CRITICAL READING 13

A CRITICAL READING OF DEVELOPING ACADEMIC WRITING

IN A BUSINESS-ORIENTED UNIVERSITY

J.A. Foley

Graduate School of English, Assumption University, Thailand

Published by Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Vol. 2 No. 2, January 2013, pp. 168-186

Nowadays, every field of science deals with English. English as an international need to be required by the student to acquire higher knowledge. As a result, teaching English become a important term in transferring knowledge. Thus, the teacher have to develop the student to have preference in learning English.

In the higher level of education ,English has been taught in specific field such as academic writing. Academic writing is a subject focus on the academic form of writing such as genre text, essay, scientific article, and so on. In the process of writing, it provides many steps and the student should pass the steps simultaneously.

There are many researches about academic writing for instance: the research conducted by Foley (2013). The research investigated the development of language choices in the Academic writing of students at an English-medium university in Thailand. The purpose of this study was to see what effect the implementation of a genre– based approach to writing might have on the development of “academic” writing of university undergraduates. The focus was on the nominal group in Topical and Marked Topical themes position.

The result of his study showed that the students have limited knowledge of genres. They also have narrow lexical and grammatical choices. Furthermore, after implementing the approach of genre based in teaching learning, there are some improvements. They have written a draft text of report.

Based on the finding above, we can learn that writing subject needs to be taught by appropriate teaching strategy. The teacher should develop strategy that make the students understand easier about what they learn. The teacher also can guide the student to write continuously until they can write individually.  

CRITICAL READING 12

A CRITICAL READING OF STUDENTS’ READING PRACTICES AND ENVIRONMENTS

Aiza Johari

Amelia Alfred Tom

Affidah Morni

Siti Huzaimah Sahari

Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Sarawak

Published by Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Vol. 3 No. 1, July 2013, pp. 17-28

Motivating student to practice reading everyday becomes challenging activity. Students have different interest in reading. They preferred to learn another activity that funnier to do. This problem is supported by poor literacy atmosphere in their home. Usually parents do not aware with their children activity in the home. The parents believe that in the school, their children have got much knowledge.

Nowadays, there are many studied conducted to reveal that problem. One of the studies was conducted by Johari et.al. (2013) about students’ reading practice and environment. The study aimed to resolve the issues of students who seem to find reading to be unbearable. They wanted to compile students’ reading reason and their home reading environment. The study placed in one of the urban schools in Sarawak, Malaysia consisted of 120 secondary school students.

The result of this study shows that reading is their last hobby. They actually know the importance and the role of reading activity in learning process but they have no sufficient time in practicing reading at home. In reading activity, they prefer to choose reading material such as comics, story books, magazines, etc. furthermore, their parents give the freedom to read book or not in their home. It means that the parents are not aware to their children literacy.

From the result above, we can learn that parents have big role in creating comfortable reading atmosphere in the home. Reading practice become funny activities if they place it as their hobby. It has implication to the parents and teachers.  Parents should be aware in supporting their children reading hobby. Moreover, teachers can provide reading log to control the student reading practice.

CRITICAL READING 11

A CRITICAL READING OF CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING APPROACH TO TEACHING WRITING

Intan Satriani

Emi Emilia

Muhammad Handi Gunawan

Indonesia University of Education

Published by: Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Vol. 2 No. 1, July 2012, pp. 10-22

Teaching writing cannot be separated with the context of content. The student should be able in constructing meaningful paragraph. It will not be success if they do not understand what the context of the content itself. Furthermore, teacher should apply a creative strategy to promote students interest in writing.

According to Nydam (2000), CTL is an appropriate approach in teaching English writing. CTL emphasized in the process and content of writing. The students that have familiarity in context will be easier to deliver the message from their writing product to the reader. They know what actually readers want then, the written communication will run effectively.

According to Satriani, et al. (2012), CTL in teaching writing process was successful to improve student writing skill especially in recount text. There are some significant improvements in schematic structure, grammar, and graphic picture. They collect the data through observation, interview, and documentation. The data were analyzed qualitatively in the form of case study. This study conducted at second graders of a Junior High School in Bandung.

Based on the study above, we can also use CTL approach to teach our students to promote their literacy sense. This technique is available to be applied in senior high school where teaching writing become one of the hardest subject in English. it will open students’ mind that writing actually can be acquired easily if the teachers know the appropriate and the effective approach use in teaching process.

CRITICAL READING 10

CRITICAL READING OF READING HABITS AMONG STUDENTS AND ITS EFFECT ON

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: A STUDY OF STUDENTS OF

Micheal Owusu-Acheaw

Koforidua Polytechnic, Koforidua, Ghana

Agatha Gifty Larson

University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

University Of Nebraska – Lincoln 2014

Reading habit is  an activity that executed simultanously. It attained to the consistency work in understanding the massage of the text. Reading implicated high academic achievement of the students. It not only has effect to the academic achievement but also promote students to reach excel life (Bashir and Mattoo, 2012).

