FINAL ASSIGNMENT APPLIED LINGUISTIC

A STUDY ON THE READING SKILLS OF EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
By Flora Debora Florist
Marsha Divina
Pertra Christian University, Indonesia

    SUMMARY

    This Journal is about the research of EFL students’ reading skills. In this case the writer focused on the investigation of the reading skills of ten-batch-2003-students studying at an English Department of a private university in Surabaya. They were selected because they have passed all levels of reading classes.
    The writers used some types of data collection that is implemented in that university. Those are :
    The first step was to analyze the kinds of reading skills which were taught. The result lead the writer to focus on seventeen reading skills which were already taught, namely:
1.    Scanning
2.    Skimming
3.    Improving reading speed
4.    Structural clues: morphology (word part)
5.    Structural clues: morphology (compound words)
6.    Inference from context
7.    Using a dictionary
8.    Interpreting pro-forms
9.    Interpreting elliptical expression
10.    Interpreting lexical cohesion
11.    Recognizing text organization
12.    Recognizing presupposition underlying the text
13.    Recognizing implications and making inference
14.    Predictions
15.    Distinguishing between fact and opinion
16.    Paraphrasing
17.    Summarizing
    The second step of the data collection was to develop two reading test. The tests were designed in short answer type instead of multiple choices answer type to avoid respondents’ guessing in doing the test.
    The third step was piloting the two reading tests. This steps was aimed to help the writers to see wheter the two reading test had clear and good instruction and items.
    The next step was to distribute the reading tests to the students who were chosen randomly.
    The final step was to check and count the result of both reading tests. The rule was that if the respondents’ answer were correct or in accordance with the answer keys more than 75% the respondents got full mark, on the other hand if the respondents got less than 75%, the respondents got zero.
The result of the data analysis showed that the most difficult reading skill for these students was recognizing as text organization (72.5%). According to the writers it could be because many Indonesian students were not trained to active recognizing text organization after they read a passage. The second most difficult reading skill was paraphrasing (65%). Perhaps it was because thay had not fully understood the ideas of the original passage or sentence.
    This research was a small scale one, the findings discussed in this study showed that each reading skill had different level of difficulty for the respondents. May be the larger number of respondents could also be used to produce wider result which could be used to make generalization.

COMMENTS ON THE CONTENT

This research was based on the seventeen reading skills which were already taught by the respondents. The all seventeen reading that was tested are include in the conventional ways of reading testing. Why did I say that things? Here is my opinion supports.
-    A series of question that contains seventeen skills tested to the respondents only took short time just to measure their skills seem like they are in ‘unfair judgment’. The test takers felt in underpressure condition, that obliged them to answer all the questions in the limitation time provided by the researcher.
The critical reading does differently from the concept of the test above. The critical reading may takes more time because there are three processes that have to be done by the readers. The important value that we will get from this long processes is that students participate actively to study the text. Students not only read the text then throw it away and do nothing after they finish read the text, but further they will give their personal opinion to the text which will improve their ability not only in the reading skills but also in another skills.

-    In the second step of the data collection was to develop two reading tests. In developing the tests, the writers used the following steps. First, they adopted two reading texts entitled Learning to be Funny is No Joke and The Birth of Rock by Marker and Lenier (1986) and Using the Creative Imagination and Power of the Press by Talok (1992). On the other hand, the critical reading that popular among the students nowadays mostly use the happening news taken from newspaper or magazine article. The aimed of using the happening article is that students can relates the article with their experience. This statement based on Huckin (1997), who counsels teacher to consider students’ age and interests so that the lesson will be more relevant to their experience and thus more profitable.
The critical reading not only focus on the students’ comprehension of the text, that measured by some questions related to the text, but also to help EFL readers feel they have options in the way they choose to read the text and to help them feel in a more equal relationship with the writer (Wallace 1992,80).
-    After readng that article we know the reason why did the most difficult reading skill for these students was recognizing text organization. The researcher said that perhaps it was because many Indonesian students were not trained to activate recognizingtext organization after they read the passage. If we concern on the advantages of critical reading, this problem that mostly faced by the Indonesian students from the lowest level to the highest could be solved. Because critical reading will train students to recognizing text organization. This research just shows us the level of reading skills difficulties, but they did not give us the solution.

