The mastery of the writing skills is crucial, not only among the school children, but also to everyone. The use of Cooperative Learning (hereafter, CL) has become increasingly popular in recent years as pedagogy trends worldwide. It has shifted from teacher-centred to learner-centred methods. Among the methods endorsed in teaching writing is the application of CL. This research investigated the effects of CL to improve the writing skill of ninth grade students in a middle school in Kuala Lumpur. This research used the quasi experimental design, with pre-test and posttest of the narrative essays as the instruments. The data were further analysed by employing descriptive and inferential statistics. The students' writing were scored on the five writing components, they are vocabulary, organization, grammatical accuracy and mechanics. The results showed that the students had increased in their writing scores from the pre-test to the post test after the application of CL in the class. Subsequently, the results indicate positive effects of CL in improving the writing skill of students at the school, and they are also discussed in the paper.

Teacher talk plays an essential role in classroom interaction since it can facilitate students to enhance their levels of comprehension toward the learning materials and further encourage them to be more active during the learning process. This qualitative study is aimed to analyze the types of talk employed by the teacher in the classroom interaction based on the framework of Flanders Interaction Analysis Category System (FIACS) promoted by Flanders (1970). The data were collected through audio recording and observation for three class meetings, and interview with the teacher at the second grade of a senior high school in Aceh Tengah, Indonesia. The results showed that all of the seven types of teacher talk were found. Among them, giving directions took place as the most applied interaction by the teacher. It indicates that the teacher mostly controlled and provided the students with directions, commands, or orders in the learning process. Meanwhile, the least used were accepting or using ideas of pupils and accepting feelings. From the result of the interview, this matter occurred due to the lack of students’ participation in expressing their ideas and feelings. Thus, this study is expected to be a reference by which teachers could consider the types of teacher talk to be implemented to improve their students’ activity and interest during the classroom interaction.

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This experimental research aimed to explore the effect of teaching English writing of narrative texts by using Edmodo learning media through blended learning on the tenth-grade students in one of the senior high schools in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. It further looks into the students’ responses on the use of this media in learning English writing of narrative text. To study the development of the students’ writing before and after using Edmodo learning media in the classroom, the writing tests were given to the students. The data were gained quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative data were collected from the pre-test, treatments for three class meetings and the post-test, while the qualitative data was collected through the open-ended questionnaire which was distributed to the students after the treatments were done. Statistical formulas were used to calculate the mean, standard deviation, and t-test for the students’ pre-test and post-test scores. The hand coding and computer coding were used to analyze the data from the questionnaire. The results from the analysis of quantitative data showed that there was an improvement in students’ writing of narrative texts; their scores improved from the pre-test to the post-test after treatments with Edmodo were done. Furthermore, the analysis of the questionnaire revealed a majority of positive responses from the students. Those who negatively responded towards the use of this online learning media said that it was due to the necessity of the Internet connection and computers, laptops or mobile phones to operate Edmodo. Not all students have the privilege of possessing such devises and the Internet quota can also be costly. Thus, they recommended the school to provide them with free access to the Internet and computers should learning by using this media is to be continued in the future. Keywords: Blended learning, Edmodo, EFL students, English writing, narrative texts.

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<p style="text-align: justify;">The study aims to investigate the evaluation model of professional leadership and the characteristics of successful principals at an Indonesian secondary school. It is to further realize the effective learning and to produce instruments that meet the validity and reliability tests. It also aims to discover the correlation and the significance of the independent variables on the dependent variables, and the percentage of influence on the indicators in shaping the model of principals’ leadership. Quantitative data were obtained by distributing questionnaires to 100 students. The number of respondents was determined using a simple random sampling technique. The research findings showed that there was a significant correlation among the principals’ leadership, characters, and effective learning. It indicated that leadership evaluation influenced the school leadership and the principals’ characters on effective learning. The results of the measurement on formative relationships showed that the indicators of behaviour and actions of school principals who manage the teachers to conduct learning activity seriously in the classroom became a determining factor in shaping the effective learning paradigm in secondary schools.</p>