The mastery of communication skills is undeniably considered the most important aspect in modern-day EFL contexts. Nevertheless, becoming communicatively competent is particularly difficult for foreign language learners as it is influenced by a number of factors including affective factors. Among the several affective factors which affect foreign language learning especially speaking, anxiety emerges to be the crucial one that has a devastating effect on the oral performances of students. This paper reviews the speaking anxiety phenomenon in the field of foreign language learning. The possible factors that cause speaking anxiety to come into play are described and discussed in accordance with the central themes appearing from an examination of relevant literature. The central themes are (1) cognitive factors covering topics, genre, interlocutors, and processing demands, (2) affective factors dealing with feelings towards the topic and/or the participants, and also self-consciousness, and (3) performance factors concerning mode, degree of collaboration, discourse control, planning and rehearsal time, time pressure and environmental conditions. Understanding the nature of this anxiety and the sources it springs from thoroughly should help both teachers and learners to gain more insights and find ways with which to deal with anxiety in EFL classrooms.
This study was done to study the learning strategies used by both low and high performance speaking students in developing their speaking skills as well as the differences between their learning strategies. The reason for conducting this research was that the competency of many students in speaking English was still considered unsatisfactory in Banda Aceh. We postulated that one aspect involved in the process of developing speaking skills was the learning strategies used by the learners. In this study, the data was collected through field research by means of documents, questionnaires, and interviews. The result of this study indicated that high performance speaking students had better balance in using all kinds of learning strategies (memory, cognitive, compensatory, metacognitive, affective, and social) for enhancing their speaking skills; the same could not be found with low performance speaking students. Besides, the high performance students employed more learning strategies consciously and appropriately compared to the low performance students. Based on the research results, it is suggested that students should be trained to be more aware of their own speaking learning strategies. They should use appropriate language learning strategies more consciously, purposefully, and frequently to be more successful in developing their speaking skills.
The use of EFL published materials like textbooks are becoming more widespread as they can bring easiness in the classroom by providing teachers with guidelines comprised of syllabus, methodologies, as well as materials for teaching and learning. However, choosing a suitable textbook for their teaching situation is deemed to be one of the most challenging tasks that EFL teachers often face. To get a good picture of the suitability of a textbook, a careful investigation needs to be undertaken. This study focused on the analysis and evaluation of two different English textbooks addressed to junior high schools grade VII in Indonesia, KTSP and curriculum 2013 textbook. Harmer's (2007) framework was employed to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each textbook. The analysis revealed that both textbooks are quite satisfactory as they are very affordable, contain interesting layout, attractive designs, and clear instructions, correspond to current ELT methodology, cover all language skills, and comprise a wide range of topics which are familiar and culturally appropriate for learners. Nonetheless, the KTSP textbook does not have add-ons and extra materials; meanwhile, curriculum 2013 textbook is weak in providing authentic listening materials. Therefore, although the teachers manage to use the textbooks as their core materials, they are supposed to make adjustment and supplement them with other materials according to their learners' needs and their teaching context.
This study focused on teachers’ materials adaptation as a part of teaching strategies to ensure learning success. Given that such activity is not something light to engage in and requires expertise, the researchers looked at how the process of materials adaptation was carried out. These included what was added, removed, and modified as well as the challenges confronted during the adaptation process and classroom implementation. This study sought perspective from a qualitative case study approach. Documents, classroom observations, and interview were employed to gather data from one senior high school teacher in Aceh, Indonesia. The results were analyzed based on frameworks of language teaching materials analysis, principles of teaching materials, and materials adaptation. Research findings suggested that materials adaptations mostly concentrated on adding and modifying, with less emphasis on eliminating, simplifying, and rearranging. Furthermore, the altered materials aided language learning in various ways. Nevertheless, several modifications made raised issues, such as the lack of a feeling-sharing session with the materials and an inappropriate difficulty level. Inaccessible sources of materials, fear of producing irrelevant information, time constraints, a lack of professional training and school assistance, learners’ uncooperative behavior and low competences were also identified as problems in materials adaption.
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