English

Citation, an indispensible aspect in academic writing, has recently been receiving considerable research attention. This present study empirically delves into citation practices in Master’s theses written by Indonesian student writers. This study employed corpus-based approach. Applying a purposive sampling, there were 7 exemplary theses included in this study. From those theses, it generated 305 citations which then were built as the corpus. A corpus toolkit AntConc3.4.3w was chosen to assist the analysis. Types of citations were analyzed based on Thompson and Tribble’s (2001) framework. Corpus analysis on types of citations revealed that Verb Controlling was more favoured; while Reference form was totally absent. Since citing contributes to succesful writers, this study suggests that citation practices particularly types of citations need to be inculcated in the classroom to help the student writers develop citation skill

Successful Indonesian startups’ product blogs: A digital genre analysis and its pedagogical implications

Blogs can be deemed as an alternative digital media which have been strategically employed for business communication. One of the realizations is product blogs. As startups, which are identically linked to digital media, have been skyrocketing in number, product blogs play an integral role to accommodate their business communication. In writing an article for the product blogs, startups often open an internship vacancy for, among others, polytechnic students majoring English for business communication. However, generic structure of a product blog article is quite different from academic essays. There is a need to equip the students with adequate product blog article writing skills before they embark on internship. This study aims at empirically delving into generic structure of successful Indonesian startups’ product blogs. To achieve the aim, this research employed corpus-based research methodology. There were 33.430 tokens of product blogs from two unicorn startups. The framework for analysis was adapted from Askehave and Nielsen (2005). The findings show that there were three moves in the corpus, namely contextualizing product, detailing product, and soliciting response. Each move consisted of steps which were categorized into reading mode and navigating mode. The findings lead to pedagogical implications—inculcating the moves to polytechnic students majoring English for business communication—as an attempt to link and match between vocational pedagogy and industry requirements

Successful Indonesian startups’ product blogs: A digital genre analysis and its pedagogical implications

Blogs can be deemed as an alternative digital media which have been strategically employed for business communication. One of the realizations is product blogs. As startups, which are identically linked to digital media, have been skyrocketing in number, product blogs play an integral role to accommodate their business communication. In writing an article for the product blogs, startups often open an internship vacancy for, among others, polytechnic students majoring English for business communication. However, generic structure of a product blog article is quite different from academic essays. There is a need to equip the students with adequate product blog article writing skills before they embark on internship. This study aims at empirically delving into generic structure of successful Indonesian startups’ product blogs. To achieve the aim, this research employed corpus-based research methodology. There were 33.430 tokens of product blogs from two unicorn startups. The framework for analysis was adapted from Askehave and Nielsen (2005). The findings show that there were three moves in the corpus, namely contextualizing product, detailing product, and soliciting response. Each move consisted of steps which were categorized into reading mode and navigating mode. The findings lead to pedagogical implications—inculcating the moves to polytechnic students majoring English for business communication—as an attempt to link and match between vocational pedagogy and industry requirements

Employing the Picture Series Strategy to Improve the Writing Ability of the Eighth Graders of MTs Surya Buana Malang

