AN ANALYSIS OF EFL WRITING DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERGRADUATE ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT STUDENTS: AN INDONESIAN CONTEXT

This research aims at finding out: 1) kinds of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) essays written by the fourth semester students of the Undergraduate English  Education Department, School of Teachers Training and Educational Sciences, Nusa Cendana University; 2) how the students develop as EFL student writers; 3) elements of EFL writing that the students can produce well; and, 4) elements of EFL writing that the students fail to produce well.  This research using desctiptive-qualitative method was conducted from March to September, 2019.  Its research subjects were the fourth semester students of the department.  Since the department has four classes, the researchers chose two classes purposively as their research subjects.  The instruments used to get the data were writing tests conducted twice, that is, the first one on 18 March and the second one on 18 September, 2019.  In doing the first test, the students were each  asked to individually handwrite an essay whose topic was free for an hour.  In writing their essays,  the students  were not allowed to use any dictionary and they were not allowed to discuss it with their friends.  After it was written, the researchers collected the essays, asked the students for clarrification on their unclear hand writings.  Six months later, that is, on 18 September, 2019, the same essays were handed back to be revised/edited by their relevant writers.  The time used to edit/revise each essay by each relevant writer was an hour and they were not allowed to use a dictionary or to discuss it with their friend(s).  In addition to these writing tests, the researchers also studied the students’ curriculum document to have an insight into any courses they join that could have influenced their writing development.  The focus of  the researchers’ documentary study was on subjects related to EFL writing.  The data were analyzed descriptively focussing on four major elements of EFL writing, namely: content; organization; word choice, sentence structures, and paragraph structures; and, mechanics of writing (i.e. punctuations and spelling).  The data collected were analysed descriptively.  It is found that students produced three major kinds of written products, that is, informative, expressive, and a combination of both, but none was included in creative writing.  The students had two distinctive ways of development, that is, good and poor development in terms of content; organization; word choice, sentence structures, and paragraph structures; and, mechanics of their writings (i.e. punctuations and spelling).  The elements of EFL writings that develop well and/or poorly vary among the research students: some develop well, for example, in relation to content, but poor on word choice and other elements of EFL writing

ONLINE ENGLISH SENTENCE CONSTRUCTIONS BY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF THE ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, NUSA CENDANA UNIVERSITY

This research aimed at finding out: 1. kinds of sentences constructed by semester VI undergraduate students of the English Education Department, School of Teachers Training and Educational Sciences, Nusa Cendana University; 2. their strengths and weaknesses in constructing those sentences; and, 3. solutions to their weaknesses in constructing English sentences.  To achieve those aims, this research used descriptive-qualitative research paradigm.  The phenomenon to be investigated is how students joining TEFL course constructed certain sentences in communicating with their lecturer or in doing their tasks.  The research was done at the English Department of Nusa Cendana University from March 2021 to October, 2021.  The instruments used to collect the data were students’online documents and interviews.  The data were analysed descriptively based on English grammatical accuracy.  It was found that, first, kinds of sentences the students constructed were simple, complex, compound and compound-complex sentences including sentences which are discursive on their own, that is, sentences as complete discourses themselves like “Thank you, Sir!”.  Second, the students’ strengths varied: they used various sentence patterns with various words, tenses, structures, and mechanics.  Third, their weaknesses were sentence structures, tenses, vocabulary, and mechanics which were not always correctly used.  Some sentences, for example, had no subjects or verbs.  Fourth, to solve their weaknesses, they say, for example, that they must study harder, memorize English structure, and be more active in reading, writing, speaking and listening in English

Analisis Berita Pencalonan Gubernur Dan Wakil Gubernur NTT Tahun 2018 Pada Surat Kabar Victory News: Sebuah Kajian Wacana Kritis

