This paper is aimed at (1) investigating whether the implementation of portfolio assessment had an impact on students’ writing ability, and (2) obtaining the students’ attitudes towards portfolios. The method used in this study was quasi-experimental research design, and the data were collected through a set of writing tests (pre-test and post-test) and a questionnaire. The results show that the implementation of portfolio assessment increased the students’ writing ability. It was also found that the students’ knowledge of global issues (content and organization) also increased more significantly than the local issues (grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics). In addition, the results of the questionnaire proved that the secondary level students had positive attitudes towards the implementation of the portfolio assessment. Therefore, it is suggested that the portfolio assessment should be implemented in the teaching-learning process especially in English writing since it could give regular feedback, and help the students in monitoring their writing progress.

This study explores the effect of working memory capacity (WMC) and content familiarity (CF) on EFL reading comprehension. Seventy senior students from a private university in Malang, Indonesia, were involved in the study, having been selected based on their English proficiency of at least pre-advanced level. These students were required to complete a reading span test for the WMC and a multiple-choice reading test based on CF. The findings of this study show that there is no interaction effect between WMC as the main independent variable and CF as the moderator variable; this implies that the students with higher WMC comprehend texts better than those with lower WMC, regardless of whether they are familiar or not with the texts.

This study aimed at investigating the benefits of the implementation of Content-Based Approach (CBA) in academic writing of EFL settings. Therefore, the approach was implemented in writing class in which 35 students participated as the respondents of the study. They were treated with CBA and their essays were then analyzed to examine the effects of the implementation of the approach on their writing products. Besides, this study investigated further the grammatical errors made by the students as reflected on their essays. The findings of this study proved that CBA is beneficial to improve students' writing skills even though the students still produced grammatical errors.

The choice of words used by the lecturer such as politeness strategies in the classroom interaction is very important, not only for controlling the classroom but also for the process of acquiring the language itself. This study aimed to investigate lecturer’s politeness strategies in criticizing teaching performance of students with multicultural backgrounds in a microteaching class. This qualitative study was conducted with the students from multicultural backgrounds. The subject of this study was a lecturer who taught Microteaching. The findings of this study showed that there were four most frequent criticism strategies used by the lecturer: demand for change, indicating standard, advice about change and other hint. In addition, the highest proportion of politeness strategies applied by the lecturer was occupied by positive politeness, off-record strategy, bald on record, and negative politeness. It implied that the lecturer mostly applied positive politeness in criticizing the students, in order to save the students’ face, get closer and give more positive feedback to help students develop their teaching performance. The facts also proved that students’ multicultural background did not affect too much lecturer’s decision in applying politeness strategies, yet it needed to be very careful in delivering them. Keywords: politeness strategies, criticism, multicultural backgrounds

This paper mainly investigates the benefits of the implementation of Reformulation and Text Modelling in an EFL writing setting. Reformulation and Text Modeling (henceforth RTM) is intended to help EFL students understand better how to write academic texts to make their texts sound as nativelike as possible. Therefore, RTM was implemented in a writing class in which 35 students participated as the respondents of the study. They were treated with RTM and their essays were then analyzed to examine the effects of the implementation of RTM on their writing products. Besides, this study investigated further the students' perception towards RTM in EFL writing settings. The findings of this study proved that RTM is beneficial to improve students' writing performances and students have positive perceptions on RTM. The implications of the findings for language learning are also discussed.