as the examples shown, taken from the course outline: (1) for paper assignment: (a) the due date for the paper proposal/plan was the mid-term week, (b) the due date for the final paper draft was the final week, and (c) the composition of the final paper should follow the already given rubric. (2) for individual task assignments: (a) read the journals and submit the worksheet on sundays (first half) and mondays (second half), (b) make a self-reflection after the discussion on tuesdays (first half), (c) post the assigned worksheet answers and video links on mondays (second half). (3) for the group presentation: (a) the assigned group posts a 10-minute video before the class, and each student submits the presentation and youtube links individually (first half), (b) the presenting group may use video or present in zoom meetings. if using youtube, share the link on monday; if directly presenting in zoom, present for 30 minutes (second half). (4) for classroom discussion: (a) raise questions or give comments to the presenting group in the youtube comment section or lms, and the presenters answer the questions (first half), (b) raise questions or comments to the presenting group in the zoom chat, and the presenters or other participants answer the questions (second half). however, other rules, which directly concerned the students’ tasks, were negotiable, and some were changed due to the discussion with the students: (1) final task topic: either conducting a study or doing a library analysis; (2) worksheet due date (first half): sunday the latest; (3) worksheet completion (second half): each student answers each worksheet number based on his/her presence number; (4) zoom meetings: every other week (first half), every week https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 50 (second half) for one to one and a half hours; and (5) individual workload: reading only one journal is allowed (first half). division of labor. the students were divided into groups with distinct duties in undertaking the activities. the ma-tblt included the before, during, and after activities (xue, 2020) and self-regulated students in those stages. horizontal and vertical divisions: (1) horizontal: task division was in the group presentation assignment for five groups with 3-4 students in each group. each group presented two topics. (2) vertical division: lecturers as the highest position set the decisions and rules, the class captain delivered information from the lecturers to students and vice versa, and the rest of the students. self-regulation. (1) pre-activity: started with choosing groups in the first week and students’ metacognitive strategies before each activity to achieve the outcomes. (2) mid-activity: monitoring emotion, time, effort management, and their control on their volition during worksheet completion, material discussion, and the final paper. (3) post-activity: reflecting attitude and attribution in lms, wag, and sharing the moment. the relationships among those units are presented in figure 1. the subjects, objects, and outcomes were interrelated. activity theory is goal-oriented, and it aims to have the expected outcomes as the actual results. the students aimed to achieve the expected outcomes and were affected by the objects as they should consider the effort, time, and other conditions needed. the objects, the media, topic, and activities bridged and were influenced by the students, who did the actions and outcomes. how the students utilized the objects influenced the actual outcomes. the relationship of those subjects, objects, and outcomes was mediated with other components: the tool, rule, community, and division of labor. the tools eased the activities performed by the subjects; the rules guided the subjects in doing the activities, using tools, and having relationships with the community; the community assisted the subjects in doing the tasks and helped knowledge construction; while the division of labor helped the individual subject in coping with the activities within himself/herself and also as a part of the community. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 51 figure 1. the units of learning activity system the challenges faced by the students in a transformation process, there will be challenges and obstacles. after gathering data by observing reflections and interviewing two students, the authors found several contradictions and tensions on preferences. the challenges faced by both students are: interview participant 01 (ip01). the participant had his preferences and therefore had some contradictions and contestations in several aspects of educational psychology’s classroom management. community. “i never contacted other students except if they were my group friends because i don’t know them and i don’t want to bother them. … i actually like being among others when learning. because of that, i also felt like i’m alone and i had to work by myself during online classes.” relationship with others. the participant encountered problems in being close with others and knowing them. he did not know the interlocutors’ personalities nor how to approach them, so he observed the students and only talked with the familiar ones. he preferred to be contacted first because he felt reluctant to contact others first or pekewuh in javanese. he did not want to disturb lecturers’ private time, though they allowed that for consultation. the online environment hinders students from forming a sense of community, so it is the teachers’ role to initiate it (stewart, 