English Department

Grabbing meanings in oral texts is not always easy. Therefore, listening is considered as a difficult task by many learners of English as a foreign language. The preliminary study of this research even revealed that students of English Department still face this problem. To ease the task, it is essential for students to know and apply suitable listening strategies as well as to have awareness related to their learning. Yet, whether or not students have the awareness and know the strategies are still questioned. Hence, a research was conducted and this article attempts to share the findings of an investigation on the metacognitive awareness of sophomore students regarding their listening comprehension in English and the strategies they use to understand listening texts. Sophomore students of English education department were chosen because they met the criteria to be the participants of this study i.e. they had joined some level of listening courses in the department. They are considered have adequate experiences in listening class. The data in this study was obtained through questionnaires (MALQ, Vandergrift et al, 2006). Results showed that the students were fairly aware of all aspects of metacognitive strategies and knowledge. Unlike those who were only tested, students who perceived of being trained in using listening strategies had higher metacognitive awareness.

The use of authentic materials has received a nod from both teachers and students in reading classes due to the benefits they get from such materials. The most obvious advantage that can foster comprehension is the language containing genuine expressions used in real written communication in daily life. In addition, culture-bound expressions could be learned from authentic materials because they are written for native speakers, and grammatical errors could be kept to a minimum because they are written by native speakers. Despite these benefits, using authentic materials may have some drawbacks, but the one most relevant to this paper is related to the readability or the difficulty level of the reading texts. The sentences in authentic reading materials are sometimes considered too hard for foreign language learners to understand, demotivating them to read further. To overcome this problem, it is strongly recommended that the teachers simplify the authentic texts before presenting them in reading classes. This paper describes the procedures of simplifying reading texts in two steps: replacing the words that are considered difficult and reducing the complexity of the sentence structures. An authentic reading text will exemplify how these procedures are conducted without changing the meaning in the text. Finally, some implications for the teaching of reading will be presented.

Proficient readers usually skip unknown words that they
encounter in a reading text. This study attempts to examine the use of skipping as a lexical processing strategy in reading comprehension and explore the reasons for utilizing this strategy. The findings reveal that most proficient readers do skip unknown
words, and there are five reasons underlying the application of this strategy. Some recommendations are made based on these findings.

Building a strong argument in written form could be challenging for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for two reasons: they are still grappling with the target language and have little knowledge about the rhetoric in the target culture. This paper focuses on the latter, examining the problems that the Indonesian learners face when writing an argumentative text in English due to cultural differences. Twenty eight adult EFL learners who participated in a language training to improve their English proficiency were asked to write an argumentative essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, two paragraphs in the body and a concluding paragraph. In this paper the analysis was confined to the introductory paragraphs that they wrote, and the results showed that the way they organized the ideas to build an argument in the introductory paragraphs was influenced by their native culture to a certain degree. Rather than expressing their thoughts and opinions in a linear fashion like native speakers of English commonly do, some of them wrote their arguments by beating around the bush, making it harder for the readers to identify and understand these writers’ stance about a certain issue. Moreover, some others even avoided giving an overt argument in their paragraphs and embraced both contrasting views about a particular issue instead. Some implications for the teaching of writing argumentative text were proposed.

The present paper reports the challenges that the researcher had when teaching statistics to undergraduates majoring in the teaching of English and how to overcome them. It attempted to describe: (1) how to increase their motivation to learn statistics, and (2) how to improve their ability in statistical analysis. Approached qualitatively and quantitatively, this study was conducted by using mixed-method action research. The research subjects consisted of forty-one undergraduates attending the Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses class in the English Department, and were selected purposively. Data were collected by means of these instruments: participatory observations, exercises, focus group discussions and a statistics test. The results indicated that setting clear instructional goals and relating statistics to the undergraduates’ study and future duties in the teaching profession could increase their motivation to learn statistics. To improve their ability in statistical analysis, it was better for them to avoid using software immediately to analyze numbers; rather, they should learn to compute numbers manually while at the same time trying to find out what each term meant and how to interpret the results. Based on these findings, some implications for the teaching of statistics to the EFL undergraduates were described.

The ease of comprehending a text—or readability—should be estimated by the teachers before they present it to the learners in the teaching of reading; otherwise, the text may be either too easy or too frustrating to read, decreasing the learners’ interest in the text and demotivating them to read further. To predict whether the text is of the right level of difficulty for the learners, the teacher may use his or her own subjective judgment, especially if he or she has ample experience in teaching reading and knows the learners’ reading ability very well. There has been mixed evidence about the accuracy of the teacher’s judgment in estimating readability, and the present study provides an additional piece of empirical evidence to this heap. This study aimed to find out whether the subjective judgment of the teacher correlated with the learners’ perspective in terms of the difficulty level of English texts. A lecturer in the English Department of Unesa ranked five texts from the easiest to the hardest, then asked her students (N = 41) to do the same procedure. Pearson Product Moment was used to compute the relationship between these two, resulting in negative, very high correlation (r = -.98). This finding demonstrates that the texts estimated to be harder to read turned out to be easier for the students, and vice versa. Some possible reasons for this phenomenon were explained, and it was recommended that broader spectrum of factors be considered when using subjective judgment to predict readability so that the results could be more accurate.

