Pragmatic competence is a core part of communicative competence and has become the main focus of teaching and learning process in today’s English language teaching. Thus, it is pivotal to have more of pragmatic materials in English textbooks since they are the major references used in the classroom. This study examined the conversation section in the series of Indonesian ELT textbooks to see whether the pragmatic content as required in the curriculum is fulfilled. Using Searle’s speech acts model as the framework, content analysis method was applied by using descriptive approach in analysing the illocutionary acts and forces provided in the textbooks. The findings indicate that despite their occurrences on the textbooks, some of the speech acts provided were low in frequency and lacked variety to develop better pragmatic competence for the students. This has significant implications on the textbook writers in developing content materials for the pragmatic competence.
Online learning poses challenges that students might never have encountered in a face-to-face learning environment. In learning English, students may confront more challenges as they need both cognitive and metacognitive skills in dealing with the dynamic lessons involving interaction, online exercises, and audio, video and text downloads. The challenges faced in online learning have led students to employ learning strategies to help them learn more efficiently and effectively. This paper examined students’ strategy use in learning English online and the correlation of the strategies with their academic performance in the subject. Using the Online Language Learning Strategy Questionnaire (OLLSQ) to gauge students’ strategy use in the domains of cognitive, metacognitive, resource-management and affective, the findings indicated that all students were high users of OLLS in English online learning with the highest preference for metacognitive as the strategies were helpful to students in planning and organizing their studies. However, there was low correlation between the strategies use and performance. Overall, the strategies have impacted the students positively and helped them to cope with the new learning mode that is different from the traditional learning. It is hoped that the discovery of the strategies could provide some important insights into how students can be more successful in learning online, and help others to achieve their study goals and overcome any challenges confronting them in learning English online. Keywords: E-learners, Learning strategies, Online learning, Performance
Writing is perceived to be one of the most difficult skills for English language learners to master. Although studies on challenges faced by ESL students in writing are replete, most of them have focused on students at secondary and tertiary levels of education. Studies on learners at lower level have been scarce. Thus, this paper aims to fill the gap by examining the major problems faced by ESL primary school level students in writing in English. Survey and interview sessions were conducted to fit the purpose of the study. Data were collected from a class of 26 students from Year/Standard 6 of the primary school level in Malaysia and an interview session with the English teacher of that particular class. The findings indicate that the major difficulties charted are rooted in the students’ poor mastery in vocabulary, inability to spell words correctly and L1 interference. Thus, in order to enhance the students’ skills in writing in English, the teacher implemented some remedial measures during the teaching and learning sessions. The findings have essential pedagogical implications on understanding students’ struggle to write in English at the lower level of education.
Blogs have gained popularity among language teachers as a tool to develop students' writing skills. However, using blogs in teaching writing has not been widely practised in Indonesia depite the positive effects on students' learning as reported in the literature. This paper examines the development of students' communicative writing skills through blogging. The data were collected from students' writing based on different themes posted in a class blog over a five-week period. Using Franker's ELT blog rubric as a framework for analysis, the findings were classified into four codes of communicative skills in writing: creativity, critical thinking, voice and comment. The findings indicate a general improvement on the students' communicative skills in writing based on these codes. Students also responded positively towards the use of blogging in developing their communicative skills in writing. Not only blogging helped to develop their minds critically and evaluatively, they were able to write their thoughts and respond to others' point of view freely without the presence of the instructor and fellow friends. Such findings indicate that with advance of technology in education, blogs can be an alternative medium for teaching writing in class, especially in this IR4.0 era.
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