A SOCIOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECH ACT OF REQUESTING IN LOCAL ENGLISH COURSEBOOKS

The speech act of requesting is a speech act commonly found and used in daily conversations. It is an intriguing research topic of pragmatics, particularly pragmatics in materials development, which is a sub-topic of language teaching. Earlier studies of pragmatics in language teaching reported that English teachers tend to look down on pragmatic aspects when teaching the language, including being ignorant of sociopragmatic information about language use in English coursebooks. For this reason, this paper discusses the findings of a sociopragmatic analysis in a local English coursebook. A content analysis employing pragmatic and sociopragmatic theoretical frameworks and a pragmatic judgment task by a native speaker of American English was carried out to investigate the sociopragmatic information in the course book. Results indicated that it did not contain an adequate amount of sociopragmatic knowledge indicating sociopragmatic failure. Thus, it implies that the coursebook may not be reliable language input for pragmatic competence improvement

Language Teacher Assessment Literacy: A Current Review

HHalf of the language teachers’ time is spent on assessing students’ performance. Therefore, they should be literate to language assessment in terms of how to make a good test or knowing which method appropriate to assess their students’ learning. Without having assessment literacy, they may not be able to help their students achieve the best results of their performance. For this reason, the present study attempts to examine language teacher assessment literacy and how it has been measured. Besides, suggestions and recommendations for language teachers regarding assessment literacy are discussed in this study. A literature review was employed to conduct this research. Findings suggest that language teachers need more training on language assessment due to their lack of knowledge of language assessment. Although some of them are assessment literate, they do not practice the knowledge in their classroom. This implies that the training they need could be on how to select appropriate assessments for their students, how to design a test,  alternative assessments, and test specifications

An Analysis of Lexical Cohesion in Veronic Roth’s Novel“Divergent”

This thesis studied about an analysis of lexical cohesion in Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” by using discourse analysis. The thesis aims to find out kinds of lexical cohesion and to explain the functions of lexical cohesion that were performed by characters in the novel. The writer used descriptive qualitative method, because the data are in the form of words, phrases, and sentences. The data of this research are data from Veronica Roth’s novel “Divergent” which is published on March 2011, consisted of 381 pages which is devided in to 39 chapters. The technique of data analysis in this research is always linked to the theory, concepts, and method based on the theory of cohesion. The writer analyzed the data by using Renkema’s theory. The result of this research show that lexical cohesion which consist of reiteration is used in the text of Veronica Roth’s novel and each kind of lexical cohesion has different function. There are; repetition is expressed up to 15 times in the sentences. While synonym is 2 times, hyponym is 5 times, antonym is 7 times and the last metonym is 1 time. Based on the result, the writer concludes that repetition dominates in this novel. Therefore, the functions of repetition are to stree, to connected, to inform, to declare, to persuade, to describe, to express, to explain and to show the speaker situation. This research gives contribution to English students, lecturers, and people who are interested in analyzing about lexical cohesion, because this research can lead the reader understand the relationship of the words in the text

The Effects of Second Language Learning on First Language Production: A Code-Switching Study of an Indonesian-English Bilingual

As bilingual behavior, code-switching has always been an interesting topic to discuss. Milroy and Muysken (in Chloros, 2009:9) state that code-switching is probably the fundamental issue in research related to bilingualism. This paper discusses a code-switching study of an Indonesian-English bilingual who does code-switching very often when talking to an Indonesian who speaks English fluently and accurately. The data were taken from several sources: a chat in yahoo messenger, a chat in short messaging service (SMS), a conversation recorded in a mobile phone, a short paragraph written by the informant, and regular observation. The results of the research show the types of code-switching that appeared during the research are inter- and intra-sentential.

Integrating Cultural Awareness in English Language Teaching Materials

Over the past few years, English has increased itself as a lingua franca of international community. Due to this fact, various problems have arisen in English Teaching. They regard to several aspects of English, e.g. grammar or vocabulary. In this paper, I shall discuss the importance of Integrating Cultural Awareness in English Teaching Materials, which I think is one of the most complex problems in teaching English as an international language.To me, culture is inseparable with language. For instance, when my students and I are discussing houses, we also talk about cultural differences regarding houses and the furniture. Americans, for example, do not use a “gayung” when they take a bath. I explain the cultural differences and tell the students that not all words in Indonesian can be translated into English because of the cultural differences. Also, the meaning of rooms designed in an American’s house is different. In Indonesia, the meaning of living room could be “ruang keluarga” whereas it is actually “ruang santai".To sum up, the materials used for English teaching should cover cultural awareness as the speakers of English not only come from the English-speaking countries, but they are also from the non-English speaking countries. Keywords: Cultural Awareness and English Language Teaching Material

