WHAT IS SO SCARY ABOUT LEARNING ENGLISH? INVESTIGATING LANGUAGE ANXIETY AMONG FILIPINO COLLEGE STUDENTS

Learning English as a foreign/second language is never a straightforward process. Several constraints may come along the way that tend to hinder students’ learning. Studies have shown that the successes and failures of L2 learners in an English language classroom are dependent upon various psychological and social factors including anxiety. This study examined the English language learning anxiety of Filipino college students. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety survey adapted from Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) was administered to a group of 150 students randomly selected from 5 programs at a private university in the Philippines to identify students’ anxiety level in terms of fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, fear of test, and anxiety of English class and to determine which factor is most probable to cause anxiety among them.. The results indicated that the students expressed different levels of anxiety among the four factors as majority provided answers ranging from neutral to strongly agree. However, it was discovered that fear of negative evaluation and communication apprehension were the most probable to cause anxiety among them. The study offers practical implications as to how L2 teachers can help students overcome their English anxiety and thus be successful in the learning of the target language

A Literature Review on Remedial Reading Teachers: The Gaps in the Philippine Context

Remedial reading teachers are forerunners in elevating the reading achievement of students in schools. In the Philippines, there has been a continual enrichment of the reading skills of struggling readers through the initiatives of remedial reading teachers. However, the country does not have clear policies on the identities, roles, challenges, and needs of such teachers. This paper presents a review of the literature on remedial reading teachers. The results revealed that remedial reading teachers performed various roles in schools and that the cultivation of the roles and duties of remedial reading teachers rely so much on different factors, some of which are knowledge and the skills that they have, philosophical views in education and the whole school community, the rapport that remedial reading teachers have with their colleagues, the support of the administrators to their personal and career developments, and provisions of the local government. It was also evident in the review that literature and studies are scarce regarding remedial reading teachers in the Philippines, thus, suggesting to explore on the what's and the how's of remedial reading teachers in a hope of creating clear policies that will strengthen their identities and support their professional developments

Preservice Teachers as Extra Milers: Lived Experiences in Teaching Emergent Literacy and Numeracy in an Online Radio Program

The present study explored preservice teachers’ lived experiences in teaching emergent literacy and numeracy in an online radio program of a Philippine elementary public school to fill a lacuna in online practicum experiences. Utilizing phenomenology as a methodological framework, preservice teachers’ firsthand experiences as online radio teachers were explored to acquire a better grasp of what they went through in developing their learners’ emergent literacy and numeracy skills. The finding of this study revealed three themes that underscored three stages of their practicum experiences: (1) Tuning In, (2) From AM to FM, and (3) Don’t Switch the Channel. The essence of their lived experiences offered insights that they are extra milers suggesting that their online practicum journey is a fulfilling yet challenging accountability for personal, professional, and institutional growth. The study offers policy recommendations for strengthening technology integration in teacher education programs and institutionalization of teacher educators’ technopedagogical knowledge and skills, redounding to knowledge and skills development of preservice teachers

L1 as a Tool for Dialogic Discourse in an ESL Classroom during Pre-Writing Stage

This descriptive-qualitative study investigated L1 functions in the pre-writing stage in the L2 context. It explored how L1 in the pre-writing stage built dialogic engagement as a form of empowerment necessary to engage in L2 writing. Grade 8 students conducted community interviews to gather local and national issues needed to elicit small group pre-writing discussions. Guided by the sociocultural theory of learning by Vygotsky and the dialogic model of Alexander (2010), results revealed that the speakers' L1 has significant roles in L2 writing. These identified classroom L1-supported discourses further build dialogic engagement among the participants, showing their empowered roles through problem-posing, referencing, reflecting, and problem-solving. Such L1-dialogic engagement further allows learners to penetrate social realities, which helps them to build critical awareness of their society. Data open implications for teaching English, specifically promoting critical language pedagogy in second language learning

Discursive construction of spiritual values and cultural standards in Sang Pemimpi Film

