Swear words are generally used to articulate anger, pain, excitement, frustration, or surprise. It is often imitated by children who may not really understand the meaning of the swear words. This survey-based study aims to identify the swear utterances of male and female teenagers, find out their commonly-used swear words, and investigate whether bilingual male or female students of Grade 12, Binus International School, Simprug, Jakarta, use more swear words. A combination of multiple choice and open-ended questionnaire was constructed and the analysis revealed that swearing is inevitable and becomes a part of the male and female language repertoire. Both groups of students are said to employ the use of Indonesian and English swear words in carrying-out conversations in order to release stress and express intense emotions. However, male students tend to use more swear words that are associated with sexuality.

This study explores the perceptions of high school students who attend an international school in Jakarta towards language use, language attitude, and identity. One hundred sixty-five students aged between 15-18 years old participated in this study. They were divided into three categories based on their nationalities, namely (1) Indonesian students who were born and raised in Indonesia, (2) Indonesian students who were born and raised outside Indonesia, and (3) non-Indonesian students (expatriates) who were studying in Indonesia. The data were collected using a survey and in-depth interviews. The findings reveal that the majority of the students in the first and second categories were more comfortable with both oral and written English rather than their first language. However, for the expatriates in the third group, they could express themselves better when they used their first language. Generally, their attitude towards their home language was quite positive. The need to speak their first language (e.g., Korean, Hindi) was a gateway to connect with friends and relatives who did not speak English. As for the students’ identity, this study reveals that although the students were more fluent in English, they felt that they were strongly connected to their country of birth. This study draws out the pedagogical implication that the use of English as a medium of instruction can be quite critical, especially for Indonesian students, as it may have an impact on the loss of their home language.

Librarians are re-discovering themselves in many functions that connects them to library users by playing critical roles in supporting the users. Investigating how librarians will help their users is now significant to school library services. This is a comparative study carried out in Nigeria and Indonesia to find out roles of librarians towards helping hurting library users. The study investigates if librarians are aware of issues that makes their users hurts emotionally and if there are specific activities that are created in the libraries to enhance  users’ well-being. The librarians in these two countries were asked if they use readers’ advisory to recommend literature that could help users that are hurting. This study also examines wether librarians in these countries understands the concept of bibliotherapy. Every librarian has the potential to help hurting library users once they recognise the efficacy of using the appropriate book to help. The 21st century library professionals need to learn more about their potentials to help and comfort users in the library space.

This study explores how Indonesian ESL Grade 2 elementary students studying in an international school in Jakarta produce written and spoken narratives. The stimulus material used to obtain the data was a four-panel comic strip with no written text. The findings revealed that both productions follow the basic global structure such as story elements, linearity of the storyline, and coherence. However, the written narratives contextually demonstrated formality while the spoken narratives displayed higher frequencies in using structure of discourse (e.g. hedges, contraction, repair and repetitions) and sentence complexity in T-units. Hedges were used as delaying tactics to allow more time for language processing. The use of contractions was due to the rapid production of language that constraints the ability of the students to produce syntactic richness. Repairs illustrated specificity of the chosen words, while repetition stemmed from the linguistic device like onomatopoeia that demonstrated the creative sides of the students to amplify their thoughts. Apparently, sentence complexity using the T-units demonstrated that the spoken narratives outnumbered the written mode. Nevertheless, it was apparent that the 2 T-units or 3 T-units followed a pattern (e.g. independent clause to independent clause with extension) which was a product of the participants knowledge on spellings and construction of formal and complete sentences. These results may implicate that language educators need to heighten the learners awareness of the unique linguistic features of each mode, to provide a clear understanding on how these modes work best in English language, and to attempt in establishing a balance in structure discourse and sentence complexity in T-units.Keywords: ESL young learners, written and spoken narratives, pattern of differences

This study explores how Indonesian ESL Grade 2 elementary students studying in an international school in Jakarta produce written and spoken narratives. The stimulus material used to obtain the data was a four-panel comic strip with no written text. The findings revealed that both productions follow the basic global structure such as story elements, linearity of the storyline, and coherence. However, the written narratives contextually demonstrated formality while the spoken narratives displayed higher frequencies in using structure of discourse (e.g. hedges, contraction, repair and repetitions) and sentence complexity in T-units. Hedges were used as delaying tactics to allow more time for language processing. The use of contractions was due to the rapid production of language that constraints the ability of the students to produce syntactic richness. Repairs illustrated specificity of the chosen words, while repetition stemmed from the linguistic device like onomatopoeia that demonstrated the creative sides of the students to amplify their thoughts. Apparently, sentence complexity using the T-units demonstrated that the spoken narratives outnumbered the written mode. Nevertheless, it was apparent that the 2 T-units or 3 T-units followed a pattern (e.g. independent clause to independent clause with extension) which was a product of the participants' knowledge on spellings and construction of formal and complete sentences. These results may implicate that language educators need to heighten the learners' awareness of the unique linguistic features of each mode, to provide a clear understanding on how these modes work best in English language, and to attempt in establishing a balance in structure discourse and sentence complexity in T-units.