Enhancing students’ vocabulary knowledge using the Facebook environment

This study investigates the effectiveness of using Facebook in enhancing vocabulary knowledge among Community College students. Thirty-three (33) Community College students are exposed to the use of Facebook as an environment of learning and enhancing their English vocabulary. They are given a pre-test and a post-test and the findings indicate that students perform significantly better in the post-test compared to the pre-test. It appears that Facebook could be considered as a supplementary learning environment or learning platform or a learning tool; with meaningful and engaging activities that require students to collaborate, network and functions as a community of practice, particularly for introverted students with low proficiency levels and have low self-esteem

Assessing intercultural competence (IC) of state junior high school English teachers in Yogyakarta

Intercultural competence (IC) is a concept whichthat has gained importance in recent years. It seems to be transparent, accepted as well as used both in formal and informal situations. This concept can be defined as an individual’s capability to communicate effectively and appropriately with other people who have different cultures, norms, and values. In order for a person to be labeled as an intercultural speaker with intercultural competence, s/he should have the competence of intercultural attitude, skill, and knowledge. However, this competence has not been noticed and assessed comprehensively inside and outside academia, particularly in the setting of English language teaching. Hence, this study aims to assess and determine the level of intercultural competence of state junior high school English teachers in Yogyakarta. This study involved 260 participants taken using cluster random sampling from the whole population of 790 state junior high school English teachers. Data were collected using a valid and reliable questionnaire. Afterward, the data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and the Kruskal Wallis test, along with a prerequisite of normality. This study revealed that the level of IC of state junior high school English teachers in Yogyakarta was high. Moreover, it has been found that their level of intercultural attitude (IA), intercultural skill (IS), and intercultural knowledge (IK) were categorized as high. In other words, these results indicate that the state junior high school English teachers in Yogyakarta have a capability to mingle with diverse people using a language effectively and appropriately. Importantly, this study showed that there were no significant differences in their IC level according to where they teach in four districts and one city. These mean that the locations where they teach do not affect their level of intercultural competence

Implementation of school-based curriculum as perceived by secondary school teachers of English

Information about Curriculum 2013 has seemed to make many EFL teachers feel anxious. This anxiety is assumed to happen due to the unwillingness of the teachers to implement the new curriculum because they have not yet even implemented the previous curriculum (KTSP) in their classrooms optimally. This study was aimed primarily at investigating the implementation of KTSP covering three important components: preparation, application, and evaluation by 107 secondary school teachers of English. To collect the data, “KTSP Implementation Questionnaire” was used. The data collected based on the teachers’ own perceptions were analyzed in relation to their education level, teaching experience, certification status, and KTSP socialization involvement. The results showed that (1) 62% teachers confessed that they had not yet optimally implemented KTSP although all of them had been involved in its dissemination program done by the government; (2) there was no correlation between either education level or teaching experience and the implementation of KTSP. However, (3) there was a significant correlation between teachers’ certification status and their (i) KTSP preparation, (ii) teaching experience, and (iii) involvement in dissemination program activities

DEVELOPING ACADEMIC WRITING IN A BUSINESS ORIENTED UNIVERSITY

Abstract: This research investigated the development of language choices in the Academic writing of students at an English medium university in Thailand. The first part involved looking at the writing in the first semester of their English program at the university. representing the level of the students’ writing on entry into the university. Seventy two samples of first year students’ writing were collected, but only 12 were randomly selected for this study in order to compare their progress over a period of 14 weeks (first semester). The second part of the research looked at the writing of students’ journals at the end of their second semester of their first year after the implementation of a writing program based on research originally developed in Australia (Derewianka, 2003). A third part of the research investigated the development of students’ writing towards the third year in university with specific reference to their academic writing in the business English program. The focus on Business English was mainly because the university was well known in this field of study. The framework for the analysis of the students’ writing was based on a systemic functional approach (Halliday and  Matthiessen, 2004). In order to provide insights into the meaning and effectiveness of the text, a discourse grammar needs to be functional and semantic in its orientation. This paper discusses the development of the Nominal Group (NG) in the students’ writing in THEME position, as this was felt to be a major issue in the development of academic discourse. However NGs in the RHEME would also be looked, as this was a part of the text structure, where complex nominal groups would be expected as part of the NEW information.  The resulting analysis showed that initially the students had a limited knowledge of the different genres and used an equally limited range of lexical and grammatical choices. After the implementation of a new teaching approach in the second semester of the first year, some improvement could be observed. During the third year of the English program, improvement in the writing of genres used in “business” writing, such as Reports, was clearly evident

Theme markedness in the translation of student translators

A good translation product should be able to reflect the typical characteristics of the target language in terms of its function and structure. One of the structure features that can show that the target text (TT) is free from the influence of the structure of the source language (SL) is its theme structure. As there are both marked and unmarked themes, this would be considered as one of the options to characterize the TT structure. This is a research-based article aimed at finding out the extent of theme markedness in the student translators’ TTs. This research used content analysis design, taking 15 student translators as the participants. They were asked to translate two news item texts from English as the source text (ST) into Bahasa Indonesia as the TT. The data were collected using Translog. Based on the data analysis, it was found that: (i) simple unmarked theme (SUT) was the theme most frequently used in both the ST and the TTs; (ii) Indonesian news item texts were characterized by the frequent use of marked themes. This finding indicates that Indonesian news item text puts more emphasis on how the events presented in the text can be easily caught by the readers as SUT is characterized through the use of short clauses with low lexical density. This study concludes that English and Indonesian news item texts share a small number of similarities as most of their clauses are composed of simple marked themes (SMT) but the similarities are outweighed by a large number of differences

Addressing challenges in the practice of critical literacy in EFL classrooms: A new framework

The practice of critical literacy in EFL contexts answers the need for EFL pedagogy that considers the complex social and political dimensions of foreign language learning. Many teachers are still discouraged from practicing critical literacy due to the many challenges they encounter.  In this paper, we outline a practical framework that can help teachers navigate the complexity of practicing critical literacy in EFL contexts.  The framework consists of four resources of critical literacy practice, namely curriculum and standards, students’ experiences and background, local social issues, and text selection.  The classroom activities include text analysis and critique, bridging the word and the world, and social action. Particular issues in EFL pedagogy are addressed with implications for the practice of critical literacy