Spirituality is a contentious human phenomenon that encompasses personal, sociocultural, and transcendent interconnection. In Indonesian society, spiritual experiences are often associated with religion. They are also part of the cultural standards, the way of thinking, feeling, and behaving shared by most of a culture's members. This research aims to examine the spiritual and cultural values of Belitung's Muslim society through the Sang Pemimpi film. The research method in this study was critical discourse analysis, a qualitative approach based on a critical paradigm. This study combines Theo van Leeuwen's critical and multimodality discourse analysis techniques. Spiritual values and cultural standards are used as theoretical elements. The character in the film's text with the background of the Muslim society and the Belitung people's culture is the focus of this study. According to the film analysis, spirituality is formed by socio-cultural interactions in people's daily lives. The Muslim community in Belitung adapts well to religious and cultural differences in their social relationships with other ethnic groups, including the Chinese ethnic groups. According to the findings of this study, religiosity and communal domains are the aspects that appear the most in the film

No child left behind, literacy challenges ahead: a focus on the Philippines

The Sustainable Development Goal 4 has commenced a global mandate to provide equitable access to quality education for everyone. In the Philippines, SDG 4 inaugurates the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Policy. This brief argues that while the NCLB has ensured equal access to quality literacy education, it poses socioeconomic-based challenges, declining rate of parental involvement in their children’s schooling, overemphasis on standardized tests, and the lack of community involvement towards literacy programs. The Holistic Literacy Enhancement Program (HLEP) is proposed in this paper to help address these challenges to NCLB. HLEP presents policy implications that could assist the NCLB in more efficient and effective implementation: equitable resource allocation, parental and community engagement, and culturally and linguistically relevant assessment tools

Anxiety by COVID-19 Death Reports: Explanatory Study among Jakarta’s Muslim Young Adults

The convergence of technology has led to a mass appearance in digital users worldwide. News media must also distribute their news broadcasts using the new advanced technology. In addition, the initial lethality of COVID-19 has led Indonesians astray with the chaos at the beginning of the pandemic. The research aims to identify how COVID-19 news exposure by Republika.co.id can affect the increased anxiety levels of Jakarta’s young adults aged 15-24 years old. Quantitative research uses a positivistic paradigm and a survey method to collect the primary data, whereas secondary data is collected through past surveys related to the study. The collected data will then be tested for validity and reliability before both data variables are tested with the Correlation Test and Coefficient Determination Test. The research results with 100 respondents implicate that the COVID-19 Pandemic news exposure by Republika.co.id is highly correlated to the increase of anxiety levels of Jakarta’s young adults. The effect of this exposure is based at 23,6%, which is a moderate level. The other 76,4% causing the increase in anxiety levels were external factors that were excluded from this research topic

AUGMENTING SENIOR SECONDARY ESL LEARNERS’ READING SKILLS THROUGH EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Reading and comprehending a text or selection in a language that is different from one’s native tongue can be a daunting task to many English as a Second Language (ESL) learners due to several reasons. Hence, teachers’ instructional strategies play a pivotal role in developing students’ reading skills. This study used a quasi-experimental design to discover the effects of using explicit or direct teaching of metacognitive strategies on the reading skills of students—comprehension skills and vocabulary. Forty grade 11 ESL students from a Chinese–Filipino school in Manila were selected through convenience sampling to be participants of the study. The performance of the two groups in comprehension and vocabulary was compared through pre-test and post-test. Using two-tailed t-test of dependent means, the significant difference between students’ performance in the reading comprehension test and the vocabulary test after the intervention was determined. Based on the results, there is no question that one’s comprehension and vocabulary size could be improved using explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies. The study has practical implications to the teaching of reading among ESL learners. Recommendations for future research are also provided in this paper

Mapping Hate Speech Relationships Indonesia's Religion and State in Social Media

Social media has also become a public sphere for people to express all expressions, opinions, ideas, and feelings, including conveying hate speech. In Indonesia, there are many forms of hate speech, one of which leads to issues of racism and religious and state sentiment. This study will identify the problem of hate speech related to religion and the state on social media. This study is a descriptive qualitative study by taking data from Social Media Analysts using a query for hate speech words that have a relationship between religion and the state that are popular in Indonesia, namely the terms Kadrun and Cebong. The first result shows that around 52,290 thousand mentions containing hate speech using the word kadrun and 25,290 thousand statements using the word cebong as a form of negative response to issues that contribute to the background, the case of contradiction between religion and the state. The second religious issue has become a trending issue in the digital era and is most readily associated with political matters in spreading hate speech. Three Twitter media are one of the most frequently used social media platforms compared to other media in spreading hate speech by Indonesia's digital community. This research implies the development of perspectives from both labels to bring down the opposition's reputation during certain political events.