Analysis of validity and reliability of English formative tests

This study was conducted in order to analyze the English formative tests made by the English teacher of grade VIII of SMPN-4 Mentaya Hulu based on the characteristics of a good test. The indicators to be analyzed were validity and reliability of the test. The validity covered the content and construct validity. The writer applied descriptive method in conducting this study. The population and sample of this study was the English teacher-made tests for the grade VIII of SMPN-4 Mentaya Hulu in the first semester of academic year 2008/2009. The writer analyzed 2 English formative tests as the representative of all English formative tests in the first semester of academic year 2008/2009. Based on the result of the data analysis, the writer found that the English formative test conducted on October 2008 belongs to high validity in its content validity and excellent validity in its construct validity. The English formative test conducted on November 2008 belongs to low validity in its content validity and high validity in its construct validity. While the English formative test both conducted on October 2008 and November 2008 are unreliable

The implementation of contextual teaching and learning in teaching English

The main purposes of this study are (1) to describe the implementation of contextual teaching and learning (CTL) in teaching English, and (2) to investigate the teacher’s difficulties in implementing CTL in teaching English at the seventh grade students of SMPN-1 Palangka Raya. It was used qualitative method. The subject of this study was an English teacher of SMPN-1 Palangka Raya. It was used observation, interview and documentation to collect the data, and for data analysis it was used data reduction, data display, and conclusion. The findings show that (1) the implementation of CTL implemented by the teacher was through some components of CTL which were applied more frequently than others. The questioning, learning community, and modeling were frequently applied. (2) The problems faced by the teacher were the condition of the students who still made some noise, the large amount of students in the class, little attention from the students, and the shyness from the students to speak up

Research problems in S-2 theses

The study is intended to identify, classify, evaluate, describe, and explain the quality and the patterns of research problems in the S-2 theses of the English Education Program at Islamic University of Malang. Qualitative approach and evaluation designs were used. The data of the study were 135 of S-2 theses of the English Education Program at Islamic University of Malang from 2003-2008. The study reveals that the majority of the research problems, as written in the theses, indicate clarity, researchability, variables being involved, areas, designs, non-factual data or information, and significance

Appropriate writing assessment, how do we do it properly?

This paper describes the assessment upon the 3rd semester Business Administration students’ writing work of State Polytechnics Samarinda. Results show that there are weaknesses done by the English lecturer of this Polytechnics in evaluating his students’ work: 1) Instructions given to his students were not clear for examples: how many pages or how many words they had to write, resulting in a very short paragraphs, a very long paragraph written by students, 2) criteria of assessment were not clear, reflected by his own judgment and interpretation in form of words like: good, fair, excellent; 3) Students were not given a feedback on what they had written in form of the first draft and neither were they told to rewrite the first draft for final product.

The effectiveness of picture chart media on students’ English vocabulary

The study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of using picture chart media on students’ English vocabulary. The study belonged to pre-experimental study by applying counterbalance procedure to collect the data. The study was conducted at the class VII-5 at the SMPN 1 Palangka Raya. The number of the sample was 40 students. This study was restricted to focus on teaching vocabulary especially in classification of vocabulary. To answer the research problem, the t test for correlated was applied. The research findings showed that teaching vocabulary by using picture chart media gives effect toward the seventh grade students’ English vocabulary. The mean score of posttest reached higher score than the mean score of pretest (X=57.105 t table =2.021