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Being reflective is a prerequisite of effective teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). Without reflecting on their own practice, it is virtually impossible for teachers to identify what they have done well and what needs to be... more
Being reflective is a prerequisite of effective teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). Without reflecting on their own practice, it is virtually impossible for teachers to identify what they have done well and what needs to be improved. It is essential, therefore, to develop the EFL teachers' ability to reflect early in the pre-service stage. This study described the reflections performed by EFL pre-service teachers about student teaching. Fifty two pre-service teachers participated voluntarily in this study and wrote a reflective essay about student teaching done in the previous semester. The results showed that most pre-service teachers admitted they needed to improve their skills of classroom management. It was the first time they taught actual students in schools and they found it challenging to cope with various learner characteristics. In addition, they realized their English proficiency and knowledge also needed improvement so they could be good models for the students. Finally, they still grappled in explaining the materials to the students and had to search for the most effective methods to teach English to secondary school students. Based on these findings, some implications for teaching practicum, especially student teaching, were suggested.
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Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being... more
Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being said, resulting in errors known as slips of the ear. Although these errors can sound very amusing, they provide more than entertainment as they have the potentials to reveal the listeners' strategies in coping with the difficulties in perceiving utterances. This presentation aims to describe the slips of the ear performed by Indonesian university students who learned English as a foreign language (EFL). Analysis of the corpus consisting of 1008 data revealed that the EFL learners made phonological, morphological, lexical and sentential errors while attempting to make sense of the expressions spoken by native speakers of English. They misinterpreted the oral input by omitting, adding or substituting the sounds, morphemes, words and sentences. Introduction The critical role of listening in the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has been acknowledged by researchers, language educators and learners. Formerly considered as a passive skill and assigned the least emphasis in EFL classes, it is now recognized as a language skill which needs an active process in the learners' mind and therefore has increasingly received more attention in language learning (Vandergrift, 2004; Herschenhorn, 1979). Despite the widely accepted claim that listening requires an active process on the part of the learners, there are still intense debates as to how the oral input is processed. Some argue that the processing operates in purely bottom-up fashion, while others tend to the top-down one. To mediate these polarized claims, some scholars suggest that both are necessary so the cognitive processing works interactively. The present paper aims to examine this particular issue, i.e. how the cognitive processing is carried out when the learners are attempting to perceive speech in the foreign language, as evidenced by the errors they perform during the speech perception. Such errors are often referred to as slips of the ear, and they turn out to provide useful information on the way aural perception takes place in the learners' mind. The first part of the paper reviews the cognitive processing that occurs during listening, followed by the basic concepts of slips of the ear. The third section presents the slips of the ear which are produced by EFL learners at various linguistic levels and the next one analyzes how these slips reflect their mental processes. Finally, the implications on the teaching of EFL listening are discussed in the last part of the paper.
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This chapter describes two stages of a TESOL practicum at the State University of Surabaya, Indonesia. The first stage requires student teachers to participate in peer teaching and videotaped micro-teaching, as well as secondary school... more
This chapter describes two stages of a TESOL practicum at the State University of Surabaya, Indonesia. The first stage requires student teachers to participate in peer teaching and videotaped micro-teaching, as well as secondary school teaching practice during a semester break. This stage is part of an undergraduate degree in TEFL and takes place during the first semester of the third year of study. The second stage is available only to undergraduate degree holders and ends with a government-funded certification. The second stage grants certification and status as fully-qualified teachers, and requires that candidates attend an intensive pre-service teacher training at the university to develop detailed lesson plans, design engaging teaching materials, experience peer teaching, engage in classroom instruction at urban secondary schools, and conduct classroom-based action research. Prior to being awarded the government-required teaching certificates, pre-service teachers must also pa...
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The use of movie videos as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Generally teachers play such videos without subtitles and have learners view them while attempting to comprehend the... more
The use of movie videos as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Generally teachers play such videos without subtitles and have learners view them while attempting to comprehend the conversations spoken in the target language there. However, it is also possible to present movie videos with subtitles in the native language. This paper describes how the English movies in a DVD format are used in FL listening classes in Indonesian context. These movie DVDs contain a feature in the form of subtitles in Indonesian language, which is the learners' mother tongue, and this feature is activated while the movies are being played. Some motivating learning activities are suggested for the previewing , while-viewing, and post-viewing stages of the lesson. This technique of using subtitled movie DVDs has received favourable feedback from the learners, and therefore could be considered effective in assisting them to learn English as an FL.
