English Education Journal
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Factors that affect students success in English debates
Get PDFThis qualitative research aims to investigate the strategy of the English teacher coaching English class debates at SMAN (National Senior High School) Modal Bangsa in Aceh. It also aims to find out the factors behind the success of the Modal Bangsa students in English debating competitions. The participants of this research were 17 students and 4 teachers. The instruments for this research were an interview guide and observation sheets. The data were then analyzed by using analytical content analysis and document analysis. The findings showed that, in coaching the English debating teams the coaches used some approaches and methods of teaching such as opening the students mindsets, grouping the students and creating good relationships between the team members and the coaches. Four methods of teaching were used by the coaches viz: teacher center, co-operative learning, plus minus interesting and practice debates. Besides these approaches and methods, there were some other factors that triggerred the students achievements in the English debating competitions such as the recruitment process, the coaches background, the motivation of the students, the school environment and facilities, the classroom atmosphere, teamwork/the team relationships, the background of the students, the parental/community support/involvement and getting advice from a professional debater. Hence, in coaching English debate students, it is suggested that teachers should recruit members of English debate students using appropriate tests and an appropriate recruitment process. In order to make the learning process interesting, it is better to help students understand the advantages of participating in English debates and apply all of the above methods to learn about English debating and to support the progress of the English debating club
English Teachers and Autonomous Learning
Get PDFThis study investigates the understanding and beliefs of Acehnese teachers concerning autonomous learning as mandated in the 2013 curriculum and how their beliefs about the concept of learner autonomy were applied in their teaching practices. The purposes of this research were: 1) to find out what is the understanding of English Foreign Language (EFL) teachers concerning autonomous learning, and 2) to find out howwell the EFL teachers performed at implementing autonomous learning as mandaited in the 2013 curriculum. The data was obtained by studying 4 EFL teachers from two different schools. It was collected in two phases of study, utilising both a quantitative method (a survey) and qualitative methods (interviews and observations). The instruments used for collecting the data were a questionnaire, interviews and field note observation. This study found that the teachers studied generally lacked understanding about learner autonomy and there were some inconsistencies between the beliefs of the teachersand their actual teaching practices regarding learner autonomy, as little evidence could be found that many students regarded themselves as autonomous learners in their studies. The findings from this study will hopefully provide teachers and policy-makers with new insights into fostering learner autonomy to improve the educational system in Indonesia especially in Aceh
Analysis of Instructional Questions in an English Textbook For Senior High Schools
Get PDFThis study aimed to analyze the extent of instructional questions for listening, reading, speaking, and writing activities in the course book, Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA/SMK/MAK Kelas 1 Semester1 emphasizing HOTS (High Order Thinking Skills) or LOTS (Low Order TS); and to investigate the most dominant cognitive dimension of the instructional questions in that textbook. Content analysis was applied for all 9 chapters of the textbook in order to answer the research questions. All the activities in the form of listening, reading, speaking and writing in the textbook became the object of analysis. Additionally, every instructional question defined as wh- question, yes/no question, multiple choice question, statement question, and true/ false question was taken as the units for analysis. The instructional questions were collected, listed, and analyzed according to Bloom's Taxonomy of cognitive domains. The researcher then calculated the percentage and frequencies of the questions on every level of cognition that appeared in each chapter of the textbook. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the basic features of the data in this study. The results showed that there were 227 instructional questions for listening, reading, speaking, and writing activities. Listening activities had the least instructional questions (11 questions); while the most dominant ones were found for reading activities (125); speaking and writing were in the middle with average frequencies (45 and 46). After the instructional questions in all the activities were categorized, it revealed that most of those instructional questions emphasized LOTS (198 questions)
Teaching English using a multiple intelligences approach
Get PDFThis research was done to study the use of the Multiple Intelligences Approach (MIA) for teaching English especially for young learners. The participants of the study were fourth grade, primary school, students at AlImtiyaaz Islamic School in Banda Aceh and the study used a descriptive qualitative research method. The school English class emphasized the implementation of MIA for apperception and also used a variety of teaching-learning strategies. The data was obtained by direct observations, an interview with the teacher and document analysis. It was found that the apperception section in the MIA took longer than any of the other approaches. This was because the apperception section had four stages (alpha zone, warming up, preteaching, and scene setting). The function was to enable the teacher to figure out each students best conditions for learning. The result of this study showed that from observations at five meeting, the apperception took 20 to 25 minutes, the core activities took 55 to 60 minutes, and the closing took only 5 to 10 minutes. Furthermore, in the core activities, the dominant intelligences of the students were integrated using various learning strategies. The results also showed that the teacher combined more than two intelligences in teaching the English class. The verballinguistic intelligence was the main component of the English class and reached about 24%, the bodilykinaesthetic and intrapersonal intelligences were each 19%, musical intelligence was 14%, and interpersonal intelligence was about 9%. Furthermore, logical, naturalist, and spatialvisual intelligences each had about5%. whilst existential intelligence was not found in this study (0%)