2008). tool primary: technology secondary: comprehension and language skills, ideas subject students of educational psychology class object media and task accomplishment outcome 3c achievement in psychological education rules general and activity rules community students and lecturers division of labor vertical-horizontal self-regulation https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 52 perceived loneliness. ip01 felt like he was the only person who had problems completing his tasks. he perceived that other students did well and were better than him. this perceived loneliness was caused by the lack of face-to-face meetings for him and other students to be close and share their problems. in an online community with the absence of other students and teachers, the students can feel alone with their learning, including their tasks (stewart, 2008). rules. “we have a lot of readings, plus we had to read even more for our final paper. sometimes, it’s overwhelming.” deadline. to ip01, the amount of the reading was too much for the given deadline. the reading workload was too heavy if combined with other tasks and the final project. the readings caused a heavy workload for the students and were also time-consuming (chong & reinders, 2020), so teachers should consider the workload and flexibility (chong & reinders, 2020; francisco & barcelona, 2020). ip01 often did self-paced learning. he completed the tasks in his free time since he also had a job to work on. to assist students’ special needs, the teachers can design the class to either be self-paced or time-driven (francisco & barcelona, 2020). division of labor. “the group works were difficult as i often feel reluctant to speak up first, and i much prefer individual tasks because i don’t want to hold the group down. … all subjects had an essay in the end, and i prefer making videos more. i believe research paper is more time-consuming.” work distribution. in work distribution, ip01 preferred to be directed. it would take a long time if the group members discussed only the work distribution, so he preferred that they just pick their own duty and left him some to work on. work form. he preferred to make presentation videos rather than paper, although it would be useful for his graduation since those would be beneficial in teaching, and he liked making videos. community and division of labor. “because of that, i also felt like i’m alone and i had to work by myself during online classes. if we meet, we can discuss, know each other, and have better learning atmosphere overall that improve the mood. … i also sometimes feel anxious in group works because and i don’t know if they think i do good enough work.” perceived loneliness with attribution. offline classes hamper the sense of community. the feeling of being the only one who struggled a lot affected students’ attribution (turner & https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 53 husman, 2008). op01 disliked not having offline meetings; he believed he could manage his time, feeling, and work better if he had those. working community with preference. op01 chose to work on his tasks by himself. in shared accountability, he often worried about making a satisfactory or enough contribution according to others’ standards. he could show his level of ability and proficiency in this class if he worked by himself without the pressure to ‘help’ or ‘satisfy’ others to achieve a good enough score and submit on time. rules, tools, and division of labor. “other students offered me to just copy the work, as it won’t be graded, but i think it’s better if i submit late rather than copying. task grading policy is also a problem, because why bother giving such big workload if it is not graded. as for the final paper, it’s honestly hard to work on it among my tasks as a teacher.” individual reading with self-value. the participant chose to submit his work late rather than adapting his friend’s work. others offered him answers, and the rule allowed collaborative work. however, his integrity prohibited him from adapting others’ work before reading the journals. by acting on his standards and values, he achieved self-satisfaction in learning (bandura & locke, 2003). individual reading with an attitude. worksheets were done every week, but the lecturers did not give any feedback on them. ip01 gave this task high regard, which was his attitude toward the task, while the lecturers just used that for pre-meeting activity. the deadline rule without a clear statement about the purpose of the task caused tension between the participant’s attitude (and expectation) and the rule. classroom discussion with the primary tool. discussion in the youtube comment was viewed as less interactive and systematic than lms. the discussion utilized youtube comments because the lms often lagged. he was fine with that, but it was not highly interactive because students only had to comment on anything and the presenting group responded. unlike lms, lecturers would not know who had not commented. he opted for lms more, but he knew students often had problems accessing it. paper-project with secondary tool and volition. the paper project was the most challenging activity. he had not decided on the paper topic in tools as per this interview day. it was not because he lacked english proficiencies or knowledge in educational psychology, but https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 54 because he could not regulate his knowledge. he also had trouble motivating his actual actions