Errors made by students in skills such as speaking and writing have been treated as important information to help teachers direct the foci of their teaching. Teachers need to pay attention to the most serious errors before addressing other errors. Hence, this research was aimed at finding the most serious errors produced by students at one of the junior high schools in Indonesia, i.e. State Junior High School No 7 in Banda Aceh. The errors were categorized into surface strategy taxonomy and linguistic category taxonomy errors. The data were collected from recount texts produced by 19 students who were known to make errors in writing. The data was analyzed by calculating the percentage of errors based on the total cumulative errors for surface strategy taxonomy, but based on the number of attempts in the same grammatical elements for linguistic category taxonomy. The results of data analysis showed that the dominant errors for surface strategy taxonomy were selection (72%) followed by omission (14.4%), and addition (10.6%). In the linguistic category taxonomy, the most dominant types were word forms (48.4%), followed by articles (35%), nonfinite verbs (34.9%), verb tenses (34.3%), plurals (33.3%), and prepositions (30%). It is suggested that teachers pay more serious attention to the most serious problems because solving these problems will hasten the students' progress in learning.

Abstract

Students of social and natural sciences are expected to achieve different learning outcomes because they employ different language learning strategies and are exposed to different vocabulary. This research was aimed at finding evidence from empirical data to determine whether the differences in learning outcomes are statistically significant. The data for this research were collected by administering the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to 179 students from four state universities in Aceh, the northernmost province of Indonesia. The results of the test were analysed based on the components in each subtest. There are three parts in the listening comprehension section, 14 aspects in the structure and written expression section, and six skills in the reading comprehension section. The results show that significant differences were only found in part A (the short talk section) of the listening comprehension part and in the main idea skill section in the reading comprehension part. Students of natural sciences performed better when listening to a short academic talk, while social science students had a better general comprehension of non-discipline specific academic texts.

The major objective of this research is to analyze the flouting maxims in one of the Indonesian comedy movies, The Guys. This research is focused on identifying the types of flouting maxims and to seek out the reasons behind those flouting performed by Alfi character in the movie. The data for this qualitative research were collected from the utterances produced by character Alfi containing flouting maxims. They were obtained by watching the movie and transcribing the movie script to ensure that no data were accidentally left out. The data was analyzed by classifying the data into types and reasons of flouting maxims, then the researcher verified all the data to ensure that all the data matched and correctly-translated. The results of this research show that character Alfi performed all types of flouting maxims, i.e. quantity, quality, relevance and manner. Flouting maxim of manner is in the highest occurrence and flouting maxim of relevance is in the lowest occurrence. Whereas the reasons that lead character Alfi to flout the maxims are competitive, convivial, collaborative and conflictive. Concerning the reasons of flouting maxims, collaborative reason is in the highest position, and conflictive reason has the lowest position in its occurrence.

The research aimed at finding out the Acehnese archaic words and their non-archaic alternatives that younger speakers often utter today. Several Acehnese original lexical items were no longer understood by the younger generation, and thus it was expected that some words to disappear without proper documentation. Hikayat Prang Sabi (Sabil War Sage), an early literary work in Acehnese, was the source of archaic words for the research. Therefore, the research design applied a descriptive qualitative method. The data consisted of 54 suspected archaic words from Hikayat Prang Sabi that were distributed to 20 speakers of Acehnese who lived in the Pidie regency. They were divided into two age groups consisting of 20 to 25 years old and 26 to 30 years old. They were asked to verify the suspected archaic words. The research results show that there are five archaic words and 49 semi-archaic words have found in the Hikayat.

The credits for translation courses offered at the study program of English Language Teaching at a university level in Indonesia are very limited, which is not sufficient to teach and facilitate practices for all techniques of translation. Therefore, the students should only be taught techniques frequently used in translation from English to Indonesian. This research was to analyze translation techniques commonly used in translating from English to Indonesian. The data were collected from Colors magazine, an in-flight magazine for Garuda Indonesia. The magazine comes in two languages. The sentences were extracted, and translated sentences in Indonesian were compared to the original version in English. The research results showed that the most frequently used techniques in translating from English into Indonesian are amplification (23.36%), reduction (15.20%), transposition (12.32%), borrowing (12%), modulation (11.68%), and literal translation (10.08%). Therefore, it is recommended that lecturers teaching students majoring English Language Teaching provide them with those techniques of translations with practices, feedbacks and explicit instruction for revisions.

Purpose of the study: Lecturers of public universities in Indonesia are encouraged to publish articles in internationally reputable journals frequently. Due to their workload and tight schedule, they may be tempted to copy some or part of their works. This study aimed at investigating the reasons for young lecturers on plagiarism in English academic writing. Methodology: A quantitative method was used to describe and explain the phenomenon of the junior lecturers’ plagiaristic conduct. A set of questionnaires was used as the instrument to obtain the data. The data were collected from 82 young lecturers who were attending an English intensive program at the Language Centre of Syiah Kuala University, the oldest and biggest university in the province of Aceh. Main Findings: The results show a contradiction between junior lecturers’ awareness of their practical behavior. Their high awareness of plagiarism was not a benchmark from the misconduct or plagiarism. Surprisingly, the findings show some of the junior lecturers were intentionally plagiarizing by paying more professional writers to finish their articles. They also copied the whole source or part of it to produce better writing work. Finally, lack of consequences and lack of ability in academic writing are the major reasons why young lecturers plagiarized. Applications of this study: This study applies to the area of English Teaching and Learning. However, it does not rule out the possibility that the study result applies to other fields of study. Novelty/Originality of this study: Moreover, the study result might be useful for readers’ conceptual development because there is very little research related to lecturers’ plagiaristic behavior, especially in Indonesia. A more in-depth investigation can be obtained and tested using this study result.

The most critical requirement of an online class is the availability of the internet for a teacher and students alike. The objective of this study was to find out how student internet access correlates to teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching an online class. This quantitative study used categorical data obtained using two questionnaires, one of which was student internet access consisting of three constructs, and the other is teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching an online class. The questionnaires were distributed online to in-service teachers who had completed or almost completed an online teacher professional development program in four major universities in Indonesia. As many as 158 teachers completed both questionnaires. The data were analyzed using Spearman Correlation Coefficient to reject the null hypothesis at the significance level of 0.05. The correlation was calculated for seven teacher categories, i.e. teachers in urban areas, teachers in rural areas, elementary school teachers, junior high school teachers, senior high school teachers, experienced teachers, and inexperienced teachers. The research results show that teacher-reported student internet access correlates with teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching an online class. The level of correlation ranges from weak to strong correlations, with moderate correlations for most teacher categories. The implication of this study for teacher education is also discussed.