TOEFL has been used as a requirement for non-native English students to pursue further study overseas, to get an appropriate job and to graduate from university. Students often encounter difficulties completing TOEFL reading test. This quantitative study investigates the undergraduate students' difficulties and their strategies in completing TOEFL reading comprehension test. The data was obtained by collecting students' worksheets of the TOEFL test and distributing questionnaires related to test taking strategies used by the students. Thirty students of English Education Department of Syiah Kuala University were involved as participants. The results indicate five difficult reading aspects encountered by the students. In addition, their strategies to complete the reading comprehension section of the TOEFL test are also found. These findings are further discussed in this paper.

Drawing on a multimodality theory, this study attempted to investigate the various semiotic resources utilized by a giant Indonesian cigarette company, Sampoerna, and explore how these resources communicate meanings or messages in its billboard advertisements to persuade its potential customers to buy the product. The data were analyzed using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar focusing on ideational meta-function or also known as a representational function in multimodal discourse analysis. The findings revealed that the billboard advertisements were designed to persuade the audience to buy the advertised products implicitly through representational functions attained using narrative and conceptual processes. Whereas the former was realized by employing its typical sub-processes, actional and reactional processes, the latter employed its sub-processes such as classificational, analytical, and symbolic processes. Implicationally, this study has illuminated the possible application of systemic functional grammar within multimodal discourse analysis domain to investigate implicit message(s) conveyed by an advertisement.

Abstract:This study intends to explore students' difficulties in using critical thinking skills in reading. The subject of this study was second year undergraduate students of Ar-Raniry State Islamic University, Banda Aceh. This qualitative study analysed students' difficulties in using critical thinking skills in term of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. A personal interview was conducted to find the data from the students. The result indicates that students' lack of practicing let them difficult in using critical thinking skills in reading. The other difficulties found were lack of language mastery, implied meaning, background knowledge, repetition and lack of vocabulary. Among six problems discovered above, lack of practicing, background knowledge and language mastery had made the students felt that critical thinking was difficult to be applied.

The objectives of this study are to figure out whether the use of Two Stay Two Stray (TSTS) strategy could improve Grade 8 EFL students’ reading skill in a junior high school in Banda Aceh and to find out the students’ perspective about the use of this strategy. One class was randomly chosen as the sample in this study. The data were collected by using tests and questionnaire. The data were both analyzed by using statistical formulas. The results show that the use of TSTS in teaching reading to the Grade 8 students was successful. It can be seen from the mean scores of the experimental class that was 84.70. Moreover, the t-score (6.81) was higher than t-table (2.021), and this indicates that the students in the experimental class who were taught using TSTS got better improvement than before they were taught using this strategy. The results from the questionnaire also revealed that the students’ have positive responses in relation to the use of TSTS because this strategy offered a positive relationship between teacher-students and students-students, and further increase their interest in learning. This led the students to escalate their self-confidence, social interaction, individual accountability, and group skills. A better understanding of the materials taught was also attained because they could learn together as a team.

During the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, students of all education levels are pushed to study at home via online classes. Schools, universities and other educational institutes have to make sure that their students can keep receiving knowledge and information based on the indicators set by the curriculum. The same thing also occurs at the English Education Department of Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. This article presents the results of a two-cycle action research project conducted in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, through an online learning platform using Zoom meeting. In this study, eight undergraduate students participated in the online intervention class to apply genre-based visualization metacognitive strategy. A total of six academic texts of the explanation genre were taken from TOEFL tests and used in both cycles. In the online intervention class, students generated visual imagery of the academic texts, built up their knowledge of the text genres in the online discussions, and individually drew visual representations of the explanatory texts. The images drawn by the students were taken for the qualitative analysis, and the tests given to the students were analyzed quantitatively. Both data are used to find out their improvement in reading comprehension. The findings of this study revealed a remarkable contribution of genre-based visualization for improving students' comprehension of academic texts of the explanation genre at TOEFL level, particularly through online learning during the pandemic.

In a writing activity students are required to transfer their knowledge to express their ideas on both what to say and how to say it. The difficulties in applying this knowledge have become obstacles for learners in constructing good writing. Consequently, these obstacles may cause the students to make errors. By adopting the notions of Error Analysis (EA) and the Surface Strategy Taxonomy as the theoretical frameworks, this study investigates the types of linguistic errors produced by the students. Along the way the sources behind the errors were also analyzed. This study employed the qualitative method design in which the case study approach was utilized. Ellis’ five-step procedure of EA was adopted to analyze the data of essays comprising of 150-300 words written by 23 EFL students of the fourth-semester at English Department at a state university. They were purposively selected as the participants of this study. It was found that omission was the most frequent errors identified in the students’ writings. Overall, 122 (63%) cases out of 195 cases were categorized under this type of errors. The number marker, verb-tense, article, preposition, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun were the categories of frequent errors made by the students, respectively. These were followed by addition (18%), misformation (15%), and misordering (5%). Significance to the source of errors, intralingual transfer turned out to be the main reason that provoked the blunder in the students’ writings. It was apparent that some of the interlinguistic contrast was the reason behind the errors. It appeared that the diverse systematical concept between the Indonesian language and English in terms of verb conjugation factor, inflectional morpheme, and auxiliary-verb abandonment were the strong contenders of the error sources. Additionally, interlingual transfer and context of learning also took part for the reason behind the errors.

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This research analyzed the rhetorical pattern (RP) of script Introduction section written by undergraduate students at four selected universities in Aceh. Information about the RP of introduction section had been found in literature, including the work of Indonesian students in general. However, specific information about the RP of the work of EFL students in Aceh was not determined yet. The main aim of the study was to explore whether Acehnese studentsperformed the exact pattern of written Academic English. Understanding the RP of this section was important because it helped readers to have a description of the whole script. A qualitative method was applied in this study to draw the RP through the content analysis. The data were taken from twenty undergraduate students’ scripts at four selected universities. CARS model was used to analyze all the data. In general, the result shows a unique RP of the Introductionsection by Acehnese students where RP of introduction section maintains the circular way of thinking.