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For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia, encountering unfamiliar words can be a major roadblock in reading comprehension, especially if they happen to be keywords in a particular text. To overcome the vocabulary... more
For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia, encountering unfamiliar words can be a major roadblock in reading comprehension, especially if they happen to be keywords in a particular text. To overcome the vocabulary problem, learners generally resort to a dictionary, hardly realizing that other strategies exist. The strategy of inferring word meaning from context, for instance, seems to be ineffectively used by the learners, as revealed in a preliminary study conducted by the author. The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicates that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (EnglishIndonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monoling...
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Building a strong argument in written form could be challenging for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for two reasons: they are still grappling with the target language and have little knowledge about the rhetoric in the... more
Building a strong argument in written form could be challenging for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for two reasons: they are still grappling with the target language and have little knowledge about the rhetoric in the target culture. This paper focuses on the latter, examining the problems that the Indonesian learners face when writing an argumentative text in English due to cultural differences. Twenty eight adult EFL learners who participated in a language training to improve their English proficiency were asked to write an argumentative essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, two paragraphs in the body and a concluding paragraph. In this paper the analysis was confined to the introductory paragraphs that they wrote, and the results showed that the way they organized the ideas to build an argument in the introductory paragraphs was influenced by their native culture to a certain degree. Rather than expressing their thoughts and opinions in a linear fashion like native speakers of English commonly do, some of them wrote their arguments by beating around the bush, making it harder for the readers to identify and understand these writers' stance about a certain issue. Moreover, some others even avoided giving an overt argument in their paragraphs and embraced both contrasting views about a particular issue instead. Some implications for the teaching of writing argumentative text were proposed.
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The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two... more
The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicated that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English) one. Two of them employed context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combined the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All but one of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.
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A common drawback of a subjective test lies in scoring, which may result in scores that are too high or too low. This problem occurred in one of the classes that the author taught in the English Department of Surabaya State University... more
A common drawback of a subjective test lies in scoring, which may result in scores that are too high or too low. This problem occurred in one of the classes that the author taught in the English Department of Surabaya State University (UNESA) when two learners expressed their doubts about the objectivity of the author in giving scores. To overcome the problem, action research was conducted. The subjects of the study were twenty-four undergraduates taking the elective course Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL). At the end of the semester, they took an oral exam to evaluate their understanding of the materials. During the exam, they had to assess themselves (self-assessment) and their classmates (peer-assessment). At the same time, the author as a lecturer also assessed them (teacher assessment). The results showed that the teacher assessment yielded the lowest mean (1.63), whereas the mean of scores obtained from the peer assessment was higher (1.76). It was the learners themse...
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Makalah ini memaparkan fenomena salah dengar yang terjadi pada orang Indonesia ketika mereka mendengarkan ujaran penutur asli Bahasa Inggris. Dari kesalahan persepsi terhadap ujaran tersebut, ditemukan bahwa pendengar menggunakan... more
Makalah ini memaparkan fenomena salah dengar yang terjadi pada orang Indonesia ketika mereka mendengarkan ujaran penutur asli Bahasa Inggris. Dari kesalahan persepsi terhadap ujaran tersebut, ditemukan bahwa pendengar menggunakan pengetahuan fonetik ketika mendengar konsonan, vokal dan urutan segmen yang salah. Mereka juga menggunakan pengetahuan leksikal ketika membuat kesalahan yang terkait morfem, menciptakan kata-kata yang sebetulnya tidak ada dalam Bahasa Inggris, atau tidak bisa mengidentifikasi batas kata. Yang terakhir, kalimat-kalimat yang melanggar tata bahasa menunjukkan bahwa mereka menggunakan pengetahuan tentang sintaksis.
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Learning a foreign language entails learning the culture where it is spoken. Although some educators consider culture as a peripheral element in language teaching, evidence shows that language is hardly culture-free. Therefore, it is... more
Learning a foreign language entails learning the culture where it is spoken. Although some educators consider culture as a peripheral element in language teaching, evidence shows that language is hardly culture-free. Therefore, it is essential that culture be embedded in foreign language teaching. This paper attempts to suggest a technique of utilizing movie videos in classes of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Indonesia to improve the learners' aural perception skills and promote cross-cultural understanding. This technique engage the learners into some motivating activities that enable them not only to comprehend English expressions, but also contrast their native (Indonesian) culture and the target culture in which English is spoken as a mother tongue. This technique of teaching listening has proved to be effective in developing listening skills in a foreign language and sensitizing them to the target culture, which is an inseparable aspect of language learning.