because he got distracted with his job. after work, he could not maintain his motivation to work on his paper. the teacher can help by giving instructions on behaviors in both study and volitional strategies (turner & husman, 2008). interview participant 02 (ip02) similar to the first interview participant, the second interview participant had his preferences and therefore had some contradictions and contestations in several aspects of educational psychology’s classroom management. tools. “i stay in my hometown instead of living near campus, and i often have troubles with my tools, especially the internet. … because i often miss classes, and sometimes notices, i am worried if i miss any tasks or important announcements like administrations.” inadequate facilities. the participant had problems with tools. the problem was about internet facilities, laptops and cell phones which were inadequate to support the learning process (cojocariu & boghian, 2014). sometimes, participants had difficulty getting an internet signal to participate in the learning process. to get an internet signal, they had to put their cell phone on a cupboard or window to learn comfortably, but sometimes the effort was not always successful. he preferred to watch videos or ask friends who were indeed able to follow the lesson quite fluently, to be able to explain to him about what material was being studied that day or about the assignments given by the lecturers to students. perceived worry. the lack of adequate facilities may cause worries for students, especially if they cannot follow the class properly. tools such as the internet, laptops and cell phones are crucial to support online learning properly, but on the other hand, it is one of the most difficult things for students who may not have adequate facilities at home, so lecturers have to work harder to provide the best solution in this problem. baralt, gurzynski-weiss, & kim (2017) suggested that online learning may be less effective than classroom learning as students are less engaged. tang (2019) argued that face-to-face learning is more effective than online learning. while most had used some online tools as supplements to their classroom teaching, very few had taught whole courses online. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 55 community. “i rarely talk with the lecturer or students outside the class because i don’t want to disturb them.” relationship between lecturers and students. participants also had problems with the community on how the relationship between lecturers and students was not close enough because they could not meet face-to-face in class learning. participants had difficulty getting closer to classmates because they could not meet face to face directly. participants felt that online meetings had many restrictions that could not be carried out when meeting in person. he also felt that he could not get to know friends or lecturers closely because he did not know the personality of the other person or how to approach them. during this online learning, he observed other students more often and talked to those he already knew. he was also not used to contacting or asking unimportant questions to lecturers or friends he may not know closely because he was uncomfortable. online learning has made students have a distance from friends and lecturers to build or form a harmonious community with class members so that the role of lecturers is crucial to build a sense of togetherness and community in online learning currently being undertaken (stewart, 2008). this situation may make him feel that his abilities are not that good from his other friends. rules. “i can handle the assignment but i need longer deadline, it’s too much if we only have a week.” collection of assignments. ip02 had problems regarding the distribution of time in the work of assignments and deadlines for assigning assignments made by the lecturer. in one week, the lecturer gave three readings and still had to do the assignments that had to be collected at the lms with a fairly close deadline. he felt that the number of readings given by the lecturer was too much within a fairly small period. excessive tasks could provide time and mental pressure for students (rees & redfern, 2000) to read three readings given by the lecturer. he had to manage his time between one subject’s assignments and another and adjust to his busy life. dayto-day, even though he no longer worked formally, he was quite overwhelmed in dividing his time to do all his lecture responsibilities within one week. the university needs to maintain a well-balanced academic environment conducive to better learning, focusing on the students’ personal needs (elfering et al., 2005). in this case, the lecturer must pay attention to the workload and the time each student has. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 56 conclusion and implication this research explored the activities in educational psychology and the challenges faced by the students using the activity theory. there were seven activity components in educational psychology class, including the subject (students), object (media and task achievement), outcomes (according to 3c ignatian pedagogy), tools (technology and students’ knowledge), rules (general and activity rules), and division of labor (horizontal-vertical division and self-regulation). in addition, the students also faced challenges in the form of tensions and preferences when undergoing the educational psychology class. those challenges were related to the technology, community, deadline instructions, workload, and students’ self-regulation. this research was still limited because of the small number of samples so that future researchers could use another sampling in different classes. the implications of this study are for the teachers to utilize the chat framework to identify the tensions, conflicts, contradictions, and issues within the class and for the teachers and students to evaluate the learning process together. references allen, d., karanasios, s., & slavova, m. (2011). working with activity theory: context, technology, and information behavior. journal of the american society for information science and technology. 