ABSTRACT   Anyassari, Nugrahaningtyas Fatma. 2010. Employing the Picture Series Strategy to Improve the Writing Ability of the Eighth Graders of MTs Surya Buana Malang. Thesis, Undergraduate program in English Education State University of Malang. Advisor: Dr. Johannes Ananto Prayogo, M.Pd, M.Ed.   Key Words: Picture Series, Senyum Itu Sehat rubric, Narrative   Class of 8A in MTs Surya Buana felt that writing in English was a hard task to do. They had to think of many things, such as spelling, punctuation, tense, and word order. When they had to start writing, most of the eighth graders were both idle and confused of what to write. As a result, the students' writing products were not sufficient to assess. They got low score in this case. Based on rubric employed in the preliminary study, the students got 2,95; 2,91; and 2,47 as the mean of content, organization, and language; respectively. This is in line with what many scholars state-that writing is the most complex skill amongst others. However, writing skill based on Depdiknas (2006) is one of skills that should be taught in Junior High Schools in Indonesia. Regarding the importance and the problems happening in practice, this research was conducted to improve the students' ability in writing narrative by employing picture series strategy. To do this, the series were taken from Senyum Itu Sehat rubric in daily newspaper Jawa Pos. The reasons of choosing the particular series were ubiquitous, inexpensive, easy to prepare, contextual, and amusing. Furthermore, the series had not been utilized in the particular school before this research was conducted. This research was conducted in MTs Surya Buana Malang. The school is located at Jalan Gajayana IV/ 631. The subject of this research was class of 8A 2009/2010 academic year which consisted of 29 students varying from 13 females and 16 males. Classroom Action Research (CAR) was chosen as the methodology. Therefore, the research was done through four stages namely planning an action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting on the observation. In order to gain data, four instruments were utilized. They were observation checklist, questionnaire, rubric, and field notes. The instruments were to get collaborator's reflection, students' feedback, students' writing scores, and the researcher's reflection; respectively. After the data were gained, they were analyzed quantitatively by calculating the mean and qualitatively by data sensemaking. It took two cycles to meet criteria of success. In Cycle I, which consisted of three meetings, the students performed well. They showed positive attitude towards writing ability. The students who used to be confused felt awakened by the picture series so that they could have thoughts of what they were going to write. The writing scores in Cycle I were increasing from the preliminary study. The mean of content, organization, and language were 3,43; 3,41; 3,2; respectively. From the treatment in Cycle I, 90% of the students were good in content, 93% good in organization, and only 73% good in language. Since the criteria of success told that each aspect had to reach 90% and one aspect which is language had not met the criteria, Cycle II was conducted. In Cycle II, the students were exposed to write with good punctuation. Two branches of punctuation matter which were focused on were capital letters and full stop. Moreover, to promote the students' cognitive aspect the last pictures of each series employed were omitted. The students could make their own ending based those incomplete picture series. After four meetings, the students performed well in writing ability. It could be seen from the mean of content, organization, and language. They were 3,51; 3,46; 3,47. More than 90% of the students were good in them. Moreover, they performed positively since they were not confused and idle in the beginning of writing. Most of them were inspired to make stories by the picture series. The result of this research improved the writing ability of the eighth graders of MTs Surya Buana Malang. They were not reluctant to start writing because they could easily generate ideas to write. The picture series assisted them. Moreover, the teaching methodology utilized helped them in writing process. They were inductive style, teaching punctuation, narrative scaffolding, personal guidance and reinforcement. It was recommended to the English teachers to employ the picture series taken from Senyum Itu Sehat rubric from daily newspaper Jawa Pos to teach writing especially narrative to the students of junior high schools. However, careful selection should be done first. The series should be easily understood and should reflect narrative structure. For other researcher, it was suggested to conduct similar research in higher lever, senior high school or vocational school levels. Different methodology and genre could be employed.

Featuring Content Writing in the Classroom

Content writing has been gaining much attention. As many emerging enterprises go online, job vacancies for content writers are ubiquitous. Consequently, classroom activities, at polytechnics to be specific, should adjust with the current shift. This study aimed to describe content writing as a project in a Writing 3 class. The class consisted of 20 second-year students from the D4 English for Business and Professional Communication program. During a 5-week project, each student created a dummy business website on either Google sites or Blogger and performed as the main writer, contributor and editor. The business foci relied on their own interests which varied from fashion to merchandise and creative media. The results revealed that students were able to create excellent content for their websites. Pedagogical implications of this study may be to encourage designing a syllabus and instructional materials to teach content writing. It is suggested that future researchers include teachings on how to employ keywords in articles, and conduct interviews or surveys with actual content writers or related industries to support the course design.  Keywords: content writing, English for business communication, ELT&nbsp