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Statistical reasoning should precede the statistical method in the teaching of statistics because the students should master the concepts before they perform computations. To find out whether the students were aware of this principle, the... more
Statistical reasoning should precede the statistical method in the teaching of statistics because the students should master the concepts before they perform computations. To find out whether the students were aware of this principle, the present study explored their preference and the underlying reasons. Twenty undergraduates were taught central tendency and variability by using statistical method (with machine computation) and statistical reasoning (with manual computation) respectively in one session. Most of them turned out to prefer to reason and compute numeric data manually because they understood the statistical concepts and the process of the computation. On the other hand, the rest of the undergraduates preferred the teaching of statistics using the statistical method with machine computation for three reasons: accuracy, efficiency, and convenience. The implications of these findings for the teaching of statistics were presented.
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Action research atau penelitian tindakan kelas (PTK) merupakan upaya para pendidik yang reflektif untuk meningkatkan kualitas pengajarannya sehingga hasil pembelajaran siswa juga semakin baik. Pada awal perkembangannya di Amerika Serikat... more
Action research atau penelitian tindakan kelas (PTK) merupakan upaya para pendidik yang reflektif untuk meningkatkan kualitas pengajarannya sehingga hasil pembelajaran siswa juga semakin baik. Pada awal perkembangannya di Amerika Serikat di awal abad 20, PTK menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif. Namun seiring berjalannya waktu, masalah di bidang pendidikan dan pengajaran juga semakin kompleks sehingga beberapa pendidik mulai menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif. Makalah ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan PTK dengan pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif, disertai dengan contoh-contoh PTK di bidang pengajaran Bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing untuk memperkuat alasan penggunaan masing-masing pendekatan tersebut. Pendekatan apa pun yang digunakan—kualitatif atau kuantitatif—bukan menjadi masalah dan masih dapat disebut sebagai PTK, asalkan tujuan penelitian tersebut dapat dicapai, yaitu peningkatan kualitas pengajaran.
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Guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context can be one of the effective vocabulary strategies in reading comprehension. Two types of context clues and semantic clues. This study investigates the students' ability in... more
Guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context can be one of the effective vocabulary strategies in reading comprehension. Two types of context clues and semantic clues. This study investigates the students' ability in employing (1) syntactic clues to identify the part of speech of the unfamiliar words, and further (2) semantic clues to figure out the meaning of these words. Results indicate that they are quite successful in utilizing syntactic clues, but they have less ability in using the semantic ones.
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The role of the learners’ personality in learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has drawn the interest of researchers and educators. The present ex-post-facto study added empirical evidence of this issue by investigating whether... more
The role of the learners’ personality in learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has drawn the interest of researchers and educators. The present ex-post-facto study added empirical evidence of this issue by investigating whether extroversion and introversion affected the learners’ English proficiency. Seventy-five undergraduates majoring in English participated in this study and completed a questionnaire to find out whether they were extroverts, introverts, or ambiverts. They also took the Test of English Proficiency (TEP) to measure their language proficiency. The results indicated the English proficiency of the extrovert learners was not significantly different from that of the introvert or ambivert learners. On the basis of the findings, implications for the teaching of EFL and suggestions for further studies were presented.
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Introductory statistics has been considered an anxiety-inducing course by undergraduates so efforts need to be done to reduce or eliminate their negative attitudes about statistics. One of such efforts is using TikTok tutorial videos as... more
Introductory statistics has been considered an anxiety-inducing course by undergraduates so efforts need to be done to reduce or eliminate their negative attitudes about statistics. One of such efforts is using TikTok tutorial videos as instructional media. The current study aimed to find out the undergraduates' perceptions about the use of TikTok tutorial videos in introductory statistics classes, describe the challenges they encountered in using the videos and elicit their feedback to overcome these challenges. The results showed that in general they had favorable perceptions about the use of TikTok tutorial videos, but they reported three challenges: the speed, the backsounds and the instructions of the tutorial videos. Therefore, they suggested solutions for the challenges, and added some other feedback about other aspects of the videos, namely, the quality of the pictures, the content and the links. Implications for the teaching of introductory statistics are proposed based on these findings.
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English mastery is indispensable for business students as they need to communicate effectively by using this international language later at work. Whatever career paths they choose, there is always a possibility that they interact with... more
English mastery is indispensable for business students as they need to communicate effectively by using this international language later at work. Whatever career paths they choose, there is always a possibility that they interact with business partners overseas in English. It is important, therefore, to provide as many opportunities as possible to the business students to learn the concepts in English, and in Financial Management class at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim this is carried out by conducting bilingual lessons. In each session they learn a topic in Indonesian and it is followed up by a reading lesson about the same topic in English. This paper presents how the reading materials for the Financial Management class were developed to promote the students’ mastery of the concepts about financial management and their reading comprehension in English. The development study used Reeves and McKenney’s model proposed, which consisted of the following steps: analysis & exploration, design & construction, and evaluation & reflection. It resulted in short reading texts with comprehension and vocabulary exercises. They were reviewed by two lecturers as the experts and tried out to a group of students taking the course Accounting to elicit their opinions about the draft of the reading materials. Some feedback was obtained from them and used to revise the draft.
