A digital library of language learning exercises

Recent years have seen widespread adoption of the Internet for language teaching and learning. Interactive systems on the World-Wide Web provide useful alternatives to face-to-face tuition, and both teachers and learners can benefit from the exercises available. However, although there is a wealth of suitable material, it is hard to find because it is scattered around the web. Moreover, teachers are restricted by the material that is available, and cannot provide their own. To tackle these problems we have constructed a digital library of language learning exercises that presents students with different kinds of exercise, and also lets teachers contribute new material. We first reviewed existing language learning systems on the web in order to develop a taxonomy of exercise types used for language activity. A prototype, ELLE, based on this taxonomy, provides various kinds of interactive exercises using material that teachers submit. The system has been evaluated by practicing language teachers

The Language Learning Strategies Used by Students of Merchant Marine Studies Polytechnics Makassar

This thesis aims to (1) to investigate the kinds of language learning strategies the merchant marine polytechnics students use in learning English, (2) to investigate the most dominant language learning strategies used by successful and unsuccessful students, and (3) to find out whether or not the successful students employ different language learning strategies from the unsuccessful students. The researcher applied descriptive quantitative method. The population of this research was the students of merchant marine polytechnics of Makassar in academic year 2014/2015.  The  sample  was  the  fourth  semester  students  of  nautical  study program,  class  C  which  consisted  of  30  students.  This  research  used  cluster random sampling technique. This research used 2 kinds of instruments; they were English skill tests and questionnaire. The research data was collected by using English skill tests and SILL questionnaire which were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistic through SPSS 20.0 for windows program.The result of the descriptive quantitative data showed that (1) the nautical students of merchant marine polytechnics used six kinds of language learning strategies namely metacognitive, compensation, social, memory, cognitive, and affective strategy (2) the most dominantly used language learning strategies among the successful students is metacognitive strategy and the most frequently used language learning strategies among unsuccessful students is social strategy (3) there is a difference in using language learning strategies between successful students and unsuccessful students. The six language learning strategies were employed by the students in learning  English.  The  successful  students  employed  two  kinds  of  language learning strategies; metacognitive and compensation strategy while the unsuccessful students employed four kinds of language learning strategies namely social, memory, cognitive, and affective strategy. Keywords: Language Learning Strategies, Successsful/Unsuccessful Students, Metacognitive, Compensation, Social, Memory, Cognitive, And Affective Strateg

A discourse analysis of figurative language used in English storytelling on BBC Learning English

This study aims to discover the kinds of figurative language used that describe the meaning of those figurative languages in English Storytelling on BBC learning English. This study uses a qualitative method with a descriptive analysis approach. For the data, the primary source of this study is Storytelling from BBC Learning English. Secondary sources include books, publications, journal articles, English encyclopedias, observations, and documentation relevant to the research. After analyzing the kinds of figurative language in Storytelling on BBC Learning English, the study found 15 sentences that involve figurative language in English storytelling. There are four kinds of figurative language: personification, metaphor, hyperbole, and simile. The most frequently used figurative language on BBC Learning English Storytelling is personification because figurative language is easier to describe the behavior of objects that resemble human activities. Personification contains five sentences, metaphor contains four sentences, hyperbole consists of 4 sentences, and simile contains two sentences. Further researchers should consider the differences between each type of figurative language used as a context for evaluating the topic, find figurative language on other English education websites such as VOA (Voice of America), and have background knowledge of literature, such as songs and their features

THE MOST DOMINANT LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES IN LEARNING SPEAKING ENGLISH OF THE MIDWIFERY STUDENTS