Improving essay writing using the Semantic Mapping technique
Get PDFThis research inquires whether the semantic mapping technique be used to improve the students ability in learning essay writing. It was designed in classroom action research which was conducted in two cycles by following the procedure of action research consisting of four steps; planning, implementing, observing and reflecting. Each cycle was carried out in three meeting. The subject of the research was the 4th semester students in unit A of the English Department, Almuslim University. The instruments used were test, observation checklist and questionnaire. The obtained data were presented and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The results showed that the implementation of semantic mapping technique could improve the students ability in learning essay writing. This is proven by the first result found from the test given to the students. The students average score of the test in cycle 1 was 60 and it increased to 75 in cycle 2. The second result was obtained from the observation of the researchers performance and students activities. The percentage of the researchers performance in the first cycle was 75% in the level good. While, in the second cycle it increased to 88% in level very good. Next, the percentages of the students activities was 57% or enough in the first cycle and it increased to 79% in the level good in the second cycle. The other finding from the questionnaire was the strongly positive response (4.62) from the students to the use of the semantic mapping technique for learning essay writing
Teaching reading comprehension by using short stories
Get PDFThis research was intended to figure out the effectiveness of the use of short stories in teaching reading comprehension to enhance the quality of students reading to the first semester students of Tarbiyah of Muhammadiyah University of Aceh. The mayor principle of conducting this research was to investigate whether or not the students in the experimental group taught by using short stories would produce a higher achievement than those of the control group taught by using conventional study. To find out the effectiveness of the use of short stories, the pre-test and the post-test were given for those groups. The result of data analysis demonstrated that there was a significant difference on students achievement from both groups proved by the average of the post-tests score. As a result, the score of the post-test of the experimental group is higher than that of the control group (80:65) by which the gained score for t-test was 8 while the value for t-table was 1,684 at the level of significance 0,05. It means that t-score was higher than t-table (8 1,684). It can be concluded that the students who were taught by using short stories had a better achievement in reading comprehension than those who taught by using conventional study
Using concept mapping to improve reading comprehension
Get PDFThis study was done to find out if reading comprehension ability of students from class X at SMAN 1 Sawang could improve significantly by using the Concept Mapping technique in teaching-learning reading EFL. True experimental design was employed in this study in which the sample 25% (30 students) was chosen by random sampling from the total population (118 students). The sample was divided into an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG); each with 15 students. The EG was taught reading comprehension using the Concept Mapping technique, whereas the CG was taught using a conventional teacher centered approach. Tests were used as instruments to collect data which was analyzed using SPSS version 16. A questionnaire with a Likert scale was used to find out the students responses toward the use of Concept Mapping for learning reading comprehension. The t-test scores for the results from the pre-tests compared to those from the post-tests for both the EG and the CG were significant (p=0.006) which was lower than the degree of significance (0.05). The results indicated that the alternative hypothesis can be accepted and the null hypothesis rejected because the students of the EG achieved significantly better scores than those in the CG. Therefore, it can be concluded that using the Concept Mapping technique significantly improved the reading comprehension ability of students from class X at SMAN 1 Sawang
Teaching listening by using authentic videos
Get PDFThis research aims to investigate the impact of using authentic videos as audio-visual aids for teaching listening for ESL. It was conducted from October 15, 2015 up to November 19, 2015. The population of this study was the second grade students of State Senior High School 4 (SMAN 4) Banda Aceh, and from this population, two classes were selected as the sample. This research employed true experimental research method with two groups, an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG). The EG was taught by using authentic video, while the CG used audio Compact Disc (CD) as the teaching aid most often used by ESL teachers in teaching listening. In collecting the data, the writer used tests as the instrument, and in analyzing the data collected, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) computer software was employed. The mean score of the results from the post-tests from the EG at 75 was higher than that of the control group at 64. Moreover, the t-test for the EG was higher than that for the CG (11.514.06) which meant that the improvement in the EG was significantly higher than the listening achievements of the CG. The EG students taught by using authentic video achieved higher results in listening than the CG ones taught by audio compact disc (CD). As a result, the alternative hypothesis was accepted and null hypothesis was rejected which meant that there was a significant improvement in terms of listening achievements after the use of authentic videos treatment