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Being reflective is a prerequisite of effective teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). Without reflecting on their own practice, it is virtually impossible for teachers to identify what they have done well and what needs to be... more
Being reflective is a prerequisite of effective teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). Without reflecting on their own practice, it is virtually impossible for teachers to identify what they have done well and what needs to be improved. It is essential, therefore, to develop the EFL teachers' ability to reflect early in the pre-service stage. This study described the reflections performed by EFL pre-service teachers about student teaching. Fifty two pre-service teachers participated voluntarily in this study and wrote a reflective essay about student teaching done in the previous semester. The results showed that most pre-service teachers admitted they needed to improve their skills of classroom management. It was the first time they taught actual students in schools and they found it challenging to cope with various learner characteristics. In addition, they realized their English proficiency and knowledge also needed improvement so they could be good models for the students. Finally, they still grappled in explaining the materials to the students and had to search for the most effective methods to teach English to secondary school students. Based on these findings, some implications for teaching practicum, especially student teaching, were suggested.
Research Interests:
A common drawback of a subjective test lies in scoring, which may result in scores that are too high or too low. This problem occurred in one of the classes that the author taught in the English Department of Surabaya State University... more
A common drawback of a subjective test lies in scoring, which may result in scores that are too high or too low. This problem occurred in one of the classes that the author taught in the English Department of Surabaya State University (UNESA) when two learners expressed their doubts about the objectivity of the author in giving scores. To overcome the problem, action research was conducted. The subjects of the study were twenty-four undergraduates taking the elective course Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL). At the end of the semester, they took an oral exam to evaluate their understanding of the materials. During the exam, they had to assess themselves (self-assessment) and their classmates (peer-assessment). At the same time, the author as a lecturer also assessed them (teacher assessment). The results showed that the teacher assessment yielded the lowest mean (1.63), whereas the mean of scores obtained from the peer assessment was higher (1.76). It was the learners themselves who overestimated their knowledge about TEYL, resulting in the highest mean (1.79). The mark of each undergraduate was the average of the scores they got from the self-, peer and teacher assessments. In this way, the subjectivity of the teacher in assessing the undergraduates could be eliminated and fairness in determining the scores could be improved.
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Teachers occasionally need to develop instructional media, materials or techniques to make the teaching-learning process more effective. To accomplish this task, they need to conduct research using methodology which is called... more
Teachers occasionally need to develop instructional media, materials or techniques to make the teaching-learning process more effective. To accomplish this task, they need to conduct research using methodology which is called 'development.' This paper reviews three models of development: Four-D Model, Research and Development (R & D) and Design Research. The procedures of development in these models are basically similar, but some models are more detailed and refined than the others. The implications of development for language teaching are presented.
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Statistical reasoning should precede the statistical method in the teaching of statistics because the students should master the concepts before they perform computations. To find out whether the students were aware of this principle,... more
Statistical reasoning should precede the statistical method in the teaching of statistics because the students should master the concepts before they perform computations. To find out whether the students were aware of this principle, the present study explored their preference and the underlying reasons. Twenty undergraduates were taught central tendency and variability by using statistical method (with machine computation) and statistical reasoning (with manual computation) respectively in one session. Most of them turned out to prefer to reason and compute numeric data manually because they understood the statistical concepts and the process of the computation. On the other hand, the rest of the undergraduates preferred the teaching of statistics using the statistical method with machine computation for three reasons: accuracy, efficiency, and convenience. The implications of these findings for the teaching of statistics were presented.
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The present paper reports the attempt to develop materials of critical reading for undergraduates who learned English as a foreign language. The materials development was carried out by using Jolly and Bolitho’s framework as a model, and... more
The present paper reports the attempt to develop materials of critical reading for undergraduates who learned English as a foreign language. The materials
development was carried out by using Jolly and Bolitho’s framework as a model, and resulted in a short video clip and a worksheet. The worksheet was divided into three sections: prereading, while-reading and postreading. The prereading section contained questions that led to the topic of the text. The text was included in the while-reading section, along with exercises on comprehension, vocabulary and sentence structures. The last section was postreading, which integrated reading and writing. The worksheet is at its tentative form at the moment and more feedback is needed to improve it.
development was carried out by using Jolly and Bolitho’s framework as a model, and resulted in a short video clip and a worksheet. The worksheet was divided into three sections: prereading, while-reading and postreading. The prereading section contained questions that led to the topic of the text. The text was included in the while-reading section, along with exercises on comprehension, vocabulary and sentence structures. The last section was postreading, which integrated reading and writing. The worksheet is at its tentative form at the moment and more feedback is needed to improve it.