This research aims: to investigate the most dominant language learning strategies used by successful and unsuccessful students, and to find out the differences of using language learning strategies between successful and unsuccessful students in their speaking.The researcher applied descriptive quantitative method. The population of this research was the fourth semester students of midwifery study program at Universitas Indonesia Timur in academic year 2012/2013. The sample was the fourth semester students of Midwifery Study Program at Universitas Indonesia Timur, class E.11 which consist of 50 students. This research used cluster random sampling technique. This research used 2 kinds of instruments; they were speaking test and questionnaire.The data were collected through speaking tests and SILL questionnaire. The data from speaking test were analyzed by Heaton’s criteria level, whereas the data from questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 17.00 and Likert scale. The result of the descriptive quantitative data through speaking test showed that (1) the most dominantly used language learning strategies among the successful students is affective strategies and the most frequently used language learning strategies among unsuccessful students choose metacognitive strategy, (2)there is a difference in using language learning strategies between successful students and unsuccessful students. The six language learning strategies usually employed by the students in speaking; the successful students employ all kinds of language learning strategies while the unsuccessful students only employ four kinds of language learning strategies.Keywords:Learning Strategies and English Speakin

Learning Styles of Australian Teachers in Learning Bahasa Indonesia (Bipa) at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang

This research examines the learning styles (Fleming, 1987) – visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK) of Aus-tralian teachers in learning bahasa Indonesia (BIPA) at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. This research was undertaken to answer the following questions: (1) what kinds of learning styles performed by the Australian teachers in learning bahasa Indonesia at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang? and (2) what kinds of categories of each learning style mostly reflected by the Australian teachers in learning bahasa Indonesia at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang? The data were collected by doing short survey, classroom observations, questionnaires, and interviews with both students and teachers (Robson, 2002). The results of the study shows that (1) more participants were kinesthetic learners. Most of them learnt bahasa Indonesia best through a hand – on method, exploring the world around them, and often relying on what they could directly experience or perform; (2) Its categories mostly suited with the participants\u27 learning style: more time for outside learning, as the participants needed to know more about the language and practice it within its cultural context. Most of them enjoyed very much tasks which involve manipulating materials and objects. Finally, they also liked learning bahasa Indonesia through moving, doing, and touching

A Comparison of Young Children\u27s Writing Products in Skills-Based and Whole Language Classrooms

Whole language instruction and an emphasis on the writing process have had a significant impact on the teaching of writing. Many whole language teachers are already in practice, and more educators are moving toward this kind of teaching. However, comparative research on the value of whole language curriculum is limited. It is important to study children\u27s interpretations (Erickson and Shultz, 1992) as they are reflected in the written products they generate in different kinds of classrooms. We need to know more about the sense children make of their instruction, what they are learning about written language, and the kinds of writing they produce. The purpose of this article is to report on a two-year, descriptive study of eight, low-income children\u27s writing in skills-based and whole language instruction during kindergarten and first grade. Our focus was on the development of emergent writers in these two different kinds of instruction

Learning with Latent Language

The named concepts and compositional operators present in natural language provide a rich source of information about the kinds of abstractions humans use to navigate the world. Can this linguistic background knowledge improve the generality and efficiency of learned classifiers and control policies? This paper aims to show that using the space of natural language strings as a parameter space is an effective way to capture natural task structure. In a pretraining phase, we learn a language interpretation model that transforms inputs (e.g. images) into outputs (e.g. labels) given natural language descriptions. To learn a new concept (e.g. a classifier), we search directly in the space of descriptions to minimize the interpreter's loss on training examples. Crucially, our models do not require language data to learn these concepts: language is used only in pretraining to impose structure on subsequent learning. Results on image classification, text editing, and reinforcement learning show that, in all settings, models with a linguistic parameterization outperform those without

Application of Learning Strategies to Culture-Based Language Instruction

Learning strategy is one of the most important factors that determine the learning result. So, teaching learners to grasp certain kinds of strategies is a key factor which can promote the learning efficiency. This thesis discusses the learning strategies in the theoretical and pedagogical aspects, illustrates the significance of culture-based language instruction in second language teaching, and elaborates three ways to help students use appropriate strategies in their culture-based language learning