According to Acheaw and Larson reseach, reading habit had influence of academic performance, and there was a relationship between them.  The study was con

ducted in in Koforidua Polytechnic situated in the Eastern Region of Ghana. They used quantitative study design and questionnaire instrument to collect the data.  The finding revealed that majority of the student argue that reading was important. Their reading material focused on the subject they were learning. This aimed to passed examination with high score, and then it showed good result.

            From the research above, it can be infered that focusing reading habit toward particular subject will help the students have good comprehension about their academic subject. their academic performance also lead the possitive impact. Thus, it required the teacher to motivate the student to keep on reading not only the academic material but also supported material. It is important because to be advanced learner, the student should have good reading comprehension about that. Besides that, we as the students should minimize the laziness then produce active reading to encourage higher achievement.

            

CRITICAL READING 9

A CRITICAL READING OF TEACHING WRITING THROUGH READING INTEGRATION

Luu Trong Tuan

Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance-Marketing, Vietnam

Journal of Language Teaching and Research

Published By: Academy Publisher

Vol. 3, No. 3, 2012

Writing is a skill reflected reading comprehension because reading and writing have mutual effect. Writing reinforces comprehension of cognitive information manifested in a text to read (Kucer, 1985). It means that teaching reading should be integrate with reading. The student will be a good writer if they have good reading comprehension.

Some previous studies have deal with this term such as the study conducted by Tuan 2012. He study about teaching writinf through reading integration. The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which Steve Peha’s read-like-a-writer approach is beneficial to EFL learners and thereby to attain a better way to teach integrated reading and writing courses.

This study used experimental quantitative design. Thus, test and survey questionnaire are the technique used to collect the data from the sample.  The sample is took from two classes of sixty-three full-time EFL students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance-Marketing.

The result showed that problems facing the fourth-year students of Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance-Marketing in writing essays was rather the same implications as the mutual understanding between the teachers and the students which helps the teachers design their lesson plans suitable for the students’ needs.

We can learn from the study above that teachers play an importan role in delivering the student understanding about writing. they should prepared well what actually students’ need. Teacher also need to stimulate the students to be an active people in integrate reading and writing so, it will decrease time consuming in constructing word of the text.

CRITICAL READING 8

CRITICAL READING OF CHINESE EFL UNDERGRADUATES’ ACADEMIC WRITING: RHETORICAL DIFFICULTIES AND SUGGESTIONS

Xiaoyun Bian

Xiaohong Wang

Published by Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Vol. 6 No. 1, July 2016, pp. 20-29

Academic writing become a popular research field to be investigated recently. it happened because academic writing is the requirement subject should be mastered by advanced learner. In the process of learning academic writing, both teacher  and student found some difficulties. Based on that problem, many research aim to reveal what the difficulties are.

One of the newest research was conducted by Bian and Wang. Their research aimed to investigate rhetorical difficulties faced by Chinese EFL undergraduate academic writer and suggestion from the supervisors. The difficulty of this study was categorized into two: Process-related difficulties (during the process ) and product-related difficulties (error find in final written product).

They use qualitative design to dig in-depth the information about its difficulties. Thus, interview and documentation were the technique of collecting data used to get supervisors and students’ perspective and comments draft. The participant of the study are senior students and their thesis supervisors from an English Studies Department at a university in Beijing, China.

The finding of this study divided into three parts.  1) finding from supervisors’perspective in process-related difficulties were limiting the topic, creating effective paragraphs, creating a logical sequence of ideas, and appropriately using coherence devices, focusing on thesis topic. While in the product-related difficulties, two supervisors perceived that their students’ process-related difficulties persisted, then one supervisor perceived that final thesis draft was not problematic rhetorically. 2) finding from students’ perspective in process-related difficulties were remaining on the topic, developing effective paragraphs, sequencing ideas. While in the product-related difficulties were broaden thesis topic, irrelevant not effective paragraph, full of empty word. 3) finding from supervisor’ comment draft in process-related difficulties were using appropriate cohesion and coherence device. Furthermore, related to the suggestion,  the supervisors and students in this study all referred to teacher-student communication when asked to provide suggestions for dealing with rhetorical difficulties.

From the finding above, we can learn that writing academic work (thesis) is challenging to do. There are many step that should be mastered by the student  and the supervisors in teaching learning process. We should pay more attention in the topic of the thesis. The supervisor should know well what topic of student thesis to build the theory supported the topic.  The student should be aware in constructing appropriate paragraph related to the topic. and the student also have to be an active person to. 

furthermore, to minimize the error of thesis final draft, between student and supervisor should have good communication discussion. This is in with Wang and Yang (2012)’s study indicated that, to build good supervisor-student communication, students have to make good preparation before meetings with supervisors, actively negotiating with their supervisors, and take a positive attitude towards supervisor-student negotiation

CRITICAL READING 7

 

CRITICAL READING OF READING HABITS AND PREFERENCES OF EFL POST GRADUATES:

A CASE STUDY

Noorizah Mohd. Noor

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Published by Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics,

Vol. I No. 1 (July 2011)

                Nowadays, student centered becomes popular strategy in English Language Teaching (ELT). Teachers prefer to be a guider than a teacher in the learning process. In the learning process, reading is very important part in getting information and construct knowledge. Furthermore to get good comprehension about the knowledge, they have to read many sources in many times. It means that they should have a good reading habit.