Discourse Analysis and English Language Teaching

In the past, English language teaching (ELT) put more emphasis on the teaching of structure of the language. Meaning and contexts seemed to be neglected. However, over the past few years, the trend has changed. Grammar and structure (language forms) are not the single element of language learned in English language learning. Context should be taken into account when teaching and learning a language.  In this paper, I shall discuss the relationship between contexts and language teaching, particularly English language teaching. In other words, this paper discussess discourse analysis in regard to ELT. Keywords: discourse analysis, English language teachin

Raising Pragmatics Awareness: How to Raise Conversational Implicature Awareness through Movies

Learning a language is not merely learning its grammar. There are some other factors which should be covered in language learning, e.g. language in use, or meaning and communication. In other words, L2 learners of English not only need to reach grammar competence, but also pragmatic competence. Unfortunately, pragmatic competence is rather neglected as language learning and teaching, most of the time, puts emphasis on grammar competence. Hence, in this paper, I would like to discuss the importance of integrating pragmatic competence, in this case, conversational implicature, in English language teaching and learning materials. A previous study, conducted by Manowong (2011), reported that non-native speakers of English have difficulty in interpreting conversational implicature. Thus, teachers should make great efforts to help the learners raise their conversational implicature awareness. One of the most effective ways to raise learners’ awareness on conversational implicature is by making use of authentic materials. Movies could be great sources to help learners raise their conversational implicature awareness. Therefore, in this paper, I would like to propose a model of materials which integrate some scenes of a movie that might be useful for teachers and learners in English language learning and teaching.  Keywords: Raising pragmatics awareness, conversational implicature, movie

Hedging Devices in ‘Monavie Juice’ Testimony

Culture has a significant influence on how people treat illnesses. Indonesians, for example, believe that traditional healing can help them cure their illnesses. One of the traditional or alternative healing booming in Indonesia is a drink made of fruit or vegetables. This kind of drink is called juice. To convince people that juice is effective enough to cure an illness and to persuade people to buy the product, persuasive testimony is needed. Linguisctically, when discussing persuasive texts, we can relate them to powerful and powerless language. According to Blankenship and Holtgraves (2005: 4), powerless language refers to the use of linguistic features such as tag questions, hesitations, disclaimers, hedges, polite forms, etc. in a text, while powerful language does not denote these features. Hedges can be words like probably, kind of, sort of, and possibly (Carli, 1990; Gibbons, Busch, & Bradac, 1991; Holtgraves & Lasky, 1999; Hosman, 1989; Hosman, Huebner, & Siltamen, 2002 cited in Durik, Britt, Reynolds, and Storey, 2008: 218). Hedges can also be words like approximately, roughly, somewhat, quite, often, or occasionally (Salager-Meyer, 1994: 154). This paper shall discuss what hedges appear in ‘Monavie or Acai Active Blend Juice’ testimony as there are many types of hedges used in different discourse. Keywords: Culture, persuasive testimony, hedging devic

Language Acquisition: The Interaction between Innate Capacity and Language Input

Numerous studies on how language is acquired have been conducted for years and myriad theories on language acquisition have put attempts to explain how human beings acquire language, e.g. language learning through imitation, reinforcement, association, and the innateness hypothesis. This paper shall describe the language acquisition process through the innateness hypothesis. It argues that language is acquired through an interaction between innate capacity—an innate ability to produce words and utterances—and language input, the language acquired from the human surroundings. Keywords: language acquisition, language input, innate capacit

Understanding Pragmatics and Pragmatic Competence in ELT Materials

Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with utterance and speaker meaning. With regard to English language teaching (ELT) materials, pragmatics may deal with function in English or language functions—that is what or which language expression commonly used in particular situations. Speaking about function, there are some pragmatic aspects which we should be knowledgeable of. The present  paper attempts to  discuss what the pragmatic aspects are and their significance in the teaching of language functions through ELT materials. To discuss these pragmatic aspects, a library research was deployed by referring to previous studies on pragmatics and pragmatic competence in language teaching, including the author’s investigation on pragmatics in ELT materials. The results indicate that it is imperative for English language teachers to understand pragmatics in ELT materials as it helps them to teach language functions which are pragmatically effective or functional.Keywords: language functions, sociopragmatics, pragmalinguistics, meta-pragmatic information, ELT material