62(4), 776-788. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21441 arvanitis, p., krystalli, p., & panagiotidis, p. (2016). applications for mobile assisted language learning: a current field research. inted2016, 7645–7651. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2016.0803. ary, d., jacobs, l. c., sorensen, c., & razavieh, a. (2010). introduction to research in education (8th ed.). wadsworth. bandura, a., & locke, e. a. (2003). negative self-efficacy and goal effects revisited. journal of applied psychology, 88, 87–99. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.87 baralt, m., gurzynski-weiss, l. & kim, y. (2016). engagement with the language: how examining learners’ affective and social engagement explains successful learner https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21441 https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2016.0803 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.87 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 57 generated attention to form. in m. sato & s. ballinger (eds.), peer interaction and second language learning. pedagogical potential and research agenda (pp. 209-240). john benjamins. chong s.w., & reinders h. (2020). technology-mediated task-based language teaching: a qualitative research synthesis. language learning & technology, 24(3), 70–86. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10125/44739 cojocariu, v. m., & boghian, i. (2014). teaching the relevance of game-based learning to preschool and primary teachers. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 142, 640-646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.07.679 davydov, v. v. (2008). problems of developmental instruction: a theoretical and experimental psychological study. nova science publishers. elfering, a., grebner, s., k semmer, n., kaiser‐freiburghaus, d., lauper‐del ponte, s., & witschi, i. (2005). chronic job stressors and job control: effects on event‐related coping success and well‐being. journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 78(2), 237252. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317905x40088 engeström, y., hakkarainen, p., & hedegaard, m. (1984). on the methodological basis of research in teaching and learning. in m. hedegaard, p. hakkarainen & y. engeström (eds), learning and teaching on a scientific basis: methodological and epistemological aspect of the activity theory of learning and teaching (pp.119-189). psykologisk institut, aarhus universitet. engestrom, y. (2000). activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work. ergonomics 43(7), 960-974. https://doi.org/10.1080/001401300409143. engeström, y. (2015). learning by expanding (2nd ed.). cambridge university press. engeström, y., & pyörälä, e. (2020). using activity theory to transform medical work and learning. medical teacher. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159x.2020.1795105. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 http://hdl.handle.net/10125/44739 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.07.679 https://doi.org/10.1348/096317905x40088 https://doi.org/10.1080/001401300409143 https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159x.2020.1795105 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 58 estarki, n. k., & bazyar, m. (2016). the effect of mall on pre-intermediate efl learners’ writing performance. european online journal of natural and social sciences, 5(2), 406–420. retrieved from https://www.european-science.com. francisco, c. d. c. & m. c. barcelona. (2020). effectiveness of an online classroom for flexible learning. international journal of academic multidisciplinary research 4(8), 100107. retrieved from https:// www.ijeais.org/ijamr. gacs, a., goertler, r., & spasova, s. (2020). planned online language education versus crisis‐ prompted online language teaching: lessons for the future. foreign language annals, 53(2), 380-392. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12460 gedera, d. s. p. (2015). the application of activity theory in identifying contradictions in a university blended learning course. in d. s. p. gedera & p. j. williams (eds.), activity theory in education: research and practice (pp. 53-70). rotterdam: sense publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-387-2_4. issroff, k., & scanlon, e. (2002). using technology in higher education: an activity theory perspective. journal of computer assisted learning 18, 77-83. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0266-4909.2001.00213.x. jonassen, d. h., & rohrer-murphy, l. (1999). activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments. educational technology research and development, 47(1), 61-79. