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Background: Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Indonesia have been facing challenges in terms of their literacy and language development. One of the possible reasons is that they are not used to receiving meaningful early reading interventions such as shared reading during their pre-school attendance. This phenomenon has brought to light the urgency of having an early intervention, which can accommodate the very diverse linguistic and cultural context of Indonesia- a multilingual and multicultural country. Methodology: This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method research design. The first phase was conducted in a quantitative one-group pre-experiment with pre-and post-test design. The second phase of this research was carried out in a qualitative case study through classroom observation and informal interviews with the teacher and the children. Findings: The findings of MLU calculation showed that for the pre-test, the mean score was 2.35, the median was 2.20 and the standard deviation was 0.53. Meanwhile, for the post-test, the mean score was 3.72, the median was 3.18 and the standard deviation was 1.38. The qualitative phase explored two main aspects, namely the implementation of dialogic reading activity by the teacher and the teacher as well as children’s opinions regarding the dialogic reading activity. Conclusion: This current study has offered an insight that dialogic reading activity could be well implemented by the teacher in a typical Indonesian pre-school setting. The dialogic reading activity was also found to contribute significantly to the development of children’s expressive language ability. Originality: The findings of this study have indicated dialogic reading potentials in terms of promoting children’s language development and just as importantly, sparking children’s joy of reading since their early years of formal education. Therefore, it is suggested that early childhood educators and parents work hand in hand to incorporate dialogic reading activity into their daily literacy practices at schools as well as at home.

This Classroom Action Research aimed at investigating the implementation of Concept Mapping Technique to improve students' descriptive writing ability. The research was conducted in two cycles at SMP Negeri 21 Samarinda, with 37 seventh grade students participating. In this research, there was one teacherresearcher who implemented the technique and there were two collaborators who did the observation. The data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively by using writing assessment, interview guide, observation sheets and field notes. The findings showed that: 1) there was an improvement in the students' descriptive writing average scores at the end of the second research cycle; 2) the implementation of the concept mapping technique was done properly by the teacher-researcher; 3) the concept mapping technique delivered through collaborative working improved the participation of the students in the teaching and learning process. Since all the criteria of success in this research were fulfilled by the end of the second cycle, it could be concluded that this classroom action research was successfully implemented and the technique proposed could very well improve the skills being targeted.

English has been one of the compulsory subjects for special schools in Indonesia. However, there have been a rather limited number of studies conducted regarding the teaching of English under the framework of Special Education. Responding to this gap, this current study aimed at investigating whether a particular language teaching approach called Lexical Input Approach assisted by series of pictures could provide a desirable effect on post-lingual deaf students vocabulary mastery. This research employed a pre-experimental Single Subject with a multiple base (A-B-A-B) design. The sample included three 8th grade Junior High School students with the similarity of ages and hearing-loss history. The primary data in this study were taken by using assessments and analyzed statistically by calculating the Percentage of Data Points Exceeding the Median (PEM). The findings indicated that there was an improvement in the students vocabulary scores after the treatments (from 41/ novice advanced category to 46 and 51/ novice high category). Thus, it could be concluded that using Picture-Assisted Lexical Input Approach was effective to improve English vocabulary mastery for post-lingual deaf students.

Reading texts or passages from textbooks are commonly used as learning materials in the Indonesian EFL context. This leads to the emergence of readability or reading level analyses for EFL reading materials using conventional formulas which, unfortunately, were originally developed for either English as L1 or L2 context. Moreover, there are alternative readability formulas for EFL materials that are relatively newer yet still underused in the field. Hence, this current descriptive study aimed to address this gap by attempting to analyze the reading texts in three Senior High School English textbook series published by the Ministry of Education and Culture, using formulas measuring the readability level without grade-levelling and using simplified EFL reading materials. In this study, the two specific formulas employed to conduct the readability level analysis were Miyazaki EFL Readability Index and McAlpine EFLAW formula. The results showed that the overall Miyazaki EFL readability score of all reading texts in the 10th, 11th, 12th grade English textbooks was 50, categorized as having a “standard” difficulty. Meanwhile, based on the analysis using McAlpine EFLAW readability formula, the overall readability score was 20.86, which was considered as “very easy to understand”. Eventually, it could be concluded that the two formulas could be conveniently used to analyze the readability level of all the reading texts in the textbook series. Moreover, the texts could be deemed as of “suitable and understandable” level for the intended EFL students in Indonesia.     Keywords:Readability; Texts; Textbooks; Miyazaki EFL formula; McAlpine EFLAW formula