DEVELOPING ENGLISH MATERIALS FOR EFL LEARNERS AT ISLAMIC JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The purpose of this research was to develop an EFL course book for the first semester learners at the Islamic junior high school in Indonesia. The material development includes some procedures of need analysis, material development, expert validation, material revision, try-out and final revision. Based on the results of questionnaires distributed to 106-second graders, the interviews done to the teachers and field notes taken from a document of the syllabus, this research revealed that most of the students and English teachers require English instructional materials embracing religious and general knowledge. After validated by the experts and tried-out to the students, this research finally produced English materials that were supplemented by a teacher‟s guide, student‟s worksheets and a CD containing listening materials

DEVELOPING LISTENING MATERIALS FOR THE TENTH GRADERS

The needs survey shows that English listening skill of the students in the tenth graders of Indonesian Islamic High School or Madrasah Aliyah is not well developed. Consequently, the listening instructional materials based on standard of content 2006 used in the classes need to be advanced. The researcher used only one try out of the product, second revision in this study was the seventh step of Borg and Gall model operational product revision. This was done based on the result of the try out, and the final product (the production of the new materials). The development used in this study consists of needs survey, developing the materials, experts and teacher‟s validation, revision, try out, second revision and the final product. The product is found acceptable for the tenth grade students

SMART STRATEGY TO BOOST STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Reading as one of language skills plays significant roles in the teaching English as a foreign language. Since the teacher still uses the conventional way to teach reading, students‘ ability in reading comprehension seems still unsatisfactory yet. So, teacher should explore and develop new strategies. One of strategies in reading comprehension that can trigger our students to attain that purpose is SMART (Self Monitoring Approach for Reading and Thinking) strategy. This study is developing SMART strategy to boost the reading comprehension achievement of the ninth grade students. The research applies a collaborative classroom action research design in which the researcher and the collaborative teacher work together in preparing a suitable procedure of SMART strategy, designing the lesson plan, determining the criteria of success, implementing the action, observing, and doing reflection. The finding indicated that SMART strategy was successful to enhance students‘ motivation to be actively involved in the instructional process. The improvement on the students‘ participation was 75% in Cycle 1 and 87% in Cycle 2