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Schemata have been recognized as a key factor that determines the success of reading comprehension because the knowledge stored in schemata—or background knowledge—can relate the new information in a text and what the readers already... more
Schemata have been recognized as a key factor that determines the success of reading
comprehension because the knowledge stored in schemata—or background knowledge—can relate the
new information in a text and what the readers already know. This makes comprehension easier, and
paves the way for the readers to read the text critically. The present paper aims to describe how the
background knowledge played a vital role in the undergraduates’ attempt to read the texts critically.
Twenty three students majoring in English teaching took the course “Critical Reading” and participated
in this research voluntarily. They read a short story critically and constructed meaning from this text.
Analysis of the qualitative data revealed that the undergraduates were not successful in constructing
meaning because they did not activate the relevant background knowledge. Although they did have the
background knowledge about the story, they could not retrieve the right schemata from their mind.
From this finding, the implication for the teaching of critical reading was suggested.
comprehension because the knowledge stored in schemata—or background knowledge—can relate the
new information in a text and what the readers already know. This makes comprehension easier, and
paves the way for the readers to read the text critically. The present paper aims to describe how the
background knowledge played a vital role in the undergraduates’ attempt to read the texts critically.
Twenty three students majoring in English teaching took the course “Critical Reading” and participated
in this research voluntarily. They read a short story critically and constructed meaning from this text.
Analysis of the qualitative data revealed that the undergraduates were not successful in constructing
meaning because they did not activate the relevant background knowledge. Although they did have the
background knowledge about the story, they could not retrieve the right schemata from their mind.
From this finding, the implication for the teaching of critical reading was suggested.
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Authentic texts could be invaluable reading materials, but occasionally the language needs to be simplified as the texts are originally written for native speakers rather than language learners. This paper describes: (1) how the... more
Authentic texts could be invaluable reading materials, but occasionally the language needs to be simplified as the texts are originally written for native speakers rather than language learners. This paper describes: (1) how the vocabulary and the sentence structures in an authentic text were simplified to ease comprehension, and (2) how they were elaborately modified to resolve vague ideas and concepts. These two processes—simplification and elaborative modification—resulted in a text which was more readable for language learners.
The present paper reports the slips of ear that occurred among non-native speakers in Indonesia when they were listening to the utterances of native speakers of English. From the erroneous perception of utterances, it was found that the... more
The present paper reports the slips of ear that occurred among non-native speakers in Indonesia when they were listening to the utterances of native speakers of English. From the erroneous perception of utterances, it was found that the listeners used their phonetic knowledge by misperceiving consonants, vowels or segment orders. They also used their lexical knowledge when they made morphemic errors, created nonwords or failed to identify the word boundaries. Lastly, the ill-formed sentences they reported to hear proved that they used their syntactic knowledge.
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Action research atau penelitian tindakan kelas (PTK) merupakan upaya para pendidik yang reflektif untuk meningkatkan kualitas pengajarannya sehingga hasil pembelajaran siswa juga semakin baik. Pada awal perkembangannya di Amerika Serikat... more
Action research atau penelitian tindakan kelas (PTK) merupakan upaya para pendidik yang reflektif untuk meningkatkan kualitas pengajarannya sehingga hasil pembelajaran siswa juga semakin baik. Pada awal perkembangannya di Amerika Serikat di awal abad 20, PTK menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif. Namun seiring berjalannya waktu, masalah di bidang pendidikan dan pengajaran juga semakin kompleks sehingga beberapa pendidik mulai menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif. Makalah ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan PTK dengan pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif, disertai dengan contoh-contoh PTK di bidang pengajaran Bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing untuk memperkuat alasan penggunaan masing-masing pendekatan tersebut. Pendekatan apa pun yang digunakan-kualitatif atau kuantitatif-bukan menjadi masalah dan masih dapat disebut sebagai PTK, asalkan tujuan penelitian tersebut dapat dicapai, yaitu peningkatan kualitas pengajaran.
