Beyond Words (Journal)
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169 research outputs found
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Pedagogical Competencies in The Prescribed and Enacted Curriculum for Graduate Students
Full text linkTThis case study is aimed to find out far the curriculum in a teacher education institute has integrated these pedagogical competencies in both their prescribed and enacted curriculum using the Actor Network Theory (ANT). ANT is applied in this research to see the network formed in both the prescribed and enacted curriculum so as to find out how students master the pedagogical competencies in the coursenet of three investigated courses, namely Principles of English Language Teaching, Teaching Reading and Writing, and Teaching Listening and Speaking. Therefore, this research analyzes how the human and nonhuman entities influence each other in both prescribed and enacted curriculum in two perspectives: 1) to what extent are the pedagogical competencies intended for graduate students in TEFL program? 2) to what extent are the pedagogical competencies delivered to the graduate students in TEFL program? The result of the study shows that most pedagogical competencies are delivered in the three investigated courses. Lecturers and students are human entities in the network formed in the courses while the nonhuman entities involved within the network are noises, light, class settings, and class location. Lecturers then become key actors that impact upon the actants–students– to act upon the translation process to master the pedagogical competencies. As for the non-human entities, they influence the learning atmosphere in which graduate students in TEFL are situated as they learn to master the pedagogical competencies. The coursenet formed within the three investigated courses have shown that evaluation and improvement need to be done by the education institution to enhance the quality of teachers’ education curriculu
The Preference for English in Digital Media among Indonesian Millennials
Full text linkThe use of English among Indonesian millennials has been more widespread especially because of exposure to English has been so massive to secondary school in urban areas. There has been a concern that the increasing use of English might diminish their Indonesian language use and cultural identity. This study aims to investigate the roles of English on satellite TV programs and social media posts for Indonesian millennials, their language preference, and the consequences of language preference on their national identity. A concurrent embedded mixed methods design collecting quantitative and qualitative data was carried out through short essays and closed-questionnaires. Both questions of essay writing and closed-questionnaires were sent to students of private high schools in two big cities (Jakarta and Surabaya), aged 18 to 20 years old online. The questionnaire items were in multiple-choice and the short paragraph essay explained the importance of TV programs and social media posts for learning English. After being scrutinized, 989 respondents’ essay responses were analysed. The findings showed that TV programs and social media posts were claimed to have important roles of English learning resources. Although they practiced English through social media, they felt that they still kept themselves as Indonesians when using English on social medi
The Effects of Three L2 Vocabulary Learning Methods Through Reading Activity
Full text linkThis study examines the effectiveness of the three vocabulary learning methods the authors adopted. In search of this research issue, the study used longitudinal experiments with 93 university Japanese learners of English (JLEs) for fifteen weeks. Once a week for six consecutive weeks, participants of the three experiment groups were given different treatments for learning 110 targeted English words when they were mainly reading an English textbook: (i) Group A: the Implicit Vocabulary Learning Group with Questions in English/Answers in English Task, (ii) Group B: the Explicit Vocabulary Learning Group with a Cloze Test Task, and (iii) Group C: the Explicit Vocabulary Learning Group with Multiple-choice Word Test Task. A pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest were conducted. The results showed that (i) all the groups improved their performances at the immediate posttest and almost maintained their performance levels at the delayed posttest, which indicate that all the learning methods were more or less effective. However, the developmental degrees of the vocabulary increase were different: Group C showed the highest improvement among the three. From these findings, the authors claim that using a (multiple-choice) word test is fairly effective for JLEs to develop their knowledge of English words
Screencast-O-Matic to Support EFL Teaching and Learning Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