THE BENEFIT OF THIS RESEARCH TO THE TEACHER

In my opinion the benefit of this research are:
First, As the test designer, we also take an important role. After knowing the level of difficulties faced by EFL University students in mastering reading skills, we should realize that they are weak in certain reading skills. So that when we design the test, we have to consider this problem.

Second, teacher will know the level of reading skills difficulties faced by the students in the test. By knowing the level of reading skills difficulties, teacher could concern more to the most difficult reading skill by giving them some solutions to solve the questions.
Third, teacher further could find the best method to solve the students problem in mastering the recognizing text organization skill. As a teacher we can not force the students to master this difficult skill instantly, but we have to help them to find the most appropriate method to make it understandable to the students.

SUMMARY OF SEX, POLITENESS, AND STEREOTYPES

Iva Dlurrotun N.

 2201409009

Thursday, 405-406

SUMMARY OF SEX, POLITENESS, AND STEREOTYPES

We are going to learn more about examining styles and registers, the way language is used, and linguistic attitudes, the issue of ‘women’s language’ is one which illustrates all these concepts in this chapter. there are three important issues that would be discussed.

The first part of this book discuss about women’s language and confidence. According to Robin Lakoff, she argued that women were using language which reinforced their subordinate status, they were “colluding in their own subordination” by the way they spoke.

·         Features of women’s language

In this chapter, Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistic features such as the following:

Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see.

Tag questions, e.g. she is very nice, isn’t she?

Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.

‘Empty’ adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute.

Precise color teams, e.g. magenta, aquamarine.

Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.

‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.

‘Superpolite’ forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.

Avoidance of strong swears words, e.g. fudge, my goodness.

Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a brilliant performance.

The internal coherence of the features Lakof identified can be illustrated by dividing them into two groups. First, there are linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance. Secondly, there are features which may boost or intensify a proposition’s force. She claimed women use hedging devices to express uncertainty, and they use intensifying devices to persuade their addressee to take them seriously. According to her, both hedges and boosters reflect women’s lack of confidence.

The next material is INTERACTION. There are many features of interaction which differentiate the talk of women and men: interruption behavior and conversational feedback.

1.      Interruptions

In the same sex-interactions, interruptions were distributed between speakers. In cross-sex interactions almost all the interruptions were from male. It has been found that men interrupt others more than women do. Men interrupt more, challenge, dispute, and ignore more, try to control what topics are discussed, and are inclined to make categorical statements. Women are evidently socialized from early childhood to expect to be interrupted. Consequently, they generally give up the floor with little or no protest.

2.      Feedback

Another aspect of the picture of women as cooperative conversationalists is the evidence that women provide more encouraging feedback to their conversational partner than men do. In cross-sex conversation, women ask more question than men, encourage others to speak, use more signal like mhmm to encourage other to continue speaking, use more instant of you and we, and do not protest as much as men when they are interrupted. The mhmm a woman uses quite frequently means only “I’m listening”, whereas the mhmm a man uses, but much less frequently, tends to mean “I’m agreeing”.

The differences between women and men in ways of interacting may be the result of different socialization and acculturation patterns.

The third is gossip. The author describes gossip as the kind of relaxed in-group talk that goes on between people in informal contexts. Its overall function for women is to affirm solidarity and maintain the social relationships between the women involved. It focuses on personal experiences and relationships also personal problems and feelings.

The last section in this chapter talks about “SEXIST LANGUAGE”. It is concerned with the way language expresses both negative and positive stereotypes of both women and men. However, in reality, it is more concerned with language conveys negative attitudes to women. According to the author, based on linguistic data supports the view that women are often assigned subordinate status by virtue of their gender alone and treated linguistically as subordinate, regardless of their actual power or social status in a particular context.

