Students' Anxiety in Speaking in Front of the Class

This study investigated the factors that cause students to feel anxious during impromptu activities in speaking class. Qualitative descriptive methods were employed. An openended questionnaire was used to collect the data. Nine students from class A in the second semester of the academic year 2019/2020 took part in this study. They were majoring in English education at one of Southeast Sulawesi's higher education institutes, and they had speaking anxiety when performing impromptu activities in speaking class. The study's findings indicated that students had feelings of nervousness, fear and worry, and a lack of vocabulary during impromptu activities. The findings also demonstrated their reasons for feeling anxious and how they overcame their anxiety. This research found that teachers used impromptu activity performance to create and provide a learning environment that made students feel less nervous about speaking in front of the class. Keywords: kw

Developing Students' Willingness to Communicate Using Information Gap Activities

The goal of this study was to increase students' willingness to communicate by incorporating information gap activities into the teaching and learning process. Three meetings were held to conduct the research. A total of 31 students took part in this study. The instrument used was students' reflections. The information was gathered in a qualitative manner and triangulation was carried out. The data analysis revealed that (1) implementing information gap activities in classrooms while teaching English increased students' willingness to communicate, particularly their behavioral intention to communicate; (2) incorporating information gap activities increased students' motivation and confidence to communicate in English; and (3) implementing information gap activities in the form of pair and group work activities increased students' motivation and confidence to communicate in English. Furthermore, information gap activities can be used as a teaching strategy in English classes to assist the teacher in effectively managing the class and retaining students' attention during the learning process. Keywords: information gap activities, students' willingness to communicat

National Qualifications Framework in Practice

Claimed by some to be a successful policy tool to connect education with the industrial world, a body of research has documented issues on adapting and adopting the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), a worldwide policy phenomenon. However, there are fewer studies on implementing this framework in initial teacher education (ITE). Therefore, to fill this gap, this paper explores and contextualises the enactment of NQF within the ITE sector from a curriculum ergonomics perspective, a novice concept of analysis on the interactions between curriculum design and its use. This paper contributes to the existing research on curriculum studies, especially in the ITE sector. Implications and recommendations are also discussed