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02299477. leontiev, a. n. (1978). activity, consciousness, and personality. pergamon press. leontiev, a. n. (1981). problems of the development of the mind. progress publishers. namaziandost, i., bohloulzadeh, g., & pazhakh, a. (2017). the effect of task-based language teaching on motivation and grammatical achievement of efl junior high school students. advances in language and literary studies, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.2p.243. nussbaumer, d. (2012). an overview of cultural historical activity theory (chat) use in https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 http://www.european-science.com/ http://www.european-science.com/ http://www.ijeais.org/ijamr https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12460 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-387-2_4 https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0266-4909.2001.00213.x https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02299477 https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.2p.243 journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 59 classroom research 2000 to 2009. in educational review 64(1), 27-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.553947. pintrich, p. r. (2000). the role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. in m. boekaerts, p. r. pintrich, & m. zeidner (eds.), handbook of self-regulation. cambridge: academic press. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012109890-2/50043-3. postholm, m. b. (2015). methodologies in cultural–historical activity theory: the example of school-based development. educational research, 57(1), 4358. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2014.983723. quinton, s. & allen, m. (2014 ). collaboration: towards a new model for virtual learning in gosper, m. and ifenthaler, d. (eds.). curriculum models for the 21st century: using learning technologies in higher education. springer rees, c. j., & redfern, d. (2000). recognising the perceived causes of stress–a training and development perspective. industrial and commercial training. roth, w. m., & lee, y. j. (2007). “vygotsky’s neglected legacy”: cultural-historical activity theory. review of educational research 77(2), 186232. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654306298273. roth, w. m., & tobin, k. (2002). redesigning an “urban” teacher education program: an activity theory perspective. mind, culture, and activity 9(2) 108131. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327884mca0902_03. saka, y., southerland, s. a., & brooks, j. s. (2009). becoming a member of a school community while working toward science education reform: teacher induction from a cultural historical activity theory (chat) perspective. science education, 93(6), 996 1025. streefkerk, r. (2019). qualitative vs. quantitative research: differences & methods. retrieved from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/qualitative-quantitative-research (accessed on july 2, 2020). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.553947 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012109890-2/50043-3 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2014.983723 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654306298273 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327884mca0902_03 http://www.scribbr.com/methodology/qualitative-quantitative-research http://www.scribbr.com/methodology/qualitative-quantitative-research journal of foreign language teaching and learning volume 7, no. 1, january 2022 available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 e-issn: 2580-2070, p-issn: 2527-7650 60 stewart, d. p. (2008). classroom management in the online environment. merlot journal of online learning and teaching, 4(3), 371-374. retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/ stewart_0908.pdf. tang, x. (2019). the effects of task modality on l2 chinese learners’ pragmatic development: computer-mediated written chat vs. face-to-face oral chat. system 80, 48-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.10.011 thomas, m., & reinders, h. (2010). task based language learning and teaching with technology. continuum. turner, j. e., & husman, j. (2008). emotional and cognitive self-regulation following academic shame. journal of advanced academics 20(1), 138-173. https://doi.org/10.4219/jaa-2008-864 vlachopoulos, p., & cowan, j. (2010). reconceptualising moderation in asynchronous online discussion using grounded theory. distance education, 31(1), 23-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587911003724611 vygotsky, l.s. (1978). socio-cultural theory. mind in society, 52-58. yamagata-lynch, l.c. (2010). activity systems analysis methods: understanding complex learning environments. springer science & business media. xue, s. (2020). a conceptual model for integrating affordances of mobile technologies into task-based language teaching. interactive learning environments. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1711132 ziegler, n. (2016). taking technology to task: technology-mediated tblt, performance, and production. annual review of applied linguistics, 36, 136–163. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190516000039. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/ftl/issue/view/833 http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.10.011 https://doi.org/10.4219/jaa-2008-864 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587911003724611 https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1711132 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190516000039