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It has been common knowledge that culture and language are inseparable. When students learn a foreign language, they have to learn the culture where that language is spoken as a first language. Otherwise, they will produce awkward written... more
It has been common knowledge that culture and language are inseparable. When students learn a foreign language, they have to learn the culture where that language is spoken as a first language. Otherwise, they will produce awkward written or oral expressions which native speakers never use. In addition, a tendency to form a negative opinion about a foreign culture exists among the students, who make their native culture a standard to evaluate other cultures. These two problems may hinder the success of foreign language learning, so it is essential to promote cross-cultural understanding among language learners. One way to achieve this is offering a course designed to improve their knowledge of a culture and at the same time raise their awareness of mutual understanding between people of different
cultures. This presentation aims to describe some activities which were undertaken in a course titled Cross-cultural Understanding (CCU) in the English Department of Universitas Negeri Surabaya to attain these two objectives. Rather than the traditional lectures containing mainly explanations of materials by the educator, the course was held using a learner-centered approach, in which the learners had ample opportunity to share their knowledge and negotiate meaning in a favorable learning atmosphere. While they maintained a high value ontheir native culture, they learned to respect other cultures despite striking differences between the two. The implications for the teaching of English as a foreign language will be presented.
cultures. This presentation aims to describe some activities which were undertaken in a course titled Cross-cultural Understanding (CCU) in the English Department of Universitas Negeri Surabaya to attain these two objectives. Rather than the traditional lectures containing mainly explanations of materials by the educator, the course was held using a learner-centered approach, in which the learners had ample opportunity to share their knowledge and negotiate meaning in a favorable learning atmosphere. While they maintained a high value ontheir native culture, they learned to respect other cultures despite striking differences between the two. The implications for the teaching of English as a foreign language will be presented.
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It is virtually impossible to teach a foreign language without teaching the culture where this language is spoken as a mother tongue because the use of a language relies heavily on the culture observed by the speakers. This principle also... more
It is virtually impossible to teach a foreign language without teaching the culture where this language is spoken as a mother tongue because the use of a language relies heavily on the culture observed by the speakers. This principle also applies to the teaching of English in Indonesia, where it is spoken as a foreign language. The present paper aims to describe how the native cultures and the target cultures are explored in a course offered by the English Department of Universitas Negeri Surabaya (State University of Surabaya) in an effort to build understanding across cultures through their similarities and differences. While this may be a tedious task to accomplish due to the multicultural backgrounds of the learners and their diverse experiences that shape their personal opinions, it does not necessarily mean that cross-cultural understanding is impossible to achieve. It should be approached with appropriate methods to ensure that the teaching-learning process can yield the desired results. In addition, learners are engaged in a variety of motivating activities that not only have them examine how their native and target cultures are alike or different, but also give them relevant experiences that can lead to understanding.
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Vocabulary knowledge has been empirically proven to correlate with language skills; therefore, teachers usually make a rough estimate of the learners' language proficiency from the number of words that the learners know. For this reason,... more
Vocabulary knowledge has been empirically proven to correlate with language skills; therefore, teachers usually make a rough estimate of the learners' language proficiency from the number of words that the learners know. For this reason, it is important for teachers to estimate the learners' vocabulary size continuously as a part of their efforts in assessing the learners' language proficiency. The present study attempted to find out the development of vocabulary size of EFL learners at the tertiary level using cross-sectional study as the research design. The subjects were 216 students in the first, second, third and fourth years at the English Department of Universitas Negeri Surabaya. They took Vocabulary Size Test to estimate how many words they knew. The results showed that the freshmen knew more than five thousand words (X ̅ = 5425), and in average the vocabulary size increased by 238.8 words every year so that the fourth-year students knew more than six thousand words (X ̅ = 6141.3). A similar study is being conducted by using longitudinal approach to validate the above results.
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The present study attempted to compare the predicted readability computed using formulas and the actual readability expressed by the readers. Forty six students of English Department Unesa ranked five English texts from the hardest to the... more
The present study attempted to compare the predicted readability computed using formulas and the actual readability expressed by the readers. Forty six students of English Department Unesa ranked five English texts from the hardest to the easiest, then Spearman r was employed to correlate the ranks from the students' perspective with the ranks obtained from the formulas. The results indicated that these two were moderately correlated, suggesting that some texts which were predicted to be hard indeed tend to be considered challenging by the EFL readers.
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It is generally agreed that learning a foreign language entails learning the culture of the countries where this language is spoken as the first language. Therefore, students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) in Surabaya State... more
It is generally agreed that learning a foreign language entails learning the culture of the countries where this language is spoken as the first language. Therefore, students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) in Surabaya State University (Unesa) have to equip themselves with knowledge about the American, British and Australian cultures in order to build understanding across cultures and ensure accurate use of the language. To provide the students opportunity to learn the target culture, English Department at Unesa offers a course called Cross-cultural Understanding (CCU), in which the values, beliefs and customs of people in English-speaking countries are examined and then related to language use. In addition, the target culture is constantly compared and contrasted with the native culture where they were born and grew up, i.e. the Indonesian culture. This paper aims to describe how the Indonesian language and culture play a vital role in building understanding across cultures in CCU classes. For every topic discussed in this course, the students’ native language and culture are explored alongside the target language and culture. Some expressions and activities will examplify the similarities and the differences between these two.