                There are many studies about reading habit and it still becomes happening issue right now. Noor is one of the researchers who conduct the research in this field. She focuses on the higher education such as university level (post graduate student). The purpose of her study is to figure out the student’s reading habit and the preference.  The finding shows that the students have different of reading material. The major preference they read is reading online material. This is in line with previous studies (Shen, 2006, Hagood, 2003) that indicated students’ primary preference for reading online materials. Furthermore, in reasoning why they choose that type, they have different view point. It can be categories into two; pleasure and study. 

                This study can be applied in our class in Indonesia. We can also conduct this study in the university level. I think there is no big obstacle if we do this study because reading is skill that can be measured without using complicated tool. We can use questionnaire instrument to collect the data. Thus, we can figure out what preference they read most and what reason they give. Is there any different finding of still the same? Furthermore, we can enlarge the study not only to figure out the preference and the reason but also to examine the effect of the preference in their achievement.

CRITICAL READING 6

CRITICAL READING OF THE EFFECT OF USING COOPERATIVE AND INDIVIDUAL WEBLOG TO ENHANCE  WRITING PERFORMANCES

H. Gulhan Orhan Karsaki, Seval Fer, and Feza Orhan

University of Turkey

Published by Journal of Educational Technology & Society

Weblogs is one of the prominent tools applied in blended learning environment. There are many researchers studied in this field such as Karsaki, et.al. The aim of their study is to examine the effect of using cooperative and individual weblogs to enhance writing performance, based on blended instructional design. The design of the research is mixed method. In the experimental study, the researcher applied pretest-posttest control group design and in the case study, the researcher used students’s views. The fifth grade students of elementary state school in Istanbul was chosen as the subject of this research. The researcher uses cooperative weblog on the experimental group worked in blended learning environment, and an individual weblog. The result of this research is writing instruction in an individual weblog-integrated learning environment based on blended instructional design, in terms of the ideas/content aspect, ideas/content , performance on fluency, organization and writing rules tasks contributed to the improvement of writing performance more than writing instruction in a cooperative weblog-integrated learning environment.

 Boonk and Graham defined that blended learning is generally defined as the integration of internet-based learning and face-to-face (Boonk and Graham 2013). In addition, (Boonk and Graham 2013) et.al Blogs are defined by different writers as web environments that are easy to create and through which links such texts, pictures, and audio and video files can be shared and updated; additionally, individuals from different locations at different times can comment on these links.

If we use this tool in our elementary school so it will faced many obstacles. There are many students who cannot use  internetw well besides that there are limited facilities that provided by the school. It will be different if we apply this tool in senior high school or university students. They can already manage their selves and their skills in using the internet (weblog).

IATEFL/ TESOL 2016

IATEFL/ TESOL WEB CONFERENCE

Topic : English as a Lingua Franca

Presenter: Jennifer Jenkins

with Jennifer Jenkins

The topic of session one online conference is english as lingua franca.  The things we can learn from the topic presented is about the English Lingua Franca (EFL) similect instead of World Englishes (WE) Variety. She maintained that ELF communities, unlike traditional speech communities, are not made up of speaker with a share language background but of speakers from different L1s. in multilingual research, SLA and ELT are standing still, a range of overlapping developments in multilingualism research and especially into translanguaging and demonstrating gap even in surrent ELF thinking. Furthermore, translanguaging posits that bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively. ELF Current definitions don’t allow for situations where English is known to everyone in the interaction but isn’t actually used or is only used minimally.

Some possible future of English: 1. Convergence (we all speak American English); 2.  Divergent (Latin syndrome, English will develop into many mutually incomprehensible varieties); 3. No future (another language will take over); 4. A Chinese future (influence from the largest speaker of English in the world, Chinese English); 5. English as multilingual franca.

This topic is very interesting. We know that English Lingua Franca become more popular in today’s classroom. English as tool of comunucation not only use in English class but also in non-english class. It is a necessity because many literature of science written in English. Many students learn English to know and to understand the text of the literature. As the result, they become more familiar with English term and start to use English in their communication. Even though there are some mistakes in practicing, they still use English as a Lingua Franca confidently. It means that ELF becomes a mode of communication.

The thing we learn from the presenter is that she has fully prepared for her speech. She is also aware with the audiences’ cultural diversity which came from different country. In simply, she has good ethical speaking.