Full text linkThe COVID-19 situation causes a sudden and unexpected shift of face-to-face pedagogy to emergency remote teaching mode. In that transition, teachers often do not have enough space and time to explore various technology to support their teaching and learning practices that should be done flexibly in multiple places and times. In response, the primary purposes of this article are to introduce a technology tool called Screencast-O-Matic (SOM), its potentials, and possible practices of using SOM that EFL lecturers might adopt for their teaching and learning purposes, specifically in the current pandemic era. Some of the practices discussed in this paper are the use of SOM to: record a video lecturer on how to write a paper following an APA format, give video-based feedback to students’ work, make a digital video presentation, and be a digital mirror that helps students review their speaking performance before they do an actual video presentation. The discussions of the paper are supported by some of the authors’ actual experiences in using SOM in their classrooms, related research findings, and literature. Ideas for future research are presented
Information and Communication Technology to Help Students Create Their Own Books the Dialogic Way
Full text linkThe use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language learning allows students to be more engaged and innovative. The present article explores the potential use of technology in the planning, drafting, reviewing, and publishing stages of students’ own book creation. First, the use of digital tools to create books in an interactive and engaging process and format is discussed. Then, the varieties of multimedia books created using ICT are explored. Next, the use of technology for sharing ideas, communicating opinions, collaborating, and reviewing others’ books is explained. The article also describes some collaborative methods students may employ in creating books. Finally, it discusses learners’ development of technology and media literacy in the creation of their own books
The Linguistic Perspectives on Computer Mediated Communication
Full text linkThis paper aims to explore the role of production and perception constraints in computer mediated communication. I review Lindblom's (1990) theory of phonetic variation and propose a new model of linguistic production in Computer Mediated Communication. Cyber citizens use cyber communication as conceptually oral, medially written. The reason to use chat-mode is that it saves time and space (the principle of least effort); here sound, not spelling, is the first thing to be considered. With respect to production in the proposed model, effort is no longer equated with articulatory movement, but rather with the number of keystrokes involved in typing an utterance. On discussing online, discussants show paralinguistic actions such as smile, frown, screaming, etc., and they also reduplicate writings, capitalize all the sentences, and use emoticons; net-communication is headed toward less grammatical and more telegraphic type. The production of hyper-and hypo-forms such as reduplication, punctuation and capitalization will vary according to the sender's estimation of signal-complementary processes and his attempts to compensate for the restricted context.We discuss online and off line on the issues; why we like cyber communication and how we classify the phenomena. The more computer mediated communications we use, the moreissues we have to review beyond words and linguistic principles
Cultural Contents in Two English Textbooks in Indonesia: Representations and Sources of Culture
Full text linkThis study explores the representations of the cultural contents in English textbooks used in Indonesian contexts. The textbooks as the sources of data are two textbooks for grade 12 that represent local and global textbook. The first one was Bahasa Inggris, a textbook published and endorsed by Indonesian government and the other one was Think, a global textbook published by Cambridge. This study aims at finding out how different cultural sources are represented in the two textbooks. The findings show that the two textbooks have different emphasis regarding the culture they present in texts and their accompanying visual illustrations. Bahasa Inggris puts the emphasis on global and local cultural sources. Other cultures that are not representative to the two main sources are very limited. On the other hand, Think provides a wide array of representations for global and other cultures but not local Indonesian culture. We end our discussion with a conceptual implication on cultural sources in English language teaching (ELT) materials
Teaching Assistants in International Schools: Perceptions and Perspectives
Full text linkThis research study occurred because of the many observations made by the researcher while working in international schools in East and Southeast Asia. Although multiple studies have investigated teaching assistants in public schools, there is little research dedicated to the study of teaching assistants in international schools. The purpose of this research study was to look at classroom practices, student language acquisition, professional development, and teaching assistant wellbeing in international schools through the lenses of locally-hired teaching assistants and to discover what they consider to be barriers in their positions as a teaching assistant. Further, comparisons were made between teaching assistants in English-only and multi-lingual schools and between teaching assistants in schools that are for-profit and non-profit. Data acquisition for this mixed-methods study occurred through a thirteen question survey that was completed by 135 teaching assistants working in international schools in East and Southeast Asia. The main findings of this research study were that many teaching assistants in international schools desire relevant professional development, fairer working environment, more equitable salary conditions, and more professional and career opportunities