This study aims to analyze the text, the practice of citizenship and the socio-cultural context in the news text of the election of the governor and vice governor of East Nusa Tenggara in 2018 in the Victory News newspaper. The theory used in this study is Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis to analyze texts, the practice of producing and consuming texts, and socio-cultural practices on texts. The method used is descriptive qualitative method. From the data analysis, conclusions can be drawn. First, the VN news text features the 'promise' vocabulary which tends to be used to weaken the pair of candidates for governor-vice-governor besides Viktory-Joss. Transitive sentences tend to be used in the headline of VJ packages while other packages tend to be intransitive sentences. The use of negative sentences and metaphors tends to be used to benefit VJ packages. The news texts used by Victory News tend to be descriptive and argumentative in nature, characterized by the use of meaningful causal conjunctions. Second, Victory News discourse tends to raise news about the campaign, vision and mission, the strength of character and background that supports the Viktory-Joss package. Victory News tends to be political, which means that the interests of the owners of these newspapers are more dominant than balanced reporting. Third, Victory News ideology is positive imaging by highlighting the VJ package so that the public positively evaluates the vision, missions, and actions taken by the packag

REDEFINING OUR FORMAL EDUCATION

In this article we argue that our formal education has failed, to a certain extent, to create good quality graduates, namely, those whoare not only competent and independent, but also good in terms of such character traits as “grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude,optimism, and curiosity” (Tough, 2012: 76). Such a failure has been caused by some educational practices which are not pedagogically soundlike: institutional manipulations leading to our students’ highly consumeristic behaviours;nondialogical education; teacher-centered approach;misunderstanding of teaching and learning; and, centralised education.To prevent such a failure, we suggest that our formal educational systembe redefined so that it will be capable of creating good quality education that, in turn, can help our students be more competent, independent, andexcellent in terms of the character traits mentioned. It can be done by applying such methods as Ivan Illich’s learning webs, Paulo Freire’sdialogical education, and student-centered education in which teaching is seen as a means of faciliating students’ learning based on theirpotentials, interests, and learning needs. In this sense, it is important that school curricula be also designed by each educational institution andthat each individual instituion has its own independent management system and networking system to make it more successful in achieving itseducational goals

MAKING TEACHING AND LEARNING MORE EFFECTIVE DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND BEYOND

In this article, we acknowledged that it is formal teaching and learning that has contributed much in creating a great civilization as we have it in the last few centuries.   Yet, we argue that teaching and learning activities in our formal schools  in general, during this Covid-19 pandemic in particular, are no longer that effective as shown by such facts as students who are not active in learning, who drop out of our school system, and who fail in schools and beyond.  To overcome this problem,  we insist that the following concepts be implemented in schools: 1. teaching should be no longer seen as transferring knowledge, skills, and values, but it has to be viewed as facilitation of students’ learning so that they can be indepent, healthy, and socially and environmentally great; 2. learning should not also be seen as memorizing what teachers teach, but to a process of real development within students themselves so that they can be independent with great characters in and after schooling; 3. dialogical education should be the basis of our formal education; 4. students’ potentials, interests, and needs should be the focusses of our formal education ; and, 5. educational evaluation should be more comprehensively done, that is, it should focus on  students’ cognition, skills, and affection, rather than on their cognitive aspect alone

FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI RENDAHNYA KECAKAPAN BERBICARA MAHASISWA PROGRAM STUDI BAHASA INGGRIS

The main purpose of this research is to find out the factors affecting the poor speaking skill of semester four students at the English Department, Faculty of Teachers Training, Artha Wacana Christian University, Kupang. The research was conducted in the Academic Year 2013/2014 to the fourth semester students who had passed the lectures of Speaking One, Speaking Two and Speaking Three. The participants of the research were the students with the low marks ranked from the lowest level where twenty students were taken as the research subjects. The research result shows that there are twelve factors affecting the students’poor speaking skills: psychological factors, poor vocabulary-related factor, peer-related factors, pronunciation related factors, grammar related factor, personality factor, L1 interference related-factor, teacher-related factor, teacher’s poor teaching method, environmental factor, motivation factor, and cross-cultural factor. Those are the main factors that have contributed to the speaking skills