Approach to Discourse

iva dlurrotun nihayah
2201409009
401-402

           In this chapter there are several approaches to discourse analysis based on the seventh-meeting material available. First approach is speech act theory. This approach is developed by Austin (1955) and Searle (1969). The basic unit of analysis is speech act (SA) or illocutionary force (IF). From the basic belief that language is used to perform action, Austin and Searle state that the basic unit conversational analysis must be functionally motivated rather than formally design one. The systemic name of this approach is Speech function (SF), the central issue in discourse structure.
            The second approach is Interactional Sociolinguistics and developed by Gumperz (1982) and Goffman (1959-1981). It is concerned with the interpretation of discourse and importance of context in production. The unit of analysis is grammatical and prosodic features in interaction. In other side, Schiffrin (1987) is focusing on quantitative interactive sociolinguistics analysis, especially discourse markers. His basic concern is on the accomplishment of conversational coherence and the unit’s analysis is turn.
            the third is Ethnography of communication. It is developed by Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974). It concerns with understanding the social context of linguistics interaction: ’who says what to whom’, when, where, why, and how. The prime unit of analysis is speech event which has some components. The analysis of the speech units’ components then we called ethnography of communication or ethnography of speaking. Then the ethnography framework has led to broader notion of communicative competence.

Systemic Functional Linguistic

Applied Linguistic ( meeting 8 assignment)
iva dlurrotun nihayah
2201409009
401-402

Systemic-Functional, is functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in orientation, takes the text rather than the sentence as its object, and defines its scope by reference to usage rather than grammaticality. The name "systemic" derives from the term SYSTEM, the theoretical representation of paradigmatic relations, contrasted with STRUCTURE for syntagmatic relations.

Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language centred around the notion of language function. SFL starts at social context, and looks at how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, this social context. Systemic semantics includes what is usually called 'pragmatics'. Semantics is divided into three components. They are ideational Semantics (the propositional content), Interpersonal Semantics (concerned with speech-function, exchange structure, expression of attitude, etc.) and Textual Semantics (how the text is structured as a message, e.g., theme-structure, given/new, rhetorical structure etc.

The focus of systemic functional Liguistic  is not on texts as decontextualized structural entities in their own right but rather on the mutually predictive relationships between texts and the social practices they realize.
Semantics is the interface between language and context of situation (register). Semantics is therefore concerned with the meanings that are involved with the three situational variables Field, Tenor and Mode. Ideational meanings realize Field, interpersonal meanings realise Tenor and textual meanings realize Mode. Interpersonal meanings are realised lexicogrammatically by systems of Mood and Modality and by the selection of attitudinal lexis.

The Mood system is the central resource establishing and maintaining an ongoing exchange between interactants by assuming and assigning speech roles such as giving or demanding goods and services or information. Modality is the resource concerned with the domain of the negotiation of the proposition or proposal between the categorical extremes of positive or negative. The negotiation may be in terms of probability, usuality, obligation or inclination. Lexicogrammatically textual meanings are realised by systems of Theme and Information. Theme selections establish the orientation or angle on the interpersonal and ideational concerns of the clause whereas Information organises the informational status or relative newsworthiness of these concerns.

discourse analysis

iva dlurrotun nihayah
2201409009
401-402

Stubb argues in his book (1983:1), that discourse analysis as analysis of language use beyond the sentences, concern with the interrelationship between language and society, and dialogic properties of everyday communication.
Text analysis and discourse analysis are two different things. In the text analysis, it needs linguistics analysis, and the interpretation is based on the linguistic evidence. In other side, discourse analysis study the text-forming devices with reference to the purpose and function for which the discourse was produce. It relates to contexts of situation, culture, and social. The goal of discourse is to show how the linguistics elements enable language users to communicate. In other words it tells us about happenings, what people thinks, belief, how text represents ideology, etc.
            Discourse analysis is defined as the study of how stretches of language used in communication assume meaning, purpose and unity for their users (coherence). Coherence itself is an interaction of text with given participant based on the context (participants’ knowledge, perception of paralanguage, other texts, the situation, the culture, the world in general and the role, intentions and relationships of participants.
There are some approaches to Discourse Analysis: speech act theory (interpretation), interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversational analysis, variation analysis, and structural functional approaches.

