THE DEBATE ON WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK: ITS IMPORTANCE AND IMPLICATION FOR ACADEMIC WRITING INSTRUCTION IN EFL SETTINGS

More than a decade after Truscott (1996) claimed that written corrective feedback (CF) should be avoided, the debate on written CF is still ongoing. Although studies have been conducted and their results mostly support the advocates of written CF, issues with their methodology left practitioners in doubt. This article reviews extensive literature and the debate on written CF. Studies over the last decade have shown that, under certain circumstances, written CF could be beneficial for learners. Therefore, teachers should consider many factors before deciding to provide written CF to their students. The literature also indicates that further studies about the effect of written CF on syntactic complexity of learners’ writing are still needed. Likewise, similar research in different context is also necessary. Keywords: written corrective feedback; error correction; writing; English as a foreign languag

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION LEVEL

While the literature has shown that vocabulary mastery affects reading comprehension, only a few Indonesian researchers investigated this. To narrow this gap, this study aims to: 1) measure Indonesian university students' knowledge of receptive vocabulary, 2) measure their reading comprehension level, and 3) investigate the association between the two variables. The participants in this study were 168 first-year university students from a private university implementing English-medium instruction (EMI). We utilized the updated vocabulary level test to measure their receptive vocabulary size and the IELTS academic reading test to measure their reading comprehension level. The participants mean scores on the updated VLT were 28.73, 26.63, 22.27, 22.42 and 23.12 at the 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and 5,000-word level respectively. Only 34 out of 168 participants could be considered to have a sufficient vocabulary size. On average they scored 16.08 (SD = 7.96) on the IELTS academic reading test, which was roughly equivalent to 5 in IELTS band score. We also found strong and significant correlations between the participants’ scores on the IELTS academic reading test and the updated VLT at all levels, with the largest effect size on the 4,000-word level (r = .71, p .001, BCa 95% CI [0.64, 0.78], r2 = .50). These findings indicated that the participants did not have sufficient vocabulary knowledge and had a low reading proficiency, potentially inhibiting progress in their academic pursuits. We discussed the findings in relation to the teaching of English in EFL, ESL, and EMI contexts. Practical implications of the findings are also discussed

Exploring Past Tense Usage in EFL Hospitality Students’ Narrative Essays

This study attempts to analyze the differences of morphological features used by hospitality students in indicating tenses while writing narrative essays. Four participants of different CEFR levels enrolled in a private university in Jakarta were asked to write short essays of a story how they ended up choosing hospitality major. The method utilized discourse hypothesis, in which the morphological features indicating past, non-past, and no verb were categorized and counted. The results show that the most advanced students produce the most variety of tenses, while the lowest produce the least variety of tenses. The results indicate further interesting discussion on how interlanguage paradigm may take more important role in pedagogical approach of EFL classes for vocational students

An Analysis of Personality Traits of Indonesian Start-Up Entrepreneurs Based on Social Media Footprint

The objective of this research was to analyze the personality traits of successful Indonesian start-up entrepreneurs whose businesses were in the top 200 based on start-upranking.com. Using IBM Watson Personality Insights, the Big Five personality traits from 27 samples were measured. The Big Five personality traits include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and mean comparison. Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the difference in personalities between genders, while the Spearman test was utilized to identify the correlation between education level and personalities. The results revealed that Indonesian start-up entrepreneurs tended to be more open, more conscientious, moderate in extraversion, less agreeable, and more neurotic (O+, C+, E, A-, N+). There was no personality difference in different genders and no correlation between education level and personality traits either. The results of this study should serve as a point of departure for future studies on start-up entrepreneurs’ personality traits in Indonesia. Additionally, future studies are suggested to employ a larger number of samples from different countries. Keywords: angel investors, big five personality traits, Indonesian entrepreneurs, social media analysis, start-u

Investigating the Relationship between Test-Taking Anxiety and Test-Takers’ Performance on the IELTS Test

