Indonesian JELT
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Looking on the bright side of grammar-translation method
Get PDFIn spite of having been rejected as a method in language teaching, the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) has never been totally left out. Among the rejections to the GTM are because the language learners’ native language is used as the medium of instruction and the grammar is taught deductively. However, GTM is composed of two features hardly inescapable in any discussion about language teaching: grammar and translation. If grammar serves as a medium to know about the form of language, translation can interlingually guide the way to comprehending the meaning of language. This article is aimed to explain the importance of grammar and translation in language teaching and to propose some modifications of the ways in which both can be taught that can possibly restore the bright side of the GTM to some extent
Language anxiety in Chinese university EFL learners in varying learning contexts
Get PDFThe present study examined Chinese university EFL learners’ anxiety in English classrooms in varying learning contexts, and causes for and impact of anxiety on their performance in English. Analyses of 215 journals and 1203 questionnaires revealed the following conclusions: (1) around a third of the whole participant sample and each university sample experienced anxiety in English class, (2) various reasons such as low proficiency in the target language, lack of vocabulary, lack of practice, lack of preparation, and poor pronunciation were responsible for anxiety in the participants, and (3) anxiety mainly debilitated the students’ performance in English and the majority of the participants felt helpless about feeling anxious when using the language in English class
Strategies in expressing thanking in English realized by Indonesian learners
Get PDFThis study describes the gratitude strategies realized by Indonesian EFL learners in responding to different situations. Data were collected from 17 undergraduate students of English Department of Education Faculty of Atmajaya Catholic University Jakarta by using (O’Keeffe et.al, 2011) Discourse Completion Tasks. This study revealed that the gratitude strategies employed by the participants of this study ranged from simple, brief thankings to lenghty, complex thankings. All participants produced mixed speect act sets of thanking in the following conditions: a) social status (between a vice-president and a newly hired personnel, b) indebtedness (because of money loan and meal treat), and c) breaking promise. On the other hand, in informal contexts, such as between friends and the setting of public area, the participants tended to use simple or brief thanking
auditory repetition priming for English word stress applying auditory priming in teaching English word stress
Get PDFThis paper discusses the implications of using the auditory priming method in teaching English word stress to Indonesian university students. In auditory priming experiment, 30 participants had to pronounce 80 English words after hearing the stimuli (i.e. pre-recorded 80 words with correct stress placement). The data was taken from the recordings of the students’ responses, which were transcribed carefully to determine the stress placement. Research revealed that auditory priming effect was achieved although the result was not statistically significant. The result of this study was significant for Indonesian EFL teachers as it give insight for the implementation of the auditory priming method to teach English pronunciation
Teaching English through literature
Get PDFTeaching English in Indonesia, particularly for students, remains a great challenge owing to the fact that English is a foreign language in this country. The challenge could be tackled through teaching literature. Literature has been a subject of study in many countries at a secondary or tertiary level, but until recently has not been given much emphasis in the EFL/ESL classroom. It is considered a very versatile subject and is generally considered one of the most difficult subjects to teach. Central to teaching literature in the classroom is to let students be involved in the experience and let them observe life more closely
Teaching English generic nouns: The exploration of the generic idea in English and Indonesian and the applications of explicit instruction in classroom
Get PDFAlthough the generic idea is often expressed in discourse, the acquisition of it is so slow among learners. Moreover, this idea is expressed through a highly complex system of the English language called the article system. As a result, learners tend to make errors when they attempt to convey the generic idea in their output. Since the Indonesian language has a different way to express the generic idea, Indonesian learners of English may be interfered by their first language when expressing this idea. Consequently, errors are inevitable. A thorough examination at how the generic idea is expressed in English and in Indonesian is perhaps the only way to understand this complexity. To help learners express the idea correctly and appropriately, teachers should give explicit instruction in forms of mini lesson and explicit corrective feedback (i.e. metalinguistic feedback). This article presents all the patterns to express the generic idea both in English and Indonesian, poses some pedagogical implications and discusses some useful approaches for English teachers in dealing with it
The role of explicit instruction in English word stress patterns in an EFL Arab University context
Get PDFThis study presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which explicit instruction in English word stress patterns correlates with better word stress assignment performance by Palestinian EFL university students. The students received three weeks of explicit instruction in the main English word stress rules. In analyzing the differences in the pre- and post-treatment test scores, the researchers found significant increases on the post-treatment test scores which indicate a correlation between explicit instruction in word stress rules and students' performance in word stress assignment. Teaching suggestions and activities are provided to improve learners' word stress assignment performance. The results of this study are of great value to Palestinian linguists, EFL teachers and curricula developers who need to pay special attention to this often overlooked area and, therefore, to ensure that pedagogical materials and teaching activities on word stress become an integral part of EFL curricula
A bilingual child's acquisition of Mandarin and English: Same or different rate?
Get PDFThis paper is descriptive in nature. It looks at the utterances of one Malaysian-Chinese bilingual child who was specifically spoken to in Mandarin and English from birth. The aim of this paper is to highlight the different speech components present in the two languages. There is some evidence to show that the child's preferred language is not necessarily the dominant language. The child was observed closely by the researcher cum mother over a period of seven months. Initial utterances were tape recorded but later discarded due to impracticality. Subsequent utterances were then spontaneously recorded into journals as and when they occurred within the child’s home with details such as time, date, place and participants indicated. Transcribed orthographically, data were then categorized according to the languages heard and then the speech components (see Hoff, 2009; Foster -Cohen, 1999; Crystal, 1997) respectively. A frequency count of all these utterances suggests that 59% of the child’s utterances were in English while 19% were in Mandarin (dominant language) with smaller percentages subscribing to the various environmental languages. Data also indicate that more nouns were used in English and but slightly more verbs and noun phrases were used in Mandarin. This phenomenon was also used as a determinant to gauge the rate of acquisition of the two languages. A very small percentage of the child’s data were also articulated as complete sentences but this was done in mixed languages, which could be a typical phenomenon of bilingual language acquisition at the early stage
Anxiety in oral performance tests: A case study of Indonesian learners
Get PDFThis study examined anxiety experienced by students before an oral performance test, the relationship between the anxiety and their test performance, and strategies they applied to reduce the anxiety. The participants were 107 Indonesian students who enrolled the English speaking classes. This study revealed that the students did not experience a high level of anxiety before the oral performance test. There was not a very significant relationship between anxiety and their score in the performance test. Finally, some strategies to cope the anxiety were also discussed
Teacher vs peer scaffolding modes in L2 writing classes: A consideration of genre approach to writing
Get PDFWhile it is not a long time that scaffolding is applied in writing classes, few attempts have been made to identify the scaffolding mechanisms that teachers and peers employ in face-to-face interactions to help students develop requirements of different genres of writing. Therefore, this study was conducted aiming at investigating the scaffolding behaviors and mechanisms that the teacher and peers employed while revising two genres of writing, i.e. description and essay, written by the students of two classes who were assigned to teacher and peer scaffolding. Vygotsky's Socio-cultural framework and its related notion of scaffolding metaphor were used in this study. To identify the scaffolding behaviors, the verbal interaction between the students and the teacher and peer mediators was recorded, transcribed and coded, using Lidz's scale (1991). Based on the findings of the study, the difference between the teacher's and peers' scaffolding behaviors in the two genres of writing was significant, illustrating the fact that not only the teacher and peer mediators offered different numbers of scaffolding behaviors, but also the type of these behaviors was at times different from a particular genre of writing to another. Finally, some pedagogical implications of Socio-cultural Theory in EFL/ESL writing classes are provided