This paper provides a general overview of reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL). Reading comprehension is defined as the process of constructing meaning from the printed text, involving cognitive and social factors. There are three types of reading processes: bottom-up, top-down and interactive. In order to comprehend a text well, the proponents of the reading-universal hypothesis believe that good reading ability in the first language (L1) makes the readers read well in FL. On the contrary, those who support the short-circuit hypothesis argue that the readers need to reach a certain threshold level of proficiency in FL before such a transfer occurs. Some implications are suggested for language teachers who teach reading comprehension.

The present paper reports the slips of ear that occurred among non-native speakers in Indonesia when they were listening to the utterances of native speakers of English. From the erroneous perception of utterances, it was found that the listeners used their phonetic knowledge by misperceiving consonants, vowels or segment orders. They also used their lexical knowledge when they made morphemic errors, created nonwords or failed to identify the word boundaries. Lastly, the ill-formed sentences they reported to hear proved that they used their syntactic knowledge.

A common drawback of a subjective test lies in scoring, which may result in scores which are too high or too low. This problem occurred in one of the classes that the author taught in the English Department of Surabaya State University (UNESA) when two learners expressed their doubt about the objectivity of the author in giving scores. To overcome the problem, action research was conducted. The subjects of the study were twenty four undergraduates taking the elective course Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL). At the end of the semester they took an oral exam to evaluate their understanding about the materials. During the exam they had to assess themselves (self-assessment) and their classmates (peer-assessment). At the same time, the author as a lecturer also assessed them (teacher assessment). The results showed that the teacher assessment yielded the lowest mean (X =1.63), whereas the mean of scores obtained from the peer assessment was higher (X =1.76). It was the learners themselves who overestimated their knowledge about TEYL, resulting in the highest mean (X =1.79). The mark of each undergraduate was the average of the scores they got from the self-, peer and teacher assessment. In this way, the subjectivity of the teacher in assessing the undergraduates could be eliminated and fairness in determining the scores could be improved.

The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicated that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English) one. Two of them employed context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combined the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All but one of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.

The present paper addresses the advantages and the limitations of using verbal reports in a study on the lexical processing strategies of learners' reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. While verbal reports offer invaluable data in exploring mental processing, caution should be applied in its use; consequently, a number of actions need to be taken to minimize the limitations to obtain more valid data.

This paper attempts to analyse the call utilized by the street hawkers who sold snacks in Malang, a small town in East Java. The results indicate that their utterances could be classified into five categories. Most of them observed the Gricean maxims, a few flouted them, but none disobeyed them. In general the snack vendors could be considered conforming to the cooperative principle in offering their merchandise to the hearers or the customers.

Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being said, resulting in errors known as slips of the ear. Although these errors can sound very amusing, they provide more than entertainment as they have the potentials to reveal the listeners’ strategies in coping with the difficulties in perceiving utterances. This presentation aims to describe the slips of the ear performed by Indonesian university students who learned English as a foreign language (EFL). Analysis of the corpus consisting of 1008 data revealed that the EFL learners made phonological, morphological, lexical and sentential errors while attempting to make sense of the expressions spoken by native speakers of English. They misinterpreted the oral input by omitting, adding or substituting the sounds, morphemes, words and sentences.

For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia, encountering unfamiliar words can be a major roadblock in reading comprehension, especially if they happen to be keywords in a particular text. To overcome the vocabulary problem, learners generally resort to a dictionary, hardly realizing that other strategies exist. The strategy of inferring word meaning from context, for instance, seems to be ineffectively used by the learners, as revealed in a preliminary study conducted by the author. The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicates that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian) dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English) one. Two of them employ context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combine the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.

The use of movie videos as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Generally teachers play such videos without subtitles and have learners view them while attempting to comprehend the conversations spoken in the target language there. However, it is also possible to present movie videos with subtitles in the native language. This paper describes how the English movies in a DVD format are used in FL listening classes in Indonesian context. These movie DVDs contain a feature in the form of subtitles in Indonesian language, which is the learners' mother tongue, and this feature is activated while the movies are being played. Some motivating learning activities are suggested for the previewing , while-viewing, and post-viewing stages of the lesson. This technique of using subtitled movie DVDs has received favourable feedback from the learners, and therefore could be considered effective in assisting them to learn English as an FL.

Verbal reports have been extensively used as a research method in the inquiries on reading strategies. Despite criticisms directed toward this method, verbal reports remain a popular tool among researchers who are attempting to study in depth how human mind works while reading a text. It has been viewed as one of the most appropriate devices to access the online reading and therefore to unlock the unknown domain of this mental activity. The present paper addresses the advantages and the limitations of using verbal reports as experienced by the author when researching lexical processing strategies of learners who were reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. While verbal reports offer invaluable data in exploring mental processing, caution should be applied in the use of this method. This paper suggests a number of actions that need to be taken to minimize the limitations so that more valid data can be obtained.