English dpartment

This research article aimed to explore the relationship between students’ learning styles, writing proficiency, and self-assessment. The participants in this case study were forty Indonesian tertiary-level EFL learners. This study investigated language learning styles preferences of the participants, analyzed preferred language learning styles of the most proficient writers, and explored how the partcipants assess their writing ability. Multiple sources of data were collected, including questionnaires, self-assessment checklist, and students’ writings. The findings revealed three main points. First, based on the mean value and standard deviation, Communicative was the most popular learning styles among the students, followed by three others styles, called Concrete, Analytical, and Authority-Oriented. Second, based on the students’ writing scores, eight students were considered the most proficient writers, and most of them had applied Communicative learning style to help them organiz...

This research article aimed at exploring the effects of three different assessments (self-, peer-, and teacher-) on students’ text revision. Ten Indonesian tertiary-level EFL students participated in this study. It investigated the extent to which three types of assessment facilitate text revision, and analyzed students’ perception of these assessments. The research methods used were students’ text revision and semi-structure interview. The findings revealed two main points. First, the results showed that students made the total of 2,096 revision changes across 40 drafts, with lower percentage of self-feedback incorporated into their revision. Furthermore, the findings indicated that students had a tendency to engage in self-assessment practice more often when revising their drafts. Second, students mostly appreciated teacher-assessment, as opposed to under half of them favoured peer-assessment. In contrast, self-assessment showed a balanced response between positive and negative co...

This research article aimed to analyze the effects of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on EFL learners' reading comprehension. The participants in this case study were five Indonesian tertiary-level EFL learners. It investigated whether mediation in DA improve the learners reading comprehension performances and analyzed the extent to which mediation in DA benefit learning. The research methods used were pre-test, mediation, and post-test. The findings revealed two main points. First, the result of the post-test showed an overall improvement for all five students. As indicated by the effect size (0.96) and the result of paired samples t-test (p-value = 0.0028), it can be concluded that the effect of DA on the participants’ reading skill performance was highly significant. Second, mediation in DA appeared to benefit learning with different characteristics in each student. The implications of this study were to provide practical insight to EFL teachers into how mediation can be developed to...

This research article aimed to investigate the effect of interventions deployed by teachers on peer feedback in the context of Indonesian EFL writing classroom. This case study involved 16 participants of tertiary-level EFL learners. It explored types of teacher‟s interventions on peer feedback, analyzed whether the learners use peer feedback to improve their writing, and explored how the learners appreciate peer feedback. The case study research employed three instruments; they were students‟ writing assignment results with peer and teacher feedback, questionnaire, and interviews. The findings revealed three main points; (1) the teacher‟s interventions were mostly on grammatical errors, inappropriate vocabularies, and content structures, (2) facilitated by the teacher‟s interventions, more than 50% of the peer feedbacks were integrated by the students in their revision, (3) the students generally confirmed the usefulness of interventions deployed by the teacher on peer feedback. It...

This research article aimed to investigate the perceptions stated by students regarding the use of portfolio as an assessment tool in an EFL writing class. The participants in this study were 28 Indonesian tertiary-level EFL learners. The purposes of this qualitative study were to explore students’ opinions regarding the use of portfolio as an assessment tool, and to analyze the extents to which portfolio assessment benefited students. The research methods used were students’ reflective essays and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed two main points. First, most of the students argued that portfolio was an effective tool to assess their writing tasks. Second, portfolio seemed to benefit students through reflecting on their previous writing tasks. The pedagogical implications of this study were to provide insight to EFL teachers into how portfolio could be used as an assessment tool particularly in writing courses, and to inform EFL teachers with some suggestions to carr...