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Learning a foreign language entails learning the culture where it is spoken. Although some educators consider culture as a peripheral element in language teaching, evidence shows that language is hardly culture-free. Therefore, it is... more
Learning a foreign language entails learning the culture where it is spoken. Although some educators consider culture as a peripheral element in language teaching, evidence shows that language is hardly culture-free. Therefore, it is essential that culture be embedded in foreign language teaching. This paper attempts to suggest a technique of utilizing movie videos in classes of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Indonesia to improve the learners' aural perception skills and promote cross-cultural understanding. This technique engage the learners into some motivating activities that enable them not only to comprehend English expressions, but also contrast their native (Indonesian) culture and the target culture in which English is spoken as a mother tongue. This technique of teaching listening has proved to be effective in developing listening skills in a foreign language and sensitizing them to the target culture, which is an inseparable aspect of language learning.
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Verbal reports have been extensively used as a research method in the inquiries on reading strategies. Despite criticisms directed toward this method, verbal reports remain a popular tool among researchers who are attempting to study in... more
Verbal reports have been extensively used as a research method in the inquiries on reading strategies. Despite criticisms directed toward this method, verbal reports remain a popular tool among researchers who are attempting to study in depth how human mind works while reading a text. It has been viewed as one of the most appropriate devices to access the online reading and therefore to unlock the unknown domain of this mental activity. The present paper addresses the advantages and the limitations of using verbal reports as experienced by the author when researching lexical processing strategies of learners who were reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. While verbal reports offer invaluable data in exploring mental processing, caution should be applied in the use of this method. This paper suggests a number of actions that need to be taken to minimize the limitations so that more valid data can be obtained.
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The use of movie videos as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Generally teachers play such videos without subtitles and have learners view them while attempting to comprehend the... more
The use of movie videos as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Generally teachers play such videos without subtitles and have learners view them while attempting to comprehend the conversations spoken in the target language there. However, it is also possible to present movie videos with subtitles in the native language. This paper describes how the English movies in a DVD format are used in FL listening classes in Indonesian context. These movie DVDs contain a feature in the form of subtitles in Indonesian language, which is the learners' mother tongue, and this feature is activated while the movies are being played. Some motivating learning activities are suggested for the previewing , while-viewing, and post-viewing stages of the lesson. This technique of using subtitled movie DVDs has received favourable feedback from the learners, and therefore could be considered effective in assisting them to learn English as an FL.
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For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia, encountering unfamiliar words can be a major roadblock in reading comprehension, especially if they happen to be keywords in a particular text. To overcome the vocabulary... more
For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia, encountering unfamiliar words can be a major roadblock in reading comprehension, especially if they happen to be keywords in a particular text. To overcome the vocabulary problem, learners generally resort to a dictionary, hardly realizing that other strategies exist. The strategy of inferring word meaning from context, for instance, seems to be ineffectively used by the learners, as revealed in a preliminary study conducted by the author. The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicates that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English) one. Two of them employ context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combine the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.
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Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being... more
Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being said, resulting in errors known as slips of the ear. Although these errors can sound very amusing, they provide more than entertainment as they have the potentials to reveal the listeners’ strategies in coping with the difficulties in perceiving utterances. This presentation aims to describe the slips of the ear performed by Indonesian university students who learned English as a foreign language (EFL). Analysis of the corpus consisting of 1008 data revealed that the EFL learners made phonological, morphological, lexical and sentential errors while attempting to make sense of the expressions spoken by native speakers of English. They misinterpreted the oral input by omitting, adding or substituting the sounds, morphemes, words and sentences.
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This paper attempts to analyse the call utilized by the street hawkers who sold snacks in Malang, a small town in East Java. The results indicate that their utterances could be classified into five categories. Most of them observed the... more
This paper attempts to analyse the call utilized by the street hawkers who sold snacks in Malang, a small town in East Java. The results indicate that their utterances could be classified into five categories. Most of them observed the Gricean maxims, a few flouted them, but none disobeyed them. In general the snack vendors could be considered conforming to the cooperative principle in offering their merchandise to the hearers or the customers.
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The present paper addresses the advantages and the limitations of using verbal reports in a study on the lexical processing strategies of learners' reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. While verbal reports offer... more
The present paper addresses the advantages and the limitations of using verbal reports in a study on the lexical processing strategies of learners' reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. While verbal reports offer invaluable data in exploring mental processing, caution should be applied in its use; consequently, a number of actions need to be taken to minimize the limitations to obtain more valid data.
