Attitudes of Acehnese People towards Acehnese Proverbs in Relation to Education

This study is aimed at describing proverbs from the Acehnese society and explaining the attitudes of people towards those proverbs in relation to education. The methodology applied was ethnographic using a questionnaire to obtain data. A number of 14 respondents who varied across ages, educational background and occupations participated in this study. These respondents included three housewives, two university students, one fresh graduate, one junior high school and two senior high school students, one trader, two senior citizens, one teacher and one civil servant. Based on the findings, the attitude nowadays of the Acehnese has changed radically. Out of eight adults, only three were actively using proverbs in their daily lives and teaching their children those proverbs. All of the young people, who ranged from fourteen to twenty three years old, did not use proverbs. In relation to education, proverbs are used to teach the society about courtesy, advices (e.g. for choosing companions and friends in life, child rearing, socializing/conversing, and not to mind other people’s business), and shyness as part of faith. Furthermore, a significant language shift has occurred in Aceh which has impacted Acehnese oral literature whereby more parents today prefer Indonesian to be taught as their children’s first language (Alamsyah, et al., 2011). Consequently this has put the Acehnese proverbs under the threat of becoming extinct in their own society.

The Analysis of Social and Discourse Deixes in the ‘Bird Box’ Novel by Josh Malerman

Many representations of human thoughts, ideas, opinions, and messages are portrayed in diverse situations of the character in literary works. Among the works are such as novels. Deixis is concerned with the encoding of many different aspects of the circumstances surrounding the utterances and within the utterances themselves. This study aims to find out the type of social deixis and discourse deixis used in the novel ‘‘Bird Box’’ written by Josh Malerman, published in 2014. The research design used is the qualitative approach with document analysis as the data collection technique. Cruse’s theory (2000) is applied to analyze the data related to the types of social deixis and discourse deixis found in the novel. The results of this research show that there are 475 data containing social deixis and discourse deixis, with 317 data of social deixis (of these, 307 data are related to relational social deixis and 10 data are related to absolute social deixis), and 158 data of discourse deixis. Understanding deixis, especially while reading works like novels, is a means to understanding the plot as well as the characters portrayed and to reduce the amount of ambiguity. Moreover, using the proper deictic words will help foreign language learners, such as English non-native students, in their efforts to produce effective communication, whether in spoken or written forms. Keywords: deixis; social deixis, discourse deixis; nove

The X Factor in Understanding Listening Comprehension Skill

This research was aimed to find out factors affecting students’ challenges in listening comprehension as perceived by students at SMAN 1 Calang. This is a descriptive qualitative study. The samples of this research were selected by using purposive sampling. There were 75 eleventh-grade students who participated in this research. Questionnaire and interview were designed as research instruments. The questionnaire consisted of 30 items grouped into five categories, namely students’ listening comprehension challenges related to factors attributed to the content and linguistics features of the listening text, factors attributed to the speaker, factors attributed to the listener, and factors attributed to the physical setting. Moreover, the interview consisted of three questions asking students’ opinion about listening comprehension, challenges they faced in listening comprehension activity, and factors that caused those challenges. The result indicates listening texts, speaker, listener, and physical setting were the main sources of students’ listening comprehension challenges. The dominant factor affecting students’ challenges in listening comprehension was the physical setting such as the noise from environmental surroundings, with the percentage of 89.6%

Group investigation technique for better reading comprehension skill

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of using Group Investigation Technique (GIT) in teaching reading comprehension at the second grade class of a junior high school in Banda Aceh and to identify the most difficult reading comprehension aspect that students at that level faced. An experimental design was used and the data were collected through tests as so for the instruments. There were two tests, namely pre-test, and post-test, applied in the form of multiple-choice questions. The population of this study was all of the second-grade students. Then, two classes were randomly chosen as the samples: experimental class and controlled class. The findings indicated that there was an improvement in students’ achievement in the experimental class. The study applied gain-score calculation in which the mean for the experimental class was 0.57, while the controlled class was 0.22. The researchers also used the t-test to prove the hypotheses. The result showed that t-scoret-table or 34.761.68, which means the H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected. To conclude, the students who were taught reading comprehension by using GIT achieved significant improvement. Besides, after the determination of the mean of the post-test and pre-test scores which were divided into four aspects of reading comprehension: main idea (MI), vocabulary (V), detailed information (DI), and reference (R), the result showed that MI=25.91, V=28.64, DI=25.00, and R=31.59. Therefore, it was found that the most difficult aspect of reading comprehension was detailed information (DI. Meanwhile, time management becomes a paramount concern in implementing the GIT due to its nature of complexity

Applying Metacognitive Strategies in Comprehending English Reading Texts

Comprehending English text is still regarded as hard for students. Metacognitive strategies have been considered effective in overcoming reading difficulties by many researchers. The objective of this study is to describe the application of three types of metacognitive reading strategies (global strategies, problem solving strategies, and support strategies) used by the students of Senior High School (SMAN) 1 Ingin Jaya, Aceh Besar. It is a descriptive qualitative study. Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) questionnaire suggested by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) was used to collect the data. The result of the study revealed that the students generally showed moderate awareness of all strategies and held a preference of using Problem Solving Strategies, followed by Support Strategies and Global Strategies respectively. The study also showed that high performance students used the strategies more frequently than low performance students. It can be concluded that the more students aware of using metacognitive reading strategies, the better their performance is in reading skill. Therefore, teaching the students to use metacognitive strategies can be a solution in enhancing students’ reading ability

PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVES OF VERBAL HUMOR IN AN AMERICAN SITCOM

Purpose of the study: This study aimed at finding out the types of illocutionary acts which create humor effect in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory Episode The Thespian Catalyst (S04E14). Methodology: A descriptive qualitative study with the pragmatic approach of illocutionary acts suggested by Searle (1975) was undertaken by observing the utterances spoken by all the characters in the sitcom. Main findings: The results of the study showed that there were four types of illocutionary acts found in the sitcom; assertive, directive, commissive, and expressive. Those illocutionary acts also flouted the maxim of Cooperative Principles, i.e. quality and relevance. In conclusion, it can be known that the humor that occurred in the sitcom is the result of the way the characters conveyed illocutionary acts that also have flouted the maxim as in the Cooperative Principles. Applications of this study: This study is expected to be a reference for other studies in the field of pragmatics particularly in illocutionary acts. Novelty/Originality of this study:This current study, however, would discuss The Big Bang Theory sitcom by using the Illocutionary Act framework proposed by Searle (1975)

Analysis of Social and Discourse Deixes in the ‘Bird Box’ Novel by Josh Malerman

Many representations of human thoughts, ideas, opinions, and messages are portrayed in diverse situations of the character in literary works. Among the works are such as novels. Deixis is concerned with the encoding of many different aspects of the circumstances surrounding the utterances and within the utterances themselves. This study aims to find out the type of social deixis and discourse deixis used in the novel ‘‘Bird Box’’ written by Josh Malerman, published in 2014. The research design used is the qualitative approach with document analysis as the data collection technique. Cruse’s theory (2000) is applied to analyze the data related to the types of social deixis and discourse deixis found in the novel. The results of this research show that there are 475 data containing social deixis and discourse deixis, with 317 data of social deixis (of these, 307 data are related to relational social deixis and 10 data are related to absolute social deixis), and 158 data of discourse deixis. Understanding deixis, especially while reading works like novels, is a means to understanding the plot as well as the characters portrayed and to reduce the amount of ambiguity. Moreover, using the proper deictic words will help foreign language learners, such as English non-native students, in their efforts to produce effective communication, whether in spoken or written forms. Keywords: deixis; social deixis, discourse deixis; nove

CROSS-LINGUISTIC INFLUENCES OF MALAY THROUGH CARTOONS ON INDONESIAN CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE USE IN THE HOME DOMAIN

The Malay cartoons that air on Indonesian television channels are now popular among children in Indonesia. The shows Upin Ipin, Boboboi, and Pada Zaman Dahulu are especially popular with Acehnese children. Initial observations found that these cartoons have played a great role in the increased use of contemporary Malay in their Indonesian. Thus, this study discusses the cross-linguistic influences of Malay from cartoons in Indonesian children’s language use in the home domain. Data were collected through recordings and field notes. Some steps based on the framework by Lacey and Luff (2007) were taken to analyze the data. The results were transcribed and sifted to distinguish the significant data. The recording and its transcription were then re-checked. The last step was categorizing the data into cross-linguistic influences based on Ringbom (1987). These influences include borrowing, hybrids, phonetic influence, and relexification. The results showed the presence of only two aspects of cross-linguistic influences: borrowing and phonetic influences. Borrowing was the most frequent aspect, followed by phonetic influence. Relexification and hybrid did not appear in the data. Nevertheless, there were other cross-linguistic aspects that were found in the data, including intonation, parenthetic remark, and interjection. In the broad-spectrum, the initial mimic on the Malay cartoon characters has expanded to employment in the language use of the children while speaking Indonesian. This study is expected to contribute in some ways or another towards the development of sociolinguistics, especially in cross-linguistic influence in children’s language use. Indonesia and Malaysia are neighboring countries, and language contact between the two countries is inevitable and evident. Hence, the study on the influences can benefit sociolinguistics, especially when investigating language change in the future

A DEMOCRACIA, O LIBERALISMO E A ESQUERDA: perspectivas e contradições

Resumo: Este artigo trata das articulações entre a esquerda, a democracia e as diretrizes liberais que têm alcançado hegemonia no Ocidente nas últimas décadas, sendo determinante para o domínio classista burguês e sobre quais as perspectivas para a reconstrução da democracia em bases realmente igualitárias.Palavras-chave: Democracia, liberalismo, esquerda política.DEMOCRACY, LIBERALISM AND THE LEFT: perspectives and contradictionsAbstract: This article deals with the joints between the left, the democracy and the liberal policies that have achieved hegemony in the West in recent decades, being decisive for the bourgeois class- field and on the outlook for the reconstruction of democracy in really an egalitarian basis.Key words: Democracy, liberalism, political left