Third Assignment of Applied Linguistic

Iva Dlurrotun Nihayah
2201409009
401-102
Third Assignment of Topics in Applied Linguistic

Summary of Communicative Competence
           The main key in this case are the words performance and competence. The term ‘performance’ and ‘competence’ are used differently by the research, so that why Chomsky (1965) had differed those two terms. According to Chomsky (1965), the term ‘competence’ refers to the linguistics system (grammar) that an ideal native speaker of a given language has internalized whereas ‘performance’ mainly concerns the psychological factors that are involved in the perception and production of speech. Given this perspective, theory of competence is equivalent to the theory of grammar or language rule that can generate and describe the grammatical sentence of a language. In other hand, theory of performance focuses on the acceptability of sentence in perception and speech production.
           in other words, communicative competence can be defined as a knowledge that enables someone that enables someone to use that knowledge communicatively. Some researchers had been defining the term communicative competence, Munby (1978) assumed that communicative competence should focus minimally on the relationship and interaction between regularities in grammatical competence and regularities in sociolinguistic competence. It can be assumed that the rule of language will be useless if there is no grammar rule “not only knowing the grammatical rules of language, but also what to say to whom in what circumstances and how to say it, example: the rule when we greet the younger will be different with the rule when we greet the elder.
                There are some guiding principles for communicative competence in second language teaching. The first, communicative competence is composed minimally of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and communicative strategies. A communication approach must be based on and respond to the learner’s need. The second language must have the opportunity to take part in meaningful communicative interaction with highly competent speaker of the language. It is particularly at the early stages of learning (young age). The primary objective of a communication-oriented second language program must be to provide the learners with the information, practice, and much of the experience needed to meet their communicative needs in second language.

Second Assignment of Applied Linguistic

Iva Dlurrotun Nihayah
2201409009
401-102
Third Assignment of Topics in Applied Linguistic

Summary of Communicative Competence
           The main key in this case are the words performance and competence. The term ‘performance’ and ‘competence’ are used differently by the research, so that why Chomsky (1965) had differed those two terms. According to Chomsky (1965), the term ‘competence’ refers to the linguistics system (grammar) that an ideal native speaker of a given language has internalized whereas ‘performance’ mainly concerns the psychological factors that are involved in the perception and production of speech. Given this perspective, theory of competence is equivalent to the theory of grammar or language rule that can generate and describe the grammatical sentence of a language. In other hand, theory of performance focuses on the acceptability of sentence in perception and speech production.
           in other words, communicative competence can be defined as a knowledge that enables someone that enables someone to use that knowledge communicatively. Some researchers had been defining the term communicative competence, Munby (1978) assumed that communicative competence should focus minimally on the relationship and interaction between regularities in grammatical competence and regularities in sociolinguistic competence. It can be assumed that the rule of language will be useless if there is no grammar rule “not only knowing the grammatical rules of language, but also what to say to whom in what circumstances and how to say it, example: the rule when we greet the younger will be different with the rule when we greet the elder.
                There are some guiding principles for communicative competence in second language teaching. The first, communicative competence is composed minimally of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and communicative strategies. A communication approach must be based on and respond to the learner’s need. The second language must have the opportunity to take part in meaningful communicative interaction with highly competent speaker of the language. It is particularly at the early stages of learning (young age). The primary objective of a communication-oriented second language program must be to provide the learners with the information, practice, and much of the experience needed to meet their communicative needs in second language.