Research Interests:
This paper describes the context cues used by undergraduates in guessing the meaning of unknown words.
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The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two... more
The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicated that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English) one. Two of them employed context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combined the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All but one of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The ease of comprehending a text—or readability—should be estimated by the teachers before they present it to the learners in the teaching of reading; otherwise, the text may be either too easy or too frustrating to read, decreasing the... more
The ease of comprehending a text—or readability—should be estimated by the teachers before they present it to the learners in the teaching of reading; otherwise, the text may be either too easy or too frustrating to read, decreasing the learners’ interest in the text and demotivating them to read further. To predict whether the text is of the right level of difficulty for the learners, the teacher may use his or her own subjective judgment, especially if he or she has ample experience in teaching reading and knows the learners’ reading ability very well. There has been mixed evidence about the accuracy of the teacher’s judgment in estimating readability, and the present study provides an additional piece of empirical evidence to this heap. This study aimed to find out whether the subjective judgment of the teacher correlated with the learners’ perspective in terms of the difficulty level of English texts. A lecturer in the English Department of Unesa ranked five texts from the easiest to the hardest, then asked her students (N = 41) to do the same procedure. Pearson Product Moment was used to compute the relationship between these two, resulting in negative, very high correlation (r = -.98). This finding demonstrates that the texts estimated to be harder to read turned out to be easier for the students, and vice versa. Some possible reasons for this phenomenon were explained, and it was recommended that broader spectrum of factors be considered when using subjective judgment to predict readability so that the results could be more accurate.
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Research Interests:
The present paper reports the challenges that the researcher had when teaching statistics to undergraduates majoring in the teaching of English and how to overcome them. It attempted to describe: (1) how to increase their motivation to... more
The present paper reports the challenges that the researcher had when teaching statistics to undergraduates majoring in the teaching of English and how to overcome them. It attempted to describe: (1) how to increase their motivation to learn statistics, and (2) how to improve their ability in statistical analysis. Approached qualitatively and quantitatively, this study was conducted by using mixed-method action research. The research subjects consisted of forty-one undergraduates attending the Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses class in the English Department, and were selected purposively. Data were collected by means of these instruments: participatory observations, exercises, focus group discussions and a statistics test. The results indicated that setting clear instructional goals and relating statistics to the undergraduates’ study and future duties in the teaching profession could increase their motivation to learn statistics. To improve their ability in statistical analysis, it was better for them to avoid using software immediately to analyze numbers; rather, they should learn to compute numbers manually while at the same time trying to find out what each term meant and how to interpret the results. Based on these findings, some implications for the teaching of statistics to the EFL undergraduates were described.
Building a strong argument in written form could be challenging for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for two reasons: they are still grappling with the target language and have little knowledge about the rhetoric in the... more
Building a strong argument in written form could be challenging for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for two reasons: they are still grappling with the target language and have little knowledge about the rhetoric in the target culture. This paper focuses on the latter, examining the problems that the Indonesian learners face when writing an argumentative text in English due to cultural differences. Twenty eight adult EFL learners who participated in a language training to improve their English proficiency were asked to write an argumentative essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, two paragraphs in the body and a concluding paragraph. In this paper the analysis was confined to the introductory paragraphs that they wrote, and the results showed that the way they organized the ideas to build an argument in the introductory paragraphs was influenced by their native culture to a certain degree. Rather than expressing their thoughts and opinions in a linear fashion like native speakers of English commonly do, some of them wrote their arguments by beating around the bush, making it harder for the readers to identify and understand these writers’ stance about a certain issue. Moreover, some others even avoided giving an overt argument in their paragraphs and embraced both contrasting views about a particular issue instead. Some implications for the teaching of writing argumentative text were proposed.
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This chapter describes two stages of a TESOL practicum at the State University of Surabaya, Indonesia. The first stage requires student teachers to participate in peer teaching and videotaped micro-teaching, as well as secondary school... more
This chapter describes two stages of a TESOL practicum at the State University of Surabaya, Indonesia. The first stage requires student teachers to participate in peer teaching and videotaped micro-teaching, as well as secondary school teaching practice during a semester break. This stage is part of an undergraduate degree in TEFL and takes place during the first semester of the third year of study. The second stage is available only to undergraduate degree holders and ends with a government-funded certification. The second stage grants certification and status as fully-qualified teachers, and requires that candidates attend an intensive pre-service teacher training at the university to develop detailed lesson plans, design engaging teaching materials, experience peer teaching, engage in classroom instruction at urban secondary schools, and conduct classroom-based action research. Prior to being awarded the government-required teaching certificates, pre-service teachers must also pass a compulsory competence examination set by the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education.