Although there is a growing body of research indicating that anxiety relates to foreign language learning, the correlation between anxiety and learners’ performance on a high-stakes testing context has not been fully explored. To date, studies investigating the relationship between test-taking anxiety and test-takers’ performance are not only limited in number, but also partial in nature as most of them only looked at one aspect of test-takers performance, i.e. listening, speaking, or writing performance only. This study is aimed at investigating the relationship between test-taking anxiety and test-takers’ performance with a holistic view, taking into account the test-takers’ performance on the listening, reading, speaking, and writing modules of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS™) test. The participants in this study were 15 government officials taking an IELTS test preparation program. Two instruments were utilized in this study: (1) a set of test-taking anxiety questionnaire items to measure the level of anxiety and, (2) the official IELTS™ test to measure test-takers’ performance. The results indicated that there was a weak to moderate correlation between test-taking anxiety and the test-takers’ performance across different modules of the IELTS test. These results corroborate the findings from previous studies

THE INVESTMENT OF MIGRANT WOMEN IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Migrant women, especially married migrant women, are perhaps one of the least discussed groups in the field of second language acquisition. To date, there have been limited studies on this group of learners. This is unfortunate because our inability to understand this group would restrict us from catering to their language learning needs. Because of this reason, we decided to conduct a systematic review to understand what the literature has revealed about their investment in language learning and how gender influences their decision to learn a second language. An in-depth review of 24 empirical studies published from 1995 to 2021 reveals that the new living conditions affect their self-positioning in family and society, gendered identities play a critical role in making a woman invest or not to invest in learning a second language, and gendered identities relevant to their family roles (e.g. being a mother or a wife) appear to be the most common and powerful factors in deciding their investment in learning a second language.Keywords: migrant women, language learning, motivation, investment

KESULITAN DALAM MENULIS DALAM BAHASA INGGRIS YANG DIHADAPI OLEH MAHASISWA DARI BAHASA INGGRIS PROGRAM STUDI UNIVERSITAS BENGKULU (Studi pada Semester Kelima Mahasiswa Program Studi Bahasa Inggris dari Universitas Bengkulu pada 2009/2010 Tahun Akademik)

Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menyelidiki kesulitan siswa saat menulis dalam bahasa Inggris, yang ditinjau dari sudut pandang ketatabahasaan. Subjek penelitian ini ialah mahasiwa Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris yang berjumlah 36 orang. Semua subjek telah duduk di semester 5 dan telah menempuh kelas Structure I sampai Structure IV serta Kelas Writing I sampai Writing III. Dengan menggunakan tes menulis sebagai instrument penelitian, peneliti menemukan bahwa 53, 79% dari total kesulitan siswa adalah subject-verb agreement dan sisa 46,21% adalah parallelism. Temuan tersebut mengindikasikan bahwa siswa masih mengalami kesulitan dalam menulis dengan baik. Maka dari itu, peneliti menyarankan diadakannya langkah-langkah untuk meningkatkan pemahaman mahasiswa mengenai aspek tatabahasa dalam penulisan

Hospitality Students’ Pragmatic Competence in Apology

When dealing with guests’ complaints using English language, hospitality frontliners at hotels in Indonesia will also rely on their pragmatic competence to satisfy the guests. This research is aimed at analyzing the strategies used by hospitality students in handling guests’ complaints especially in terms of apologizing and whether there is a significant difference between those with part-time job experience and those without the experience. The study utilized quantitative method by collecting responses (n =22) using Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT). Using the categorization of apology strategies (Cohen, 1986), the results show that the most frequently used strategies are expressing apology and offering repairs. Other strategies such as admitting responsibility and explaining are used much less frequently, while promise of forbearance was never used. Furthermore, after performing t-test, the 13 participants who took part-time jobs (M = 1.76, SD = 0.25) compared to the nine participants in the control group (M = 1.38, SD = 0.33) demonstrated significantly better at using strategies in apology for handling complaints, t(14) = 2.87, p = .01