AN ANALYSIS OF SPONTANEOUS ENGLISH CONVERSATIONS AMONG SECOND SEMESTER STUDENTS OF THE ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF SAN PEDRO UNIVERSITY IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2017/2018

The aims of this study are describing the topics conversed by the second semester students of the English education department of San Pedro University; analyzing what are students’ conversations for; analyzing how students converse with their friends; and analyzing what are students’ strengths and weaknesses in English conversations. To reach these objectives, this research was designed in a descriptive qualitative study. All the data were obtained through observation, documentation (recordings), and interview. The data was collected and analyzed through descriptive approach. And after analyzing the data on the basis of research questions dealing with English conversations among the students, the researcher finds that there are different topics that conversed by the students, and all those topics are very contextual with the real life of students; or in other words, the topics present what students’ lives are. The students did English conversations in order to develop their ability to speak English confidently and pronounce English words correctly; encourage them to use appropriate grammar and vocabulary in English speaking; help them to produce and organize their ideas logically; and develop their communication competence such as oral presentation and story-telling. There are several findings deal with how do students converse with their friends: they do their conversations with big motivation; they begin their conversations with good starting point; they present good turn taking in their conversations; they present good cultural act in their conversations; they conduct their conversations with low accuracy; they conduct their conversations with low fluency; they present cohesion and coherence in their conversations; and they end their conversations with good closing point. And in conducting English conversations, there are strengths and weaknesses. The strengths found in students’ conversations are: students have big motivation in doing English conversations, using very simple vocabularies in their conversations; conversations run spontaneously and naturally; more reactive or responsive in doing conversations; creating good use of conjunctions and determiners; and giving good extended answers to the questions appeared in conversations. While the weaknesses found in students’ conversations are: students are still poor in vocabulary, still weak in using proper grammar, pronunciations and intonations are not so good affected by local language so much. &nbsp

CHARACTERISTICS OF FORMS AND MEANINGS OF VERBAL EXPRESSIONS ABOUT GOD’S EXISTENCE IN SABUNESE

Sabu Raijua society is a society that is polytheism. They believe many Deo 'Gods and Goddesses' in their lives. They believe that Deo 'God and Goddess' has a different role. Every god and goddess has the character, form and meaning contained in each name. In general, the names of Gods and Goddess in accordance with their role, there is no name that refers to his name. Gods and Goddesses in general have good character, patience, loyalty, helpers, protectors, guardians, and maintainers

THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF WRITING IN INDONESIAN: A CASE STUDY OF A PRIMARY SCHOOL

This case study is about the teaching of writing in an Indonesian state primary school, that is, in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara Province. It aims at finding out: 1) how writing in Indonesian is taught in the research school; 2) how competent the students are in writing in Indonesian as the results of their teachers’ teaching of writing in Indonesian; 3) proper teaching teachniques done in order to better the athmosphere of the teaching and learning of writing in the research school. The method used was a case study with the school as a research object and the teachers teaching Indonesian writing in the school and their students from grade I to grade VI learning to write in Indonesian as reseach subjects. This study was done from July to November 2017. The data collected through interviews, observations, and documentary studies were analyzed descriptively. It was found that the teaching and learning of writing in the school was traditionally done, that is, it was not to improve students’ writing in Indonesian, but to improve other skills like reading, speaking, and listening. Despite such a traditional method in the teaching and learning of writing in Indonesian, it was found that the students could write generally well in Indonesian. The teachers in the school believe that they need to do some changes in order to ensure that their students can write well in Indonesian like: “joining more courses/trainings on the teaching and learning of writing for publication;” continuing their formal study/degree; providing more teaching facilities so that it is much easier for them to teach writing, to revise, to edit, and to publish their students’ writings; and, working hand in hand with fellow teachers to improve their students’ writing competence